The Conspiracy of the Solar Eclipse

originally posted by: humanoidlord
how know how many exoplanets share earths fate

I tried to google this.

The premise of this seems flawed. First we don't know for sure there is no life at all on these planets. Second, this assumes that the frequency of solar eclipses has a bigger effect on life than the general atmosphere, environment, distance from the sun, the planet's orbit, presence of water and countless other things, that from our current understanding of life, are fairly essential to life as we know it. This seems to place a pretty big assumption on something that's been found to have a fairly small effect as being one of the most important things for life. Unless I'm missing the point of the OP.

originally posted by: dug88
The premise of this seems flawed. First we don't know for sure there is no life at all on these planets. Second, this assumes that the frequency of solar eclipses has a bigger effect on life than the general atmosphere, environment, distance from the sun, the planet's orbit, presence of water and countless other things, that from our current understanding of life, are fairly essential to life as we know it. This seems to place a pretty big assumption on something that's been found to have a fairly small effect as being one of the most important things for life. Unless I'm missing the point of the OP.

Yes. We don't know for sure about life on other planets, but this is the present evidence. No life.

I don't assume that the frequency of solar eclipses has a bigger effect on life than atmosphere, environment, distance from the sun, the planet's orbit, presence of water and countless other things. It doesn't make sense where you got that assumption.

I have suggested that the chances of Earth/moon eclipse -- is intriguing -- since, having only one moon, Earth/moon only had one shot at this -- and got it. Neptune, for example, with 14 moons had a lot more chances.

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
a reply to: eraTera

Pluto's "moons" are a bit of a misunderstanding - they all orbit about a common point out in space. In other words, technically Pluto's moons don't really orbit it.

It could be argued the Pluto and its largest Moon Charon are a double-world that orbit each other around a common point, and Pluto-Charon's smaller moons (Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra) orbit that double-world around that same common point...

...Think of it as the four smaller moons orbiting around the dumbell-shaped Pluto-Charon system.


By the way, Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other (like our Moon is tidally locked to Earth), which itself might not be unusual since there are at least 30 Moons in the Solar system tidally locked to its parent Planet. However, the unique thing about Pluto and Charon is that since they are BOTH tidally locked to EACH OTHER, the same side of Charon always faces Pluto, and the same side of Pluto is always facing Charon.

Which makes them almost literally like a dumbbell as they orbit each other while gravitationally locked together.

a reply to: eraTera

Actually the lack of firm evidence of life elsewhere (not on Earth) is proof of nothing considering we've only been looking for said life elsewhere for only a few decades now.

Once we've searched every planet in the universe (which would most likely take longer than the universe could support life), and then turned up nothing can one say that it's not out there.

Your use of "one shot" makes me shake my head. Any celestial body orbiting about another one that orbits a star will get some sort of an eclipse (I mentioned this in another post, but you've seem to ignored that for some reason).

If the moon was 10 times smaller than it is now, we would not get total solar eclipses, but we would still have times where the Moon blocks some of the suns light falling on us.

Even if the Earth didn't have a moon, we'd still get some sort of eclipsing effect every time Venus or Mercury transits across the sun. It's a very small percentage of light that gets blocked, but it gets blocked nevertheless.

Exoplanet data right now is such that we are lacking information on satellites that orbit other planets around other stars, so we really have NO idea how often smaller rocky planets (like Earth) end up with moons around them. Going by our own solar system is NOT a good idea.

Decades ago we used to assume that our solar system was pretty average and that once we could see what was going on around other stars, it would confirm that.

In fact: exoplanet data has shown quite the opposite. Each system is very unique in it's own way. We've found things that are bizarre and things that made us have to change how we think of planetary evolution.

The Earth has a moon. It has a very large moon compared to it's planet (Ganymede is actually the largest moon in our solar system. It's actually bigger than the planet Mercury), but considering the Earth's Hill field only goes out to about 1.5 million miles, and the fact that most of the inner part of the solar system was cleared out of other bodies early on in the solar system's history, it shouldn't came as a surprise that we only have a single moon.

In fact: count your blessings that we don't have a lot of crap still floating around in the inner solar system. Having many mile wide asteroids slam into us is not a good thing. Go outside next chance you get and look at the moon. Majority of those craters you see was from the last heavy bombardment that happened a few billion years ago.

As far as how life developed on Earth and how much of that was due to having an oversized moon is something that is still debated by scientist (no big "conspiracy" there). There have been many papers put forth suggesting that having our moon was critical, papers suggesting that how the moon formed and being close to the Earth back then was critical, to papers that down play it and say that it was not as critical as some might think.

Again: NO big conspiracy. It's been discussed a LOT by scientists for decades now.

As far as solar eclipses having played a role is the development of life here on Earth: How? You're talking about an event that lasts for only 2 minutes now, and way, way, way back when, for only a few hours when the moon was much closer than it is today. Tidal forces played a much greater role in that case than blocking light.

As for the "miracle" that the Earth happens to have a huge moon and we get solar eclipses: Yah? Big deal.

Seriously: meh. Think of how big space is. Think about how many stars there are in our galaxy alone, then think about how many stars there are in the universe (having an issue thinking that big? Let me put it into perspective for you: if each star in our universe was a grain of sand, there are enough stars in the universe to fill up train box cars with sand and the train would be over three miles long. ).

So yah.....eventually somewhere a rocky world like Earth would end up with a moon and get solar eclipses.

Considering how chaotic the early solar system was (computer models suggest there may have been up to 20 small rocky planets when the solar system first formed and most were either ejected from the solar system, fell into the sun and/or collided destroying each other.) it's not really that big of a surprise that one of them collided with the Earth and formed our moon.

Considering again, the size of our universe it may be a very common thing. We won't know until we get even better data on the exoplanets we know about.

So while it's great that you think it makes us special.....I wouldn't hold your breath on that just yet.

More on Pluto and Charon (to add more to my post above)...

Since Charon is so big and so close to Pluto, making Cahron look relatively large in Pluto's sky, and since the distance of Pluto to the Sun being so far makes the Sun relatively small in Pluto's sky, Charon does create total solar eclipses on Pluto. As does (very occasionally) Pluto causing a total solar eclipse as viewed from Charon.

However, because Charon's orbit around Pluto is greatly tilted relative to the Sun, there are only a few total solar eclipses on Pluto per Earth century.


There are other total solar eclipses in the Solar system. Jupiter quite often gets in the way of the sun as seen from Jupiter's moons, and does Saturn as seen from Saturn's moons, and the same thing with the other planets as seen from most of their moons.

So if you were on Europa, Io, Ganymede, Titan, Enceldaus, Triton, Phobos, or even our own Moon, you can see a total solar eclipse occur reletively often.

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
a reply to: eraTera

Any celestial body orbiting about another one that orbits a star will get some sort of an eclipse (I mentioned this in another post, but you've seem to ignored that for some reason).

-- Maybe you're confused, I didn't see this idea in the other post.

I was not talking about partial eclipse -- I was talking about full eclipse.

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
a reply to: eraTera



Once we've searched every planet in the universe (which would most likely take longer than the universe could support life), and then turned up nothing can one say that it's not out there.

There's no evidence for it. But there could life in a galaxy far far away.

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
a reply to: eraTera

Actually the lack of firm evidence of life elsewhere (not on Earth) is proof of nothing considering we've only been looking for said life elsewhere for only a few decades now.

Once we've searched every planet in the universe (which would most likely take longer than the universe could support life), and then turned up nothing can one say that it's not out there.

Your use of "one shot" makes me shake my head. Any celestial body orbiting about another one that orbits a star will get some sort of an eclipse (I mentioned this in another post, but you've seem to ignored that for some reason).

If the moon was 10 times smaller than it is now, we would not get total solar eclipses, but we would still have times where the Moon blocks some of the suns light falling on us.

Even if the Earth didn't have a moon, we'd still get some sort of eclipsing effect every time Venus or Mercury transits across the sun. It's a very small percentage of light that gets blocked, but it gets blocked nevertheless.

Exoplanet data right now is such that we are lacking information on satellites that orbit other planets around other stars, so we really have NO idea how often smaller rocky planets (like Earth) end up with moons around them. Going by our own solar system is NOT a good idea.

Decades ago we used to assume that our solar system was pretty average and that once we could see what was going on around other stars, it would confirm that.

In fact: exoplanet data has shown quite the opposite. Each system is very unique in it's own way. We've found things that are bizarre and things that made us have to change how we think of planetary evolution.

The Earth has a moon. It has a very large moon compared to it's planet (Ganymede is actually the largest moon in our solar system. It's actually bigger than the planet Mercury), but considering the Earth's Hill field only goes out to about 1.5 million miles, and the fact that most of the inner part of the solar system was cleared out of other bodies early on in the solar system's history, it shouldn't came as a surprise that we only have a single moon.

In fact: count your blessings that we don't have a lot of crap still floating around in the inner solar system. Having many mile wide asteroids slam into us is not a good thing. Go outside next chance you get and look at the moon. Majority of those craters you see was from the last heavy bombardment that happened a few billion years ago.

As far as how life developed on Earth and how much of that was due to having an oversized moon is something that is still debated by scientist (no big "conspiracy" there). There have been many papers put forth suggesting that having our moon was critical, papers suggesting that how the moon formed and being close to the Earth back then was critical, to papers that down play it and say that it was not as critical as some might think.

Again: NO big conspiracy. It's been discussed a LOT by scientists for decades now.

As far as solar eclipses having played a role is the development of life here on Earth: How? You're talking about an event that lasts for only 2 minutes now, and way, way, way back when, for only a few hours when the moon was much closer than it is today. Tidal forces played a much greater role in that case than blocking light.

As for the "miracle" that the Earth happens to have a huge moon and we get solar eclipses: Yah? Big deal.

Seriously: meh. Think of how big space is. Think about how many stars there are in our galaxy alone, then think about how many stars there are in the universe (having an issue thinking that big? Let me put it into perspective for you: if each star in our universe was a grain of sand, there are enough stars in the universe to fill up train box cars with sand and the train would be over three miles long. ).

So yah.....eventually somewhere a rocky world like Earth would end up with a moon and get solar eclipses.

Considering how chaotic the early solar system was (computer models suggest there may have been up to 20 small rocky planets when the solar system first formed and most were either ejected from the solar system, fell into the sun and/or collided destroying each other.) it's not really that big of a surprise that one of them collided with the Earth and formed our moon.

Considering again, the size of our universe it may be a very common thing. We won't know until we get even better data on the exoplanets we know about.

So while it's great that you think it makes us special.....I wouldn't hold your breath on that just yet.

There's a lot of "may's" and "could's" in your argument. I'm talking about what's been observed.

originally posted by: eraTera

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
a reply to: eraTera

Actually the lack of firm evidence of life elsewhere (not on Earth) is proof of nothing considering we've only been looking for said life elsewhere for only a few decades now.

Once we've searched every planet in the universe (which would most likely take longer than the universe could support life), and then turned up nothing can one say that it's not out there.

Your use of "one shot" makes me shake my head. Any celestial body orbiting about another one that orbits a star will get some sort of an eclipse (I mentioned this in another post, but you've seem to ignored that for some reason).

If the moon was 10 times smaller than it is now, we would not get total solar eclipses, but we would still have times where the Moon blocks some of the suns light falling on us.

Even if the Earth didn't have a moon, we'd still get some sort of eclipsing effect every time Venus or Mercury transits across the sun. It's a very small percentage of light that gets blocked, but it gets blocked nevertheless.

Exoplanet data right now is such that we are lacking information on satellites that orbit other planets around other stars, so we really have NO idea how often smaller rocky planets (like Earth) end up with moons around them. Going by our own solar system is NOT a good idea.

Decades ago we used to assume that our solar system was pretty average and that once we could see what was going on around other stars, it would confirm that.

In fact: exoplanet data has shown quite the opposite. Each system is very unique in it's own way. We've found things that are bizarre and things that made us have to change how we think of planetary evolution.

The Earth has a moon. It has a very large moon compared to it's planet (Ganymede is actually the largest moon in our solar system. It's actually bigger than the planet Mercury), but considering the Earth's Hill field only goes out to about 1.5 million miles, and the fact that most of the inner part of the solar system was cleared out of other bodies early on in the solar system's history, it shouldn't came as a surprise that we only have a single moon.

In fact: count your blessings that we don't have a lot of crap still floating around in the inner solar system. Having many mile wide asteroids slam into us is not a good thing. Go outside next chance you get and look at the moon. Majority of those craters you see was from the last heavy bombardment that happened a few billion years ago.

As far as how life developed on Earth and how much of that was due to having an oversized moon is something that is still debated by scientist (no big "conspiracy" there). There have been many papers put forth suggesting that having our moon was critical, papers suggesting that how the moon formed and being close to the Earth back then was critical, to papers that down play it and say that it was not as critical as some might think.

Again: NO big conspiracy. It's been discussed a LOT by scientists for decades now.

As far as solar eclipses having played a role is the development of life here on Earth: How? You're talking about an event that lasts for only 2 minutes now, and way, way, way back when, for only a few hours when the moon was much closer than it is today. Tidal forces played a much greater role in that case than blocking light.

As for the "miracle" that the Earth happens to have a huge moon and we get solar eclipses: Yah? Big deal.

Seriously: meh. Think of how big space is. Think about how many stars there are in our galaxy alone, then think about how many stars there are in the universe (having an issue thinking that big? Let me put it into perspective for you: if each star in our universe was a grain of sand, there are enough stars in the universe to fill up train box cars with sand and the train would be over three miles long. ).

So yah.....eventually somewhere a rocky world like Earth would end up with a moon and get solar eclipses.

Considering how chaotic the early solar system was (computer models suggest there may have been up to 20 small rocky planets when the solar system first formed and most were either ejected from the solar system, fell into the sun and/or collided destroying each other.) it's not really that big of a surprise that one of them collided with the Earth and formed our moon.

Considering again, the size of our universe it may be a very common thing. We won't know until we get even better data on the exoplanets we know about.

So while it's great that you think it makes us special.....I wouldn't hold your breath on that just yet.

There's a lot of "may's" and "could's" in your argument. I'm talking about what's been observed.

What's been observed is that a lot of things are essential to life, solar eclipses are not one of them.

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
a reply to: eraTera


Jupiter and Saturn having many moons is not unusual. They are massive gas giants who's Hill field extends outward a very long ways, enabling them to capture objects all the time.

I didn't say it was unusual for them to have many moons.

double post

originally posted by: dug88

originally posted by: eraTera

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
a reply to: eraTera

Actually the lack of firm evidence of life elsewhere (not on Earth) is proof of nothing considering we've only been looking for said life elsewhere for only a few decades now.

Once we've searched every planet in the universe (which would most likely take longer than the universe could support life), and then turned up nothing can one say that it's not out there.

Your use of "one shot" makes me shake my head. Any celestial body orbiting about another one that orbits a star will get some sort of an eclipse (I mentioned this in another post, but you've seem to ignored that for some reason).

If the moon was 10 times smaller than it is now, we would not get total solar eclipses, but we would still have times where the Moon blocks some of the suns light falling on us.

Even if the Earth didn't have a moon, we'd still get some sort of eclipsing effect every time Venus or Mercury transits across the sun. It's a very small percentage of light that gets blocked, but it gets blocked nevertheless.

Exoplanet data right now is such that we are lacking information on satellites that orbit other planets around other stars, so we really have NO idea how often smaller rocky planets (like Earth) end up with moons around them. Going by our own solar system is NOT a good idea.

Decades ago we used to assume that our solar system was pretty average and that once we could see what was going on around other stars, it would confirm that.

In fact: exoplanet data has shown quite the opposite. Each system is very unique in it's own way. We've found things that are bizarre and things that made us have to change how we think of planetary evolution.

The Earth has a moon. It has a very large moon compared to it's planet (Ganymede is actually the largest moon in our solar system. It's actually bigger than the planet Mercury), but considering the Earth's Hill field only goes out to about 1.5 million miles, and the fact that most of the inner part of the solar system was cleared out of other bodies early on in the solar system's history, it shouldn't came as a surprise that we only have a single moon.

In fact: count your blessings that we don't have a lot of crap still floating around in the inner solar system. Having many mile wide asteroids slam into us is not a good thing. Go outside next chance you get and look at the moon. Majority of those craters you see was from the last heavy bombardment that happened a few billion years ago.

As far as how life developed on Earth and how much of that was due to having an oversized moon is something that is still debated by scientist (no big "conspiracy" there). There have been many papers put forth suggesting that having our moon was critical, papers suggesting that how the moon formed and being close to the Earth back then was critical, to papers that down play it and say that it was not as critical as some might think.

Again: NO big conspiracy. It's been discussed a LOT by scientists for decades now.

As far as solar eclipses having played a role is the development of life here on Earth: How? You're talking about an event that lasts for only 2 minutes now, and way, way, way back when, for only a few hours when the moon was much closer than it is today. Tidal forces played a much greater role in that case than blocking light.

As for the "miracle" that the Earth happens to have a huge moon and we get solar eclipses: Yah? Big deal.

Seriously: meh. Think of how big space is. Think about how many stars there are in our galaxy alone, then think about how many stars there are in the universe (having an issue thinking that big? Let me put it into perspective for you: if each star in our universe was a grain of sand, there are enough stars in the universe to fill up train box cars with sand and the train would be over three miles long. ).

So yah.....eventually somewhere a rocky world like Earth would end up with a moon and get solar eclipses.

Considering how chaotic the early solar system was (computer models suggest there may have been up to 20 small rocky planets when the solar system first formed and most were either ejected from the solar system, fell into the sun and/or collided destroying each other.) it's not really that big of a surprise that one of them collided with the Earth and formed our moon.

Considering again, the size of our universe it may be a very common thing. We won't know until we get even better data on the exoplanets we know about.

So while it's great that you think it makes us special.....I wouldn't hold your breath on that just yet.

There's a lot of "may's" and "could's" in your argument. I'm talking about what's been observed.

What's been observed is that a lot of things are essential to life, solar eclipses are not one of them.

What's been observed is that I've never said solar eclipses are essential to life. Your reply is nonsense.

originally posted by: eraTera

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
a reply to: eraTera


Jupiter and Saturn having many moons is not unusual. They are massive gas giants who's Hill field extends outward a very long ways, enabling them to capture objects all the time.

I didn't say it was unusual for them to have many moons.

Actually you've not said much of anything, except for how odd or unusual that Earth only has one moon, and that we get solar eclipses.

Neither of which are odd or special in anyway.

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity

originally posted by: eraTera

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
a reply to: eraTera


Jupiter and Saturn having many moons is not unusual. They are massive gas giants who's Hill field extends outward a very long ways, enabling them to capture objects all the time.

I didn't say it was unusual for them to have many moons.

Actually you've not said much of anything, except for how odd or unusual that Earth only has one moon, and that we get solar eclipses.

Neither of which are odd or special in anyway.

I think not saying much of anything is your reply of may's and could's.

Also, I haven't said somethings I've been claimed to have said.

If you take into account the (theorised) way the solar system was formed out of a spinning disc of material which coalesced into the planets and their moons it's not unlikely that the moon(s) orbits will take them between the sun and their planet(s) occasionally producing eclipses. Most of the planets and their moons are roughly within that general plane still, Pluto having an orbit that's tilted in relation to the rest but still doesn't exclude the possibility of its moons casting a shadow on the planet at times.

Nothing strange here, just physics at work in the wild

originally posted by: Pilgrum
If you take into account the (theorised) way the solar system was formed out of a spinning disc of material which coalesced into the planets and their moons it's not unlikely that the moon(s) orbits will take them between the sun and their planet(s) occasionally producing eclipses. Most of the planets and their moons are roughly within that general plane still, Pluto having an orbit that's tilted in relation to the rest but still doesn't exclude the possibility of its moons casting a shadow on the planet at times.

Nothing strange here, just physics at work in the wild

Thread does not say there's anything strange about solar eclipses. In fact it mentions that they occur on other planets.

kk, it appears you're here to troll then, and not really have any intent to actually have a discussion.

originally posted by: TerminalVelocity
kk, it appears you're here to troll then, and not really have any intent to actually have a discussion.

It seems you've tried to troll this thread by trying to post antagonizing comments.

I've replied to your statements in a normal way.

double post