Three planets and several moons revolve backwards (Talk.Origins)

Claim CE260:


 * The hypothesis that the solar system formed from the collapse of a revolving nebula is contradicted by the fact that three planets and several moons revolve backwards.

Source: Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 19.

CreationWiki response: It is interesting that Talk Origins ignores both moons with significant tilts to the their parent planet's equator, including Earth's own moon.

The problem here is that catastrophic collisions tend to average out to little or no net effect on a planet's rotation or orbit over time, and one collision large enough to reverse a planet's spin would have to have more impacting energy than even a body in retrograde solar orbit could have unless it was large enough for the impact to destroy both planet and impacter.

No disagreement here. However the presence of so many captured asteroids, particularly for Saturn, is most consistent with a system-wide disaster.

No disagreement here. However such a violent capture is most consistent with a system-wide disaster.

Has this ever been modeled? At best these seem like unlikely events, particularly given Pluto's retrograde rotation.

The problem is that any collision powerful enough to do this would probably have shattered the protoplanets.

Has this ever been modeled? Admittedly this is their best one. It is at least plausible and not dependent on highly improbable planet shattering collisions.

The universe is a big place and such a planet may yet be found, but more likely than not some implausible explanation will be proposed to save the nebular hypothesis.

This fact was known when the nebular hypothesis was invented, so it confirms nothing about the nebular hypothesis.

The sun is composed of 98.1% hydrogen and helium, that leaves 1.9% For the Earth to have started with the same composition it would have had to have started at 50 times its current mass, making it more than 2.5 times the mass of the gas giants Uranus and Neptune. So Earth would have had to have started out as a gas giant to have started with a sun like composition. The same can be said of Venus, while both Mars and Mercury would have had to start at more than twice Earth's mass. So this actually goes against the nebular hypothesis.