Hi All

I've just spent the last couple of hours browsing the slightly kooky theories of E.M.Drobyshevski. I say "slightly kooky" because while his ideas are odd they've been published in some decent journals, so they've passed some sort of peer review.

Ok... main ideas...

(1) Planets are formed as part of the formation process of a binary system - in our case Jupiter is the remnant of the Sun's companion.

(2) Solid state electrolysis in ice causes a build up of massive amounts of enclathrated H2 + O2 in the crusts of icy moons. Eventually an impact can trigger a catastrophic detonation creating the various comet families and impact events. Proximity within Jupiter's primordial magnetic field determined the detonation history of the Galileans. Io was stripped to the core, Europa almost was, Ganymede suffered one event but Callisto is a slow-fuse cosmic ice-grenade awaiting the right impact to set it off. Titan recently (~ 10 kyr) detonated, the debris made Saturn's rings and some Saturn-associated comets and its surface is a thin ice veneer over a still warm ocean.

(3) Primordial Planck-mass black-holes have accumulated in the cores of large masses (including the Sun and Earth) and catalyse proton-decay. These Planckions have been detected by Drobyshevski's equipment and could explain ball-lightning.

...some pretty wild reading and he does trumpet his cosmogonic ideas as THE planet formation theory, but the ideas are definitely worth exploring. His image of Galilean moons being kept warm by inductive heating in Jupiter's early days has a certain poetic appeal and interesting astrobiological potential.

Here's the entry for him on NASA's ADS... Drobyshevski,E.M. ...and many of the entries are available online.

Crank, kook or genius? Or all three???

Adam