Scientists speculate that there may have been a 5th giant planet in our solar system. Do you find this as cool as I do?

MSgt Jamie Lyons I'll be damned. My immediate response was that you were wrong, but then I did the math. Huh. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I'd give you an upvote but I'm out for the day.

I would like to take credit SN Greg Wright but I am affraid I am not that smart.lol. Youtube or google 209 seconds solar system and that is how I learned it. School project for my kid.

That is another of example of there being far more "space" in the universe than mass.

SPC George Rudenko Sweet, thanks, Specialist! I DO dig it -- usually Space.com is my haunt. I hadn't known about this one. Thanks.

SN Greg Wright This was a computer simulation (first of all) and in planetary formation, I can set up systems that can produce literally anything in a solar system. But, it's a sterile simulation and our universe isn't sterile. There are rogue objects, planets, stars; galactic collisions (we are going to colide with Andromeda in a few billion years). And, planetary formation is a real dice roll. Inside the asteroid belt are rocky planets. Outside that, the gas planets. IF Jupiter is a touch bigger, it could become its own star and we don't get enough gravity to coalesce the rocky planets. And that is really the key,... even if we have perfect conditions to form another Jupiter, it would then disrupt our gravity on earth, we have fewer collisions with comets/asteroids... and no life. WE got lucky, because everything cooked in the right order and it was not disrupted. If you add another gas giant, I don't see Jupiter/Saturn/Planet X. I see ONE super giant that if it gets to about 0.8 solar masses, ignites (creates fusion) and we get a star. There are equal parts binary star systems to solo systems. So, just for me,the computer simulation is uber cool, and shows what could have happened, but it isn't a fair assessment of our happy solar system.

SPC George Rudenko You make good points that I can't argue with.

SN Greg Wright I would love to see some of this "happen" or have happened, but I want to see the proof. We know that stuff is flying around all over the place, but space is just so big. When the propeller heads with seven PhD's to each name changed the parameters for planets, and planets with life I figured some numbers on a napkin (literally) and if I did a normal distrbution with the new statistics, I still couldn't get an earth type planet within about 20-30 light years.

That said, I love that more people outside traditional physics are chiming in with new ideas and theories. This forces the conservative scientists (not to be conservative politician confused) to think greater outside the box.

Funny, because a woman/mother/astronomer who decided to get into a field of astronomy nobody wanted solely to be "out" of the limelight and the news was the one who would become the discoverer of dark matter. :-)

SPC George Rudenko - Well, the proof of what happened during the formation of our solar system is out in the asteroid belt. We just have to go collect it, yeah?