Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 01:26:31 -0500 (EST)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: possible tenth Solar planet
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

There are no clear and sharp dividing lines between:

* Large Kuiper bodies and small icy outer planets

* Small Kuiper bodies and large comets

* Large asteroids and small rocky planets

* Small asteroids and large meteoroids

* Small meteoroids and large dust particles

* Large gas giant planets and small stars

* Small moons and large ring particles

* Earth's upper atmosphere and outer space

* Large bushes and small trees

It's a wild and woolly solar system, containing all manner of random
stuff.  Call it whatever you like.  We'll eventually turn it all into
condominiums, anyhow.  There's mass and energy enough to luxuriously
support a population of about 10 to the 20th people (billions of times
earth's present population) for billions of years.  And that's without
even leaving our solar system.

One supposed asteroid was recently reclassified as a spent rocket
stage from the Apollo project.

Eric wrote:

> The worst aspect of that decision is that the mnemonic becomes "My
> Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine--" Nine what?  It used to be
> "Nine Pizzas," but now it's just "Nine."

I recommend memorizing the mnemonics for digits of pi instead.
There's no danger of any digits being downgraded to something else.
Or of two of them temporarily swapping relative positions, as Neptune
and Pluto did.

One thing there's no doubt of is that most of the mass in orbit around
the sun is Jupiter.  Everything else is lost in the noise.  Ignoring
Jupiter, most of the mass in orbit around the sun is Saturn.
Everything else is lost in the noise.  You have to go down a ways
before you find a planet that isn't larger than everything smaller
put together.

I also recommend that everyone look at the scale model of the solar
system on the national mall, that starts in front of the Air & Space
Museum.  If you want to get a good look at anything other than the sun
and maybe Jupiter, I recommend bringing a magnifying glass.  If you
want to get any look at all at anything beyond the inner solar system,
I recommend wearing a good pair of hiking shoes.

Keeping the same scale, they could put some Kuiper belt objects in
Georgetown, some Oort cloud objects in front of their new Dulles Annex
(except that they'd be far too small to see on that scale), and the
closest star in Australia.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.