Wikipedia:Peer review/Solar System/archive5

Solar System

General checkup, plus, can anyone locate the missing citations in the "Formation" section? Serendipodous 20:35, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 00:52, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work on this one so far, this could be a gigantic article and I don't envy the discussions you must have had on what to include. I have a few suggestions:

The lead needs a bit of rewording to copyedit for flow, the rest of the article probably needs a look over for similar issues, but I'll let you do that.

Commas and interjections: there are a LOT. Pausing at every one (unlikely, but I sometimes do unintentionally) really makes reading jerky. You may consider removing many of the commas and placing the text as the subject rather than an aside. For example, The Sun's two largest orbiting bodies, Jupiter and Saturn, account for more than 90% of the system's remaining mass. can be rephrased to "Jupiter and Saturn are the Sun's two largest bodies and account for more than 90% of the system's remaining mass." An interjection or two per paragraph is fine, but more than that gets a little tedious to read through.
Additionally, you don't need a comma after short introductory phrases (less than 5 words, but it's not a hard and fast rule). The article has a number of them and I'd suggest skipping the comma. E.g. In broad terms, , Under this definition,For many years,.
An extreme example, try briefly pausing at each comma: Because of its large mass, the Sun has an interior density high enough to sustain nuclear fusion, releasing enormous amounts of energy, most of which is radiated into space in the form of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light. There are four phrases here with good information, don't be afraid to use two sentences.
All planets but two are in turn orbited by natural satellites... -- this just reads weirdly. If I might suggest, "Six of the eight planets are orbited by natural satellites..."
Other such systems are usually referred to by the names of their parent star: "the Alpha Centauri system" or "the 51 Pegasi system". I think you want a ", for example" instead of a colon.

You may want to find someone to thoroughly copy-edit the article. Perhaps not before going for a Good designation, but definitely before heading to FAC (if that's your intention). More stuff (no comma comments, I promise):

Layout

Layout heading -- seems vague (to me). Perhaps "Layout of solar sytem objects" or something?
Make sure that each paragraph has a topic sentence that leads into the other sentences. For example, the first sentence under "Layout" makes it seem like the paragraph will be talking about the ecliptic. However, other sentences within the paragraph talk about the orbit direction and relationship of speed and distance. Either find a good umbrella statement as your paragraph opening, or reorder them so similar ideas are placed together. (The orbit and speed sentences could go into your next paragraph.)
Jupiter and Saturn were able to gather together far more material than the terrestrial planets, as those compounds were far more common. -- gather together is redundant, "far more" is used twice (and the "far" doesn't really tell us anything)

Sun

The young Sun's solar wind then cleared away all the gas and dust in the protoplanetary disk, blowing it into interstellar space, thus ending the growth of the planets. -- Why did this happen just now? You mentioned the T Tauri phase earlier in the paragraph, but should probably bring this up again here (if my memory of solar system formation serves me).
I'd love to see a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram instead of "The Sun as seen from Earth". It would help the explanation of where the stars fit immensely.
it contains far more elements heavier than hydrogen and helium -- another "far more", just "more" will do.

Planets - ok, so you're not going to like this, but I might suggest cutting down the planet discussion SIGNIFICANTLY. I mean hack and slash. The planets are so cool that it's very tempting to put things in about each one, but they already have their own entire articles. My preference right now would be to have a section titled "Planets" with a paragraph or two describing the gross distinctions (inner vs. outer) and their characteristics, but skip going into any detail. Make sure all the planets are wiki-linked and call it a day. This would cut the article down to a reasonable size and allow readers to focus on the other parts of the article like Galactic Context and Furthest reaches, which is what I'd want to read about if I came to the "Solar System" article. The beauty of Wikipedia is that if the reader wants to know about the formation of Venus, they are just a click away.

metallic dust grains such as iron, which forms their cores -- well, it's not really dust, or even granular if its in the core. How about "metal iron and nickel, which form their cores."
Three of the four inner planets have atmospheres. -- So tantalizing, but just tell us which ones! Actually, your in depth description for each says that ALL of them have atmospheres (even Mercury), so you may need to add a qualifier to this sentence.
All have impact craters, and all but one possess tectonic surface features, such as rift valleys and volcanoes. -- Mercury (I'm assuming you're talking about Mercury) certianly has wrinkle ridges, which are tectonic features probably related to planetary contraction. I think I know what you mean (no volcanoes, or rift valleys), but the sentence implies ANY tectonics, which isn't correct.

Venus -- needs help.

Venus (0.7 AU), the first truly terrestrial planet, -- I'm not sure what this means. Mercury is still a "terrestrial" planet by designation. I think you probably mean "the first planet kinda like Earth", but "truly terrestrial" is misleading. Unfortnately I think the "right words" may not be worth putting in - I'd take out the comment altogether.
evidence of one-time internal geological activity, such as volcanoes. -- one-time? Check out the Venus article where it says (much closer to current scientific consensus) that "Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus."
Unlike Earth, evidence suggests that Venus's crust is not divided into tectonic plates but instead comprises a single very thick rind. -- I'm glad there was a reference, because otherwise I wouldn't have believed you. That is one study's view, but it's far from as universally accepted as its placement and wording make it seem. Again from the lead of Venus, "Venus is thought to undergo periodic episodes of plate tectonics", an idea you allude to later. You may want to reorder these sentences to indicate that the work is ongoing.

Earth

unique among the terrestrials, -- "terrestrial planets" would be better.:-)

Unfortunately I'm out of time, but this hopefully gives you some ideas. Hopefully this isn't too overwhelming, and perhaps I'll find time to do some copy-editing myself sometime. Good luck!--Will.i.am 00:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Those ideas were very helpful. I've edited in accordance with most of your comments; though I'll need time to come around to the "hack and slash" idea about the planets, because it would require a rethink about what to do about the paragraphs on Pluto, Ceres, Eris and Sedna. Venus will have to wait until I know what to do about this issue. In the meantime, I've given all the planet sections a cursory trim. As regards the solar wind bit, I'm afraid I don't know much about planetary system formation theories and didn't actually write that section. I've had to give myself something of a crash course just to reference it. Serendipodous 02:43, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]