Any Big Bang theorists want to tackle this one?

Question

Please explain to me how the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum (something that falls off a spinning object always spins in the same direction) correlates with Venus' and Uranus' retrograde rotation (spinning backward). Try real hard to use science.

(Yeah, I know where I am. I maintain that Big Bang is a religion.)

So far the answers are as expected... including "May have". Well, God "may have" made it that way.

No really... try to use science. If you're right, then by all means, speak truth. Don't be scared.

Sparky, because I honestly believe that science works. I also understand that science cannot explain everything. I AM a scientist. Science in NO WAY discredits anything about the Bible. So by all means, try to convince me using science. Good chance I'll believe ya.

"What did Venus and Uranus fall from?"? Are you even familiar with Big Bang? Supposedly, everything came from an incredibly dense, spinning "object" about the size of a period at the end of this sentence.

BTW, Uranus is gas. What could it have collided with that would either turn it upside down or reverse it's spin and not completely obliterate it?

Answer 1

Though I think that there are theories about this, that's not the point. You don't want to take on scientists on their own turf. Time and time again inexplicable phenomenon in the universe are eventually solved. Just because we don't know something today doesn't mean there's no answer. If we were around 300 year ago, you may have said "We'll, if God didn't put us here, there was no way for us to have gotten here". A possible explanation for that has been found. Darwin himself asked how the eye came into being since, if we believe in evolution by small advancements, there would have been no use for "half and eye". We know now it doesn't work that way. A eye is a highly advanced organ which began with photo sensitive chemicals that gradually became more and more advanced until it arrived where it is.

Don't pit science against religion. They are NOT mutually exclusive ideas and to make them fight only causes yourself harm. God made all things-- including evolution and the Big Bang (a concept that was accepted by the Roman Catholic Church in 1951 BTW).


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Uhmmm-- you realize Uranus is NOT completely gas? It has an Earth sized-- or larger core of solid material.

Answer 2

When the solar system was still being formed, there were large bodies in overlapping orbits. Many of the these bodies collided, knocking Venus and Uranus on their sides (almost completely upside down in the case of Uranus - hence the appearance of spinning backward). It's also part of the reason for Saturn and Uranus' rings, the asteroid belt, the Moon's of Mars and other smaller bodies. The fact that those planets are still spinning on tilted axis is supported by the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum.

BTW Earth has a tilted axis, too. That's why it's summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere. If it weren't tilted, there would be no seasons.



P.S. Gas planets compress at high gravity to a density greater than the Earth's. Only the atmosphere of a gas planet is true gas. That's like saying the Earth is made of 80% Nitrogen and 20% Oxygen.

Also, Earth was not created at the time of the big bang, only 10-12 billion years later. Our whole solar system is made up of debris from older solar systems whose stars went supernova. The debris scatters in the direction propelled by the blast and gravity pulls the materials in. More materials, more mass, more gravity, more materials get sucked in, etc. We're about three solar generations removed from the big bang.

Answer 3

What, pray tell, did Venus and Uranus fall off of? I suppose that technically, all planets in the solar system can be considered to be falling into the sun, in a very time-consuming fashion. I'm not sure what exactly they supposedly fell off of.

Planetary rotation is established by multiple factors: tidal motion, gravitational pull of nearby bodies, random accretion of planetesimals during formation, impact with other stellar bodies, etc.

Truly, there is no standard for planetary motion. Mercury and Venus rotate slowly. Venus, Uranus, and Neptune have retrograde rotation. Uranus and Neptune have high degrees of tilt. Mars tilts chaotically, though it does so over very long periods of time. The solar system is simply too old to account for every random event in its history and build a working model of exactly how it happened. The best we can do is make educated guesses. Fortunately, educated guesswork leads to more education and more accurate guesswork. That's how science works!

EDIT: I'm familiar with Big Bang theory, thanks. It predicts that, at some point in the distant past, the universe was immensely dense and hot. The gravitational singularity that you're talking about (which is infinitely small, by the way), is predicted by general relativity. Not all astrophysicists agree with the singularity model. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with angular momentum, however. You're expecting us to accurately predict the rotational motion of an object that didn't form recognizably for 8 billion years AFTER its component matter started moving, not to mention the 5 billion or so years that passed before we were first able to collect observational data on it? Physics can't consistently predict the break on a pool table, for Pete's sake. As I mentioned above, the best that science can do is to make educated guesses and maintain probabilities of accuracy.

What kind of scientist are you? Anyone with a passing familiarity with the scientific method should understand the importance of "may have". Margins of disbelief are the bread and butter of scientific inquiry. That's the beauty of the scientific mindset: it allows you to admit when you don't know something. We can't learn ANYTHING until we first admit that we don't know it.

Answer 4

Most likely these planets were captured gravitationally by the sun and pulled into orbit, they may have already had their own momentum and spin, hence they did not fall off of a spinning object. Remember we still don't know exactly how the planets formed and why they are in the locations they are. I would also ask why some planets like mercury and our own moon are locked into geosynchronous orbit.

This is just an idea.

Also:

There are two notations for retrograde motion that are mathematically equivalent: The body can be considered to orbit backwards, or it can be considered to orbit forwards, but with its orbit upside-down.

The big bang has little to do with the formation of our solar system it only helps to describe the orogin of the universe and to explain some of the distribution of matter. The age of the universe is currently thought to be about 13.5 billion years old, our solar system is no where near that old and our sun is still on it's main sequence.

Answer 5

First of all, the planets in our solar system formed about 8-9 billion years *after* the Big Bang. So the retrograde motions of Venus and Uranus have nothing to do with it.

The solar system was formed from a large mass of gas and dust much like we see today in planetary nebulas. This mass condensed due to gravitation (which preserves angular momentum). While the overall cloud had a slight rotation relative to its center of mass, there were parts of it moving in various ways (like we see the comets, and Kuiper cloud objects doing today). When the density of materials got large enough, there was an era of collisions, during which our moon was formed and when Venus got its retrograde motion from a collision. Uranus was formed rotating at a large angle to the ecliptic (probably just a local variation). So where is the problem with conservation of angular momentum??? Remember that it can be exchanged in interactions and the individual bodies don't have to maintain their particular angular momenta.

Answer 6

I'm sorry, but Big Bang isn't a religion. It's something that Men have come to lean on since they don't wanna believe that God is real and that He made the Earth. And that's what's sad about our day & time. If a person can't use their 5 senses to identify something...then they will dismiss it as nothing. And my main proof is the "Big Bang Theory." And the other things that the "scientiests" have said over the years.

Answer 7

There is this little toy I keep around, it is a small, what we would call Spinning Top. It has a round base with a short peg stuck in the top. When you spin it (fast enough with your finger's) and let it go, it will do it's thing and flip over, spinning on top of the short peg, with the round base on top of the peg. Funny thing, if you draw an arrow(magic marker) on it in the direction that it's spinning when you let go of it, it will start spining back-wards some where with-in the transistion of flipping over. It's a very interesting effect!!!! Something to think about, hope it helps.

Answer 8

You haven't defined the axis of spin. Just because it appears to spin backwards from Earth (according to how you think it should spin) doesn't mean that it hasn't conserved its initial angular momentum. Why can't it be upside down relative to the Earth instead of backwards (in which case angular momentum is preserved)?

Oh, because that's too easy and it doesn't fit your preconceived ideas. Ouch.

Answer 9

I believe God snapped his fingers and there was a huge explosion. I believe God created all the material that was needed for all the planets, comets, stars, meteors, sun, the soil, water, gas, chemicals, etc.
This material had to have some kind of a start from somewhere.
Some inteligent being had to be in on this creation of all this soil and water that is in the whole universe.

Answer 10

What does that have to do with religion?

We can totally ignore science and that would have no effect on the illogic of proposing that complexity is proof the universe was created by a creator who did not require creation.

BTW, that is a fallacious argument called a "red herring" in that you attempt to argue that you are proving one thing by using an unrelated example as your proof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring_%28fallacy%29