h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Update A79508 Our Solar System-an overview - A32537720
Author: Shagbark - U170775

time for an updated view of our Solar System.

What hath Gnomen Wrought?

Who is Gnomen?

I spent so much time trying to spell wrought properly that I (once again mispelled the curators name. apologies to Gnomon.
Anyway this update came about because I was trying to show off to Deke all the stuff I had found on the Solar system.
But instead of the head of H2G2AS responding I got a shout out from Gnomon saying what was wrong with the old page.
When I told him, he suggested if I didn't think it was good enough anymore I should update it. Which I did.
It never would have happened without his prodding- hence What hath Gnomon wrought.

Spelling someone's name wrong is a real bugbear of mine; it's rude
and I am no longer able to tolerate it silently. Deke is very busy organising all the old pages and getting a new H2G2AS membership together. I am happy for Gnomon to be patrolling the threads, and anybody at all who is subscribed to the original page can post a reply.

I'll go read your update now

You should see what happens on the fantasy Pirate ship
The Blood of the Zaphodistas. they have a ships engineer who goes out of his way to be rude. He has come up with about about fifteen different spellings of my name incluiding shagfart. I just put up with it.

getting back to what this forum is about -the update.
In addition to the new sections I reworded the sections on Neptune and Pluto. I wanted to refer to Neptune as what it is the farthest Planet.
Someone had mistakenly called the farthest point from the sun
Perihelion-it is (of course) Aphelion.
They said Neptune had eight moons. More have since been discovered.

Moons are being discovered all the time. I believe Jupiter has the most at 63, with Saturn the next most at the last count, 60 with confirmed orbits.

So you need to tweak the Jupiter and Saturn sections

And Uranus, as that no longer has the most moons.

<> = thirteen should be 13

GB

time to tweak s

63,60, 13 got it. I think I will look up how many uranus has.

Perhaps you could do something with the headers that are currently being used as links. I may be wrong but I thought that current ‘good practice’ was to keep the links within the paragraph text itself rather than the headers/subheaders. I do think that some of them being blue and some red looks a bit messy.

Also on the subject of moons, perhaps it’s worth noting that many of the moons around all the major planets, including those of Mars, are currently thought to be captured asteroids or bodies from the Kuiper belt or Oort cloud that otherwise might have been comets.

Several of them within the same systems, can by association be related, insofar as they share common orbital characturistics, inclination and/or retrograde motion. Some may have had their origins in the same body which broke up due to collision, or by gravity during acquisition.

Deke

As to Links I have changed them to occur on the first appearance in the text. In the case of Pluto and Quaoar this was in a table.
I have not yet addressed your other concerns.

Please keep my name out of this, Shagbark, whether spelled correctly or wrongly. You wrote this update, not me.

I'd love to have a detailed read through it, but haven't time until Thursday at the earliest.

Good work, Shagbark. I did get time to read it after all.

I think this needs a little bit more of an introduction, saying what the Solar System is.

Some small points:

This The Sun -- that capital T bugs me. It should be:

Thus the Sun

And why does it say "might have been born"? Isn't that the standard explanation?

I know that it says 200 million years in the original, and you haven't changed it, but isn't the current estimate 5 - 6 billion years?

What does "Some have postulated that this is an example of global warming" mean?


The The Asteroid Belt -- remove one "The"

You say it is not known whether the Asteroid Belt is the remains of an unformed planet, an exploded planet or just debris. Firstly, the "remains of an unformed planet" and "debris" are the same thing, surely? Secondly, it is almost certain that it is the remains of an unformed planet, prevented from forming by the gravity of Jupiter.

acreting --> accreting
acreted --> accreted

487 KM --> 487km

Big, Blue --> Big, blue

First,the --put a space after the comma

Aphelion --> aphelion

They had this chunk --> they had this chunk

COMETS --> Comets

Numbers should have a comma after the thousands position, so the sizes in km in the table should all have commas.

I think it would be better with a space around the x in 1960x2500.

frozen crystals of Methane or Nitrogen -- no need for capital letters there.

trans-neptunian-objects -- there should be a space, not a hyphen, between trans-neptunian and objects. They're separate words.

October 21,2003 --> 21 October, 2003

ERIS --> Eris

was finally named Eris for the goddess -->
was finally named Eris after the goddess

are to small and to distant --> are too small and too distant

As to global warming- there have been scattered repots suggesting that if the greenhouse effect on earth gets to far out of hand it will increase temperatures here exponentially, boil off the ocean, and this planet will end up looking like our sister Planet Venus.
Were it not for the greenhouse effect on Venus much of the heat would radiate into space leaving Venus considerably cooler than Mercury.
I do not have time to make any more updates today but I will get around to them thursday at the latest.

I know what global warming means on Earth - it means the temperature of the earth is increasing. But it's not increasing on Venus - it is staying constant and much higher than it should be due to the Greenhouse effect. So you could say something like - this is the same Greenhouse effect which is probably to blame for the global warming we are experiencing here on Earth in the last 30 years.

shouldnt it be climate change instead of glabal warming, as not all of the globe will end up warmer, but the climate of many places will change. Think we are supposed to use the term climate change now anyway, just my though.

mini

Venus isn't suffering from climate change or global warming. It has had the same climate for a long, long time.

But the processes that are keeping Venus at 900 degrees (or whatever it is) are believed to be the same ones that are causing climate change on the Earth.

I agree with what Gnomon said in the previous post.

A

Perhaps I will just take out the reference to global warming.
As Gnomon said the temperature there has stayed the same for a long time. And I believe the Polar regions are also hot enough to melt tin not just the equatorial ones.