In this episode that is one second shy of 30 minutes, I talk about some of the historical reasons why some people may think the asteroid belt was at one time a planet, but then I go into four ways to show that it could not have been a planet. Next episode (“Part 2”) will get more on the wacko-conspiracy/crazy/pseudoscience exploding planet ideas.
March 31, 2012
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Exposing PseudoAstronomy 
Nice one 🙂
Mike Brown mentions the history of asteroids as “planets” in passing in the fantastic How I Killed Pluto And Why It Had It Coming.
Hey, if you’re feeling particularly strong one day, there’s the wackiest pseudoastronomy I’ve ever heard: the young-earth creationist theory that the Kuiper Belt objects are, or came from, “the waters above” named in Genesis 1:6-8. I’ve just been working on a long RationalWiki article answering this stuff point by point and I’m a little mentally punchdrunk …
(BTW, if you see any errors in our answers in that section, please correct! The target audience is readers miseducated in creationism who would be capable of thinking.)
Comment by davidgerard — April 1, 2012 @ 1:28 am |
Stuart, in your mass/volume calculation you haven’t included Saturns adonids or irregular satellites as possible captured debris, nor have you done any work on percentages of remaining solid matter/material after explosions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Saturn
“The remaining thirty-eight, all small except one, are irregular satellites, whose orbits are much farther from Saturn, have high inclinations, and are mixed between prograde and retrograde. These moons are probably captured minor planets, or debris from the breakup of such bodies after they were captured, creating collisional families. The irregular satellites have been classified by their orbital characteristics into the Inuit, Norse, and Gallic groups, and their names are chosen from the corresponding mythologies. The largest of the irregular moons is Phoebe, the ninth moon of Saturn, and was discovered at the end of the 19th century”
Comment by Bruce — April 1, 2012 @ 4:55 am |
I will address this in the next episode.
Comment by Stuart Robbins — April 1, 2012 @ 1:28 pm |
Good work, Herr Professor; thanks.
I see here, that the Billy Meier writes, that the asteroid belt the Planet Malona was and that people there even lived!
http://futureofmankind.co.uk/Billy_Meier/Malona
“Malona.
A planet in our star system that is now the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter, it was once a home for over 400,000,000 human beings who were descendants from the genetically manipulated peoples that originated from the Sirius star system, long ago. 73,000 years ago the human beings on Malona fought each other in a war that ended with the planet’s destruction.[1]
Malona, also called Malon[2] and Phaeton, is mentioned by Semjase in the Contact Report 004:
109. Man on Earth must get accustomed to the thought that his predecessors have forced all of mankind and Earth itself to the brink of ruin, and had to partially evacuate the planet in a wild escape.
110. It should also serve as a warning to him that thirst for power and barbarism are attributes that bring death.
111. A second race also had to experience this truth in your solar system.
112. In their unlimited hatred and unquenchable thirst for power, they destroyed themselves right down to the last man, and scarcely a creature survived the conflict.
113. They eliminated and destroyed their own planet with a huge explosion and nothing remained of it but the many thousands of asteroids, which today still circle your sun — as a reminder of the human beings’ deadly irrationality.
114. (These asteroids are) remnants of the once thriving planet “Malona”, which was destroyed by its inhabitants in their barbarian thirst for power and irrationality.”
Comment by Jennifer D. — April 2, 2012 @ 1:34 am |
Couldn’t there be a planet in the very begining of solar system? The belt contained then mass equivalent to Earth.
Click to access asteroids.pdf
Comment by rybert — April 2, 2012 @ 4:29 pm |
I have enjoyed your site! I have never read that the asteroid belt was a planet, I found this very interesting! Thanks for keeping your site going I will be back for more!
Comment by Jessica — April 5, 2012 @ 7:04 am |