The accepted explanation for the hemispheric dichotomy is a very large impact in Mars' history which affected half of the planet's surface.
Well, yeah, no doubt. The problem is, if all the other planets received their meteor craters over billions of years, why didn't Mars get more on the unaffected side?
It is accepted that the gravitational field of Jupiter prevented the creation of a planet nearby. I have not heard of the Fibonacci sequence thing before. I might look into that a bit more.
Apparently you didn't read my earlier post on this. The thing is; there are irregular asteroids that seem to me would fit a blown-apart planets' solid outer mantel and crust, and then there are the round ones, which would be consistent with a molten core forming spheres before cooling. If the asteroids all formed separately, why didn't they all assume a spherical shape? That was my point. It's a mystery to me why this theory is so unpopular.
I thought that the sun and planets were all part of the same process of gravitational attraction and the planets were formed from parts of the same material that formed the sun as the debris collapsed.
Again, you missed things. The thing is, some planets spin opposite the direction that the others do, which shouldn't be if they all where thrown off by the Sun. The principle is called something like 'the conservation of angular momentum' or something like that (but don't hold me to that). Like kids flying off a merry-go-round, they keep spinning in the same direction that the merry-go-round was spinning.
I think I read you talking about planets being hit by other celestial objects as the explanation for backwards spinning planets, and indeed this is one of the 'official' explanations. This is pretty ridiculous, though. If an object struck a planet hard enough to cause it to start spinning backwards, it would most certainly alter it's orbit, too. Hell, it would no doubt make a dent in the planet, if not blow it apart. (asteroid belt?) Yet, all the planets hold very close to the same equatorial plane, with near perfect circular orbits. Even if the highly improbable situation where one object hit the planet and caused it to spin backwards, and then another hit it and put it back in its orbit were true, it is statistically absurd that it would happen THREE times! No way, Jose.
The other solution put out sometimes is the backwards planets are captured objects for outside our solar system, there is no way all three would have entered our system at the exact speed and vectors to assume a nearly perfectly circular orbit, within a couple of degrees of the equatorial plane of the Sun. Also statistically impossible.
There are really no viable theories to explain this, it's still mystery.
I remember reading a story by Arthur C. Clarke about plowing through dust. It was a prevailing suspicion. I don't know that they are religious beliefs though. They are hypotheses that are proven wrong.
The idea that our solar system is billions of years old is the belief that stays around, even though discovered facts contradict this. Like there NOT being many feet of dust on the Moon from billions of years of impacts and such.
I've heard this before. They've had to change it. I still don't see why being wrong and refining things is religious. If you accept you are wrong when evidence is presented, that is scientific. If you reject when you are proven wrong, that is religious (refer Terril Park).
If the comets had been passing by the Sun for billions of years, all the ice from what we now know are icy rocks would have dissipated. They were assumed to be mostly ice, because that's the only thing that would have them still shedding water. They find out otherwise, but keep on with the Billions of years.
No worries. I really need to dig in to it more thoroughly with a formal class - it's fascinating. Any suggestions of a class I might take?
and so much more!!!
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