By Ron Cowen
NANTES, France — Call it the battle of the planet creationists.
On one side of the ring stands Doug “Rocky Core” Lin. On the other side stands Alan “Jupiter in a Hurry” Boss. For more than a decade, Lin, a theorist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has argued with Boss, a theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (D.C.), over the correct theory of planet formation.
Lin champions what is generally viewed as the standard model, known as core accretion. In this model, grains of dust lying within the disk of gas and dust that surrounds a young star gather together to form solid chunks of rock. Then some of these bodies are destined to become rocky planets like Earth; others cloak themselves in a massive envelope of gas and form gas giants like Jupiter. But one problem with this gradual, two-step recipe for making a Jupiter is that the gaseous disk may evaporate before the process finishes.