“Vulcan is inside the orbit of Mercury? Not surprising. It was extablished in “Amok Time” that Vulcan’s climate is much warmer than Earth’s. Good thing Mr. Spock only gois into heat once every seven years.”

But seven years would come around a *lot* quicker if your “year” is just … oh, three days or so!

So Spock must be in heat every month or less!!

Incidentally, if our Sun had a Hot Jupiter type planet in a 2 or so day orbit – would we be able to see it???

&, if so, what would it look like? (From Earth – & after all I gather even Mercury with its 88 (?) day orbit is hard to see, & Copernicus apparently never saw it ..)

The issue is this: it would seem that planets form in a way that fits the largest number of planets possible into the system (indeed, this theory has successfully predicted the existence of planets at the location of 55 Cancri f and HD 74156 d). This leaves open the question of why the innermost planet is not packed in right up against the star, especially given the variety of inward migration processes available. Having a large stable region which could be occupied by planets/asteroids but isn’t is somewhat troubling under this model and perhaps warrants explanation.

It went something like this: According to Greek mythology, Cronus knew of a prophecy that he would be destroyed by his own son, so whenever Rhea gave birth he would swallow the child. But when Zeus was born, Rhea hid Zeus and gave Cronus a sack with a stone in it instead. (And indeed Zeus did grow up to defeat Cronus.) One of Zeus’s many acts, mentioned in the Iliad, was to threw Hephaestus down from Mount Olympus, as a punishment.

But Hephaestus is just the Greek name for the Roman god Vulcan. And so we see, he was indeed eventually thrown down from the heavens. And by who? None other than the man indentified as one stone, or in his own native language, “ein Stein”.