Explanation of Planet Order

[Squeamous]

Phew. My OH asked me this a week ago and that's the explanation I gave. Didn't realise Pluto was something foreign to this solar system though.....live and learn!

[Barbarossa]

The only people talking any sense in this thread are snee and squeamous.

Pluto isn't a planet any more, so all mnemonics are fail.

what determines how the planets in our solar system are ordered?

Angular momentum. Now STFU.

[SAM]

and me barbie
i mentioned gravity .didn't this count?!

[thebazzla]

the only Pluto i know of is in Disneyland

[Biggles]

s my post that unclear or do you guys just like to treat people like dummies?

A little from column A and a little from column B

As far as I have read there is no hard and fast rule that Gas giants have to be in the outer ring or that there has to be 8 or more planets. However, as Squeamous pointed out, in order to support life it is most likely that any such planet would have to be able to maintain liquid water. This means it would need a moderately temperate climate and not be too big. I believe that most of the planets identified so far around other suns have been gas giants (because they are easiest to spot) and that some of these have occupied regions that should be optimum climate wise but would appear to have too much mass to make living easy. That doesn't mean they might not have habitable moons. Then again any moon would need to have a rotation that presented all the surface to the sun otherwise one side would cook and the other freeze.

There are then a number of variables, spin, size, climate, water, atmosphere etc. However, with billions of stars in a galaxy and billions of galaxies in the universe, the chances of other earth like planets (medium size with atmosphere the right distance from the sun) seems moderately high. Certainly, the evidence seems to suggest that planets are the norm rather than the exception and therefore the accretion processes described in other posts above also descibe the process that many, if not all stars, go through when forming. If, as is possible, the size and type of planet are not fixed then there will be many solar systems not suited to life. If the formation of planets is more fixed, that is small hot ones near sun, medium rocky ones a bit further away and gas giants in the outer circle then most solar systems might have the conditions to support life. As more planets are discovered a pattern in planet formation may be determined.