MOST THOROUGH MODEL-5
PLANETS, CEPHEIDS, DWARFS, RAYETS, GIANTS, CEU, PHOTOSPHERE, SATURN, JETS, TILTS, MAGNETIC, IMPACTS, BURSTS, AGE, DATING, IMPLOSION, RILLES, SUN, STAR, SIZE, TEMPERATURE, TRAIN, WARMTH, EARTH, CAPTURE
……………………………………….(Brown Dwarf with Bipolar Jets)
CONTENTS
PLANETS’ CONTENTS & FORCES — CEPHEIDS, WHITE DWARFS, WOLF-RAYETS, RED GIANTS — EU MODEL V. CEU MODEL — PHOTOSPHERE ELECTRICAL RESISTANCE — SATURN, BROWN DWARF, BIPOLAR JETS — AXIAL TILTS — MAGNETIC FIELD FLIP — IMPACTS, THERMONUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS — AIR BURSTS — CHARGE ON METEORS & RILLES — SOLAR SYSTEM’S AGE — DATING A FILAMENT IMPLOSION — HOW LUNAR RILLES FORMED — SUN’S AGE — STAR SIZE RANGE & INITIAL TEMPERATURE — LINEAR TRAIN OF BODIES IN SPACE — WARMTH WITHOUT THE SUN — EARTH WAS A BROWN DWARF TOO — SATURN’S CAPTURE
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Sun Jan 24, 2016 7:05 pm
PLANETS’ CONTENTS & FORCES
Lloyd wrote: Charles, if stars shrink to become planets/moons, and if stars' cores and inner layers have elements heavier than Manganese, shouldn't planets/moons have a larger percentage of such elements?
Maybe they do -- just deeper down.
Lloyd wrote: If a planetoid were on an elliptical orbit with a perihelion inside Jupiter's orbit and an aphelion outside, can you calculate whether close approaches between the planetoid and Jupiter would more likely result in the planetoid being repelled from Jupiter or being gravitationally pulled into Jupiter resulting in a crash?
The electric force can be either attractive or repulsive, depending on the charge and thickness of the object's atmosphere. If the atmosphere gets stretched into a coma, the force between that body and another one is attractive. There might also be frictional charging, as a comet gets into a planet's atmosphere. I think that SL9 broke apart due to internal electrostatic pressure.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Fri Jan 29, 2016 8:02 pm
CEPHEIDS, WHITE DWARFS, WOLF-RAYETS, RED GIANTS
Lloyd wrote: Is it certain that Cepheids are stars? Do they have spectra typical of stars? I ask because the guy who wrote "Stars Are [many] Times Closer Than They Appear", which is discussed in an older TB forum thread, suggested that their variability is due to them going through phases like the moon. Do you know if that theory is definitely wrong?
If the Cepheids were close enough to be that luminous just on the basis of reflectivity, the distance by parallax measurements would be quite accurate.
Lloyd wrote: Later in your paper, you say: "It's possible that the pulsations of the Cepheids generate so much heat that the star expands too much, and the weaker gravitational field can no longer support EDP. If so, the star falls apart. Opposite charges recombine in a brief flare-up, but the low density produces long wavelengths. The red giant phase is thought to last only a few million years,3 which would make sense if it's the final charge recombination in a star whose EDP is undergoing a catastrophic failure of the gravitation/electrostatic force feedback loop that was holding it together."
Are you implying that stars take a few million years for their CFDLs to disintegrate? If the CFDLs disintegrate at the Cepheid/Red-Giant phase, where would planetoids come from? And how would planetoids continue to have CFDLs?
I just got done overhauling the Main Sequence paper, to bring it in line with other recent improvements in accuracy, and to resolve some outstanding theoretical issues. I removed the bit on the Cepheids, which I intend to study more. They're tough to classify on the basis of their spectra, especially since they vary so much. Their position on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is therefore contentious, and the whole idea that main sequence stars can branch off toward the red giant cluster might be very naive -- these things might have nothing to do with each other. I'm now convinced that red giants actually aren't even stars -- they are properties of white dwarfs or Wolf-Rayet stars that cannot be reconciled with theory. So the standard model says that there have to be two stars there, to get both property sets. But I can explain the white dwarfs, Wolf-Rayet stars, quasars, and red giants all with the "natural tokamak" model. The short lifespan of white dwarfs and red giants, despite their fundamental differences in the standard model, makes more sense in the NT model, since they're both the same stars. And I'm no longer of the opinion that CFDLs ever disintegrate (unless the object collides with something). Rather, stars evolve into planets.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Sat Jan 30, 2016 4:36 pm
EU MODEL V. CEU MODEL
Vecta3 wrote: So, in a nutshell, what's the difference of the theory presented here in comparison to the {EU} theory(s)?
Probably the biggest difference is in the nature of star formation. The TB idea is that there is a galactic electric current flowing through a plasma filament, which pinches the plasma into a star. I'm saying that there is an electrostatic force running through the entire plasma filament, which causes it to collapse lengthwise, like the tensile force in a stretched rubber band. Once the plasma filament is imploding, it's moving electric charges, which generate magnetic fields, which are measurable. So both models acknowledge the same observed magnetic fields surrounding imploding plasma filaments, while the difference is a matter of which force is the prime mover -- magnetic fields (TB) versus electric fields (me).
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Sat Jan 30, 2016 11:03 pm
PHOTOSPHERE ELECTRICAL RESISTANCE
Lloyd wrote: What resistance are you talking about there? You said "as the resistance increases with the thickness of the photosphere". Do you mean the electrical resistance, since ohmic heating means electrical resistance heating?
Yes, it's electrical resistance.
Lloyd wrote: Is there more electrical resistance when the photosphere ions/atoms are farther apart?
Not because of the spacing, but because of the cooling. Electrical resistance increases with decreasing temperature. At extremely high temperatures, hydrogen plasma is a near perfect conductor, but at room temperature, it's an insulator.
Lloyd wrote: How would the negative layer under the photosphere get deeper?
I'm saying that the boundaries between positive and negative layers are all isobars. If the pressure relaxes, the same isobar is to be found deeper within the Sun.
Lloyd wrote: Do you mean because the photosphere expands?
And yes, at the same time, the photosphere also expands upward. The force that is holding it down is its electrostatic attraction to the underlying negative layer. If that gets further away, the electric field isn't as strong. This will allow the photosphere to expand.
SATURN, BROWN DWARF, BIPOLAR JETS
Lloyd wrote: Is it at all plausible to you that Saturn may have been a brown dwarf...
Yes.
Lloyd wrote: ...and flared up like that about 4,500 years ago?
How would humans have survived?
Lloyd wrote: If so, could Saturn have lost a lot of mass in such a flare, so that it shrank into a gas giant planet?
Where did the mass go?
Lloyd wrote: And, by the way, have you studied bipolar jets from brown dwarfs yet? [...] I assume they would not form the way natural tokamak jets form.
No, I haven't gotten to that yet. But I don't know of another way of producing a jet, so I wouldn't rule out the "natural tokamak" model. My current working hypothesis for red giants is that they are the atmospheres around white dwarfs. So the two distinctly different emissions are not coming from a binary system containing a red giant and a white dwarf -- they're coming from two different aspects of the same star. The same could be true of brown dwarfs with jets.
Lloyd wrote: An article, called Jets from a Possible Young Brown Dwarf, at https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200932.html says: Like most young stars, HH211 emits bipolar jets of material as it evolves; the jets help to reduce the star's spin as it ages and contracts. The jets thereby facilitate further contraction, and probably play a role in the formation of any developing planetary system.
That's astro-babble for "we don't have a physical mechanism for bipolar jets".
Lloyd wrote: They seem to compare brown dwarf bipolar jets to cometary jets etc.
But cometary jets are not bipolar -- they shoot out wherever they feel like. In my model, frictional charging as the comets cruises through the interplanetary medium results in the comet getting surrounded by a positively charged sheath. As the entire comet gets positively charged, electrostatic repulsion can drive jets through cracks in the frozen surface.
AXIAL TILTS
Lloyd wrote: Eccentricity I just read a little of the paper above and noticed this: The solutions show that an eccentric secondary’s semimajor axis and inclination both evolve monotonically with time. Therefore, the orbital plane always moves towards a pole unless the orbit is circular. The higher the eccentricity, the faster this movement. If the jet at the south pole is stronger than that at the north pole (M down u down > ̇M up u up), then the inclination always decreases. The greater the asymmetry, the faster the inclination changes. Also, although the eccentricity remains static, the location of the pericentre is a function of time.
First, I thought it may be suggesting that orbital eccentricity can change quickly, but I guess that impression is wrong. It seems to say only that planets' axial tilts can change quickly.
That's interesting -- I'll have to check it out.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Mon Feb 08, 2016 4:47 pm
MAGNETIC FIELD FLIP
ElecGeekMom wrote: So now I'm wondering what impact the sun's weakening has on that process. They say the earth's magnetic field has been weakening. IIRC, the quickening of that process seems to have happened as we have descended into the solar minimum. Can we assume that the process you describe, that involves ionization, will weaken also, or slow down?
The ionization is gravity-fed, so that isn't going to change. But other things can happen. Once charges get separated inside the Earth into layers, you then have the makings of a dynamo. Net neutral matter that is rotating doesn't generate a magnetic field, because the fields from positive and negative charges cancel each other out. But if you have positive and negative layers of charge, and if there is differential rotation between those layers, the one that is rotating faster will generate the dominant field. If that layer slows down, and the other layer speeds up, the magnetic field will flip in polarity. But I'm not sure what influence the Sun would have on this.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Wed Feb 10, 2016 5:30 pm
IMPACTS, THERMONUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
Lloyd wrote: Charles, what did you say is the minimum velocity of an impactor needed to produce a thermonuclear explosion? Did you say 30 km/s, or something else?
I don't recall saying. It would depend on the velocity, the mass, and on the rigidity of the impacting surfaces, to develop the concentration of energy necessary to set it off.
Lloyd wrote: I just noticed that Mike Fischer said the average impactor velocity is 20 km/s and he based his estimate of the Shock Dynamics impact on that velocity. But I imagine the impact would have produced a thermonuclear explosion. He calculated the diameter of the asteroid to be 42.5 km.
If it had hit the ocean, the instantaneous impact would have been absorbed and distributed the energy. It would have served the same purpose for Shock Dynamics.
Lloyd wrote: Would you expect an impact on deep water to produce a thermonuclear explosion starting at the surface? Or would it have to hit more solid matter underneath?
For the impactor to get obliterated, I think that it has to hit a solid surface, and it has to be solid itself. And big enough.
Lloyd wrote: What would a slower bolide do?
That would mean less energy.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Wed Feb 24, 2016 8:23 am
AIR BURSTS
Lloyd wrote: Charles, I think you've explained how charge builds up on bolides moving rapidly through Earth's atmosphere and can lead to detonation of an airburst,
Yes, by "frictional charging". Particles impinging on the bolide's boundary layer get their electrons stripped off, due to their lower inertial forces, while the +ions burrow deeper into the boundary layer. This makes the boundary layer positively charged, surrounded by a negatively charged sheath.
CHARGE ON METEORS & RILLES
Lloyd wrote: or can carve out rilles near the bolide's point of impact.
I don't know about the rilles getting carved by EDM.
Lloyd wrote: How could bolides have built up charge without moving through an atmosphere? You've said that charge can build up on comets moving through the solar system.
Your second statement answers your question, but certainly if there is an atmosphere, the charging will be much more robust.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Thu Feb 25, 2016 12:49 pm
Lloyd wrote: Impact Rilles: I think you agreed in the past that Juergens' reasoning about rilles seemed very sound and rather conclusive, i.e. that they were formed electrically.
I don't remember that. Anyway, my study of the Chelyabinsk bolide led me to the conclusion that the charge separation is entirely within the bolide's coma, with a positively charged interior, and negatively charged exterior. The electric potential wasn't between the bolide and the Earth, nor was there any bolide-to-Earth discharge. Rather, there were flare-ups due to excessive potentials between the positive interior and negative exterior of the coma.
Lloyd wrote: I think a TPOD said there's a rille associated with Meteor Crater in AZ.
They said it, but they didn't show a picture of the rille. Do you know where this can be found?
Lloyd wrote: Do you remember Juergens' copy of the 1949 National Geographic photo of a rille on a baseball diamond in Florida caused by lightning which killed one or more players? If lightning can dig a trench about a foot wide and deep and ten or twenty feet long on Earth, could it be calculated how much charge from an impactor would have been able to carve Schroeter's Valley by Aristarchus crater on the Moon?
If Schroeter's Valley had been formed by EDM, I'd expect it to be a star-burst pattern, not a singular rille.
SOLAR SYSTEM’S AGE
Lloyd wrote: Age of Solar System?: In your Light Curves paper at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=18943 , you calculate that the solar system, or at least the Sun, can apparently not be over about 378 million years old.
Yes, I improved the accuracy of the calcs, and added a few more constraints, and that's the number I came up with. There's still a bit of wiggle room, but no matter what I do, I get numbers that are way smaller than the standard model's. So I'm saying that the radiometric dating needs to be refigured, given that radioactive decay rates increase with temperature, and both the Sun and the Earth were a lot hotter during their early days. Not taking this into account would (does) result in falsely over-estimated dates.
Lloyd wrote: Have you tried to determine the minimum age of the Sun and maybe the solar system?
I think that everything in our solar system formed at the same time -- 378 million years ago.
DATING A FILAMENT IMPLOSION
Lloyd wrote: Do you think there should be any traces remaining of the filament/s from which the solar system originated?
I don't know -- maybe the entire filament was consumed in the process of forming the Sun, the planets, and the moons.
Lloyd wrote: Didn't you say that it could take a filament millions of years to complete an implosion process?
I got an estimate of 100 million years for the dusty plasma to implode.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Thu Feb 25, 2016 6:17 pm
HOW LUNAR RILLES FORMED
Lloyd wrote: Rilles Rille Char. - - - - - - Proposed Rille Origin Theory
----------------------- erosion - erosion - formed by - formed by - electric
--------------------- via water - gas cloud - gas blow - lava tube - eruption
wider at high end - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - O - - - - - - B - - - - - - A
channel sinuous - - A - - - - - - C - - - - - - O - - - - - - C - - - - - - A
upper end crater - - B - - - - - - B - - - - - - O - - - - - - B - - - - - - A
ends at diff. elev. - A - - - - - - A - - - - - - O - - - - - - A - - - - - - A
no out wash dep. - C-X - - - - - C-X - - - - - B - - - - - - C-X - - - - - A
no chan. bridges - - A - - - - - - A - - - - - - O - - - - - - B-C - - - - - A
chan. cratering - - - O - - - - - - O - - - - - - A - - - - - - O - - - - - - A
trav. high ground - X - - - - - - - X - - - - - - B - - - - - - X - - - - - - B
stray fr. surf. dip - C-X - - - - - C-X - - - - - B - - - - - - C-X - - - - - B
on ridge crest - - - - X - - - - - - X - - - - - - A - - - - - - B - - - - - - A
strata exposure - - - B - - - - - - B - - - - - - A - - - - - - C-X - - - - A-B
strata upturned - - - X - - - - - - X - - - - - - A - - - - - - X - - - - - - A
rille clustering - - - - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - B-C - - - - B-C - - - - - A-B
rille crossing - - - - - C-X - - - - C-X - - - - - A-O - - - - C-X - - - - - B
2nd rille in bottom - B - - - - - - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - B
Do you agree with his rating of each theory for each rille feature?
They look reasonable, but there is one theory that he didn't include -- that the rilles were caused by rifting. In this case, it would have been crustal shrinkage, due to cooling, that would have opened up the rifts. I'd like to add that there are a number of instances of channel cratering, and that this is easy to understand as the same sort of thing. If the crust was already under tensile stress due to shrinkage, and if a meteorite landed, the resulting crustal fracture would necessarily pass through the crater, because it was the crater that initiated the crack. Since meteors often break up (due in my model to electrostatic repulsion within the meteor), a line of them will impact the surface at pretty much the same time. And again, if the crust was already under tensile stress, you'll get a fracture running through the line of craters. I don't know if this explains all of the rilles, but it should be considered as one possible mechanism.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Fri Feb 26, 2016 11:44 am
Lloyd wrote: Fault Rilles & Sinuous Rilles: But what do you think about these possibilities?
Well, there are actually a lot of possibilities here. For example, what if an impactor breaks up just before impact, and then fractures the crust -- is it possible that the rille is both a fracture, due to an impact on a crust that was already under tensile stress, and a conduit for electrical discharges through the fracture, further excavating the rille? I think that my point here is just that I don't see a reason to lock down on an hypothesis, with so few data, and so many possibilities. It isn't going to prove anything.
SUN’S AGE
Lloyd wrote: Sun's Age: I thought 378 million years was your upper limit for the Sun's age. But now you're saying that's the approximately exact age.
The latter is correct -- I'm saying that that if the Sun started out at 10,000 K and cooled according to the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, it's now 378 million years old (+/-).
STAR SIZE RANGE & INITIAL TEMPERATURE
Lloyd wrote: Are you fairly sure what size and temperature the Sun had initially?
The size is limited at the upper end by supernova theory, where anything above 1.4 solar masses would produce the internal pressure necessary for a runaway thermonuclear reaction (i.e., a Type 1a supernova). So I believe that all stars that survived the star formation process, and did not create a supernova, are < 1.4 solar masses. So that piece is contrary to some aspects of mainstream stellar theory, which allow stars to be many times more massive than the Sun, but it's consistent with conventional supernova theory, as well as nuclear physics, in that it acknowledges the well-known limits on how much pressure you can have before the runaway reaction occurs. As discussed elsewhere, I don't know what the lower limit is, but it seems that a lot of stars begin at something like 1/3 the mass of the Sun. If the Earth was once a star, as I believe, then 1/333,000 solar masses is still possible for a star.
The initial temperature of the Sun is an interesting question. Just with adiabatic compression of the primordial dusty plasma, plus the thermalization of the kinetic energy in the implosion, it should have been a lot hotter than 10,000 K. So I'm saying that most of the kinetic energy got converted to electrostatic potential. So how did I settle on the 10,000 K figure? If stars form at roughly the same mass (?), and if they cool according to the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, and if they're forming at random times, then in a large population of stars, we should see specific quantities of stars at each temperature. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law requires that stars cool rapidly at first, and thereafter, the heat loss levels off with time, asymptotically approaching absolute zero at an infinite time from now. So we should see just a few stars at the higher temperatures, and lots of stars at the lower temperatures. And that's exactly what we see in star inventories.
Code: Select all
class temperature percent
min max of total
---------------------------------------
O 30,000 ∞ 0.00003
B 10,000 30,000 0.13
A 7,500 10,000 0.60
F 6,000 7,500 3.00
G 5,200 6,000 7.60
K 3,700 5,200 12.10
M 2,400 3,700 76.45So I neglected the statistically insignificant O and B class stars, meaning that I would figure that most stars begin life at 10,000 K (i.e., the top of the A class). Then I found that the heat loss, per the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, yielded almost precisely the quantity of A, F, and G class stars. IMO, the fit is close enough to be beyond chance. Where the Stefan-Boltzmann curve diverged from the observations of large populations of stars was in the K class. But we know that stars in that class are flare stars, where sporadically the temperature jumps way up, and so does the heat loss rate. So a star isn't just a simple black-body radiator that will cool according to the Stefan-Boltzmann Law -- it's a complex EMHD system that undergoes some sort of transition in the K class, and that needs to be taken into account. Then the M class falls right in line. So most stars seem to begin with masses between 1.4 and 0.3 solar masses, and at something like 10,000 K, to produce the large population statistics that we're seeing. Any given individual star could be anywhere within the valid range.
Lloyd wrote: Isn't it possible that the Sun could have started at near it's present size and temperature?
If the Sun began at its present temperature, then why isn't it getting cooled off by radiative heat loss? I "think" that the only answer to that question would be that the Sun's heat is being generated dynamically, such as from nuclear fusion. But by my reckoning, fusion is only responsible for 1/3 of the Sun's power -- the rest is electrostatic potential getting reconverted to kinetic energy (in the form of ohmic heating). And that energy source will be reduced by radiative heat loss. BTW, another implication of the Sun and the Earth beginning at their current temperatures is that radiometric dating should be reliable. I'm saying that it isn't, because both the Sun and the Earth used to be a lot hotter, and radioactive decay rates run faster at higher temperatures. So I can get away with saying that the Earth is a lot younger than in the standard model.
Lloyd wrote: And isn't it also possible that it could have formed at one size and then accreted other bodies and gotten larger a long time later? And, if it got larger by accretion, wouldn't it also have gotten hotter? And wouldn't that mean it could be very young?
That could also be taken to mean that both the Sun and the Earth are a lot older.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Sun Feb 28, 2016 10:18 am
Lloyd wrote: Charles, do you disagree with this Wikipedia statement under Stellar Classification? "About 76% of the main-sequence stars in the Solar neighborhood are class M stars [... but almost] none are bright enough to be visible to see with the unaided eye.... Although most class M stars are red dwarfs, the class also hosts most giants and some supergiants...."
No, I agree with that. Here's the light curve that I'm using for typical stars, showing that they'll spend 76% of their time in the M class... http://qdl.scs-inc.us/2ndParty/Images/Charles/Stars/LightCurveFlares_wbg.png. If a star spends 76% of its time in the M class, then in a large population of stars that all formed at random times, 76% of them will be in the M class.
Lloyd wrote: Do you agree with Cardona that M class and other cooler dwarf stars are also flare stars, like the K class? If so, is that accounted for in your Light Curves paper?
Yes, I briefly mention that the flaring can continue on into the M class.
LINEAR TRAIN OF BODIES IN SPACE
Lloyd wrote: Since there do seem to be runaway stars that escape from galaxies or star systems and since objects like the SL9 comet fragments are obviously able to follow each other in straight lines, do you think it's possible for a polar configuration of planets to exist, such as a brown dwarf star followed in a straight line by 3 or more planets all on the same rotational axis?
I think that SL9 was a single comet that broke up when it entered Jupiter's atmosphere, due to frictional charging, which generated an internal electrostatic repulsion that fragmented the comet. The fragments then fell into a line for fluid dynamic reasons -- the lead fragment created a bow shock, and behind it, the net flow of the perturbed atmosphere is inward, toward the path of travel of the lead fragment. Thus trailing fragments tend to fall in line behind the leader. It's certainly possible for the same kind of thing to happen on a planetary scale. But if you're going to say that the Earth followed Saturn into the solar system, you have to read in a lot more data specific to that occurrence of the phenomenon, and the possibility might not be tenable in that case. For example, a rogue body from outside of the solar system would tend to just pass right through, and head out the other side. So how did Saturn get captured?
WARMTH WITHOUT THE SUN
Lloyd wrote: Would it be possible for an Earth-like planet following behind a runaway brown dwarf star to be warm enough to support a thriving biosphere?
If the Earth was once a star, it would have had plenty of heat of its own, and after it had cooled a bit, life could have evolved, even in the absence of starlight from an external source. Now that a crust has formed, radiative heat loss from inside the Earth is very slow, and we get a larger portion of our thermal energy from the Sun. But earlier in the Earth's history, the heat was coming primarily from the Earth's interior. So if the Earth had been a rogue planet that did not form along with the Sun in situ, life could have been evolving, with or without radiation from Saturn, or from any other source. (But you still have to explain how Saturn etc. got captured by the Sun.)
EARTH WAS A BROWN DWARF TOO
Lloyd wrote: If the Earth used to be a star, how large an atmosphere could it have had? Could it have been larger than Jupiter? Could Jupiter have an Earth-sized rocky core?
Interesting questions. I definitely believe that the Earth (and Venus, and possibly Mars) would have qualified as "gas giants", before their atmospheres were whisked away. But I have no idea of how to constrain the estimates of how large the atmospheres would have been, or of how large the cores of the existing gas giants are.
Re: Most Thorough Model
by CharlesChandler » Sun Feb 28, 2016 3:33 pm
SATURN’S CAPTURE
Lloyd wrote: 1. if Jupiter were already in the solar system, Saturn could have been captured by passing near Jupiter;
It would take more than that to accomplish gravitational capture -- you need at least 3 bodies. Also, you need for the relative velocities to be slight, or the incoming body simply shoots straight through and out the other side.
Lloyd wrote: 2. there might have been a thick atmosphere around the Sun a million miles deep or more, which could have slowed and captured the Saturn System;
Bolides moving through an atmosphere develop charged boundary layers that are nearly frictionless, so they tend to maintain their speed. I would think that this would be true of a planet as well.
Lloyd wrote: 3. there could have been a lot of debris, like meteor streams, that slowed down and captured Saturn.
That's a possibility, but it certainly would have taken a lot of meteors to absorb all of the momentum of something as large as Saturn.
{Now I think the Saturn System could have entered the solar system as the interstellar filament imploded.}