How to Build Your Own Star System

How to Build Your Own Star System

This document is primarily for educational purposes and secondarily for the purpose of creating your own star system. This document is also  the result of the Hicks Star System Formation Theory. That theory is not the universally accepted Star System Formation Theory, at least by astronomers or astronomical societies, but it is a theory of continuity, consistency, and cohesion. The Hicks Star System Formation Theory does not require any unknown phenomena to complete the process, and as a result, will at some future time provide several of the essential elements of any universally accepted Star System Formation Theory. (Those interested in reading the Hicks Star System Formation Theory may request same at [e-mail])

While it is also not to promote the Hicks Star System Formation Theory, using it as a basis you can have a head start on others that are going to wait for clarification of details by some astronomical society before they begin their project.

Because anyone building a Star System will have their own ideas of what they want to have in their system and this document cannot cover the billions of possible systems, it will limit itself to building a star system not too unlike the Solar System. The familiarity to an existing system will allow for varieties to be built by altering the key components, which are: molecular cloud mass, linear dimensions, the resulting density, rate of spin within the cloud, and proximity to items that could disturb the sanctity of the molecular cloud.

In order to build your Star System, you will need a molecular cloud of the size of the total mass of the entire Solar System, and the molecular cloud must be at or very close to the density of the cloud that begat the Solar System, (to be calculated by you from the details herein) and this will give it the linear dimensions required. Plus, you will need eons. It is advisable to have some means to make sure that the molecular cloud is undisturbed by any other forces other than what lay within the cloud, although you can make do without this if you are willing to take the risk of variation in the final outcome. You might want to ensure that the cloud has a decent rate of rotation or spin rate in some direction. You will need strong mathematical skills to calculate the linear dimensions of the requisite molecular cloud.

You should first check the cloud to ensure that there are no previously formed bodies larger than eighty-five times the size of Jupiter. This is critical. It is also critical that you do this without disturbing the molecular cloud in any way.

There may be a body, and even a slight chance of several bodies and the larger of any bodies shall likely become your Star.

Whatever the nature of the cloud you select, you are just about finished your duties, and if you don't want to shield the cloud from other disturbing forces you are finished, for once begun, the process is self-sustaining. What's more, you don't have to know anything either. But if you want to check up on it you'll find the following sequence occurring as things progress in case you want to modify things.

If you get really lucky and find a molecular cloud that is rather homogenous in density and has no bodies larger than about fifteen to twenty jupiters, then the chances are greater that you will form a Star System very much like the Solar System. (If you want other phenomena in your star system, there is a paragraph or two near the end of this document to give some guidance.)

For the purposes of this document, we will presume that is exactly what you have found and proceed from that point. We will list your planets names now, which you can change to suit yourself later: Nept, Uran, Satu, Jupi, Abel, Maru, Luny-?, Venu, Mercy. Abel will not be a planet but a series of planetoids in a band in place of a planet, primarily due to the effect of Jupi's gravitational pull on the particles during its development.

To be sure, if, in your cloud, there is only one body the mass of fifteen to twenty jupiters, there will be smaller bodies which over time will join up with the body that has the greatest gravitational influence, almost always by being absorbed within that greater body.

So that means you should keep your eye on that larger body and watch the things that it does. You'll be waiting for some significant events. We are in the brown dwarf stage, and will be off and on until we reach that magic size of eighty-seven to one hundred jupiters, and these dwarfs may have different characteristics from each other which won't make much difference in the overall scheme of things, which seems an odd thing to say since at it's heart it will always be the same dwarf/core/proto-star. One characteristic that changes with each iteration is the mass, for each successive dwarf will be larger than the ones prior to it.

The first event that you want to see is that body around fifteen to twenty jupiters in mass undergo an episode of thermonuclear fission reactions. This explosion, and it will have all the appearances of an explosion if you look at it in the concept of cosmic time scales, will send material from that body of fifteen to twenty jupiters a long ways off via the same effect as what we know of as the Solar Wind. In addition to that, the electromagnetic radiation will mostly be absorbed within that molecular cloud so you'll be needing your very hi-tech equipment to 'view' this event. This explosion is a spherical event and residue from this blast will still reside in the outer reaches of your Stellar System long after all the planets and their satellites are formed. The blast fronts from this and subsequent explosions will be halted in their flight from the body by the presence of the particles of the molecular cloud.

You can also count on radiation pressure to assist the stellar wind.

And like an explosion, when all combustibles at the pressures, temperatures, and conditions then present are exhausted, the fire will go out, in the true manner of speaking. End of explosion.

This then will set the stage for that body, and at this time we'll call it the core, to begin to grow in size again. Strangely enough, even while material was being blown away from the core, the core was not necessarily giving up its gravitational hold on all of the material. And that material that it does give up its gravitational hold on, it will reacquire in later stages.

However, a fairly long time shall elapse before there is enough combustible material present in the core again, and the core will be more massive, and that the pressures, temperatures, and conditions are right, but eventually another explosion of the core will take place. It may last a little longer, but because the cloud is coalescing toward the core the resulting blast front will not progress as far from the core as the first, and once again the fire will go out.

This procedure may have to ten to twelve times before the core reaches the mass of eighty-five to one hundred jupiters. An interesting thing about these explosions is that each one will have a blast front that is more ovate that the preceding one if your cloud is going to create a Star with a family of planets and satellites like the Solar System. This will be due to the rate of rotation of the core, and the faster the larger equator of the core is moving, and the larger, the more ovate the blast front will be.

At the eighty-seven to one hundred jupiter mass range the core will again undergo a thermonuclear fission ignition and it will sustain the fire evermore, or at least long enough for the sequences within sequences that follow.

You don't know it yet, but this ignition and subsequent outpouring of energy and solar wind is going to create the first planet for you, just not in an eye blink.

We have an advantage here, for we know how far that first planet should be from the core. Because this star is similar in almost all respects, it follows that the star will do things that the sun did, and it will do them to the same degree that the sun did.

I'll try not to get too technical here, but two hundred and forty-four years ago, as of date of writing, a man by name of Titius wrote some figures and whatnot in the margin of a manuscript that another person by the name of Bode found interesting and made mention of. This became the Titius-Bode Law of today. Using the calculations derived from that law, we can calculate that the first planet, which in the solar system is Neptune, was formed at a specific distance.

If you are going to monitor the development of your star system, please be sure to use the Titius-Bode Law figure for what I am about to describe, not the present position of Neptune. You will see why a little later. We are also going to change the base planet to Mercury from Earth and use the Mercury Planetary Unit, or MPU for distance, approximately forty percent of the Astronomical Unit. (For more information, see the Hicks Star System Formation Theory.)

It is important to note that this figure is only valid for a system like the solar system, other systems with different molecular cloud densities, spins, and linear sizes will have their own specific density related constant that could be used for this calculation, but other conditions may apply.

Back to your star system, with its new proto-star and fresh new stellar wind and a phenomena that is as permanent as the burning star, but the significance thereof is not yet completely understood. In the solar system it is called the heliosphere, with the corresponding heliopause.  You can read elsewhere to understand what little is known, but for now a general definition. We will use the term miasmasphere for heliosphere because helio means 'sun', and your star is not the Sun. The miasmashell, which we are going to call your system's heliopause counterpart, that will enclose the miasmasphere which in turn encloses all the planets and the star itself and is not too well defined, more a region between particles moving in two different directions, usually towards each other.

As the heliosphere and the heliopause hold the interstellar particles outside the solar system, so do the miasmasphere and miasmashell, and it gets its energy to do so from the stellar wind of your proto-star, just as the heliosphere gets its energy from the star Sol.

The first miasmashell will create a region which will prevent the molecular cloud from penetrating within the miasmasphere, furthest from your proto-star on the plane of ecliptic, which is really the equatorial plane of your proto-star, and it will do it at or very near ninety-seven Mercury Planetary Units (thirty-eight point eight AU) from the proto-star.

Thus, if you have some tool to peer into the molecular cloud without disturbing it, you would see- first the newly developed proto-star, an apparently empty space surrounding that proto-star,  that 'empty' space a flattened oval in a cutaway side view, and a near perfect circle in a cutaway top view, and surrounding that empty space the continually collapsing molecular cloud held at bay by the initially invisible miasmasphere-miasmashell combination.

At that ninety-seven MPU distance and beyond,  the material of the cloud will continue to spiral about and toward the core, or more appropriately now, proto-star and will be bombarded with particles from the proto-star. Because the particles are being ejected from the equatorial region will have the most angular momentum of any of the particles and the angular momentum will drop, as will the distance from the proto-star, with increased latitude of the proto-star until at the poles there is little or no angular momentum and the distance is some percentage of the ninety-seven MPU.

Additionally, this stellar wind will add to the angular momentum of the material it contacts, especially along the equatorial zone at the outer reaches of the miasmasphere and a considerable amount of the material will reach  and maintain orbital velocity. Any material exceeding orbital velocity will be slowed by the presence of the miasmashell and the incoming particles of the molecular cloud. Orbital velocity will always be the most sustainable velocity in the formation of any star.

As this material at orbital velocity builds up over a considerable period of time it will also begin to coalesce into a planet, your first planet, and perhaps a satellite or two. This planet will become quite large, for the stellar wind is robust and will hold back a large mass of the molecular cloud in a sort of shell about the proto-star and the planet will gather the material from or near the equatorial zone.

Inside the shell, there will be particles, mostly an abundance of hydrogen ions, but also hydrogen and other elements that escape the gravity of the proto-star during the fusion processes occurring within the proto-star, and these too will migrate to the shell of the miasmasphere. These elements will also join to become compounds, building blocks for other phenomena within your stellar system. Besides the planets that form within these miasmashells, there will be other bodies formed as well, and the difference between these bodies and the planets is that the other bodies will, for the most part, plummet into your proto-star as part of the collapse of the miasmashell for they will not have the angular momentum necessary to prevent such from happening.

During this time, most of the electromagnetic waves radiating from the proto-star will not be able to penetrate the molecular cloud to any degree, and less and less as the material builds up at the edge of the miasmasphere. Thus a considerable amount of the radiation will be trapped inside the 'shell' and will create an atmosphere  perfect for the construction of other chemicals until we have a miasma made up of many different elements and chemicals- hence the names miasmaspher and miasmashell.

You will find that during the construction of your star system that nothing ever remains the same for very long,  at least, on the cosmic time scale. This state of equilibrium cannot last, and doesn't. Sooner or later the mass of the shell of the miasmasphere is going to be high enough that the pull of gravity between the proto-star and  the shell will overcome the power of the stellar wind and the shell, those parts of it that are not moving at orbital speed, will collapse onto the star.

This collapse of the miasmashell will happen in a rather short period of time relative to the time it spent being developed, as sheets and wisps of particles plummet to the surface of the star until there are none left to block the outgoing particles of the stellar wind. These plummeting sheets, always with a leading body, would give an very impressive comet like appearance if one could but view them, even though  only the leading body will arrive to collide with your proto-star.

As well, the entire molecular cloud will advance steadfastly behind the collapsing shell, leaving your planet and its tenuously clinging satellites behind, and your star will now have a mass that may have doubled, so even your planet is going to be pulled  out of its original orbit, closer to your proto-star.

Remember, this first planet is known as Nept, Neptune's counterpart in your stellar system.

Nept will be stuck in the molecular cloud for a long, long time, at least until the last planet has started to form.

Because your proto-star now has a planet, we'll will no longer call it a proto-star.

Your star will again begin to send forth its solar wind, and the first waft of energy being transmitted from the star will blow a fair amount of material, mostly of molecular cloud material, away  from its immediate vicinity and will start to create another miasmasphere, only this time miasmashell will not be as far away because the molecular cloud will be denser, having been collapsing during all the preceding activity, and it shall continue to collapse, growing more dense at a steady rate until most of the material of the cloud is part of your star.

The miasmashell of you miasmasphere will be the location of your second planet, Uran, and because of the increased density of the cloud this limit will be around forty-nine MPU (nineteen point six AU) from your star. Once again, after some length of time, this miasmashell will collapse, leaving Uran in the advancing molecular cloud and your star will gain another helping of the molecular cloud. Both Nept and Uran will have their orbits tightened a little because of the increasing size of your star.

Your star will once again send forth its stellar wind and create yet another miasmashell complete with miasmasphere, this time the planet Satu will start to form at its outer limit of twenty-five MPU (ten AU). And once again after a period of time, the new miasmashell-miasmasphere combo will form and collapse. And the outer planets will be drawn in a little more.

And again there will burst forth a new stellar wind  to create yet another miasmashell, upon the edge of which your planet Jupi will form, and it will form the largest of your planets for a complexity of reasons that you can't change so we won't go into at this point. This planet's orbit will be at thirteen MPU (five point two AU) and, over time, this planet will affect all other planets in some manner or other, mostly because of factors concerning its mass, but location is important as well.

Those planets already formed will be drawn further in towards the star, while still accreting material from the incoming molecular cloud, and their orbits will be tainted by the presence of this new planet ultimately. Further, this planet will taint the orbits of yet undeveloped planets in their turn, some more so than others. This will be a process that continues for a period that seems like forever, but is short on the cosmic scale, and definitely lasts long after the later planets are formed. At the current stage, all of this is a 'work in progress'.

The next miasmashell will form, albeit with irregularities because of the increasing size of Jupi, at a distance of seven MPU (two point eight AU) from your star. When this miasmashell forms, it will be in conditions that don't allow any planet to form, for only planetoids will have been able to form due to the interference from Jupi, and they will be scattered in an average orbit of seven MPU, and I am naming this Abel, taking the A from Asteroid, and BEL from Belt, to keep the significance and similarity to its sibling, the Solar System.

Abel, and all subsequent planets will not be dislodged as far from their initial orbits by your star as the first four planets, mainly due to the presence of Jupi, which will serve to offset the growing mass of your star, even while Jupi itself succumbs somewhat to the star's gravitational gain.

After the collapse of the miasmashell that creates Abel, the next miasmasphere will form with its miasmashell at four MPU (one point six AU) and the planet that grows from within the miasmashell will begin its heyday as a planet. Maru will form and will have an atmosphere about it, quite dense and volatile, from this point on until the last planet has nearly finished forming.

And once again, the miasmashell will collapse, leaving Maru in its dust, and the next miasmasphere shall form and this one's miasmashell will be at a distance of  two point five MPU ( one AU). It will go through all the same treatment that Maru went through, and I'll call this one Luny, and it will be barely distinguishable except for size from Maru.

And once again, this miasmashell will fall into the star, leaving Luny in its wake and the resulting miasmasphere will have its miasmashell at the distance of one point seven five MPU (point seven AU). This instance of the miasmashell will follow the pattern of the last two planets, and Venu will have been begun.

The next time the miasmashell-miasmasphere combination forms, it will be at the distance of one MPU (point four AU), and Mercy will form in that vicinity.

Now if you've been paying attention to your star system's formation, and how Solar System alike it is, you will have noticed a slight discrepancy, since there is now a planet or planetoids developing in all orbits that match the Solar System. You will be aware that the double planet Earth-Moon does not exist in your star system. Have you failed?

No, you're just not finished.

There is still the miasmashell at Mercy's orbital distance, and it too will collapse and another miasmasphere will be formed, only because the molecular cloud that begat the star and the planets has nearly been exhausted, the miasmashell for this miasmasphere will be at variance with a lot that has gone on before.

The miasmashell will form between the orbit of Venu and Luny, but closer to Luny and both will begin to accrete material from the miasmashell. This particular miasmashell will form a planet differently from all others because of the presence of those two growing planets, your star, and even Jupi.

Venu will be happy to skim the cream off the top, enlarging itself and will wreak some extra havoc now and again, but for the most part it's effect will be minimal.

Luny on the other hand will have found itself in an awkward position. Having formed, gathered an atmosphere and done what planets do, it is essentially swallowed up in a dense fog of particles, some of these from the star in the form of stellar wind, some from the molecular cloud. So it starts to grow.

But unbeknownst to it, its very presence creates an opportunity for two other bodies to form, in the LaGrange points on its orbit fore and aft. While these are stable positions gravitationally up to a point, these bodies will grow to become very unstable, but most significantly, their positions will prevent the bulk of the orbiting material from approaching Luny, and thus they will grow instead.

But as these two planetoids grow their motions within their orbit of your star, in step with each other and with Luny, and with interference from Jupi and Venu on occasion, they will wander further and further from the LaGrange points they occupy, and they will begin to orbit about a common centre of gravity amongst themselves. Sooner or later there will be a collision.

Luny will escape the collision by squirting out from between the two new bodies,  possibly squeezed out, but will remain in orbit about that common centre of gravity, and the resulting collision will launch material that will float about in your star system forever after, gravitationally tied to the now double planet system you have in place.

Luny will lose its atmosphere, both to the new planet and to the stellar wind that just keeps blowing,  for the remnants of the molecular cloud are either gravitationally bound to some other body or sent to the outer reaches of your stellar system creating a new miasmashell far beyond the furthest planet, Nept. Maru will lose its atmosphere due to the stellar wind and become a barren rock circling your star.

Hence, there is no collapse of this final miasmashell, for its particles are either gravitationally bound to another body or blown away be the stellar wind to the vast far reaches of your stellar system.

Because this is your Star System, I'll let you have the honour to name this last planet.

From the onset of this star system formation, and if you have been watching, you will have noticed that the time element between each collapse of the respective miasmashells has decreased at a steady rate, and you will have also notice that the material on the outside edge of the cloud accelerated on its way to the centre of the star system at a steady rate.

It should also be pointed out, that at the time Jupi was formed, your star was nearing maximum mass, and that subsequent collapses of the miasmashell would have added less and less material to your star. Additionally, Nept, like Neptune within the Solar System, in your system will occupy the orbit most distorted from the original placement.

An additional point, and you might be able to use this as a check for the stability of your system, is that each planet, the further from your star, then the further it has been pulled off its original orbit towards your star. The most likely exception to this will be Abel, because of its development constrictions.

There are other significant items that we are not dealing with in this productivity mode, that have interest and bearing to those who wonder why.

Should you wish to develop a star of greater mass, then find a molecular cloud of the mass you want your star to be. Should you wish to have a super-Jupiter planet around such a star, but closer, then find the most dense molecular cloud of the combined  mass that you can.

A cloud with a similar mass to the one we just described but smaller in linear size will have a greater density and not produce as many planets. Another cloud of similar mass and a low rate of spin may not produce any planets at all.

These are the primary considerations when choosing your molecular cloud, density, mass, spin rate, so good luck with your endeavour.

And thus, I, Rod, say, let there be light.... on star system formation.