Talk:Solar system/Archive 5

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Contents

[edit] The disambiguation link at the top of the page

The text of the disambiguation header was changed to read "the solar system around the star Sol". I have changed this back, as I believe that this is incorrect, there being only one "solar" system - ours. As well, the text introduces a less common name for the Sun, without explanation. The original text is simple, concise, and easy to undertand. I think that a change akin to what Lord Patrick wants should be discussed first. Thoughts? --Ckatzchatspy 02:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Badly written and tautological. There is no officially agreed generic term for "solar system", and until there is it's best ot avoid confusion. Serendipodous 02:23, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] If there is no agreed generic term for "solar system"...

why are we going around using "stellar system" as if we were some kind of authority? If Wikipedia doesn't set standards, why are we claiming that the solar system is a stellar system, when the dictionary definition for stellar system specifically excludes single stars? Serendipodous 07:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, Sol might not be a single starred system. Lord Patrick 09:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Nemesis is hypothetical... theres no other evidence for it then occasional mass extinctions -- Nbound 12:20, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Per Talk:Star system, the case hasn't really been proven that usage of the term to refer to single(-)star systems like the Solar System is incorrect. Until it is, IMO it is just as fallacious to indicate that there is no 'agreeable' term. Cogito ergo sumo 12:36, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Not "agreeable." Agreed. There are plenty of agreeable generic terms for "solar system." I personally find the word "cerulean" very agreeable. Does that mean that I should insist that all solar systems be called "cerulean systems"? The terminology in this case has not been settled officially, and until it is we should not jump to conclusions regarding the choice astronomers will ultimately settle on. Serendipodous 14:02, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
True (though use of 'cerulean' in this instance is a red herring and will be treated as such); I don't think we're jumping to conclusions, though, since usage by non-experts (particularly in science fiction) apparently differs. In the interim, perhaps we merely need to edit the lead to replace 'stellar system' with either 'star system' or just 'system' (which then elaborates) -- if this is acceptable, I will edit to reflect the latter. Cogito ergo sumo 14:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Age of the Solar System

What is the age of the solar system? I couldn't find it in the article.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.63.248.235 (talk)

It'd depend how you measured it... but using the age of the Sun would be good enough -- Nbound 10:55, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Footers

This article doesn't need two solar system footers, surely? RandomCritic 15:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I say pick whichever one you like best and go with it. Serendipodous 15:57, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
As nobody presented any counter-arguments for five weeks, I decided to be bold; however, my boldness got instantly reverted. To be sure, I do understand the reverter's concerns. The table is not bad in itself, and it could probably be integrated into this article in some way to increase its overall informativity. What I (and certainly User:RandomCritic as well) oppose is its current location within the article, which screams "I am a navigation template!" That shouldn't be its role unless it's the one used in the planet articles as well. Two navigation templates for the same class of articles is just silly. -- Jao 13:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Oops... apologies, didn't see the discussion thread here. I thought it was just someone removing a template that has some interesting and useful information. (I like the expanded detail.) Feel free to revert me if you wish. --Ckatzchatspy 22:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Full Scale Model

I noticed that there are very few full scale models of the solar system that show the Sun in its entirety. I thought the following might prove useful:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar-system-attributed.png

Thangalin 13:56, 22 October 2006 (PST)

would be difficult to work into the article. Serendipodous 10:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formation

Before I resubmit this article for Good Article consideration, I think the formation section needs to be revised, expanded and referenced. Unfortunately I don't know enough about that topic to do it. Can anyone help? Serendipodous 10:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

You can use a mnemonic to remember all the nine planets. e.g.

Mr. Venus Eats My Jam Sandwiches Up North Path

[edit] Trimming

I've been considering ways to make this article smaller, and the best I can come up with is to either completely remove or radically shorten the "Discovery and Exploration" section, perhaps incorporating its information into Timeline of solar system astronomy and space exploration. A reviewing peer also suggested compressing the inner and outer planets sections into single paragraphs, mentioning but not explaining the planets, and allowing the links to do the work. What do you think? Serendipodous 20:59, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Trim "Discovery", yes, radically shorten/remove - not a good idea. Same with the "Planets" sections - they're pretty short as it is. The article should provide a broad overview of the Solar System, and there is a lot of stuff out there to cover. Nice work on cleanup, by the way. --Ckatzchatspy 20:50, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. :) It seems like I've been working on this article for ever (It's been a year; I checked). I still hope to get it a Good Article gong. I think a Feature may be out of reach; the topic is simply too broad. Anyhoo, thanks for all your help; I really do appreciate it. Serendipodous 00:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
When I was reviewing this article, I felt like I needed to ask myself at every sentence "how does this relate to the Solar System as a whole?" As I did that, many of the descriptions of planets an their indidual features felt kinda extraneous. I realize that a short description of every planet illustrates the diversity of surfaces found in our solar system, but what do sentences like "[Mercury] has no natural satellite, and its only known geological features besides impact craters are "wrinkle ridges" probably produced by a period of contraction early in its history." relate to the Solar System? If it had volcanic constructs would it tell us something different about the main topic? Many of the planetary sections came across as a miniature review of the solar system's components rather than about the Solar System itself.--Will.i.am 03:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
As for "Discovery", I like that section and agree with Ckatz about trimming, but not deleting. "How we know about the Solar System" is important to "What we know". Although, I might remove the Phoenix image, because it's a point-source instrument package designed to study just one spot on Mars, which again doesn't seem relevant to the solar system as a whole. How about a image of Voyager instead?--Will.i.am 03:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I tried to relate the inner planets to each other as the inner planets: Mercury's lack of internal geological activity makes it the freak of the set, while Earth, which is the only inner planet to have multi-plate tectonics, is the most "archetypal". My original drafting contained some value-judgement language, but that was rightly criticised as personal opinion, rather than fact. I'm not all that certain how to relate the terrestrials to the Solar System as a whole, other than to mention that many of the moons of the outer planets also possess terrestrial features. Serendipodous 05:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] animal life?

the section on galactic content talks about animal life as if 'animal life' is generic across the galixy as opposed to 'animal life' meaning belonging to the animal kingdom specific to Earth. I think the term 'animal life' should be changed to something like 'life' or 'biological life' or 'astrobiological life'... well something more generic anyway (outside of earth). -- anonymous coward —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.54.206.36 (talk) 16:05, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

Good point; that is a rather cumbersome phrase. Switched it to something simpler. Serendipodous 16:19, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formation

This article has a problem, and one that I've been trying different ways to address, in that the Formation section mentions the Solar wind, but that term isn't explained until the Sun section. The problem is that in order to shift it to its proper place it would have to go after "Farthest regions" or "galactic context" and I think it really belongs near the beginning. What do you think? Serendipodous 00:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if it is really a problem, given that the term is linked to the "solar wind" article. However, you could try putting "Formation" ahead of "Layout". That should still flow well. --Ckatzchatspy 00:25, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Tried that out, but I don't think formation works there; I think the article works better explaining what the Solar System is before explaining how it formed. Serendipodous 00:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citations for the Formation section

This article is almost complete (or at least as complete as I can make it); the only major hole is the lack of two citations in the Formation section. The uncited information is too important to delete; however, I have not been able to locate any citations, scholarly or otherwise, which either support or refute the information presented, and believe me, I have looked. I would appreciate it if someone with better knowledge of the research tools in this field could fill that hole. Thank you. Serendipodous 17:01, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Well this was harder than I was expecting. I think the first citation needed (100 AU for the size of the uncollapsed solar nebula, if I'm reading that right) is incorrect. Pluto is already at ~40 AU and some comets apparantly have orbits greater than 50,000 AU [1], so I had a hard time imagining that the primordial solar nebula would be that small. Then I found a reference here that puts the diameter between 1 and 3 x 1017 cm (depending on if you believe this article or its predecessors). Doing the math ends us up at a number between 10,000 and 20,000 AU. Hope this helps with that first one!--Will.i.am 12:34, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you! That did indeed help, though it's a shame it didn't mention mass. Weird factoid; all the pages I can find Googling "mass of the solar nebula" give a figure less than the mass of the Sun, which would seem to be impossible. Perhaps they mean additional mass? Since we're unlikely to find an estimation of mass that uses the exact same diameter listed in that article, we might have to work out the mass ourselves. (Knowing the mass of the various elements, the average density of the solar nebula, and assuming the nebula to be essentially spherical). On the plus side, I did manage to find a citation for the other fact, which included a citation for a necessary fact that wasn't in the article before! Serendipodous 13:40, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Resonance

I read this passage several times to make sure that I understood what it was saying. The page reports that "Pluto lies in the resonant belt, having a 3:2 resonance with Neptune (ie, it orbits three times round the Sun for every two Neptune orbits." This is backwards. All the resonance figures that are here are backwards. If I am reading this incorrectly, forgive me, as I am dyslexic, but that is how I read it. Cosumel 01:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Youch. Thanks for spotting that; I'm a bit dyslexic myself, actually :-) Serendipodous 18:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, if I was right, then the other referrences need to be changed too. The resonanace for the Hildas are correct because they orbit closer to the sun than Jupiter, but the other Keiper belt objects are all further than Neptune. I am going to change them, but please check that I did it right. Cosumel 12:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mass of Solar System

In this article, it says: "Jupiter and Saturn account for more than 90% of the system's remaining mass"

Yet in List of solar system objects by mass a little math shows that Jupiter and Saturn account for less then 10% of the solar system's mass (not counting the Sun).

LEitK 03:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)LEitK

If you compare mass to the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn are not very large. If you exclude the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn seem large compared to everything else such as the Earth. --JWSchmidt 03:20, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
No, but that list suggests that the total mass of the solar system is something like sun + 20 Jupiters, which seems too large to me. Dragons flight 03:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
My suggestion: do not trust the numbers in that list for the mass of the Sun and the mass of the Solar System. I do not see any reliable sources cited. --JWSchmidt 04:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I have to say I'm surprised that the mass article makes that claim. Together, Jupiter and Saturn account for 413 Earth masses. The combined mass of the two remaining gas giants is 31 Earth masses; the combined mass of the entire inner solar system including the moons and the asteroid belt is barely two Earth masses (1.989792 Earth masses, according to Wikipedia's own figures). Even if you include all the remaining mass, from moons, comets KBO's and the like, the total could never equal more than at most two to three Earth masses. The Kuiper belt's estimated mass is barely that of the Earth (and most likely lower than that), a negligable difference. According to that list, the total mass of all the moons in the Solar System excluding our own is less than 565 Yg, or one tenth of an Earth mass. (I used a calculator, if anyone's wondering). That makes a rough total combined mass of 34.1 Earth masses, which is less than ten percent the combined masses of Jupiter and Saturn. This is likely an overestimation, but it would account at least for all of the dust and other particles which usually get ignored. I just added a reference explaining this. Serendipodous 10:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PLUTO

pluto should still be a planet.

--151.199.15.116 17:56, 7 January 2007 ngiendola

[edit] Ceres

It appears that the article about Ceres has been vandelised. Is it possible to re-write the article? This ahs since been rectified.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/o/l/Talk%7ESolar_system_Archive_5_2a36.html"