Universe

I’m taking a class in the astronomy department this spring and two are offered: "The Solar System" and "The Cosmic System". What’s the difference?

A cosmic system consists of a galaxy or galaxies or the entire Universe. The solar system consists of a star, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, gases and what not. Take the Cosmic Systems, you may learn a lot more than if you were to take a course of only solar systems.

Our Amazing Solar System

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What other benefit is it to know the solar system better? How can the position of sun, moon, and planets help us to know our position on Earth? How does knowing the conditions on other planets help us to appreciate Earth? Could there be life on other bodies in our solar system? Why or why not?

Focussing on your catastrophe part of the question… I came up with this from the NASA site…it’s really talking about why they are going back to the Moon and then Mars…

"Returning to the most important reason for a new lunar program, dispersal of the human species, the most promising site for such dispersal is obviously Mars, now known to have an atmosphere and water. Mars itself is obviously a fascinating object for exploration. But it may even now be marginally habitable for astronaut visits, and in the very long view, might be "terraformed," or engineered to have a more Earth-like atmosphere and climate. This was described in Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy, Red Mars and its successors Green and Blue Mars. A second Earth, so to speak, would greatly improve our chances of surviving cosmic catastrophes. "
It was written 14 Jan 2008

Yakko Wakko and Dot singalong song to the names of the planets… back when Pluto was a planet…

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I am writing a lesson plan on the solar system and need help on how to build a solar system out of styrofoam balls and clothes hangers, or however that works. Help!

you can make one on your computer by getting an application free here: http://www.sciencefair-projects.org/solarsystem/solarsystem.html

or do this for a real one:

Materials:

(All of these materials can be found at a local craft store)

1 big styrofoam ball for the sun (about 8 inches in diameter).
9 smaller styrofoam balls of different sizes to match the planets.
10 wooden dowels (read the instructions below to determine what size).
1 box (about 3 x 3 x 3 feet).
black thread.
pins.
clay (a small amount).
glue.
paint (black for the dowels and box; yellow for the sun & stars; other colors for the planets).
construction paper (red, white, or yellow for rings around planets).
1 cork.

1. First, find a good box. It should be big enough inside to hold 9 planets revolving around the sun.

2. Tape the box shut on three sides, leaving one side open. Remove the flaps of the box from the side that is open.

3. Use black paint or construction paper to cover the inside of the box. This will be the universe. Paint small yellow or white stars as a background for your universe.

4. Get styrofoam balls for the sun and planets. Make sure the sizes are proportional to the real solar system, but on a much smaller scale. Paint the styrofoam sun yellow. Paint the planets whatever color you want, but try to remember the color of real planets (blue for Earth, red for Mars, etc.).

5. Paint all of the dowels black, this way they will blend in with the background of the universe box.

6. Cut 2 dowels, a short one and a long one, and poke them into the cork. Use a nail to make the holes if the cork is too tough. Glue the dowels so they stay in better. It should look like this:

7. Make sure the total length is long enough to fit snugly inside the box and leave about 2 inches on the top dowel so it sticks through the box. By having this stick through the top, you can turn the dowel and make your planets rotate around the sun.

8. Now, slide the sun up through the bottom, longer end of the dowel.

9. Poke a hole through the top of the box. From the inside of the box, slide the top end of the dowel through the hole. Secure the bottom of the dowel with clay. Glue the clay to the box if it moves around too much. So far, it should look like this:

10. Now you’re ready to insert the planets. Cut the remaining 9 dowels at different lengths. These will be the distance from the sun. If you make the lengths equal, all the planets will crash into each other.

11. Insert all 9 dowels into the cork, so they form a "pinwheel." Glue the dowels for a stronger hold. Here’s what it would look like from the top:

12. Take the thread and tie it on the end of these "pinwheel" dowels. Tie the other end of the thread to a pin. Poke the pin into the styrofoam planets. Make sure to place the planets in the correct order based on distance from the sun. It should now look something like the picture below. (Note: In these pictures the dowels are white so you can see them, but your dowels are supposed to be painted black).

13. Cut construction paper to make rings around the planets that need them. Secure the rings to the planets with pins or glue.

14. By twisting the dowel that is sticking out through the top of the box, you can bring your solar system to life.

to help you scale your project I’v attached a link: http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/

We just signed with the pool company today and they will begin the work to install an inground pool in our yard. I’ve asked that they put in the necessary plumbing so that we can add the solar system later (paying approx $400 for 3 pipes?). How difficult is it to do this? Is this something relatively simple/straightforward? I should add that we have a computer control panel, so according to our pool man, we should be able to hook up to it and have it controlled remotely. So my question is, once it’s stubbed for solar, what are the next steps and best cost approach? Any guidance is greatly appreciated!

I installed my own solar system as soon as they finished our pool. I didn’t have them plumb anything for it. There is only one valve you’ll need and one backflow preventer and they both come with the solar system. Then you just cut into the return line and add the valve which will direct the water to your panels or bypass them. Then add a "Tee" for the water to come back from the panels. Nothing to it. And by the way, instead of hooking our solar system up to the control panel, we chose to put in an automatic thermostat control valve.

More about this programme:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qyxfb

In this spell-binding series, Professor Brian Cox visits some of the most stunning locations on Earth to describe how the laws of nature have carved natural wonders across the Solar System.

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My study guide for this exam for college says….

During the star formation process, a disk of material forms around the proto-sun. This disk is where planets will form. What properties of the solar system are indicative of the planets forming from a rotating disk?

I need to know if the answer would be….Heating, Spinning, Flattening…Does anybody know if that would be right?

Accretion disc planetary formation scenario = Generally speaking; the planets rotate around their central star in the same plane of the elliptic, they have nearly circular orbits, their orbital paths are in the same direction around the central star, their orbits do not intersect.

Each point can be elaborated on as to why this feature is indicative of the rotating disc model for Solar System creation.

(Pluto is no longer classified as a planet, but it’s there for size comparison. As for the Sun, it was never a planet but is here for the very same reason.)

I always wanted to see a one-by-one comparison of the sizes of the planets, so I put the numbers into my 3d program. These are all correct proportions (of size, not distance).

Tamen, the final planet, was a world we created when we were children. Obsessed with size, we said it was 1,000 times larger than Earth’s sun (this was actually only 100 times larger, because 1000 made the sun so small you couldn’t really see it). We later learned that such a planet would have to much gravity that not only would no living thing survive, but you may get a nice little black hole started right there in the planet!

Wow… and I just realized that had the sun have been sitting where it is in this video, it’d be sucked into the planet instantly.

*Music Appropriately taken from season 1&2 of the BBC’s Red Dwarf.

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I know the scientific understandings of how the solar system was started, by why, and who/what created the solar system? Explain yourself. If you think it was god, who is god? Explain yourself.

According to the nebular hypothesis theory, our sun and planets formed from interstellar gas and dust. The original nebula collapsed into a protostar (which became our sun) and a dust disk. Various eddies and instabilities within the disk led to clumps of dust, ices, and gas sticking together forming protoplanets. After a series of collisions, the larger protoplanets absorbed the smaller ones, until we have the ones we have today.

However, there is some disagreement as to the exact process of formation (the devil is in the details after all). Newly discovered solar systems have been found to have quite a few ‘hot Jupiters’ (ie gas giants in close orbits around parent stars). Also, there is disagreement on how gas giants themselves form. However, the basic mechanism, that protoplanetary disks spawn planets, is not in doubt. Similar disks have been found around many young stars in the Orion Nebula, the star Vega, Fomalhaut, and Beta Piscatorum.