Re: [FT] Jovian formation

At 11:46 PM -0400 10/3/99, Donald Hosford wrote:
><p><br>Not an astronomer, but an interested party...
><p>Ever heard of "Bode's Law"?&nbsp; He was an astronomer who suggested
>that the size of the planetary orbits follow a numerical
sequence.&nbsp;
>There is more at&nbsp; <a 
>href="http://users.nac.net/conklin/titius/titius.htm">this</a>
>site.&nbsp; This works for all of the planets except Neptune and
Pluto.&nbsp;
>(Astronomers are still arguing over that one.&nbsp; Some have suggested
>that Bode's Law applies to all star systems...)

I've been looking for that ! I mentioned Bode's Law a few weeks ago 
and I wish I'd had the URL. I hadn't seen it deconstructed like that. 
The relationships to Mercoury's orbit are very interesting. From that 
it looks like we can just randomize the first orbit (based on stellar 
mass) and then calculate the orbits from there on out. Heck, 
Traveller Book 6 just assumed Bode's Law holds and left it at that. 
Then we just populate the orbitals; Traveller Book 6 comes to mind 
again... There's a lot of valid criticism of Traveller, but its 
method of generating star systems is just plain useful (time to go 
work on the Pocket Empires DB again...)

Michael Carter Llaneza
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