Expert: Tom Whiting - 10/26/2010

Question
Have you ever come across the imaginary planet Kolob that the LDS believes
in?  I am sure it is floating around out there somewhere.  It may be the 10th
planet in the solar system!  Yeah, I had those crazy cooks visit my front door
preaching of crazy planets and warm feelings in my bosom.  I did have the
warm feeling they were talking about alright, but only because I stood a little
too close to the living room space heater if you know what I mean.  I figure
the warm feeling is about as much hokus pokus as the planet Kolob, but I
thought I would ask the expert.  In all of your years of looking up into the sky
have you EVER seen the ole Kolob aka Mormon planet?  I needed to ask
someone that is always looking up in life while most of us are looking down.

Your buddy,

Cletus P Edmond

Answer
Planets do not "float around out there somewhere", they always orbit a star, or the sun.
There is no planet Kolob, no planet Nimrod, and no red/brown dwarf star Nemesis, in our Solar System. There are only 8 major planets in the Solar System; Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. {Pluto was basically downgraded because it turned out to be simply one of the members of the Kuiper Asteroid Belt, of which there are thousands of members.  Pluto is not even the biggest Kuiper asteroid!}. Plus, at only 1500 miles in diameter, it's much smaller then even our own moon. Thus, it, Pluto, never really was a planet anyway, (only in our ignorance of the existence of the Kuiper asteroid belt)...  and should have been downgraded years ago.

There are no other major planets (3000 miles in diameter, or greater)... in our Solar System;  a major body would have long since betrayed its presence either by gravitational effects on the other bodies, and/or photographically on our super-sensitive CCD chips. If we can image a faint, young galaxy out there 12 billion lightyears distant, a 3000 mile wide planet in our own Solar System would stand out like a searchlight over your home town, by comparison.
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA
PS:  I'm not familiar with that theology... perhaps the LDSs (whoever they are) think that their so-called Kolob is an exo-planet of another star system. And if so, in that case, no one really knows, as there is no data on Earth-like exo-planets as yet. That's what most theology is very good at... pick things and events and statements that are... completely untestable and non-verifiable by science, so they can never be disproven...  a neat trick that most all religions use.