Thursday, May 7, 2026

Introduction To This Blog System

                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Image used by permission

Postings may be later combined into a compound posting on this blog. Many of the postings concern my observations in various branches of science, but there are also many on technology, religion, economics and, general world issues.

I would really like to thank everyone who reads any of these blogs for your interest.
 
SCIENCE WRITING
 
Most of the postings on this blog are visits to various places around the world, and articles about such topics as history and religion. But much of the writing is about science. I do not write about what is already known but only if I can write something new, or at least a new way of looking at things.
 
If you would like a quick background in the science and mathematics that everyone should really know in the 21st Century, the posting "Scientific Literacy" provides this in about a hundred paragraphs. Similarly, "The Way Things Work" provides a quick background in everyday technology.
 
I am a Christian and I want to show that belief in God is not unscientific at all. I was interested in science long before I was interested in religion, and have never had any trouble believing that God created everything.
 
There are five major scientific theories, each arranged in the form of a textbook. The first four of the following five are on this blog.
 
"The Theory Of Stationary Space" is my cosmological theory of how so much revolves around time being explained by us being in four-dimensional space, with the dimension that we cannot access being perceived as time. This is my version of string theory, with matter actually being strings in four dimensions rather than particles in three dimensions. Everything is ultimately based on negative and positive electric charges, with energy being able to overcome the laws of attraction and repulsion of electric charges. No one has ever explained exactly what time is, and a myriad of explanations of other things fall right into place around it.
 
"The Flow Of Information Through The Universe" is about how so much can be explained by seeing how there is a limited amount of information, and it must be the same information that constructs the highest levels as the lowest levels. A ready example is how the orbits of planets around the sun is based on the orbitals of electrons around the nucleus, in the atoms of which the sun and planets are composed. This concept is extremely useful because, understanding this, we can study things that we cannot directly see by analyzing things that we can see because all must be built on the same information.
 
"The Theory Of Complexity" is about what information actually is, how energy and information is really the same thing, and how we see the universe as we do because of our perspective of being at a higher level of information than our inanimate surroundings.
 
"The Lowest Information Point" is about how, since information and energy is really the same thing and the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, it also always seeks the "Lowest Information Point". So much is explained by how the universe prefers equalities to inequalities and related ratios where the numerator of one ratio is also the denominator of the other. This explains so much from why dust particles are as big as they to why the planets and stars are the scale that they are.
 
"The Story Of Planet Earth", on the geology blog, is about how virtually every major feature of the earth's surface, both on land and seafloor, can be explained by lines of magma emergence from below that were affected by the landing of three Continental Asteroids. Many people believe that land originated from a past "super-continent", but there is no explanation of where it came from.
 
There are a few of what we could call "minor" theories, where there is not as much written as with the major theories. On this blog, there is "How Biology And Human Life Fits Into Cosmology". On the meteorology and biology blog, there is my theory of the nature of water, "Water Made Really Simple".
 
There are compound postings about science which are groupings of writing about a certain topic.
 
Scientific compound postings include, "Computer Science", "Atomic Science", "Measurement", "A Celebration Of The Inverse Square Law", "Our Solar System", "Mind-Bending Cosmology", "The Configuration Of The Solar System Made Really Simple", "In Appreciation Of Electrons", "The Science Of Human Society " and "Orbital And Escape Velocities And Impacts from Space".
 
Compound postings about history and the world include "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began", "Niagara Stories", "Economics", "How History Repeats Itself", "The Meaning Of Freedom", "The Western Hemisphere", "Our Language" and, "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris".
 
There are two compound postings about prophecies and the Bible. There is "The Aztec Prophecy" than, for prophecies that are directly made in the Bible there is "New Insight Into Bible Prophecy".
 
"Investigations" is the compound posting that is a collection of any posting about an investigation.
 
The rest of the postings are individual postings. For more detailed information about this blog, see the posting "Thanks To Readers". For general topics of conversation, see "Thoughts And Observations", on the world and economics blog.  
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Other Blogs And Books

                                                                                                                                               

Lights at night 

Here is a quick look at my other blogs before you start this one.

On this blog, you can see a list of all postings by clicking on the year or month to the right. But on the topical blogs, that is not the case. If you click on a year or month on those blogs, it will display the postings themselves, but the list on the right will still only show those postings that were added most recently.

To access a list of all postings on those blogs, it is necessary to click on the arrow in front of the year or month in question.

http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ is about economics, history and, general human issues.

http://www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/ concerns progress in technology and ideas.

http://www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com/ is my geology and global natural history blog for topics other than glaciers. My natural history blogs concerning the impact of glaciers is http://www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com/ .

http://www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com/ is about new discoveries concerning natural history in the general area of Niagara Falls.

http://www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/ is my observations concerning meteorology and biology.

http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ is my blog about physics and astronomy.

http://www.markmeekcosmology.blogspot.com/ is my version of string theory that solves many unsolved mysteries about the underlying structure and beginning of the universe.

http://www.markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/ details my work with the fundamental patterns and complexity that underlies everything in existence.

 http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ is my religion blog.

 http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ is proof that there must be a god.

http://www.markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of Europe.

On my photo blogs, Blogspot will not hold all of the photos in each blog in a straight line. To see all of the photos, you must click on the bottom posting listed on the right at the top of the blog after seeing all that there are in the initial showing. The last posting in the North America blog should be "Tijuana, Mexico" and the last posting in the Europe blog should be "Notre Dame Cathedral Door And Arc De Triomphe, Paris". Each photo in the photo blogs can be clicked on to enlarge it to full screen.

My autobiography is http://www.mark-meek.blogspot.com/

My books can be seen at http://www.bn.com/ http://www.amazon.com/ or, http://www.iuniverse.com/ just do an author search for "Mark Meek".   

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Eastern Germany And The Reformation

EACH STOP INCLUDES FOUR IMAGES FROM GOOGLE EARTH OR STREET VIEW 

Leipzig was an important trade center in the days of the Holy Roman Empire. It could also have been considered as the center of classical music, and today there is a statue of Johann Sebastian Bach. Noteworthy architecture includes the cylindrical tower of the New City Hall.

In 1813, Leipzig was the site of a great battle, with the forces of Napoleon on one side and the forces of Prussia, Russia, Austria and, Sweden on the opposing side. Napoleon's loss of the battle was a major turning point against his empire, and there is a great stone monument on the site today, called the Monument to the Battle of the Nations.

The first two of the following images of Leipzig are of the New Town Hall. The third is of the Old Town Hall.





There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >, After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.


This is Leipzig's Monument to the Battle of the Nations. It was constructed in 1913, for the centennial of the 1813 battle. It is believed to have been an inspiration for the Voortrekker Monument, that we saw in our visit to "Pretoria".





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Potsdam is just to the southwest of Berlin. But Germany is divided into states and Berlin is a state unto itself. Potsdam is the capital city of the surrounding Brandenburg State. In our visit to "Berlin", we have already seen the New Palace in Potsdam where the Kaisers resided. There are several old city gates still standing in Potsdam, the following scenes begin at the Nauen Gate, which was built in 1755.

The first of the following four images, from Google Street View, is of the Nauen Gate. The second is the New Palace and the third is the Sanssouci Palace.





These three images, from Google Street View, are of Babelsberg Castle, in Potsdam.




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There is also a Brandenburg Gate in Potsdam, which has the same name as but is not the same thing as the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. This is Potsdam's Brandenburg Gate, which was built in 1770. Notice how similar this gate is to the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, in Paris, but was built before it. Could Napoleon have used this gate as the inspiration for his arch in Paris? I presume that the eagle in the ground stonework represents the Holy Roman Empire.





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Dresden  is another city in eastern Germany. The Baroque-style Zwinger Palace and the Frauenkirche are prominent sites. The first three images are of the palace. The fourth is of the Frauenkirche.






Halle is a city that originated in the early Middle Ages and played a very important role in the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. The first image shows how important dormers are in traditional German architecture.





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The city of Magdeburg was founded by Charlemagne himself. It was an important city of the Holy Roman Empire. But Martin Luther attended school there and the city went to the Protestant side in the Reformation. The following scenes begin in Magdeburg Cathedral. The first two of the following four images are of the cathedral.





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Eastern Germany is where the Reformation originated and it is a vital part of all that eastern Germany is about. Martin Luther is the name that is most associated with the Reformation, which began in 1517 and changed the world. I once chose Martin Luther as the most important person of the past millennium.

Luther did not suddenly initiate the Reformation. There had been what we could call "Proto-Protestant" reformers and movements for reform in the church for quite some time. There was John Wycliffe, known as "The Morning Star of the Reformation", in England, Jan Hus in Bohemia and the Waldensians in the mountain valleys of northern Italy. But it was the reform began by Luther that spread and grew.

The following four cities on our visit to eastern Germany are not just about religion. All four are well-preserved colorful medieval towns that would be well-worth seeing even if not for their historic involvement in the Reformation.

The following views of Eisleben begin in Martin Luther's birth house, which is now a museum. Luther was born here on November 10, 1483. Luther also died in Eisleben, although not in the same house as his birth. There is a statue of him in the town square, which is the second image. The third and fourth images are of traditional German architecture.





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Erfurt is an extremely old city that was important in medieval times as part of the Holy Roman Empire. Martin Luther attended Erfurt University, was ordained in Erfurt Cathedral and entered the Augustinian Monastery as a friar. The first two of the following four images are of the cathedral. The next two are of traditional German architecture.





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Martin Luther lived in the city of Wittenberg. It was here that he nailed the 95 Theses, demands for reform of the Catholic Church, to the door of the castle church. That day is considered as the beginning of the Reformation. Those who sided with the Reformation are known as Protestants.

It is generally considered that there are four main branches of Protestantism, the Lutherans, the Anglicans, the Baptists and, the Reformed (Calvinists). The Lutheran was the first of the Protestant churches, both Lutherans and Anglicans incorporated some of the rites of the Catholic Church that people were familiar with. But Martin Luther never intended to start a separate church, certainly not one with his name on it. He only wanted to reform the Catholic Church. But he was followed by men who had no intention of reconciling with the Catholics.

The Reformation spread rapidly and the result was war. The Protestants of northern Europe banded together in what was known as the Schmalkaldic League. Finally, the Peace of Augsburg was signed allowing anyone to choose between being Catholic or Lutheran. This only covered the Lutherans, Protestants like the Calvinists were not covered until the Peace of Westphalia, nearly a hundred years later.

Luther actually got the reform of the Catholic Church that he wanted, but only by splitting the church with the two halves in competition, the Eastern Orthodox Church had split away nearly five hundred years before. So much of what the Catholic Church is today is not the original church but the result of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic response to the Reformation.

One development to emerge from the Catholic Counter-Reformation was the Jesuits, the order to which Pope Francis belonged. But Pope Francis praised Luther and joined in the 500 year anniversary of the Reformation. There have been two major splits in the church, the Great Schism of the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1054 and the Protestant Reformation in 1517. I have always thought that the second great split was not quite as wide as the first.

I myself am a Protestant but see it as we are all in this together. I have been an admirer of the last three popes and if I am in a church it makes no difference to me if it is Protestant or Catholic. I sometimes listen to Catholic radio while driving.

In the U.S., the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was named after Martin Luther because his father had earlier visited Germany.

This new settlement of agreeing to disagree, rather than insisting that everyone had to agree, helped to bring about modern democracy as we know it. Here is Wittenberg.

The first of the following four images is the Tomb of Martin Luther. The second is the All Saints Church where his tomb is located and where he nailed his 95 Theses, topics for debate, to the door. The list is now inscribed on the door, shown in the third image. The fourth image is the former monastery where Luther lived.





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Above another medieval city, known as Marburg, is Landgrafen Palace. This is where the meeting was held, in 1529, between the two most important leaders of the Reformation. These two leaders were Martin Luther and his Swiss counterpart, Huldreich Zwingli. Anyone hoping for Protestant unity would be disappointed as Luther and Zwingli could not agree on everything. But others had the opinion that being a Protestant was about reading the Word of God for yourself and thinking for yourself, and it should not be necessary for the leadership to agree on everything.

This emphasis on thinking for oneself, as well as settling for agreeing to disagree, brought about modern democracy. But the century of warfare following the Reformation started putting people off to religion and brought about modern secularism.

People are designed to believe in something and if they don't believe in God then they will just believe in something else. Movements like Nazism and Communism did an excellent job of taking people who, for the most part, no longer believed in God and giving them something else to believe in.

This is Landgrafen Palace in Marburg.




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Remembering The Berlin Wall

I was going to post this last week, with our visit to "Berlin", but didn't want to distract readers from the new cosmology theory.

This is related to the compound posting "The Revolution Series", March 2025.

THE BERLIN WALL

The Berlin Wall was an artificial barrier that ultimately didn't last. But why was this so?

The most important historical factor in the Berlin Wall is the split between east and west that we saw in the compound posting "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began" January 2016. This is where the monumental split, known as the "Great Schism of 1054" took place. The Eastern Orthodox Church split away from the Catholic Church, over disagreements about how much authority the Pope should have, and the world has not been the same since. The conflicts between the two domains, from Napoleon's invasion of Russia to the Eastern Fronts of both world wars to the Cold War to the present war in Ukraine, are all rooted in this split, even if in modern secular form.

Another factor is the "The Rule Of Successive Revolutions" that we saw in the posting by that name, October 2024. The French Revolution of 1789 opened the modern political era. The king and queen were overthrown and guillotined in favor of a republic. But the revolution was messy and bloody and ultimately ended in the rule of Napoleon, who was the prototype of the modern dictator. 

There have been two major reenactments of the French Revolution, as well as many minor ones. The two major reenactments have each changed the basic direction of the French Revolution. The first reenactment, what we could call the Second Revolution, was the October Revolution of 1917, which was the beginning of world Communism. The second major reenactment, which we could call the Third Revolution, was the Iranian Revolution of 1979. This turned the direction of the revolution series back to religion.

The Berlin Wall was built by the Communists. It was their era, the era of the Second Revolution, and this enabled them to overreach westward, relative to the split defined by the Great Schism of 1054. But once the Second Revolution was supplanted by the Third Revolution, in 1979, it was only a matter of time before the Berlin Wall came down. Anniversaries are important and it came down in 1989 because that was the bicentennial of the French Revolution.

THE FIRST GULF WAR

During my youth, there was one major event that really took me by surprise. It was the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990. I had thought that the two countries were friendly, and Kuwait had seemed to favor Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. 

Now I understand but, like so many other things, it goes back to the French Revolution.

Iraq underwent a repetition of the French Revolution. Iraq actually had it's own revolution, where the king was overthrown and killed in favor of a republic, on Bastille Day, and it is known as the July 14 Revolution. But just like the original French Revolution the republic would end up under the rule of a Napoleonic figure in a military uniform. That figure's name was Saddam Hussein. I consider Iraq as one of the most perfect reenactments of the French Revolution. 

Saddam Hussein is generally considered as having invaded neighboring Iran, in September 1980, with the hope to acquire Iran's oil-rich, and Arab-majority, Khuzestan Province. The Iranian Revolution was still going on and Saddam was certainly worried about it spilling over into his own majority Shiite population. Border clashes between the two countries had been going on for several months. Iran was cut off from the U.S., which had been it's main ally, and Saddam decided to take advantage of the situation.

The war went on for eight years, without either side gaining much of anything. Since Iran was at odds with the west, Saddam Hussein seemed to think that the west "owed" him something for keeping Iran at bay, and would acquiesce if he seized neighboring oil-rich Kuwait. This would be Iraq's reward instead of Khuzestan Province.

Saddam Hussein seemed greatly surprised at the world's reaction to his seizure of Kuwait. America and it's allies demanded the withdrawal from Kuwait and began mobilizing immediately. Saudi Arabia would join the coalition and allow the forces of the other countries to assemble on it's territory. A deadline of January 15, 1991, was announced for Iraqi forces to leave Kuwait, because that would allow time for the Allies to assemble a sufficient force. 

But let's remember the all-important French Revolution. Iraq's own mirror revolution actually took place on Bastille Day, July 14. Iraq was ruled by a Napoleon-like figure in Saddam Hussein, in a military uniform and ultimately emerging from the revolution that overthrew the king. But Kuwait was ruled by an emir, which is a king, from the Al-Sabah family. This put the two apparently-friendly countries on diametrically opposite sides of the French Revolution.

Remember that we saw in the compound posting "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris", December 2015, that the Republican side of America, despite the name, represents a continuation of the French Bourbon Dynasty that was overthrown by the French Revolution. The king and queen that were overthrown and guillotined, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, had been America's first allies and helped it to gain independence. This is what led America to react so quickly in favor of Kuwait, although I don't think it had been that close of an ally to America before that. Saudi Arabia was also ruled by a king and quickly joined in. It amounted to the kingdoms against the revolutionaries. 

CHINA'S CIVIL WAR

The influence of the French Revolution and this Revolution Series reaches to the Far East. 

Japan and China both had revolutions. But their revolutions went in opposite directions. China had it's version of the French Revolution in the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which overthrew the emperor. Japan's revolution was in reverse. The power of the warrior class, the Samurai, was ended and full power was restored to the emperor. During the war between the two countries Japan got the former emperor of China, who had been a child when overthrown in 1911, and put him in power in the northeastern part of China, Manchuria.

After the end of the Second World War was the Chinese Civil War, between the Nationalists and the Communists. China had it's version of the French Revolution in 1911, and Chiang Kai-Shek emerged as it's Napoleon figure. But that was the First Revolution. Since the October Revolution of 1917, it had been the era of the Second Revolution. This favored the Communists and is why they ultimately won. 

THE FOURTH REVOLUTION 

Since there have been three revolutions in this all-important series, what might we expect if there should someday be another revolution in the series?

I wasn't thinking about it when I wrote about this series of revolutions but what about the emergence of the Antichrist, as described in Bible prophecy? This is described in the posting "The End Of The World As We Know It".

The First Revolution was hostile to religion, the Second even more so, but the Third was all about religion and brought the world generally back in that direction. The emergence of the Antichrist will certainly be revolutionary and what would be more logical as the next step in the revolution series than someone actually claiming to be God?

The Bible states that the Antichrist will go into the Temple of God and claim to be God. Remember that Napoleon was about to be crowned as emperor, in Notre Dame Cathedral by the Pope who had come to crown him, but he snatched the crown from the Pope and put it on himself, showing that he was above the Pope. 

Decades later Napoleon's nephew, known as Napoleon III or Louis Napoleon, would be the first president of the French Republic. When his term of office was over, in true Napoleonic fashion, simply declared the republic at an end, and France again as an empire, with himself, as we might expect, as emperor.

All three of the revolutions in the series has removed the existing order and had some kind of "storming" as it's signature event. The original French Revolution had the Storming of the Bastille. The October Revolution had the Storming of the Winter Palace. The Iranian Revolution had the Storming of the U.S. Embassy. What is referred to as the "Rapture", although the word is not in the Bible, is the removal by Jesus of all true Christians from the earth before the Tribulation Period begins. Although it will not be the work of humans, it fits ideally with being the Storming and overthrow of the existing order in the Fourth Revolution.

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Apocalyptic Developments

This is in regard to the parallel postings "The End Of The World As We Know It" and "Inducing The Apocalypse", both January 2026.

We know that the Antichrist will be from Europe and will be the greatest leader that the world has ever seen, apparently with all of the answers to everything. Donald Trump pulling military forces out of Germany means to show that Europe is now "on it's own". We are back to the era of great powers, led by king-like leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. What Europeans really need to do is to come up with a great leader of their own.

Drones are new to warfare and we still haven't seen much of the worst that drones can do. Drone attacks on ships at long distances are bad enough. The world depends on ships to deliver food, fuel and, supplies. Even if the drone attacks are not successful, it will still raise insurance rates and make everything expensive. The world is dependent on planes for transportation. Drones cannot reach planes at their cruising altitude but planes are very vulnerable to drones while taking off and landing. Reports of drones can force airports to shut down, even without an actual attack. Drones can be guided by the target country's own phone system and a possible drone attack can force a shutdown of the phone system, on which we are utterly dependent. This is a perilous new world that we have invented and the world could really use a leader that has all of the answers.

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Our Complicated Solar System

With so much attention to the Moon recently, the fact is that there must be some special circumstances for it to exist. It really shouldn't be there if the Solar System formed by a simple supernova.

We know that the sun and planets formed when a large star exploded in a supernova and some of the matter fell back together by gravity. The sun must be such a second generation star because it contains heavier elements that are beyond it's current stage in the fusion process. But the Solar System that we see is too complicated for this simple scenario.

Since this explosion and falling back together of matter is simple, the Solar System should be just as simple but it isn't. The matter near the center of the cloud of debris from the supernova should have fallen back together to form the sun and the matter further out, in orbit around the proto-sun, should have collected in masses at periodic distances to form the planets. 

But the Solar System that we have is much more complicated than this, so there must have been more information from somewhere. 

Why should there be moons in the Solar System? This is a higher information state relative to the simple explosion of a supernova. There really shouldn't be moons, there should just be planets at periodic distances from the sun. 

The four outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and, Neptune, are much greater in scale than the four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and, Mars. Jupiter is actually more massive than all of the other planets combined, and Saturn is about a third the mass of Jupiter. This is also a higher information state and requires special explanation.

To make the Solar System even more complicated one of the periodic collections of matter that would have formed into a planet didn't form into a planet. This collection of objects remain today as the Asteroid Belt. It was prevented from forming into a planet by the powerful gravity of Jupiter. Two large groups of asteroids are in the same orbital path as Jupiter, at it's Lagrangian Points L4 and L5.

As if all of this isn't complicated enough the outer planets have ring systems around them. By far the most visible, and best-known, is that of Saturn. But why is the Solar System so much more complicated than it appears it should be given the basic simplicity of a supernova explosion? 

Then there are the comets. These have very eccentric orbits, meaning very elliptical, and may be in nowhere near the same orbital plane around the sun as the planets. A comet is typically composed mostly of light molecules, such as water, and the water on earth is generally believed to have come from comets. Salt is also a light molecule and it seems certain that water and salt arrived on earth together.

One thing that is striking is the distribution of moons in the Solar System. There are a vast number of moons in orbit around the outer planets, and every space mission finds more. But around the inner planets there is only earth's moon and the two small moons around Mars, which are almost certainly asteroids that were captured by Mars' gravity. 

There is one scenario that can explain what happened. The supernova must have been more complicated. One thing that would make that possible would be if there had been one or more nova before the supernova. A star forms when enough matter comes together by it's mutual gravity to overcome the electron repulsion between atoms and fuse lighter atoms together into heavier ones. The new heavier atoms contain less internal energy than the lighter atoms that were fused together and this excess energy is released as radiation, which is why stars shine. 

But, as time goes on, increasingly heavy atoms are fused together so that the energy released per time increases. This upsets the equilibrium between the inward force of gravity and the outward force of the energy released. The star may swell and the sun is expected to eventually turn into a "red giant". 

The largest stars may completely explode in a supernova. But before that the outer layers may be blasted off by one or more nova, in an effort by the star to restore equilibrium. These nova are far less powerful than the pending supernova, which is the star exploding from the center. The nova blast off the outer layers of the star, which contain lighter atoms. 

A supernova releases so much energy that it fuses atoms together, creating elements that ordinarily wouldn't exist. The usual fusion process only goes as far as iron and all elements heavier than iron are created only during the brief time that the supernova is actually taking place, which is why elements like gold and silver are exponentially less common than iron and lighter elements.

The far less powerful nova doesn't fuse atoms together but it does fuse the light atoms in the outer layers of the star into molecules. This is how the light molecules that are abundant in the outer Solar System formed, such as ammonia, methane and, water. 

So this explains why the Solar System is so much more complicated than it appears it should be. As powerful as a supernova is it is a relatively simple event. There must have been at least one nova before the star finally exploded in a supernova. I believe that there were, most likely, three nova.

This also explains comets, composed primarily of water ice. The first nova formed the distant comets, the Oort Cloud. The second nova formed the nearer comets, the Kuiper Belt. The third nova formed the methane, ammonia and, water that makes up much of the mass of the outer planets. The water on earth arrived by way of comets. 

So when the supernova explosion threw out a great volume of heavy rocky and metallic matter, the bulk of it was thrown far enough to mix with the light molecules produced by the third nova. When the heavy matter from the supernova coalesced into planets, the vast cloud of lighter molecules was drawn in too. This made the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and, Neptune much more massive, although of less average density, than they would have been otherwise. 

This is what caused so many moons to form. The mass of heavy rocky and metallic debris that is thrown far enough outward to intersect with the light molecules that were thrown outward by the last nova thus becomes part of a more massive planet than it would be if there had been just a supernova explosion. Once the planet forms, other rocky and metallic debris is pulled in by gravity to join the planet. 

But a complication arises in that the added mass of the planet from the light molecules would cause the new pulled in mass to have greater acceleration due to gravity while falling into the planet and would cause the mass to impact the planet with more energy. But this would be creating energy out of nothing, and so it simply can't be done. So what the new mass does is falls into orbit around the planet, where it coagulates by gravity to form a moon. This is why there are so many moons around the outer planets but not the inner planets. 

Rock is so common because it is basically a compound of silicon and oxygen, which are both very common. Limestone is usually calcium carbonate, formed from the bodies of microorganisms.

The earth's moon is widely believed to have formed when a Mars-sized object, named Theia, collided with earth and it's mass was hurtled back into space where it coagulated by gravity into the moon. My geology theory has some of the mass remaining on the surface of the earth to form the continents. But this fits ideally with our scenario here. The asteroids actually did start to form a planet but it was destabilized by Jupiter's gravity, losing orbital energy, and it fell inward toward the sun until it collided with the earth. This accounts for earth's moon and, with the two small moons of Mars being captured asteroids, all of the other moons are around the outer planets.

The reason that the Moon has no appreciable atmosphere is that the water and elements in the air come from comets landing on earth and the moon has not been impacted with as many comets, since it formed later than the earth. At least one comet must have struck the moon because there is water ice in some areas of permanent shadow. But the moon has only one-sixth of the gravity of the earth and this might not be strong enough to retain water vapor and gases like oxygen and nitrogen. It also seems that Mars once had water but doesn't now. 

The most obvious way to explain our complicated Solar System is that there were, likely, three nova, a blasting off of the outer layers of the previous star before the star finally exploded from the center in a supernova. Without this, the earth's moon wouldn't exist.

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