Bode's law seems misnamed as it was quite clearly spelled out two years earlier by one Daniel Titius. This law describes a regular geometrical placement of the planetary orbits around the sun. At the time this law was proposed the outer planets of our solar system had not yet been found. Current astronomical thinking does not accord Bode's law anything beyond historical interest. But let's revisit this one.
Data
Here are the distances of our solar system's planetary orbits from the sun as calculated from the rule and as compared with measured distances, all in astronomical units:
Planet
k
Bode's rule distance (AU)
Measured distance (AU)
Here are the distances of our solar system's planetary orbits from the sun as calculated from the rule and as compared with measured distances, all in astronomical units:
Planet
k
Bode's rule distance (AU)
Measured distance (AU)
Note: Ceres was considered a planet from 1801 until the 1860s. Pluto was considered a planet from 1930 to 2006. A 2006 IAU proposal to define the term "planet" would have reclassified Ceres as a planet, but this resolution was modified before its ratification in late August 2006. The modification instead placed Ceres, Pluto, and Eris in the newly created category of "dwarf planet." One does not need the advantage of training in advanced mathematics to see that there are relationships here. Ceres is a sizeable structure in the asteroid belt and serves as a distance marker for the belt. Pluto is too little to be one of the major planets, so is now placed with Ceres and Eris in a new category, as above.
Consider for a moment that there might be on the one hand an ideal, or Platonic, siting of the planets in orbit around the sun as decreed in laws of physics, and on the other hand a present day, real situation that we observe in the sky above us. Then ask if there was in the ancient past a primordial solar system laid down in accordance with these laws of physics four and a half billion years ago. And was there an event that altered the primordial arrangement five hundred million years later to give us the one we have at present? How can we reconstruct that history? We may not need to, providing we heed George Santayana's sage advice about learning history. For, in some difficult to explain way the mesopotamian ancients who discovered irrigation, commerce, writing, computation, governance, organized religion, and astronomy also possessed an account of our solar system's origins. This account, told and retold by different peoples, includes a good explanation for present day deviations from Bode's law. And, against all odds, the records of these ancients who wrote on clay tablets are in our possession today. But just as modern astronomers have little use for Bode's law these days, modern cosmologists have little or no use for the Enuma elish and other accounts of the Babylonian, Akkadian, Sumerian, Hurrian, and Hittite peoples. The gist of the history I am alluding to is in Hebrew cosmology, too. (This, likely courtesy of the stay in Babylon.)
Here I want to propose a visual model for what happened to our solar system so long ago. Please bear with me. Imagine a pool table in space--really big table, lots and lots of space. Earth's gravity is removed from the game, so the cue ball can strike other balls above, at, or below their equator, thus sending them "out of orbit" below, within, or above the present plane of the table. In technical terms this game of pool is played in 4 pi geometry. Imagine the eight balls positioned around a central fixture and the whole lay out rotating in one angular direction. A struck cue ball is aimed in a direction counter to the "table's" rotation so as to strike the fifth ball from the center and shatter it. Picture this pool table on the scale of our solar system. The cue ball here is an as yet unidentified planet, called by the ancients of Sumer, Akkadia, and Babylon Niburu, or Marduk. This solid rocky planet the size of earth strikes protoearth, called by the same ancients Tiamat, a glancing blow. Let us assume that Tiamat lay in orbit 2.8 AU distance from the sun before impact. Imagine the fragments and water displaced from Tiamat--immense quantities of matter formerly part of a condensed planet but after collision bits and frozen pieces orbiting the sun and marking forever the crash site. (And if you are a pedantic type insisting on precision whenever and wherever possible, you will be glad to see that the asteroid belt of bits and pieces is not precisely where Tiamat orbited but a bit inside that original orbit. Imparted angular momentum, I suppose.)
Where did the surviving major portion of Tiamat go? I suggest it was displaced inward toward the sun as were the fragments now making up the asteroid belt. But the greater mass and momentum of the major remnant of Tiamat directed it farther from its original orbital position. I suggest it went past Mars in a near miss and settled into the next "orbital shell" at position 1.0 AU from the sun. Furthermore, I suggest that the object we know as our moon and that the ancients of mesopotamia called Kingu (which is disproportionately large for a moon of a planet our size) was probably already in position 1.0 as a minor planet. So, at this point we have an asteroid belt with its largest object Ceres at 2.77 AU, a slightly displaced Mars at 1.52 AU, and a new planet, Earth, with orbiting minor planet Kingu as moon of Earth, at 1.0 AU. Any more to explain here? Yes, but the rest of the story relates to heavenly bodies not known to old Bode or Titius in the 18C.
I suggest that the intruder planet with moons, that is mentioned in the cuneiform texts of the ancients (tough to counterfeit those) caused some other ruckus in our system either at the same time as the disruption of Tiamat or before or after that, since the intruder is described as having its own orbit around the sun and since it therefore makes periodic penetrations into the known solar system. Imagine one of Niburu's moons striking Neptune so as to displace it from its original 38.8 AU orbit to present day 30.06 AU. Imagine that and try to imagine that the present size and location of that offending Niburean moon are things we can deduce using Bode's law and present observations. Can you solve this mystery of the whereabouts of the Niburean moon that displaced Neptune (and caused it to roll not spin in orbit)? Hint: it is presently two thirds the size of our moon and is classified as a minor planet in our solar system.
Consider for a moment that there might be on the one hand an ideal, or Platonic, siting of the planets in orbit around the sun as decreed in laws of physics, and on the other hand a present day, real situation that we observe in the sky above us. Then ask if there was in the ancient past a primordial solar system laid down in accordance with these laws of physics four and a half billion years ago. And was there an event that altered the primordial arrangement five hundred million years later to give us the one we have at present? How can we reconstruct that history? We may not need to, providing we heed George Santayana's sage advice about learning history. For, in some difficult to explain way the mesopotamian ancients who discovered irrigation, commerce, writing, computation, governance, organized religion, and astronomy also possessed an account of our solar system's origins. This account, told and retold by different peoples, includes a good explanation for present day deviations from Bode's law. And, against all odds, the records of these ancients who wrote on clay tablets are in our possession today. But just as modern astronomers have little use for Bode's law these days, modern cosmologists have little or no use for the Enuma elish and other accounts of the Babylonian, Akkadian, Sumerian, Hurrian, and Hittite peoples. The gist of the history I am alluding to is in Hebrew cosmology, too. (This, likely courtesy of the stay in Babylon.)
Here I want to propose a visual model for what happened to our solar system so long ago. Please bear with me. Imagine a pool table in space--really big table, lots and lots of space. Earth's gravity is removed from the game, so the cue ball can strike other balls above, at, or below their equator, thus sending them "out of orbit" below, within, or above the present plane of the table. In technical terms this game of pool is played in 4 pi geometry. Imagine the eight balls positioned around a central fixture and the whole lay out rotating in one angular direction. A struck cue ball is aimed in a direction counter to the "table's" rotation so as to strike the fifth ball from the center and shatter it. Picture this pool table on the scale of our solar system. The cue ball here is an as yet unidentified planet, called by the ancients of Sumer, Akkadia, and Babylon Niburu, or Marduk. This solid rocky planet the size of earth strikes protoearth, called by the same ancients Tiamat, a glancing blow. Let us assume that Tiamat lay in orbit 2.8 AU distance from the sun before impact. Imagine the fragments and water displaced from Tiamat--immense quantities of matter formerly part of a condensed planet but after collision bits and frozen pieces orbiting the sun and marking forever the crash site. (And if you are a pedantic type insisting on precision whenever and wherever possible, you will be glad to see that the asteroid belt of bits and pieces is not precisely where Tiamat orbited but a bit inside that original orbit. Imparted angular momentum, I suppose.)
Where did the surviving major portion of Tiamat go? I suggest it was displaced inward toward the sun as were the fragments now making up the asteroid belt. But the greater mass and momentum of the major remnant of Tiamat directed it farther from its original orbital position. I suggest it went past Mars in a near miss and settled into the next "orbital shell" at position 1.0 AU from the sun. Furthermore, I suggest that the object we know as our moon and that the ancients of mesopotamia called Kingu (which is disproportionately large for a moon of a planet our size) was probably already in position 1.0 as a minor planet. So, at this point we have an asteroid belt with its largest object Ceres at 2.77 AU, a slightly displaced Mars at 1.52 AU, and a new planet, Earth, with orbiting minor planet Kingu as moon of Earth, at 1.0 AU. Any more to explain here? Yes, but the rest of the story relates to heavenly bodies not known to old Bode or Titius in the 18C.
I suggest that the intruder planet with moons, that is mentioned in the cuneiform texts of the ancients (tough to counterfeit those) caused some other ruckus in our system either at the same time as the disruption of Tiamat or before or after that, since the intruder is described as having its own orbit around the sun and since it therefore makes periodic penetrations into the known solar system. Imagine one of Niburu's moons striking Neptune so as to displace it from its original 38.8 AU orbit to present day 30.06 AU. Imagine that and try to imagine that the present size and location of that offending Niburean moon are things we can deduce using Bode's law and present observations. Can you solve this mystery of the whereabouts of the Niburean moon that displaced Neptune (and caused it to roll not spin in orbit)? Hint: it is presently two thirds the size of our moon and is classified as a minor planet in our solar system.
Using the above reasoning, if "reasoning" is not giving all of this too much credit, one could go further and posit the original incoming trajectory of the offending planet and moons four billion years ago as well as guess the present orbit and likely locations of those same objects. Too bad present day experts cannot look into this matter, it being beneath their dignity, expertise, and orthodoxy. Though presently relegated to historical interest status, Bode's law might explain all . . .
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