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The Big Bang scattered planets and stars everywhere in three dimensions.

But after billion years of moving and interacting with each others through gravity, planets moved on the same plane.

Given the very small but non zero friction in space, could we give a good estimate of the age of the universe?

HDE 226868
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Thomas
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    Simple answer - no: The planar geometry of the solar system is totally unrelated to the age of the universe. – ProfRob Sep 13 '15 at 21:32
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    The Solar system formed well after the BB, but, of course, its age (which we can meaure from isotope ratios) is a lower limit for the age of the universe, though not a very useful one. – Walter Sep 14 '15 at 09:05
  • Why the negative votes ? The question is so dumb ?? – Thomas Sep 19 '15 at 02:41

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First, the Big Bang did not happen at a point. I cannot emphasize this enough. It happened everywhere in space at the same time. You can't think of it as an explosion from one location pushing everything else away.

Furthermore, planets and stars didn't exist at the time of the Big Bang. The Solar System, for example, formed about 4.5 billion years ago, while the oldest stars - Population III stars - formed within a few million years after the Big Bang. At the beginning of the universe, everything was in an exotic soup-like state: a quark-gluon plasma.

Therefore, your hypothesis is flawed in two places.

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HDE 226868
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  • ok, it is an image, but still, does it make sense ? – Thomas Sep 13 '15 at 20:12
  • @Thomas No, because it happened everywhere. – HDE 226868 Sep 13 '15 at 20:13
  • @HDE_226868 ok, I didn't know that, but still my question holds : stars and planets formed in a 3D manner, not in a plane. why are they in a plane now ? because of gravity and friction and time. no ? – Thomas Sep 14 '15 at 18:19
  • @Thomas See http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/130/why-do-the-planets-in-our-solar-system-orbit-in-the-same-plane and http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/2224/why-is-the-solar-system-often-shown-as-a-2d-plane. The same logic holds (to some extent) on a galactic scale. – HDE 226868 Sep 14 '15 at 19:05
  • @HDE_226868 Thanks for the links. What explains the initial speed of planets and the fact that they all rotate in the same direction (e.g e clockwise) ? – Thomas Sep 19 '15 at 02:44
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    @Thomas The protoplanetary disk. – HDE 226868 Sep 19 '15 at 20:58
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No, the formation of planetary systems is not the result of the interaction of stars and planets which form at random in space post Big Bang. Stars form from density fluctuations in the gas in galaxies and planetary systems usually form (to the best of our knowledge) from the disks of gas and dust around stars that are a side effect of the formation of stars.

That is planar planetary systems should be usual because they form from planar systems which are largely the result of dynamical processes in star formation.

Conrad Turner
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