Turbulence

From Overcoming Bias:

A few months ago I came across an intriguing contrarian theory:

Hydrogravitional-dynamics (HGD) cosmology … predicts … Earth-mass planets fragmented from plasma at 300 Kyr [after the big bang]. Stars promptly formed from mergers of these gas planets, and chemicals C, N, O, Fe etc. were created by the stars and their supernovae. Seeded gas planets reduced the oxides to hot water oceans [at 2 Myr], … [which] hosted the first organic chemistry and the first life, distributed to the 10⁸⁰ planets of the cosmological big bang by comets. … The dark matter of galaxies is mostly primordial planets in proto globular star cluster clumps, 30,000,000 planets per star (not 8!). (more)

Digging further, I found that these contrarians have related views on the puzzlingly high levels of mixing found in oceans, atmospheres, and stars. For example, some invoke fish swimming to explain otherwise puzzling high levels of ocean water mixing. These turbulence contrarians say that most theorists neglect an important long tail of rare bursts of intense turbulence, each followed by long-lasting “contrails.” These rare bursts not only mix oceans and atmospheres, they also supposedly create a more rapid clumping of matter in the early universe, leading to more earlier nomad planets (not tied to stars), which could then lead to early life and its rapid spread.

I didn’t understand turbulence well enough to judge these theories, so I set it all aside. But over the last few months I’ve noticed many reports about puzzling numbers and locations of planets:

What has puzzled observers and theorists so far is the high proportion of planets — roughly one-third to one-half — that are bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. … Furthermore, most of them are in tight orbits around their host star, precisely where the modellers say they shouldn’t be. (more)

Last year, researchers detected about a dozen nomad planets, using a technique called gravitational microlensing, which looks for stars whose light is momentarily refocused by the gravity of passing planets. The research produced evidence that roughly two nomads exist for every typical, so-called main-sequence star in our galaxy. The new study estimates that nomads may be up to 50,000 times more common than that. (more)

This new study was theoretical. It used a best fit power law fit to the distribution of nomad planet microlensing observations to predict ~60 Pluto sized or larger nomad planets per star.  When projected down to the comet scale, this power law actually matches known bounds on comet density. The 95% c.l. upper bound for the power law parameter gives 100,000 such wandering Plutos or larger per star....MORE