THE UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM Flashcards
What are the Non-scientific Thought
- Ancient Egyptians believed that the world arose from an infinite sea at the first rising of the sun
- God Mbombo felt an intense stomach pain and then vomited the star, sun and moon
- Sacrifice of Purusha and its body parts became the earth, sky, sun, moon
- Monotheistic Religions believed that a supreme being created the universe
they believed that the world arose from an infinite sea at the first rising of the sun
Ancient Egyptians
They felt an intense stomach pain and vomited the stars, sun, and moon
God Mbombo
He was sacrificed by the gods, the primal man whose head, feet, eyes, and mind became the sky, earth, sun, and koon
Purusha
They believed that a supreme being created the universe
Monotheistic religion
3 Monotheistic religions
- Judaism
- Christianity
- Islam
It maintains the new matter is created as the universe expands thereby maintaining its density
Steady State Model
They created the Steady State Model
Bondi and Gould and by Hoyle
When was the Steady State Model created
1948
postulates that 13.8 billion years ago, the universe expanded from a tiny, dense and hot mass to its present size and much cooler state
Big Bang Theory
2 Theories or Ideas in the Big Bang Theory:
- General Relativity
- Cosmological Principle
gravity is thought as a distortion of space-time and no longer described by a gravitational field
General Theory of Relativity
explains the peculiarities of the orbit of Mercury and the bending of light by the Sun and has passed rigorous tests
General Relativity
assumes that the universe is homogenous and isotropic when averaged over large scales
Cosmological Principle
The Big Bang Theory has withstood the tests for expansion:
- The redshift
- Abundance of hydrogen, helium and lithium
- The uniformly pervasive cosmic microwave background radiation the remnant heat from the bang
Evolution of the Universe according to the Big Bang Theory
• Time zero until 10^-43 second later, all matter and energy in the universe existed as a hot, dense, tiny state
• Underwent extremely rapid, exponential inflation until 10^-32 second until 10 seconds
• Nucleosynthesis took place and produced protons, neutrons, atomic nuclei, then hydrogen, helium, and lithium until 20 minutes after time zero when sufficient cooling didnt allow further nucleosynthesis
• Until 380,000 years, the cooling universe entered a matter-dominated period when photons decoupled from matter and light could travel freely as still observed today in the form of cosmic microwave
• As it cools down, stars rise after 380,000 years and galaxies would form after 100 million years from time zero
• 9.8 billion years until the present, the universe became dark-energy dominated and underwent accelerating expansion
• After 9.8 billion years after the big bang theory, the solar system was found
is located in the milky way galaxy
Solar System
a huge disc and spiral shaped aggregation of about at least 100 billion stars and other bodies
Milky Way Galaxy
1 light year =
9,.4607 x 10^12km
revolves around the galactic center once in about 240 million years
solar system
Milky Way is part of the
Local Group of galaxies
is part of the so called Local Group of galaxies
Milk Way
How old is the Earth and Solar system
4.6 billion years old
Large Scale Features of the Solar System:
- Much of the mass of the Solar System is concentrated at the center while angular momentum is held by outer planets
- Orbits of the planets elliptical and are on the same. All planets revolve around the sun
- Periods of revolution of the planets increase with increasing distance from the Sun, innermost planet moves fastest, outermost is slowest
- All planets are located at regular intervals from the Sun
Small scale feature of the Solar System:
- Most planets rotate prograde
- Inner terrestrial planets are made of high melting materials and they rotate slower. They also have thin/no atmosphere, higher densities, and lower volatiles
- Outer planets rotate faster, have thick atmosphere, lower densities, and fluid interiors
rotation of counterclockwise when viewed from above the Earth’s North Pole
Prograde
What are the four outer planets or gasgiants
- Jupiter
- Uranus
- Saturn
- Neptune
Are made of high melting materials and they rotate slower due. They also have thin/no atmosphere, higher densities, and lower volatiles
Inner terrestrial planets
Rotate faster, have thick atmosphere, lower densities, and fluid interiors
Outer planets
Elements Abundance on Earth, Meteorites and Universe
Si
Al
Fe
Mg
Ca
Na
K
Mn
Hypothesis about the Origin of the Solar system:
- Nebular Hypothesis
- Encounter Hypothesis
- Protoplanet Hypothesis
Who created the Nebular Hypothesis
Emanuel Swedenborg
Immanuel Kant
Pierre Simon Laplace
Rotating gaseous cloud that cools and contracts in the middle to form the sun and the rest into disc that become the planets
Nebular Hypothesis
sun-star encounter that would have drawn from the sun matter that would condense to planets
James Jeans (1917)
Sun comet encounter that sent natter to form planet
Buffon (1749)
Who created the planetissimal hypothesis
T.C. Chamberlain and F.R Moulton (1904)
involves. star much bigger than the Sun passing by the Sun and draws gaseous filaments from both out which planetissimals were formed
Planetissimal hypothesis
Sun’s companion star colliding with another to form a protoplanet that breaks up to form Jupiter and Saturn
Ray Lyttleton (1940)
proposed that sun passed through a dense interstellar cloud and emerged with a dusty, gaseous envelope that became the planets
Otto Schmidt’s accretion theory
rogue star passes close to the sun then gas is tidally removed from both rogue star and sun. The rogue star material is less dense and becomes outer Solar system planets while the inner solar system material is more dense and becomes terrestrial planets
Encounter Hypothesis
a variation of James Jean’s near collision hypothesis
M.M. Woolfson’s capture theory
Noble prize winner that studies on meteorites in the 1950s that led to the conclusion that meteorite constituents have changed very little since the solar system’s early history and can give clues about their formation
Harold Urey’s
Is the current hypothesis in the solar system
Protoplanet Hypothesis
4.6 billion years ago, in the orion arm of the milky way galaxy, slow rotating gas and dust starts to contract due to gravity. Most of the mass move to the center and becomes a proton sun while the remaining form a disc that becomes planets. Due to collisions, the fragments began to stick to each other that formed larger bodies of planets. When the proton-sun is established as a star, its solar wind blasts from the inner planets to beyond mars to form gas giants leaving behind a system we know today
protoplanet hypothesis
comprises all space and time and all matter and energy in it
universe
how many baryonic matter
4.6% baryonic matter
matter consisting of protons, electrons, neutrons
baryonic matter
how many cold dark matter
24% cold dark matter
how many dark energy
71.4% dark energy
The universe is made up of:
4.6% baryonic matter
24% cold dark matter
71.4% dark energy
matter that has gravity but does not emit light
cold dark matter
source of anti gravity
dark energy
can explain what may be holding galaxies together for the reason that the low total mass is insufficient for gravity alone to so so while dark energy can explain the observed accelerating expansion of the universe
Dark matter
3 most abundant elements
Hydrogen
Helium
Lithium
building block of galaxies born out of clouds of gas and dust
Stars
are like furnaces where elements are synthesized or combines/fused together
Stellar interiors
most stars such as the sun belong to the so-called
main sequence stas
burn up their hydrogen faster than smaller stars
Massive main sequence stars
minimum temperature for H fusion
5x10 60 C
cluster of billions of stars and clusters of galaxies
galaxy
He discovered the Redshift
Edwin Hubble
when was the red shift discovered
1929
the universe expands because galaxies are moving away from each other
redshift
he observed that spectral lines of starlight made to pass through prism are shifter toward the red part of the electromagnetic spectrum, toward the bad of lower frequency; thus, the inference that the star or galaxy must be moving away from us
Edwin Hubble
are formed in clouds of gas and dust, known as nebulae
stars
a cloud of gas (hydrogen) and dust in space
nebula
glows brightly because the gas in it is energized by the stars that have already formed within it
Emission Nebula
starlight reflects on the grains of dust in a nebula
reflection nebula
dense clouds of molecular hydrogen which partially or completely absorb the light from stars behind them
Dark Nebula
are the outer layers of a star that are lost when the star changes from a red giant to a white dwarf
Planetary nebula
luminous globe of gas producing its own heat and light by nuclear reactions
star
born from nebulae and consist mostly of hydrogen and helium gas
star
faintest stars
red dwarf
example of an emission nebula
orion nebula
smallest mass possible for a star
8%
also called as large planet
brown dwarfs
objects with less than critical mass shine
brown dwarfs
large bright star with a cool surface
red giant
they are very bright because they are very large
red giant
very large stars (red giants) are often called
super giants
have diameters between 10 and 100 times that of the sun
red giant
these stars gave diameters up to 1000 times that of the sun and have luminosities often 1M times greater than the sun
super giants
very cool, faint and small stars approximately one tenth the mass and diameter of the sun
red dwarf
examples of red dwarf
Proxima Centauri
Barnard’s Star
very small, hot star, the last stage in the life cycle of a star like the sun
white dwarf
explosive death of a star
supernova
2 general types of supernova
type 1: occur in binary star systems in which gas from one star falls on to a white dwarf, causing it to explode
type 2: occur in stars ten times or more massive as the sun, which suffer runway internal nuclear reactions at the ends of their lives leaving a neutron star or black holes
composed mainly of neutrons and are produced when a supernova exploded, forcing the protons and electrons to combine
neutron stars
form from massive stars at the end of their lifetimes
blackhole
nothing can escape from it, even light, due to its gravitational pull
blackholes
