At https://phys.org/news/2022-01-asteroids-earth-threats.html … some asteroids, or comets, are in the vicinity of the earth in 2022 – which is the theme of this piece. Not sure if anyone should go there as they are forecast to miss earth by millions of miles. None of them will be close encounters – but why ruin a good scare story.
At www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10379273/ … the sun may have been surrounded by great rings of dust similar to Saturn. It stopped our planet from growing according to a new study. All done by modeling, once again. The model envisions the early solar system – which is of course an unknown factor. Three bands of high pressure in the disk -the formative solar system]. These have been seen around distant stars, apparently – or rather, they think they have bands of high pressure. What else might it be? It could be something quite different. Anyway, all models rely on assumptions, somewhere. The first is the idea of high pressure bands and the second assumption is those supersize planets are the norm. Why isn't earth bigger than it is? Perhaps it has not expanded enough [tongue in cheek by the way]. They claim pressure bumps produced reservoirs of disk material in the inner and outer solar system, regulating or preventing how much material was available to grow planets. Interesting theory – but does it have legs?