The April, 2004 issue of Physics Today is devoted to Planetary Diversity and includes such articles as planetary diversity, the Kuiper belt, the origin of the terrestrial planets and the earth-moon system, probing the giant planets, water on mars, a look at the Galilean satellites after the Galileo mission. There are lots of good diagrams and photos and text is very readable. It is well worth the trouble to have your local library get it on interlibrary loan, or trekking to a university library to look at it.

Have you got a link to this site abyssalroamer?

__________________
Damien,
International Baccalaureate Physics teacher
Optics, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Instrumentation Major
Admin: Pacific Science and Art

Try http://www.api.org/pt or www.physicstoday.org. I saw the first article online without signing in, but it appears that reading the others requires a subscription. I don't know what the online rate is.

An interesting story, abyssalroamer.

Planetary diversity may include different atomic weights for elements.

Measurements with the Galileo probe suggest that the mix of isotopes making up elements in the outer planets may be different than those in the inner part of the solar system. See:

http://www.umr.edu/~om/abstracts2001/windl...leranalysis.pdf

http://www.umr.edu/~om/abstracts/nolte_lietz.pdf

With kind regards,

Oliver
http://www.umr.edu/~om