Solar System Myth Busting

How much about our Solar System do you think you know?

It has never ceased to amaze me how little people know about their own planet.  But to be fair, it is a huge planet…it is 24,901 miles around, and weighs in at 5.972 x 10²⁴ or 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kg.  (1.31664252 × 10²⁵ lbs).  That is a lot of Earth to learn about.  But today we are going to leave the comfort of our small Planet and venture out into the solar system.  But don’t worry, we won’t go too far in our myth busting adventures.  Today we will focus on tackling just 4 myths.  So without further delay, put on your space suits and let’s go!

#1: Planet Orbits are Strongly Elliptical

We have all seen the diagrams in our text books.  It shows the planets orbiting the sun in a large oval that someone sat on.  If you don’t know what I mean look at the picture I included.  The one to the right of this text. This is a very common misconception we hold, and perhaps a more technical one.  But would you believe that the whole reason we have learned this incorrectly is because our textbooks display it in the improper ratio?

Although it is true that planets hold an elliptical orbit, it is not nearly as strong as those textbook pictures show us. During the winter our Earth is closest to the sun at a distance of 147 million km. compare that to the summer when we hit our furthest point, 152 million km from the sun.  This difference of 5 million km is about a 3.3% variation.  Although we can agree that 5 million kilometers is a big difference, astronomically speaking it really isn’t.    

Even the most elliptical planet, Uranus has a variation of about 8.3%.  Compare this to what any given textbook shows and you will understand where the problem lies.  If fact the further you go from the sun more

elliptical the orbits get.  So what about Pluto you may ask?  Well keep reading.

#2: Pluto is the Edge of our Solar System

Well not to burst anyone’s childhood memories but astronomers have declassified Pluto as a planet.  According to astronomers today Pluto is one of many Planetoids that lie within our Solar System.  But doesn’t the Solar System stop at Pluto?  Well once again you can blame your school textbooks here.  In most pictures of our Solar System, Pluto is the last thing they include.  But in reality our Solar System expands beyond that point.

Even after Pluto you can go out and find Haumea, Makemake, and others.  Even Halley’s Comet is a part of our Solar System that is often over looked.  So what is the take home lesson on this?  Don’t trust your textbooks, they lie to you constantly.

#3: Our Moon is the Typical Size of Any Ole Moon

This is another bought of misinformation, bad textbook drawings and just a general lack of critical thinking.  It's really silly of us to just go around assuming that one moon fits all.  Of course, I didn’t mean any of that to be offensive, but it is a little silly.  So in order to blast this myth apart let me insert a small table for you.

Moon	Radius	Mass
Earth’s Moon	1,737 km	7.3477 X 1022 kg
Ganymede (Jupiter) – Largest	2,634.1 km	1.482 X 1023 kg
Aegaeon (Saturn) – Smallest	0.3 km	5.995 X 1010 kg

Well I am done now.  If you can read that chart you will see that all moons are not created equal. And for those who can't read here's a picture...although if you can't read why are you this far into a blog?

#4: The Only Reason Life Exists on Earth is Because of Where We Orbit.

This stems from the idea that we require liquid water for life.  And this is indeed true.   But that isn’t the only things we need.  Our location is also important in providing a magnetic shield from the sun’s rays.  And the atmosphere helps keep our temperatures in a good range.  I mean I am certainly in agreement that our orbit is important to life on Earth, but I am also saying that it is not the only reason we are here.