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Re:Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star by mjhoy on Wednesday August 24, 2016 @03:29PM (#12354599)
Indeed. This is one of my favorite Wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
Re:Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star by nonbel on Wednesday August 24, 2016 @04:44PM (#12355118)
>"Venus mean surface temperature is 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F) making Venus the hottest planet in the Solar System. Earth had a similar early atmosphere to Venus, but lost it in the giant impact event."

Ever since I saw it done in the new Universe series, a pet peeve of mine has been treating the giant impact hypothesis as some kind of established fact. Even the name on the wikipedia page includes the term "hypothesis": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant-impact_hypothesis

The hubris surrounding the presentation of that particular hypothesis to the public is really, really awful. I actually stopped watching that new Universe series mid-episode after hearing it presented as fact (this was sometime in the first few episodes, maybe the first episode) and stopped reading this wikipedia page just now.