🚀 go-pugleaf

Ken Wessels wrote:

>     There is no excuse for being on this group and acting like the
> "Asteroid Belt" is a weird notion. It does seem like the remnants of
> another, possibly small, planet. 

I posted the combained mass of the asteroid belt two weeks ago;
it is only 0.0004 Earth masses, far smaller than any planet. Also,
meteorites (presumably from the belt) are not sedimentary rocks, which
you might expect if they are remains of planets. All indications
are that they formed in weightless environments (except for martian and
lunar meteorites of cources). I am not sure how the recent Galileo
asteroid fly-bys back this up.

The asteroid belt seems to be left-over material from the formation
of the solar system, prevented from forming a planet by the 
gravitational influence of Jupiter and the Sun. There doesn't seem
to be any reason to doubt this.

> I don't see how Earth could be "half" of
> the destroyed planet.
>     It seems when science and speculation merge, science gets ridiculed as
> much as the speculation. Another fault appears. Seperating the two is the
> next step in analytical thinking. The "real world" is apprehendable.

I have no problem with science and speculation. Speculation is a 
necessary part of science. It's only when (as was the case with the
original post in this thread) speculation is not based on any scientific
facts that have a problem.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Brett Holman            bholman@physics.unimelb.edu.au
School of Physics	http://astro.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~bholman/
University of Melbourne	* I can't believe that I, let alone the Uni, * 
AUSTRALIA               * would hold the opinions expressed here.    *

Stop quoting the laws to us.  We carry swords. - Pompey the Great