I am not torquing through my hat.
Here is a conversation on this topic with an astronomer.
Many thanks Hornblower. As you know from our previous conversations, my knowledge of astrophysics is patchy, so the fact the torque of the earth follows the same inverse square cube law as the tides is very helpful for me to understand what is going on.
Thanks, I had thought the discrepancy was due to torque forces of other planets, but as you point out these are miniscule.
Okay, so the late massive bombardment would have had some direct effect on the parameters of precession. No more recent event could have bumped things around on such a scale.
So the likely direct effect could be very small. I wonder, could the bombardment have shifted earth enough to change our orbit by a whole day, ie in range 364.25 - 366.25 days, or is the elephant so much bigger than the bullets that likely shift would be more like seconds or minutes?
Here are some more detailed questions on the “shuddering” theme.
The posited resonance between Jupiter and Saturn in the early solar system occurred when the Saturn orbit period was double the Jupiter orbit period, for a time lasting about 200 million years around 3.9 billion years ago, about 700 million years after the sun came alight.
To understand this 1:2 resonance, consider Saturn orbital period as 28 earth years and Jupiter orbit as 14 earth years. Jupiter has since moved closer to the sun to its current 11.85 year orbit and Saturn, now at 29 years, has moved further away. Jupiter and Saturn combined their energies during this resonant phase to expel Neptune far beyond the orbit of Ouranos. This JS resonance appears to have lasted for millions of years, until the early cosmic ‘egg’ of the solar system exploded with the expulsion of the planet Neptune to the far depths of outer space, in the stable orbit in resonance with Pluto where it has remained to this day.
The 14:28 year JS phasing would have had large effect on the solar system barycentre, causing a very regular wave function due to the repeat of the JS amplitude cycle having such simple regularity at the same exact spot on the ecliptic. Other planets crossing this JS alignment point would have been perturbed in their orbital cycle period over the movement of their perihelion against the multi-million year period of the JS resonance. Did something have to break?
We can imagine Neptune orbiting outside this JS pair with their one-two routine. When all three are lined up in a syzygy with the sun, the JS conjunctions pull Neptune closer to the sun.
Were the perturbations this resonance introduced into Neptune’s orbit enough to toss it to the current edge of the planetary disk?
For earth, now orbiting 164 times faster than Neptune, the 14:28 year JS resonance would have had real orbital effects. The conjunctions and oppositions of Jupiter and Saturn would have opposite gravitational effects on earth’s orbit, not same direction effects as with Neptune.
When Jupiter and Saturn are conjunct at earth’s perihelion or aphelion, would this move earth’s orbital position appreciably closer to Venus or Mars, with stronger or weaker gravitational interaction between the inner planets occurring as a result?
Could Earth’s orbital period have been significantly different before the Neptune escape cataclysm in the early days of the solar system?
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