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Old 18-July-2004, 08:10 PM
imported_Ziggy imported_Ziggy is offline
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To date, more then 120 planets have been found beyond the confines of the Solar System. All of these planets (except for a few disputed ones) are gas giant planets like Jupiter (except for some brown dwarfs that are up to 15 Jupiter masses). One of the more interesting facts is that a good portion of these gas giants orbit very close to their host star, directly oppisite of our Solar System. The theory is that these giant planets "migrated" from the outer parts of these solar systems, pushing the tiny terrestrial planets out of there orbits or even out of there solar systems all together. This raises the question, why hasn't this happend in our solar system? I think I have an answer, the asteroid belt. If you were to go into the heart of the asteroid belt, chances are, you would never even see a single asteroid. And your spaceship wouldn't even feel the slightest tug from anything. But when you look out the asteroid belt in the larger picture, a picture of the whole solar system, the combined mass of the space rocks in the belt would measure several quad-trillion metric tons, making the asteroid belt the secong heaviest of objects in the solar system besides the sun. Do we underestimate the influence the asteroid belt has on our solar system? And with all of those precious ores out there, just how strong is the asteroid belts' magnetic influence on gas giant planets? After all, gas giant have extreamly powerful magnetic fields, could these magnetic fields be pushing against the asteroid belt, keeping the gas giants from moving inward, protecting the inner solar system?
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