Do the planets around the earth have any purpose?

Answer 1

Yea, we can race with the Chinese and Indians to the moon to put bases and missiles on it. The moon is a good source of artistic inspiration, I always liked Van Morrison's "Moon dance".

The Moon helps deflect meteorites from hitting earth. It also control tides, and makes the earths metal core heat up allowing tectonic and volcanic activity as well allowing us to have a magnetic field and the all important ionosphere, allowing us to keep our good atmosphere and not being irradiated and being some sort of radioactive mutant.

If you are talking about planets orbiting around the sun. They make for good astrology, and Greek mythology as well as allowing us to mine and pillage later down the line. Stake a claim on Titan lots of natural gas.$$$$$$$$$$$$

Answer 2

Planets are not looking for a purpose for their existence. They have as much purpose as the earth and they are orbiting the sun not the earth.

Answer 3

I'm assuming that you mean other the planets in orbit around the Sun. I suppose that they have as much purpose as the Earth itself since they were all created (over a period of several billion years) out of the same rotating cloud of dust and gas from which gravity formed the Sun and Earth.

Doug

Answer 4

Nothing has any "purpose" anywhere in the universe.

One "role" that Jupiter plays (for example) is to "sweep up" debris and prevent many large traveling bodies (asteroids, comets) from hitting earth because it's gravitational pull is much larger. If not for Jupiter the erath would very likely have been bombarded much more frequently.

If Jupiter didn't exist, oh well. The universe doesn't care.

Answer 5

"purpose" is a philosophical/religious term which does not have any meaning beyond the one that YOU assign to it.

The teleological view is usually associated with a "personal" concept of things, including the universe. Teleology is usually linked to some sense of divinity, be it personal or at least of of the deist kind.

In the worst case it simply emerges from an overly strong sense of "self" - as in "selfish". The perceived purpose of everything and everyone only being to serve the "self". This sense of purpose obviously belongs into the psychology department.

In general teleology has to be based on faith because we do not see any facts that would hint at anything in nature having a particular purpose, certainly not one of serving us. If nature were here to serve us, it would better be organized in a very different way that is a lot less threatening to the average human!

Answer 6

We humans simply don't know. Life to us is as how we see ourselves or some life that would be similar. If we don't see that , we call that type of planet lifeless. The purpose may still be to support life or a potential life in the future but we don't know. We are still primitive.

Answer 7

Most of them are just a byproduct of the creation of the sun. Of course, Jupiter has a very important function for earthlings. Without it, we'd get a LOT more asteroid collisions than we do.

Icarus - She didn't say the planets rotate AROUND the earth, she's saying they are near us, as opposed to those around Cygnus or Sirius.

Answer 8

Yes, trying to figure out what the purpose is a bit of a challenge.

Answer 9

They have an individual purpose. It does unique things for itself. The only purpose it serves for Earth, is when an asteroid collides into them instead of us.

Answer 10

Not in the usual sense of the word, no (and they're not around the Earth, they're around the Sun).