Wikipedia:Peer review/Asteroid belt/archive1

Asteroid belt

This article seems pretty close to FA level; I was wondering what else needed to be done. Serendi^podous 19:33, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, APR _t 21:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I had added a couple of suggestions for topics here: Talk:Asteroid_belt#New_topics. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 18:44, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sections added. Serendi^podous 13:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There should be some discussion on the relative share of mass in the asteroid belt as opposed to that in the other major groupings of small solar system bodies. "98.5% of the known minor planets" is accurate as far as it goes, but it obviously doesn't reflect the reality of observational bias. I know John S. Lewis in Mining the Sky pg. 199 suggests that there is three times the belt mass in the Jupiter Trojans alone. And I'm sure that's not the only estimate out there.--Pharos 00:16, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't found any direct scholarly references to the combined mass of the Trojans but I find it difficult to believe that the combined mass of the Trojans is higher than the asteroid belt; there have only been about 700 Trojans discovered so far, and none is anywhere near as big as Ceres. Serendi^podous 08:53, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

EDIT: OK.

This article says that the combined mass of the L4 Trojans is 0.01 percent the mass of the Earth. Assuming a similar mass for the L5s, that gives a combined mass for the Trojans of 0.02 percent an Earth mass. This article says that the mass of the asteroid belt is 0.05 percent the mass of the Earth, which makes the mass of the Trojans about half that of the belt. However, according to this article, the asteroid belt is at most a twentieth the mass of the Kuiper belt, and one six hundredth the mass of the Oort cloud Serendi^podous 09:19, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The underlying hypothesis was that the Jupiter Trojans would be very-hard-to-detect ultradark super-carbonaceous chondrites, following the trend in composition observed in the outer regions of the belt. Quite possibly that idea is considered obsolete now with the recent Kuiper belt discoveries; it's hard to track up on as the book was published a decade ago and Lewis doesn't name the sources of this "recent estimate" (it's a popular science book). Anyway, it's good to see you've tracked down those numbers you have, but I wonder how accurate any of them can turn out to be be. Now it's being reported that Neptune Trojans may exceed the belt in mass.--Pharos 05:34, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not mass. Number. Big difference. Serendi^podous 18:10, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, yes. You'll excuse me that error—rest assured the "recent estimate" in Lewis was indeed about mass, though. By the way, I've discovered the actual Neptune Trojans paper and it's here.--Pharos 18:27, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I realize that all of these numbers are pretty speculative, yet still I think we need some sort of caveat to counter "98.5% of the known minor planets", which though accurate is misleading to readers who are not already familiar with this field, who are unaware that the asteroid belt almost certainly accounts for only a minority of the total number of minor planets (which of course includes the Kuiper belt, the Oort cloud, and the various Trojans).--Pharos 23:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I've added a section to the end of the article. It's a bit cumbersome, so let me know what you think. Serendi^podous 18:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's certainly a good thing that you've researched this. I'm a bit divided in my mind as to whether perhaps it should be more summarized here and the the rest moved to minor planet. It's your discretion, really.--Pharos 23:56, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I've shortened it. Serendi^podous 07:15, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Would it not make sense to just merge that section into the brief section on mass? That will provide a means of direct comparison, and not leave an off-topic section dangling at the end of the article. — RJH (talk) 18:29, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How's that? Serendi^podous 18:40, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's the best treatment of this info yet. We'll see what RJH thinks.--Pharos 15:16, 21 October 2007 (UTC)\[reply]

I guess I can live with it, although I'm unhappy that a section about the belt's mass has been changed to a section primarily about what's not in the belt. The information seems mostly irrelevant now. — RJH (talk) 17:51, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If we could find, say, three sentences worth of information about the mass of the asteroid belt as a whole, we could split the section into two paragraphs. Serendi^podous 17:56, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The second sentence of what you had in there before seemed pretty relevant. It gave the reader an idea of the mass distribution. Mention of the center of mass of the belt might also be interesting, if there is a value somewhere. — RJH (talk) 18:19, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've reinstated it. I still think a few added sentences might be good.Serendi^podous 18:34, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is strange that the article fails to mention that several of the Category:Asteroids visited by spacecraft were in the belt. Just because these missions were not "dedicated specifically to the study of asteroids", does not mean they're not of scientific importance.--Pharos 18:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

done. Serendi^podous 19:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks.--Pharos 23:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a pretty minor semantic issue, but should this article mention at some point that the asteroid belt is traditionally considered the "boundary" between the Inner and Outer Solar System; also I notice the Solar System article now places the belt in the Inner Solar System, abutting the Mid Solar System—perhaps this is a realignment due to increased Trans-Neptunian emphasis, I don't know.--Pharos 15:16, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As the person who wrote the Solar System article, I can say that yes, that was the point. The issue revolved around whether to have every section be a "two =" section, or whether to have a "heirarchical" distribution. The article's FA ultimately depended on me finding a way to make the distribution "heirarchical," and the only way I could do it was to invent a non-existent term for the middle region of the Solar System. But yes, it is true. Nowadays the term "outer solar system" is usually applied to the trans-Neptunian region. Serendi^podous 15:48, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]