[eanbardsley]

also looking at my data tables and find that if we take the distance of the planet Saturn to the sun as 9 (closest approach), then the distance to the planet Jupiter from the sun is five (closest approach). In fact this way of measuring distances puts the earth exactly at 1 unit from the sun. This is interesting, because Juptiter and Saturn, aside from being the "middle children" of the solar system, planets 5 and 6 of a planetary family of 9 or 10 depending on whether or not you consider the asteroid belt a planet that did not form, and anything found beyond pluto a planetoid, these planets carry the majority of mass of the solar system, significantly, and thus embody most of the dyanamics of its formation.