Moons or Planets? – Friday 22nd September 2023

Moons or Planets? – Friday 22nd September 2023

I’ve been concentrating on Whales and Orcas recently so thought I would write a quick article about moons in our solar system.

My view is that generally if it’s Mercury sized or smaller, it’s more suited as a moon. If it’s larger, then it’s more suited as a planet.

Planets can have things go wrong though and so when I look at Ganymede for example, to me, that’s a planet. It’s orbiting Jupiter but whether it has always done so, I think not. Something went amiss in its development perhaps.

When I look at our solar system it appears to me that a number of planets failed, which is reasonable because  in perfecting something, there is always the earlier attempts till you master any issues. Perhaps it was timing or atmosphere or lack of a moon of its own, any number of things. And of course perhaps one of them did support life long long ago, my thought is that we certainly could have been in this solar system prior to Earth. We mayn’t have reached the technological level attained here, but I really do think that it’s very possible we existed in this system previously.

Fiona MacLeod (C)