RE: Arnold and DeVito in "Twins"?
July 23, 2018 at 7:13 pm
(This post was last modified: July 23, 2018 at 7:19 pm by Anomalocaris.)
No, the reason why the solar system didn’t end up being a binary probably has little to do with Jupiter not growing big enough. Jupiter never had a chance to grow big enough. Most binary stars became binaries not because one of the planets growing in the circumstellar debris disk grew too big. They became binary stars because the region of the molecular cloud from which they formed had too much angular momentum, so instead of collapsing to form a single stellar core, the region collapsed into two or more cores orbiting each other. If there would later be planets, then the planets will form out of the debris disks around each of these stellar cores.
The show you saw took the fact that the sun and Jupiter has similar compositions and ran with it, and ignored the details of our understandings of how the sun and planets formed.
Also, we really don’t know whether the sun is or had been part of a true binary system, not a fake binary with planets pretending they once had a shot at becoming stars. The possibility that the sun actually has a very dim true stellar companion that orbits the sun in an very extended orbit has not, AFAIK, been totally ruled out. We may yet find the sun has a brown dwarve or extreme red dwarve companion in a very extended orbit that takes 20-30 million years to complete.
In addition, we think the sun formed in a dense stellar nursery that later dispersed. The sun could well have formed as part of a binary star system, but the companion star was stripped away by close encounters with other stars in the same stellar nursery very early in solar system’s history.
What we know of the solar system precludes the sun from having a bright companion star right now, or any companion star at near or moderate distances during much of solar system’s history. But it does not preclude the sun from having a very distant and dim companion star now, or a companion star of a wide range of brightness in a moderate or distant orbit very early in our sun’s life.
Finally, that said, the notion that most stars are parts of binaries appears incorrect. More recent data suggest at least in solar system’s neighborhood, most stars are singletons.
The show you saw took the fact that the sun and Jupiter has similar compositions and ran with it, and ignored the details of our understandings of how the sun and planets formed.
Also, we really don’t know whether the sun is or had been part of a true binary system, not a fake binary with planets pretending they once had a shot at becoming stars. The possibility that the sun actually has a very dim true stellar companion that orbits the sun in an very extended orbit has not, AFAIK, been totally ruled out. We may yet find the sun has a brown dwarve or extreme red dwarve companion in a very extended orbit that takes 20-30 million years to complete.
In addition, we think the sun formed in a dense stellar nursery that later dispersed. The sun could well have formed as part of a binary star system, but the companion star was stripped away by close encounters with other stars in the same stellar nursery very early in solar system’s history.
What we know of the solar system precludes the sun from having a bright companion star right now, or any companion star at near or moderate distances during much of solar system’s history. But it does not preclude the sun from having a very distant and dim companion star now, or a companion star of a wide range of brightness in a moderate or distant orbit very early in our sun’s life.
Finally, that said, the notion that most stars are parts of binaries appears incorrect. More recent data suggest at least in solar system’s neighborhood, most stars are singletons.
