Talk:Class S planet

Size Of Class S

 * A Class S planet is a 'Small Ultragiant' in Planetary classification. Ultragiants of this type have an age of 2-10 billion years and a diameter between 10-50 million km.

¡This cannot be right! A Class S with a diameter of 10 million kilometers has a volume one thousand times greater than Sol. A Class S with a Diameter of 50 million kilometers has a volume of a quarter million Sols. -- Ŭalabio 21:30, 2004 Nov 21 (CET)


 * You're right. I never thought about that, but this has to be an error of the Star Charts. Since we still don't accept Star Charts information, this page should probably be deleted anyway... -- Cid Highwind 22:02, 21 Nov 2004 (CET)

Class S, T (moved from Vfd)

 * Class S, Class T -- Star Charts info only. Should be replaced with first-hand information if such exists (probably not), otherwise should be deleted. -- Cid Highwind 22:07, 21 Nov 2004 (CET)
 * I thought the decision had been made to incorporate the Star Charts info as background notes where it wasn't supported by canon? --Steve 23:12, 22 Nov 2004 (CET)
 * Yes, but if there is no such canon this as a Class S planet, then there is no call for an article with a background note.. for classes that dont exist in canon yet, the background notes go at planetary classification -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 23:49, 22 Nov 2004 (CET)

So I don't know much about Star Trek (I am posting mainly because a friend linked me to this page, and since I'm an astronomer the factual error annoyed me, so I felt obliged to comment ;) ) but at least physically, it is basically impossible to have a planet significantly larger than Jupiter (~150,000 km) - even if you pile more and more mass on a Jupiter-like planet, the increased gravity of the matter just makes the planet compress more so it actually starts to get smaller in radius at a certain point. Brown dwarf stars are about the same size as Jupiter despite being tens of times more massive.

So tell the truth, not just class S and T but also all but the absolute smallest class I planets are all physical impossibilities. But class S and T are clearly totally absurd: the Sun has a radius of 695,000 km, for example, which would be completely dwarfed by one of those. There are stars this big - and bigger, even - but not planets!