P8 - Physics on the move Flashcards
How long ago was the big bang?
13.8 billion years ago
What happens when a light source moves away from you?
- Red shift: The wavelength of light that is emitted INCREASES, DECREASING the frequency.
What happens when a light source moves toward you?
- Blue shift: The wavelength of light that is emitted DECREASES, INCREASING the frequency.
What is the Big Bang Model?
- Scientists believe the universe started from the initial singularity, a point extremely dense and smaller than the size of an atom, which contained all the energy and matter in the universe.
- This then suddenly expanded 13.7 billion years ago.
Evidence for the Big Bang
- In the 1960s scientists discovered that there was microwaves radiation coming from all direction, which was radiation left over from the Big Bang.
- This is called “Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation” (CMBR).
Define Planets
Object that are spherical because of gravity, that orbit around the sun.
Define Comets
Objects made of ice and dust in orbit around the sun, usually with very long, thin orbits (elliptical, often travel near the end of the solar system).
Order of planets in the solar system
- Mercury
- Venus
- Earth
- Mars
- Jupiter
- Saturn
- Uranus
- Neptune
Asteroid belt
- In between Mars and Jupiter, there is an asteroid belt, which is a cluster of asteroids.
- Asteroids are pieces of rock left over from the formation of the solar system.
- They contain a dwarf planet called Ceres.
How was the Sun formed? What is it made of?
- The Sun is a huge cloud of dust and hydrogen gas.
- Gravity pulled the dust and hydrogen gas together, making the central core very hot.
- Eventually, particles were hot enough for nuclear fusion to occur.
- There is a balance between the gravitational attraction inward and the expansion of hot gases outward.
What are asteroids made of?
Mainly rock and metals.
Define Nebula
- Giant cloud of dust and gas in space.
Describe the formation of protostars.
- Over time, the force of gravity in a nebula pulls the dust and gas together, to form a protostar.
- As more and more particles collide and join the protostar, it gets bigger and bigger, making the force of gravity stronger.
- The gravity also squeezes the protostar, making it more dense.
- This means particles insides a protostar collide more and raises their temperature.
- When the temperature and pressure is high enough, nuclear fusion can occur, releasing massive amounts of energy.
- At this point, we call something a ‘main-sequence star’.
What stage is our sun currently in (life cycle of stars)
- The sun is currently a main-sequence star.
What happens at the end of the main-sequence?
- Stars runs out of fuel, nuclear fusion stops.
- Force of gravity makes the star collapse.
- This then increases pressure and temperature, inducing fusion.
- Star expands again, forming a Red Giant or Red Super Giant.