The other planets in the solar system POLL

wonder where earth would place in this poll? it's a pretty fucking cool planet ya gotta admit.

It doesn't look much but it has a great atmosphere.

http://www.fortheloveofgeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/mars_to_earth-browse.jpg

That's earth viewed from Mars.

What do people think of the idea that the current orbits of the planets are not fixed + have fluctuated wildly at times? Solar drift could be an explanation for the "snowball earth" period. I found this quite a fascinating, scary read, i am not science enough to know if it is bs.
http://nautil.us/issue/8/home/the-madness-of-the-planets

Wow, that's a cool article. I'm not science enough either, but I love the idea that actually Jupiter was basically this proto-planet mediator that roamed around and rearranged everything, basically accounting for the forms and arrangements of all the planets. Feeling better and better about voting for it.

good ole jupes

also, this could be an awesome basis for a sci-fi story:

In one version of the theory, developed by Morbidelli’s colleague David Nesvorny at the Southwest Research Institute, our solar system originally had a fifth giant planet that got ejected entirely during this commotion; if so, it is currently wandering alone among the stars.

Truly the andy gibb of planets

Planets Having Flown

gr8 article

can't decide in this poll

We have seen it snow on Mars. So until another planet has snow, it's got my vote.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/388625main_Jupiter_Approach.gif

It's gonna be weird when we ignite that as a second sun in the year 3057.

Nothing like drunkenly googling molecular clouds and red giant branch phases on a Sunday night after bedtime.

seriously is anything weirder or more horrifying than Jupiter

Venus

I mean, I don't believe in a biblical "Hell," but Venus is hellish and imo more horrifying than Jupiter. Jupiter is just a big gas ball.

They're all impossible. There is no god.

The gas giants are just like blowing cigarette smoke into a soap bubble, except on a totally enormous scale. I voted for Neptune, so I'm not immune to their charms, but I find the rocky planets way more fascinating.

rocky-ist

I mean look at Jupiter, that...thing is for all intents and purposes "two houses over". what the hell is even going on there?

yeah i feel like the gas planets get docked a little since you can't imagine being *on* them like earth, and yet....those things are some serious happenings.

the cross-sections you see of the giants don't clear anything up, they just pile on the perversities.

Uranus: "the base of the mantle may comprise an ocean of liquid diamond, with floating solid 'diamond-bergs'. gtfo, p_p

we are fucked

hard to understand anything without a "surface" but i'm the giants are out there with their unfathomable proportions and hitchcockian cloud formations.

remember when nasa fired Gallileo into Jupiter and it lasted for like an hour before it was crushed by the overwhelming pressure

"It entered the atmosphere of Jupiter at 30 miles per second (46km per second), the highest impact speed ever achieved by a man-made object. Amazingly, Jupiter’s dense atmosphere slowed the craft to 0.07 miles per second (0.12km per second) in just four minutes. The probe’s heat shield, made of carbon phenolic, was able to withstand the 15,500°C ball of plasma caused by this sudden deceleration, producing light brighter than the Sun’s surface."

Jupiter, man.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/redspot_cassini.gif

going with Uranus because of its weird axial tilt

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Uranus_clouds.jpg/257px-Uranus_clouds.jpg

holy shit clay xp

am tempted to vote jupiter.

venus is really fascinating too:

Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, gravity, and bulk composition (Venus is both the closest planet to Earth and the planet closest in size to Earth). However, it has also been shown to be very different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide which absorbs over 95% of the incoming solar radiation. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of Earth's. With a mean surface temperature of 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F), Venus has the hottest surface of any planet in the Solar System except for the surface of the solid core of Uranus. It has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor does it seem to have any organic life to absorb it in biomass. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. Venus may have possessed oceans in the past,[13][14] but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose.[15] The water has most probably photodissociated, and, because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field, the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind.[16] Venus's surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and periodically refreshed by volcanism.

from wikipedia

mars is completely overrated. the red surface is cool but other than that it's just a cold bare rock. same with mercury (except merc is hot obviously), just not much going on there.

venus vs jupiter for me

Saturn because it gave us Sun Ra

I have been convinced by the Jupiter love in this thread. Jupiter owns.

?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b0DMoPLIys

http://cimg.carsforsale.com/569434/7bb5c4a8-0fa9-4ac2-bb22-7b85427b5001.jpg

agreed that mars is the most overrated

i want to say that mercury is the most underrated, but i'm not sure. a lot of that is dependent on my idea of how fucking MONSTROUS the sunrise must be there. also, the rotation of mercury is very strange - its years are 88 earth days, but it completes a rotation every 176 earth days. that creates some really strange things with sunrises:

At some places on Mercury’s surface, an observer could see the Sun rise about halfway, reverse its course, then set, all over the course of one Mercurial day. This happens about four days prior to perihelion, because Mercury’s angular orbital velocity is equal to its angular rotational velocity. This causes the apparent motion of the Sun to stop. Once Mercury achieves perihelion, its angular orbital velocity exceeds the angular rotational velocity and the Sun begins to move in reverse.

i tried to search for artist renderings of sunrises on mercury but found nothing. but in my mind it's completely amazing, because it's a combo of it taking so LONG and the sun being so enormous. i feel like that magic moment when the sun first barely emerges over the horizon would be magnified 1000x on mercury

uh, that second paragraph is not a quote from universetoday.com, just in case you couldn't tell

Haha, I liked the shift in tone there for a moment.

the idea that extraterrestrial planets can be overrated is very o_O to me

tsrobodo, that, and:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf3iWc6krj8&feature=kp

although I suppose pluto is overrated itt xp

Oh, did https non-embedding thing - it was 'Fred Vom Jupiter', anyway.
xp

The thing about Jupiter is that one of its satellites (Io) is as interesting and beautiful as any planet, another may harbor liquid water oceans (Europa), and there are two more big moons, at least 63 small ones, and a ring system too.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/jupiter/gal_io2_47971.jpg
Io, not visibly exploding at the moment.

God, I love Io.

lol it looks like a moldy cheese ball

"Impact craters on the surface of Venus (image reconstructed from radar data)"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Mgn_p39146.png/758px-Mgn_p39146.png

"Maat Mons is a massive shield volcano. It is the second-highest mountain, and the highest volcano, on the planet Venus. It rises 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) above the mean planetary radius at 0.5°N 194.6°E, and nearly 5 km above the surrounding plains.[2] It is named after the Egyptian goddess of truth and justice, Ma'at."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maat_Mons_on_Venus.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Maat_Mons_on_Venus.jpg

Actual images from the surface of Venus via Venera 13.

http://www.space.com/images/i/000/023/793/original/venera13-venus.jpg