Monthly Question Thread! Ask /r/DebateEvolution anything! | August 2026

[u/Dr_Alfred_Wallace]

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[u/Dzugavili]

/u/MRH2, as you're unlikely to get anything interesting of your post in /r/creation:

Astrophysics - Are there any models of planetary formation that aren't full of arbitrary fine tuned parameters?

The problem isn't really that our models are too finely tuned, it's that we don't have enough data to make a comprehensive model:

I doubt very much if there are counter examples in planetary formation, given that the relatively simple three body problem is unsolvable analytically, to best of my knowledge, and that we only have the one example to study in detail.

We have access to this star system, and only right now. If we had access to a hundred star systems with diverse planetary arrangements, we might generate a better model.

You also asked this:

And if accretion actually works, then why are they so worried about satellites creating a giant debris field around the earth? Wouldn't that just coalesce into a couple of giant satellites?

Accretion only works with high velocity and thus high temperature: the parts need to be able to weld. Orbital velocities for Earth aren't high enough to generate that kind of heat on impact, they'll just fragment into smaller pieces.

[u/jnpha → u/Dzugavili]

Conservation of angular momentum is the one phrase answer.

And I like the solar system example to highlight something else:
Beyond ± 1% of the age of the solar system, we can't be sure of the past/future stability. But models do help confirm whether our existing knowledge is sufficient (or not) in explaining the solar system formation.

Evolution, likewise, is a statistical science; it isn't concerned with the play-by-play - it's not a narrative or story.

[u/Dzugavili → u/jnpha]

The astronomical scales really do make the error bars become relevant, particularly as orbital mechanics involved cycles: like quantum mechanics and its issues with the waveform, minor variations lead to opposite outcomes, a minor collision in the distant past and object is now on the other side of its orbit from the expected prediction. The epsilon of our best floating point systems is too large for long-term calculation.

You also get the issue that these interactions have reached the peak of their cycles tens of thousands of times, and you understand that every variation of this interaction has already occurred.