I wonder what the PQ is...

Duuno the PQ but i recon him beeing known as Persephone

Then it would be a her.

ohh well grammer strike

Where have I heard the name Persephone for a planet before? What is that from Icho?
Do you guys think that they should make it a planet officially?

Its not a planet, its only half the size of Pluto. Technically, Pluto is really just a really big asteroid. And Persephone is the Queen of the Underworld, husband of Hades(Pluto).

There had been reports here in germany some months ago, there the name and the "planet stat" is from.
It's proppably the 10th planet of SOL

I bet we will find another, or something else at the edge of the system. Something must be causing Plutos and this new planetoid orbits to be screwed up. They are both highly irregular.
Also, I just thought of it. In the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy Series, the last book, Mostly Harmless. It is mentioned in there as the 10th planet that they had just discovered. For those who are fans of the first book and haven't read that one, think multiple realities.

It is known since the 1960s that ther must be at lest one more planet in the SOL system. because of the strange course of Pluto

At this time, Pluto still retains the status of a planet, although it is almost identical in various characteristics to the other Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt objects, such as Quaoar and 2004 DW.

They all have a similar composition, and a 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune (i.e. their orbits take exactly 50% longer than Neptune's). Pluto, however, reflects more light than the other EKOs, and so far, is more massive than any other, nearly 2300 km in diameter, although there are seven moons (not planets) in the Solar System that are actually larger than it. That's not to suggest that there aren't EKOs that are a similar, or larger size to Pluto out there.

Because of its size though, Pluto probably has a very tenuous atmosphere. Pluto may also have been larger in the past, as its moon, Charon, may have been formed as the result of some kind of body impacting with the planet.

However, there has been a hypothesis that Sol has a brown dwarf companion, about 3 times the mass of Jupiter (although if it was this size, it would technically be a gas giant, not a brown dwarf, with a PQ of 2 or so ;)). It's been suggested that the body orbits between 25000 and 32000 AUs away from Sol.

Various names have been suggested for a 10th planet including "Planet X", but Vulcan (the Roman god of blacksmiths, Hephaestus in Greek) is one of the most common.

There is no solid evidence for a tenth planet or a companion brown dwarf btw. The eccentric orbits of the EKOs could be explained by their formation and the gravity effects of Uranus and (particularly) Neptune.

As Neptune's largest moon, Triton, shares many characteristics with Pluto, it is speculated that Triton is also an EKO like Pluto that was captured by the gas giant's gravity when it approached too close.
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I have heard that theory often. I have also heard the theory of a quiet black hole sitting something like 100,000 AU from Sol. The only way we can find a black hole is if it injests something, like a star, from the radiation burst. If it is that far away, it would be past the Kuniper Belt, and would have nothing but interstellar dust to eat. Therefore, we would never see it. Another theory I have heard mentioned from time to time.
On Jupiter, I have heard it referred to sometimes as a failed brown dwarf star, probably because of the formation of Saturn. Has anyone else heard this?

On Pluto, Charon and Triton, I think I heard of a theory of that they used to be one planet, and it was broken up by a massive asteroid hit. Charon and Pluto began to orbit each other as the planet was split in two, and the part of the planet ejected away from the hit became Trition. Proof exists in Triton's surface, which is very icy with huge cracks in it, suggesting it was formed together from several parts through one part's gravity.

Jupiter leaks about 1,5% of mass for becoming a star, so be happy it would be less nice on earth if he became one

Hmm. For Jupiter to qualify as a brown dwarf, it would need to be capable of deuterium fission, and that would require it to be at least 12 times more massive.

I don't think there is enough matter in the rest of the Solar System put together to make that the case, even including the EK belt and Oort cloud.

you are wrong there Ook Ook, it only took little to ingnite a fusion at Jupiter:
a single 1 gigaton nuke in Jupiters core to ignite it

No. For a gaseous body to (briefly) fuse deuterium NATURALLY through core pressure and temperature, it must have at least 13 Jupiter masses, which makes it a substellar object (i.e. a brown dwarf), rather than a planet. Jupiter's core pressure is not great enough for this to occur naturally.

An object of 0.08 solar masses or greater can fuse hydrogen into helium, and therefore is a star.

Yet Jupiter produces more light that it absorbes. Care to offer an explanation? It produces about three times as much light as it takes in from the sun.

Do you actually mean visible light, or do you mean energy?

Jupiter does radiate more energy than it receives, normally thought to be because gravitational compression is heating up the core. There is another theory though that the core is composed of radioactive materials which, under the conditions under Jupiter's atmosphere, causes nuclear *fission* (not fusion).
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Liked the rest, never cared for that one. Was rather disappointed that DA decided to just off the whole cast.

On the subject of Jupiter, I'd be more interested to find if the core was composed of solid metallic hydrogen. I've heard that theory floated around before, and also the posibility that it could stay solid when removed from that pressure.... wonder what sort of uses there could be for hydrogen metal

I have a question regarding Gas Giants. According to some information I've read on the web, which means it can be vary in credibility, that the Gas Giants are made of gas only, and for thousands of miles upon entering their atmosphere, there is no solid "bottom" for a space craft to reach. Instead when being too far into the planet, the gas pressure becomes so huge that it repells the spacecraft and would hold it in mid air.

Is that true? Are there no materials in solid form except dense, pressurized gas in between the space and the planet core?

~SDC~

It is believed that all gas giants have a metal core (see post 19). This is what keeps the gas together.

Ook Ook-I think it radiates both energy and visible light.

Kyro-It was a shame that he cut the whole cast, but what exactly was there to take that too. There were several hundred of all the characters, from the multiple realities, and Arthur was just jumping inbetwen them. And we know that a Vogon will not leave a job unfinished.

I've not seen a reference to Jupiter radiating visible light, but Saturn does have a level of luminosity. One explanation I've seen is that this could be due to helium raining down into the core, but I'm uncertain as to how this works. The same mechanism could be at work in Jupiter.

The other thing to remember is that the core is believed to be extremely hot (12000K-20000K) due to gravitational compression. Heated material could account for some of the radiated light.

Interestingly, Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune all radiate more energy than they receive, but Uranus doesn't.



It's cause and effect - the gaseous atmosphere itself isn't held in purely by the gravitational attraction of the solid core, it's the total gravity of the planet's mass. The core itself is believed to be about 10-15 Earth masses (compared to Jupiter's total of 318 Earth masses).If you think about it this way, the gas is kept there both by the gravitational attraction of the mass below it and the pressure of the mass above it.

The atmosphere does get denser and denser as you go further down, but it is believed that, as hydrogen doesn't change state suddenly under pressure, there aren't well defined layers. It eventually reaches a liquid/solid state near the core, and this probably accounts for the majority of the planet's mass.

Damn, you mean the precursor event that happened yesterday turning Saturn into a PQ17, and Sol V and Sol VI into PQ20s (Strange how we missed them!) couldn't happen.

Pity, I was rather looking forward to moving to the improved Mars (PQ29)

I only had that event once, and never had it again after updating to 1.13... (:(

If we humans were to ever look to terraform a planet, Venus would probably be a better candidate than Mars. If you could somehow reverse the greenhouse effect, perhaps through CO2 consuming bacteria (although my biology is spotty at best, someone else could correct my theory here), Venus would be much more hospitable to long-term human habitation, just through the factor of surface gravity alone.

There is speculation that there is (bacterial) life on Venus, as there is far less carbon monoxide than there should be, and various other compounds that should not necessarily exist unless they were being continually produced (possibly by organic processes).

With no magnetic field*, hence little natural solar radiation protection Venus would be bad news for anything with genes.

Venus is nasty, sulphuric acid clouds, atmosphere at 90x the pressure you're used to, a surface temperature which is greater than Mercury, but with the clouds you wont get much of a tan.
Also with its s-l-o-w rotation each Venusian day is 243 times longer that an earth day, so any visitors sleep patterns would be a bit disturbed.

Not an ideal holiday spot, you certainly don't want to live there!

Sorry Ook Ook, Venus is right out (especially for Orang Utangs), Mars is a much better option.

* Upper limit on the magnetic dipole moment of Venus of ~ 10^-3 that of Earth