Evhenia Ruskol

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A history of the O. Yu. Schmidt cosmogony hypothesis

Issue 3 from 30.09.2003

60 years ago O.Yu. Schmidt put forward a hypothesis about planetary cosmogony, which from the perspective of current knowledge can be evaluated as an important contribution to the development of modem ideas on the origins of the Solar system. This paper is a critical response to the article by I. A. Rezanov (VIET, No. 4,2002), which dis cussed the old polemics about the Schmidt hypothesis in 1951, at the First AllUnion Conference on Cosmogony. In fact, the 1951 discussion helped advance the development of planetary cosmology. Subsequent investigations and space explo rations confinned the far-sightedness of O. Yu. Schmidt’s formulation of the prob lem of cosmogony. In his article, I. A. Rezanov advances his own ideas on the early evolution of the Earth, assuming that the planet’s atmosphere was so dense and hot (1000 K), that it influenced the structure of balsatic rocks. He also believes that bombardment by fragments of a hypothetical planet Phaeton played a key role in the evolution of the Earth’s surface. Both these assumptions contradict observa tional data and cannot justify an alternative to existing theories.

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