[TML] Bigass Planet X

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 11/18/07 2:09 AM, Timothy Little wrote:

> In short, in the real world all bets are off.  We don't know nearly
> enough.  Even the results of theoretical modelling don't tell us very
> much - there are still too many possibilities and not enough data to
> narrow them down.

Well, every model I've every seen of planet construction starts from an
undifferentiated cloud of mass, with composition somewhere along the range
from original Big Bang gas (about 97% hydrogen, 3% helium) to what we see in
nebulae today.  Then, in whatever manner the model specifies, this gas &
dust conglomerates into bigger object.  Pretty much every way to do that
results in a distribution of lots of little stuff up thru very few big
objects.  That's why I see an exponential decay with increasing size fairly
appropriate.