Billion wrote:

Fact: A large asteroid belt exists between Mars and Jupiter. The belt could have been formed when Jupiter's outer crust ruptured as the mantle fully opened, as it exploded on it's way to becoming a gaseous giant. (Another theory states that a planet should exist in that location to fit with the order of our solar system, but some have objected due to the lack of matter. If an extra planet did exist at one time, it may have been knocked out of the way by a huge asteroid like a
billiard ball.)

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Hi Billion,

I remember this theory from my undergduate days at UCLA, studying astronomy. This theory has a name, based on the man who figured out the mathematical ratios of the planets' positions from the Sun to Pluto. The fly in the ointment was the asteroid belt: where there should have been a planet, there were only these thousands of asteroids, orbiting the earth like any planet would, yet spread out over the entire orbit (after time).

Would someone please re-enlighted me re: the inventor of this theory? I don't believe in the "exploded fragraments from Jupiter" because a) these are solid rock-like forms and I find no way, even with outer atmospheric cooling for them to have come from gasseous Jupiter. (I could be completely wrong, here, as gases have been proven to solidify under some extremly cold temperatures. I even question whether Jupiter's own moons come from the big gas ball. They, too seem solid and limned with features that suggest a solid body, susceptability to changes in climate, and having a history of water having been present.

More likely, the asteroids came from Mars, if anywhere in our own solar system. (Ever wonder why it's so small?)

The most interesting theory I've come across re: the asteroid belt is that another, solid planet as large as as say, Mercury, Mars or Earth, or a stray asteroid or comet of signigicant mass had struck this planet (which, for the sake of brevity and charm,I will christen "Petra,") on a strange trajectory through our solar system. When colliding with Petra, it blew her into a million pieces, some of which got caught in the gravitational pulls of planets like Jupiter, and Earth, thus becoming our moon.

But who was that guy's name? A wonderful theory that accounts for infinite number of planets orbiting the sun at exponential distances, one of which might be the newly rumored Planet X.

Does anyone know how far Planet X is rumored to be from the sun, and whether or not Planet X gives credibility to this mathematician's formulation?

I find this stuff fascinating.

Cathryn