Many people know that between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is the so-called asteroid belt. It is an orbiting cluster of planetoids, large asteroids, and debris. The belt numbers over 400 thousand large objects. The largest of them, the planetoids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, Hygea. Ceres has a diameter of more than 950 km, the rest - more than 400 km. In the total mass, the asteroid belt is about 4% of the mass of the Moon (as wikipedia writes). Honestly, it is not clear why such a small mass, if there is only one Ceres - a third of the diameter of the Moon (but only 1.3% of the mass of the Moon). The diameter of the moon is 3474 km.
The asteroid belt was originally discovered theoretically. It all started with the fact that the astronomer I. D. Titius in the 18th century. formulated his rule, which later became known thanks to the astronomer I. E. Bode:
This calculation is just a fitted geometric progression. Not connected in any way with any calculations based on gravitational influence or other data. Just a mathematical model showing what orbits the planets should be in. But unexpectedly for everyone, the rule was confirmed with the discovery of Uranus. Astronomers, drawing attention to this rule, began to look for a planet between Jupiter and Mars, found the planetoid Ceres:
It is interesting that the orbit of Neptune does not agree with the Rule of Titius - Bode, falls out of the series. Pluto replaced Neptune. Neptune is not in its orbit?
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Such a distribution of orbits in geometric progression was tried to be substantiated by the resonant interaction of the planets on each other. But so far it has remained at the level of assumptions.
And it seems that the Titius-Bode Rule is a universal law for other systems as well. For example, for systems of giant planets and their satellites. Here are the calculations:
The hitting accuracy is not 100%, but the actual locations of the satellites roughly match the calculations from the rules.
There are astronomers who decided to use this rule to check the location of exoplanets (planets discovered in other star systems). The information turned out to be very interesting:
As they say, the language of mathematics is universal for forces of a cosmic scale. These forces form a kind of harmony that can be described mathematically.
Interestingly, based on the Titius-Bode Rule, astronomers were looking for planets beyond Pluto? Quite a few transplutonian planetoids have been found:
But I did not find any data on whether their orbits correspond to orbits in the calculations of the Titius-Bode Rule.
Let's go back to the asteroid belt.
Photo of the asteroid Lutetia by the Rosetta apparatus in 2010.
Among the objects of the asteroid belt in 1852. an asteroid was discovered, which was given the name Lutetia. The diameter is about 95 km. Spectral analysis reported that it is rich in metals (spectral class M). And metals say that it could be a fragment of the planet. An asteroid of the same class is Cleopatra.
Based on these facts, it can be assumed that at the site of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, either there was a planet, or because of the influence of Jupiter (Proto-Jupiter) it could not form.
But the belt lacks sufficient density of small stones, dust and gas. The density of matter in the debris is very low for the formation of a protoplanet. And there are planetoids. Did they fall into this resonant orbit or are they fragments from Phaeton (the name of this hypothetical planet)?
The devices that flew beyond the orbit of Mars were not damaged. If a planet died in this orbit, then why were its fragments smeared across the entire orbit? When destroyed, they would fly to themselves heap. What caused some to slow down orbital speed, while others continue to move? Maybe Jupiter smeared them in orbit like that.
Another interesting fact about the satellite of Mars:
Filming with Curiosity apparatus 2013-01-08. Phobos passes in front of Deimos.
Most likely, Mars captured two such debris from the belt: its moons Phobos and Deimos. Do you know what's strange about Phobos? It's not even that the satellite has a very low orbit and that it orbits Mars very quickly. And the fact that Phobos has a magnetic field of the same strength as the Earth with an average diameter of 22 km!
Maybe Phobos is the core or part of the core of a planet orbiting the asteroid belt? And there are processes in it that manifest themselves as a magnetic field? Of course, the more sensational version is that this is an artificial object. It was not just that three spacecraft Phobos-1 and 2 and Phobos-Grunt were launched to him (which did not complete the mission).
The four largest planetoids in the belt are nearly spherical in shape, suggesting that these are not debris from a planet. What then? And what is the moon? It's too big for a satellite of a planet like Earth! For a giant planet, it would be a perfectly suitable satellite, but for Earth - a strange pair.
There is another hypothesis explaining what the planetoids are in the asteroid belt and even where the moon came from in orbit around the earth. But more on that in the next article.
Author: sibved
