I've been watching a series on Science Channel "Secrets of the
Universe" and besides them repeating themselves over and over again on
a few topics (the Universe is dangerous it's going to kill us all!) I
am amazed at how much of our knowledge of the universe and especially
our solar system has changed.

Some of these:

* Pluto is no longer a planet but a planetesimal  -- curious as to how
they came to that conclusion...

My gosh... when I went to school it was in all the science text books
that our solar system consisted of a sun and nine planets!  Only eight
planets? Horrors! 

* Our solar system extends out to approximately one light year if you
include the OORT cloud and things beyond that!

* Magnetic bubbles at the furthest extremes of our solar system

* our solar system doesn't really have a boundary, it just merges with
the influence of the next solar system.

I also have noted some of theory of how planets formed has slowly
changed over the years. Especially the tidbits about the gas giants
influences on how the inner planets were formed and more importantly
survived. 

Our sun a thief?  One episode they discussed (briefly) how some of the
objects in our solar system may have formed around other stars and our
sun stole those objects from its sibling stars.  I wonder how much got
stolen from our solar system in return? 

Our galaxy is eating matter from mini galaxies that are in an ongoing
collision with our galaxy?

Any sciency folks on the list want to comment on some of these random
bits I've picked up from this program...  If I really worked at it I
could come up with more choice bits from that show.

--

Peter L. Berghold                                 <xxxxxx@berghold.net>
Professonally: IT Professional (DevOps, Puppet, Perl...)
Advocations: Dog Training, Beer Brewing, BBQ, Cooking