How many people set their OWN planet type to ICE??

[Suicide Junkie]

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If a star system is formed by a catastrophic event, wouldn't you say that the size of the chunks would be random?

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Also, in a given star system, at inception, wouldn't you say that the smaller chunks were the ones most likely to be sucked back into the sun?

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Ok, astronomy lesson:
The current view of how things probably happen (from seeing many in various stages):
Start with a nebula. something happens, such as a nearby supernova, and the gas is compressed.
With the gas more compact, the force of gravity has more effect. (since it decreases with distance)
Everything starts to fall inwards.
Wait many millions of years.
The gas is gathering in the center, but there is a slight rotation in the cloud. Think of a merry-go-round, spinning slowly. When everybody climbs in towards the center, it starts spinning faster to conserve angular momentum.
With the gas spinning rapidly, it forms a disk, with a bulge in the middle.
Now, the disk starts to clump up, due to gravity. Heavy elements gather, and smash into other, sometimes sticking together. Eventually you get bigger and bigger clumps, and the biggest ones, at the right distance from the star, gather gas too, becoming large faster.
When the star gets to it's main stage,and starts pumping out lots of energy, it blows away the remaining gas from the disk, leaving only the heavy dust, rocks & planets.

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Now, I'm not really an astronomer or a physicist (which is painfully evident to those who are ) but only working from a point of logic, and, thusly, it seems to me that the tiny planets would be fewer than the medium ones....I invite counter-views

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Consider that as planets get tinier, they start to be seen as moons, and there are tons of 'em in our solar system. Asteroids are even smaller, and there's many thousands of them out there.

We have:
Giant: Jupiter, Saturn
Large: Uranus, neptune
Medium: Earth, Venus, Mars
Small: Mercury, Earth's moon, larger moons of jupiter& saturn
Tiny: Pluto, any other moons, some large asteroids.
Asteroids: Oodles. I'm not gonna count them in my lifetime.

See the trend? Zillions of tiny stuff, not as many small, bunch of medium, couple of large or huge.

[Spyder]

No arguments. Except that moons tend to be different by definition. They're trapped by the gravity of a planet, not a star. Because of this they are necessarily smaller (less gravity there)...tiny. Also, there are many possible explanations for moons other than being caught there when the planet was formed.

I was speaking primarily of planets...moons of a star, as it were. If you dropped the moons from your list, you'd get a roughly bell shaped curve with medium planets being the most numerous.

As things go, I think that this would be the norm because of the very forces you mentioned in your explanation of star system building. Most 'chunks' would be medium sized (by definition) and therefore would seem to be the most likely (because of their number) to find just the right distance from the forming sun to remain in orbit and not float away or be sucked back as the star contracts. The number of large & huge 'chunks' would be smaller and so there would be less chance that some would be caught in the system...same for tiny.


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Spyder, Chairman of the Arachnid Consortium

[This message has been edited by Spyder (edited 12 March 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

If you're not including moons, then medium would be the norm.
If you're counting all objects in the system, then there should be a preponderance of tiny moons.

Perhaps the system types should be changed to eliminate large planets with no atmosphere, and increase the tiny moons to compensate. Also adding the occasional small moon, as well small moon/small planet. would be interesting.

Did you know that an asteroid has been found with a "moon"?

[Spyder]

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:

Did you know that an asteroid has been found with a "moon"?

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Yes, I'd read that somewhere Very intersting. Kinda makes you ask "Whats the difference between a really big asteroid and a planet?"


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Spyder, Chairman of the Arachnid Consortium

[This message has been edited by Spyder (edited 12 March 2001).]