A model for the formation of Kuiper belts and Oort clouds

I have developed a rather detailed quantum model for the formation of planets based on quantum coherence in astrophysical scales (see this). In this posting the extension of this model to the formation of the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud is discussed.

The former planet Pluto (see this) is the largest object in the Kuiper belt, which has a torus-like shape. The radius of Pluto is 1,191 km to be compared with Λ_gr= 3,000 and to the radius 2,439 km of Mercury. The assumption that Pluto is a planet of solar origin requires β₀ → 3β₀ for the Pluto-Sun pair at the time when Pluto originated if β₀ has remained unchanged during its evolution. This does not conform with the proposed model.

Could the Kuiper belt (see this), which is composed of mini-planets be analogous to a planetary ring, and be the oldest structure emanating from the Sun by the proposed mechanism? The total mass of Kuiper belt is recently about 10 per cent of the mass of Earth but there are reasons to believe that the original material has been 7 to 10 Earth masses so that Kuiper belt could be perhaps seen as a failed Jupiter sized giant planet for which the transformation of dark matter to ordinary matter did not lead to a single planet but to a large number of smaller objects.

The standard view of the formation of astrophysical structures is very different from the TGD view (see this and earlier blog postings) and the standard model should have anomalies if the TGD view is nearer to truth. One example of such anomaly is described in the article "A dense ring of the trans-Neptunian object Quaoar outside its Roche limit" by Morgado et al (see this and this). The miniplanet known as Quaoar is an object half of the size of Pluto. The radius of the ring is 7 times the radius of Quaoar. The Roche limit is however 2.5 radii.

Roche limit follows involved the assumption that the satellite is held together only by gravitational forces. The gravitational tidal forces pull apart a satellite rotating too near to a planet so that it forms a ring. Therefore the formation of stable satellites is not possible within Roche radius. Conversely, a pre-existing ring can eventually condense to a satellite if its radius is larger than the Roche limit.

Also Saturn has two rings, which violate the Roche limit (see ). The E ring of Saturn, which - unlike smaller rings - consists of micron and submicron sized particles, violates the Roche limit. The particles of E ring to accumulate to Moons that orbit with the ring. Also the Phoebe ring associated with Saturn's moon Phoebe violates the Roche limit.

Could the TGD view explain the violations of the Roche limit?

1. The TGD based idea that planets and Moons are formed by a gravitational condensation of the ordinary matter produced by dark matter at a torus like ring accompanied by monopole flux tube is supported by the behavior of the rings of Saturn, which tend to condense to associated Moons.
2. Could the presence of a circular monopole flux tube slow down the condensation process and make the ring rather stable? I have considered the possibility that the planetary orbits are accompanied by monopole flux tubes defining kinds of planetary paths. Could one identify some signatures of these paths? Do they still contain dark matter?
3. Planetary radii are consistent with the Roche limit. The matter in the Kuiper belt did not condensed to a single Jupiter-sized planet but to miniplanets. This could be interpreted in terms of the ongoing condensation process, which started as the Kuiper belt was formed as an expanding ring of matter accompanied by a monopole flux tube. Could the presence of a monopole flux tube slow down the condensation process? How does the Kuiper belt differ from planets?

   Suppose that the emission of Kuiper belt from the Sun involved a collective localization from a Bose-Einstein condensate-like state of dark particles to an analog of momentum eigenstate so that a planet rotating around the Sun was formed. Why did the localization for the Kuiper belt not occur to a wave function localized to a point rotating around Bohr orbit but to a set of points associated with the Bohr orbit?

   Was the quantum coherence scale reduced by a reduction of ℏ_gr→ ℏ_eff>ℏ, which was followed by ℏ_eff→ ℏ in the transformation of dark matter to ordinary matter. The tubular Bose-Einstein condensate formed in the tubular localization would have decomposed in the transition ℏ_gr→ ℏ_eff>h to smaller regions before the transition ℏ_eff→ ℏ, which created miniplanets along the flux tube instead of a single planet.

4. Oort cloud (see this) is a spherical layer of icy objects surrounding the Sun and likely occupies space at a distance between about 2,000 and 100,000 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. The estimated total mass of the Oort cloud is 1.9 Earth masses (see this). Suppose that Oort cloud corresponds to a spherical shell emitted by the Sun. No localization to a tubular Bose-Einstein condensate would have occurred but the process ℏ_gr→ ℏ_eff → ℏ occurred directly so that a spherical cloud was created.

See the article Magnetic Bubbles in TGD Universe or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.