Exoplanets Defying Cosmic Evolution

Extrasolar planets are not a problem in and of themselves, but they have been recalcitrant toward the rules of cosmic evolution. They are also none too friendly to the hopes of secular scientists in finding places where aliens may live.

Oversimplifying the most popular idea of the formation of solar systems is swirling gasses forming a star, then planets and moons are made from what is left. Therefore, everything should be turning and orbiting in a uniform manner. Not so with some exoplanets.

Artist's concept of hot Jupiter-class HAT-P-7b, NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents)

All of our planets have prograde orbits, meaning that their motion is in agreement with the sun's rotation. Venus has a retrograde orbit, meaning it doesn't see fit to rotate like all of the others — except Uranus, of course. That bad boy is tilted so much, it's been described as practically rolling in its orbit — and is retrograde.

When one examines charts, graphics, models, and so on of the solar system, the planets could be lined up. Some of those exoplanets look like they've been hitting the firewater before orbiting, having (are you ready for this?) misaligned orbits. They are highly inclined, and some appear to have retrograde orbits. Scientists are working on the hows and whys. That may be good intellectual exercise, but the attempted rescuing devices have proved futile. Is this something the Creator tucked away, waiting for cosmic evolutionists to find and get dismayed?

This article discusses several interesting things about those exoplanets, and for people with a more technical bent, shows the mathematics and methods used to determine these orbits. I got a little out of that, but I found the top and bottom layers of greater interest.

There has been increasing interest and new research into extrasolar planets that have highly inclined orbits compared to the orientation of their stars. This was first referred to by Spencer in 20101 for the case of an exoplanet known as WASP-17b (The acronym ‘WASP’ represents a British project called the ‘Wide Area Search for Planets’). In theories of the formation of planets, the star first forms in a flattened disk of gas and dust. The planets then form from the gas and dust in the spinning disk. Since the newly formed planets in this scenario would get their motion from the spinning disk, the planet orbits would normally be expected to be lined up close to the equator of the star. But in some cases exoplanets have been discovered in which the orbit inclinations are very different from the plane of the equator of the star. . . 

. . . At this meeting it was announced that scientists had discovered that in a group of 27 exoplanet cases studied, six of these planets seemed to be moving retrograde in comparison to the spin axis of their star. This was quite a surprise.

To read the full article (and possibly skim the technical parts if you're not fond of that material), rocket over to "Confirmations of highly inclined exoplanet orbits."