Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2005
The early gas and dust protosolar nebula of the solar composition is considered analytically. A simultaneous formation of the sun and all the planets around it ($\approx 5 \times 10^9$ yr ago) through a local gravitational Jeans-type instability of small-amplitude gravity perturbations in the nebula disk is suggested. It is shown that a collective process, forming the basis of the disk instability hypothesis, solves with surprising simplicity the two main problems of the dynamical characteristics of the system, which are associated with its observed spacing and orbital momentum distribution, namely, Bode's law on planet spacing and the concentration of angular momentum in the planets and mass in the sun. Besides, the analysis is found to imply the existence of new planets or other Kuiper-type belts of comets at mean distances from the sun of 87 AU, 151 AU, 261 AU, 452 AU, 781 AU (Mercury, Venus, $\ldots$, Asteroid belt, $\ldots$, Neptune, Kuiper belt, new planets or other Kuiper-type belts).To search for other articles by the author(s) go to: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html