According to secular planetary models, Neptune should not exist. Image courtesy of NASA.
Joel Kontinen
Like the other gas planets, Neptune also causes problems for those who believe in naturalistic origins theories of the solar system, for instance the nebular hypothesis.
A recent Nature news article discusses some of the problems associated with Neptune. Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, thinks that “Neptune formed closer to the Sun, where the nebula was denser, then moved outwards” because “the solar nebula, from which planets condensed during the formation of the Solar System, should have been very diffuse” so far away from the centre of the cloud.
In other words, Neptune is a problem for secular models of the origin of the solar system.
What is more, in many other solar systems huge gas giants orbit very close to their sun.
The huge gas planets in our solar system are exceptions. They do not conform to secular models.
It seems that there is no place like this solar system or even Earth anywhere else in the universe.
Source:
Lovett, Richard A. 2011. Neptune begins to give up its secrets. Nature news (7 July).
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