From: Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: Toutatis Captured by Radar Images
X-Xxmessage-Id: <A788228413011C03@rs1-annex3.sfu.ca>
X-Xxdate: Sun, 24 Jan 93 18:40:04 GMT
Organization: Simon Fraser University
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d16
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 18:40:01 GMT

In article <schumach.727847250@convex.convex.com> Richard A. Schumacher,
schumach@convex.com writes, commenting on my earlier note:
>>Mr. Schumacher, you are guilty of reification in the first degree.
>>Historical events cannot be consequences of subsequently >>propounded
theories. If logical convention did not prohibit it >>then violation of
causality would!

>(! You're kidding, right?)

Of course I am. The comment was not meant to be offensive, it was an
attempt at drollery. As I've pointed out before, Mark Twain didn't use
"smilies". I'd like to think that, even if I can't write at his level, I
don't need to use them either. Your comment was phrased in a deliciously
ambiguous manner possible only in the English language. The meaning was
clear enough for sci.astro purposes, but a good (scientific) editor would
have caught it before it saw print.

>I think you misunderstand: TVF predicts a high proportion of contact
>binary asteroids and suggests an exploded planet as the source of 
>them. I wanted to know whether these ideas were consequences
>of his "Meta Theory", and whether that theory explains how a planet
>might explode. No reification involved.

One doesn't need a new theory to explain how a planet could explode. A
collision between two small planets can achieve the same result. There is
simply not enough evidence left around to evaluate all the dynamical
consequences of such an event. For example, in the early seventies I
modelled a capture scenario for Jupiter's outer satellites numerically,
based on their capture from the debris soon after the explosion, followed
by accretion of a large portion of the debris by Jupiter itself. It is
extremely easy to do that because there are so few constraints on what
one may assume for initial conditions.

It is so easy to do it that one can conclude nothing from the exercise
except that it is, indeed, possible. Some arguments against the exploded
planet hypothesis seem illogical to me. They sometimes cite the great
"improbability" of the initial conditions required. The irrelevance of
computing probabilities *a posteriori* never seems to convince critics.

Tom is not the only person around who has not discarded the exploded
planet hypothesis (not "theory") as the source of the asteroid belt. Some
even still find it the most appealing explanation. In fact I am among
those myself, as was my friend, the late Michael Ovenden. Just because an
idea is no longer particularly fashionable one should not discard it
without conclusive refutation.

I think the most persuasive arguments against the exploded (or collided)
planet hypothesis were aesthetic rather than scientific. Catastrophism
was "out" for a while, probably because of distaste engendered by one of
its proponents (Velikovsky). Luis Alvarez put catastrophism back into
favor with his identification of the K-T boundary mechanism, and it is,
perhaps, timely for the exploded planet hypothesis to reemerge into a
more sypathetic community.

Leigh