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

I personally feel that it is unlikely that the asteroid belt is comprised of remnants leftover from the creation of the Solar System as it's too well defined.

It's more likely to be remains of a planetary breakup with the rubble dispersing itself reasonably equally along the orbital path of the original planet.

The fact that it lies evenly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where a planet could once have been suggests this is a reasonably likely possibility. Maybe the Lexx came along and blew it up?

Anycase the asteroid belt could be considered a 'ring' of the sun in much the same way as there are rings of Saturn. In fact the rings of Saturn are supposed to be unified debris from the possible breakup of once inner moons. The asteroid belt, Sol's Ring, is obviously dispersed way more thinly than any of Saturns rings as the orbit is sooooo much larger. The smaller particles within it are dispersed way too thinly to create a beautiful ring effect as with Saturn.

Anycase - the planet from which the asteroid belt was formed musta been pretty big to create so much debris. The mind boggles as to what actually caused it to disintegrate.

Thinking about whether the debris could have come from an 'exploded' planet it would seem to me that this would be unlikely as the explosion would have forced the debris away from the centre of the explosion and thus the debris would not have scattered along the ex - planets orbital path but more outward as in a nova effect.

This would seem to eliminate any form of explosion as being the reason for the breakup. It would seem that the planet slowly but surely shattered, unforcefully, as it orbited the sun as though it wasn't being held together very well.

I would guess it is likely that the same effect that caused the rings of Saturn and other rings in the Sol System also created the Asteroid Belt.

Anycase I would love to have observed the events in question. Just where is the Tardis when ya need it?

Brian Aldiss described one possible (hmmmm..........well maybe not) scenario in his book The Eighty-Minute Hour. He speculates that it was an earth like planet, except covered in plants miles high, held bouyant by hydrogen held in seaweed-bladder analogs. The planet exploded when this man travelled back in time and launched a rocket ship, igniting all that hydrogen. That wasn't the strangest thing in the book by a long shot. Seemed almost hallucinagen induced.

You are probably right about it not being a likely cause of such a break up - lol

Brian Aldiss was an author I used to enjoy - haven't read anything of his for years - I'd sure like to read that one

Igniting hydrogen gas and blowing up a planet in such a way sounds like it could be an entry from the TV 'Hitch-hiker's guide

but then - the TV Show 'Lost in Space'had two episodes dealing with exploding planets - one was destroyed by a space- mining engineer blasting for 'the quintessence of the living force' (why such an element would hang out in dead rock anyway is probably the very least of that particular script's logic problems) and the other episode dealt with 'Space Hippies'who were given the task of blowing up the planet and saving their world in order to prove their worthiness in their society (dunno if I would trust my civilzations future in the hands of, say, gang-members just to see if they can actually do it) ... or maybe it was to make way for another hyperspace by-pass.

In both cases they were just lame ploys to get our heroic (??) family to move 'outta town'

The last Lost in Space entry had another planet blowing up - this time by way of a slightly more intelligent storyline

but then the writers had them flying THROUGH the planet at it exploded - just happening by chance to find a convenient cave that went all the way through and not getting hit by anything on the way - despite having been wiped out in another time reality by the first bit of flying rock that came their way after tryng to leave by the conventional method - as in up up and awy into the sky - the usual spacefaring route.

Did I suggest the script had 'intelligence'

Then in another basically good movie - 'Aliens 2' the heroine battled with a huge heavy alien that was hanging on to her foot while air rushed out of a huge open airlock - like the scene lasted for quite a few minutes, Riply didn't lose her leg, still managed to hang on and breathe because, strangely, for some unknown reason the air didn't run out. Maybe Zaphod Beeblebrox's other head was replacing it on the sidelines as fast as it was rushing out. (Even 'Lost in Space' had a more realistic approach to the speed of depressurization)

All this and I still love Science Fiction

Wouldn't it be a scream if the 'missing' planet in our real-life Solar System met it's demise in an equally goofy manner - who knows - maybe God has a sense of humour and wrote for 'Lost in Space'.

Thinking about that I did read an article somewhere where the writer suggested that Jupiter wasn't too far off having enough mass, comparitively, for Stellar fusion to take place apon ignition and become a second sun - as in '2010: Space Odyssey 2'

Aint fantasy wonderful fun

Damn... now just where did I park the Tardis this time?... I'm always losing that thing.

I would just like to add that in 1772 a German mathematicain Johann Daniel Titius Devised a simple number sequence that mathed the planets distances from the sun. He took the series 0,3,6,12,24,48 and 96 in which, apart from the first step, each number is double the one before. He the added 4 to each to make 4,7,10,16,28,52 and 100. putting Earth at distance 10, the planets then known fitted the sequence well, and the dicovery of Uranus in 1781 - predicted distance 196, actual distance 192 - seemed to confirm its validilty. Because of the sequence's accuarcy, Berlin astronomer Johann Bode promoted the idea that there must be a planet in the gap between Mars and Jupiter at distance 28. Accordingly, a team of planethunters, Known as the "celestial police" was assembled to track it down.
But By chance, Italian astronomer Guiseppe Piazzi beat them to it. A star that he saw on January 1, 1801, had moved by the next night. This was in fact, the asteriod Ceres, real distance 27.7. In time other small planets were found and it was realized that no single planet filled th gap 28 in his sequence but a band of asteriods. so it would point to the fact that there was a planet there but whether it was unstable at creation and just exploded or was hit by another asteriod . but it all points to the fact that there was another oplanet in our system. but that what i think

"...the planet from which the asteroid belt was formed musta been pretty big to create so much debris."

The total mass of all the asteroids is less than half the mass of Earth's moon. If this is indeed the remains of a planet, most of the mass has been lost to other parts of the solar system (fallen into Jupiter, perhaps, or the Sun). More likely, the gravity of Jupiter kept a terrestrial planet from accreting in the first place.

It is a mistake to refer to the belt as a navigational hazard, as the average distance between individual bodies is on the order of tens to hundreds of thousands of miles.

I used to have an asteroid belt. But I've put on weight now, so it doesn't fit anymore.