Hyperdimensional Physics/R. Hoagland (he assumes that the Voyager missions did actually take place)
Astrophysical discovery of "glowing planets" -- planetary bodies which shine in the infrared via internal energy sources, not just by reflected light -- stems from completely unexpected ground-based telescopic observations of this solar system, beginning in the mid-1960's: the startling detection of "anomalous internal infrared radiation" coming from the planet Jupiter. Later Pioneer and Voyager insitu spacecraft observations across the 70s and 80s added the other "giant planets," Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, to the list of solar system worlds that -- somehow, without internal nuclear fusion processes, like stars -- still manage to radiate more energy out into space than they receive directly from the Sun.
After much initial debate, the conventional understanding of these anomalous "infrared excesses" eventually settled on three possible internal sources: 1) left-over "primordial heat" from the literal formation of the planet; 2) heating caused by eventual internal separation of light elements in so-called "gas giant" planets (helium from hydrogen), releasing potential energy as the helium falls further toward the center of the planet (a form of ultra-slow, "continued gravitational contraction"); and 3), anomalous energy release due to excess radioactive decay of heavy element concentrations located within gas giant rocky cores.
Of the three current explanations for these "energy anomalies," only the first applies to Jupiter ... because of its mass -- 318 times the Earth's; a planet of that minimum mass is required (in the model) if it's to retain significant thermal energy across the immense lifetime of the solar system ... almost 5 billion years since the planet's formation ... and still be able to radiate observable heat. And, as can be seen from this diagram, the current ratio of absorbed solar energy to emitted 5-billion-year-old internal Jovian energy is still almost two to one!
After the Voyager fly-bys of the 1980's, the second "internal heat" proposal -- the "helium drip model" -- was favored for the observed heat excess in the Saturn situation. But, because of their relatively light masses (less than 30 times the Earth's), only the third possibility -- massive internal radioactive decay -- has been seriously attempted as an explanation for Uranus' and Neptune's more puzzling "anomalous infrared emissions."
There are, however, serious problems with all of these "conventional" explanations -- particularly after these spacecraft flybys, for all planets less massive than Jupiter.
For instance, during the Voyager encounters of Uranus and Neptune, spacecraft instruments detected a barely measurable (but significant) "infrared excess" (as opposed to merely infrared re-emission of absorbed solar energy) for Uranus of about "1 to 1.14"; whereas for Neptune (essentially its planetary "twin") the ratio of internal heat to intercepted sunlight was a striking "three to one!"
However, simultaneous "doppler tracking" gravity measurements conducted during the fly-bys (looking for anomalous trajectory changes to the spacecraft motion, caused by gravitational effects from increased percentages of heavy radioactive elements in the cores of Uranus and Neptune) detected no anomalous central concentrations in either planet ... necessary, if the excess observed IR radiation is in fact caused by "excessive internal radioactive element concentrations."
Even more perplexing, Uranus has a pronounced axial tilt ("obliquity" is the technical term) compared to all the other planets of the solar system -- some 98 degrees to the plane of its orbit of the Sun; Neptune's is much more "normal": about 30 degrees. [For comparison, Earth's obliquity is about 23.5 degrees]. One recently proposed alternative to the "internal radioactivity model" is "the recent collision model": that Uranus -- somehow, long after its formation -- suffered a massive impact with another major object, perhaps an errant moon ... This, according to the theorists, in addition to accounting for the current "tipped over situation" of the planet, would have also added a significant amount of geologically "recent" internal energy to Uranus, driving up internal temperatures by equivalent amounts. This model argues that these resulting elevated temperatures in Uranus, derived from a massive "cosmic collision," could thus account for Uranus' current "infrared excess," as observed by Voyager in 1986.
There is only one problem with these ideas: the "excess radioactivity theory," and the "cosmic collision model" are both apparently dead wrong.
Over the past decade, as we have attempted to understand their anomalous IR radiation, one thing has become clear -- to a first order, the "infrared excesses" of the giant planets all seem to correlate very nicely with one parameter each has in common -- regardless of their individual masses, elemental compositions, or distance from the Sun:
Their total system "angular momentum."
The mass of a body and the rate at which it spins, in classical physics, determines an object's "angular momentum." In our Hyperdimensional Model, its a bit more complicated -- because objects apparently separated by distance in this (3-space) dimension are in fact connected in a "higher" (4-space) dimension; so, in the HD model, one also adds in the orbital momentum of an object's gravitationally-tethered satellites -- moons in the case of planets; planets, in the case of the Sun, or companion stars in the case of other stars.
When one graphs the total angular momentum of a set of objects -- such as the radiating outer planets of this solar system (plus Earth and Sun) -- against the total amount of internal energy each object radiates to space, the results are striking:
The more total system angular momentum a planet (or any celestial body) possesses (as defined above -- object plus satellites), the greater its intrinsic "brightness," i.e. the more "anomalous energy" it apparently is capable of "generating."
And, as can be seen from this key diagram, this striking linear dependence now seems to hold across a range of luminosity and momentum totaling almost three orders of magnitude ... almost 1000/1!
It is an undeniable fact that Jupiter and Saturn -- which possess only a tiny fraction the solar system’s total mass compared to the sun – are, in fact, a huge influence on the sun itself (and all of the other planets as a consequence). This is because they conversely possess most (almost 99%) of the solar system’s total bulk angular momentum.
In the Hyperdimensional Model, it is this angular momentum -- mainly from these two massive planets, transmitted through the “Hyperdimensional aether” -- which ultimately causes the sun’s differential rotation.
Especially noteworthy, the Earth (not "a collapsing gas giant," by any stretch of the imagination) also seems to fit precisely this empirical energy relationship: when the angular momentum of the Moon is added to the "spin momentum" of its parent planet, the resulting correlation with measurements derived from internal "heat budget" studies of the Earth are perfectly fitted to this solar-system-wide empirical relationship -- even though the Earth's internal energy is supposedly derived from "radioactive sources."
There is a well-known "rule of thumb" in science, perhaps best expressed by a late Noble Laureate, physicist Richard Feynman:
"You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right -- at least if you have any experience -- because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in ... The inexperienced, the crackpots, and people like that, make guesses that are simple, but you can immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not count. Others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very complicated, and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I know it is not true because the truth always turns out to be simpler that you thought ..."
This startling relationship -- our discovery of the simple dependence of an object's internal luminosity on its total system angular momentum -- has that "feel" about it; it is simple ... it is elegant ... in fact--
It could even be true.
http://www.zipcon.net/~swhite/docs/astronomy/Angular_Momentum.html (see the graphic there)
So the rotational angular momentum of the Sun, which is 1.1e42, is less than 4% that of the total orbital angular momentum of the planets, which is 3.1e43.
Based on this calculation Jupiter’s orbital angular momentum alone accounts for over 60% of the total angular momentum of the Solar system!
The orbital angular momentum of the Moon 2.9e34 is about four times that of the rotational angular momentum of the Earth, which is 7.1e33.
However, the total orbital angular momenta of the largest moons of Jupiter is less than a hundredth the rotational angular momentum of the planet.
So where did all the angular momentum go if the sun truly formed by gravitational contraction? Astronomers suggest that some of it was transferred to Jupiter and Saturn, which possess 98% of the total angular momentum of the solar system, still far, far less than the angular momentum that would have been generated during the formation of the sun.
Our sun has an extremely small rotational motion—that is, it is turning slowly. This 'angular momentum' is far too small to have evolved from a gas cloud. If our sun came from a gaseous protogalaxy, its angular momentum would have to have been a billion times as much as it is now, in order for our planets to be flung out and orbit it as fast as they do. How could it have lost all of its rotational motion?
A full 99.5 percent of all the angular momentum in the solar system is concentrated in the planets, yet a staggering 99.8 percent of all the mass in our solar system is located in our sun! To an astrophysicist this is both astounding and unexplainable. There is no known mechanical process which could accomplish this transfer of momentum from the sun to its planets.
Our sun is rotating far too slowly to have been formed from a gas cloud that was rotating at high speed. To say it another way: the planets have far too much angular momentum in comparison with the sun. They are moving fast around the sun, while the sun itself is turning very slowly.
Jupiter itself has 60 percent of the planetary angular motion. Evolutionary theory cannot account for this. This strange distribution was the primary cause of the downfall of the nebular hypothesis. To satisfy the theory, the sun would originally have had to spin at an extremely high speed. But instead, it rotates slowly.
*David Layzer, a Harvard University astronomer, could find no solution to the angular momentum problem. If our sun had been part of a gaseous protogalaxy, its angular momentum would have to be a billion times as much as it now possesses. How it could have lost all but one ten-millionth of one percent of its theorized original angular momentum has never been explained. In addition, * Layzer explains, if the sun lost nearly all of its momentum, why did the planets and moons retain so much of theirs?
'Except in the Earth-Moon system (which is exceptional in other respects as well), the primary [the planet] carries the bulk of the angular momentum, instead of the satellites . . This circumstance aggravates the theoretical difficulty presented by the slow rotation of the Sun, for if the Sun has somehow managed to get rid of the angular momentum it would be expected to have, according to the nebular hypotheses, why have the planets not done likewise?'—*David Layzer, 'Cosmogony,' in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Vol. 3, p. 564.