Universe

How much space is between planetary systems? I think the next closest one is Alpha Centauri. How far is that once you leave the solar system? I know that voyager spacecraft left our solar system and is somewhere in deep space; can it ever get to another solar system? or are they all just too far away?

The nearest star from our own is Proxima Centauri, just over 4 lightyears away.

Space between stars varies, the universe isn’t evenly distributed. How far is 4 lightyears? It’s about 23,513,999,300,000 miles away (that’s 23.5 trillion). As for planets, that’s hard, because planets are extremely difficult to see from Earth. In fact, they’re nearly impossible unless they cross in front of a star while it’s being observed or it’s large enough and bright enough that it couldn’t possibly be life-sustaining (even though that wasn’t your question). We only know of about a hundred or so planets outside our solar system. Most are gas giants, none are Earth-like, although we know that there must be countless planets we can’t see.

Voyager 1 is about 10 billion miles away from the Sun right now but it’s technically still within our solar system. When it passes beyond the boundary, I’m sure it’ll make the news. As for getting to another solar system, yes it’s possible, but not in our lifetime. It will continue to float through space forever, until something hits it and destroys it, or (highly unlikely) some force equal to its velocity outward will push inward and halt its motion entirely.

Interstellar travel and interstellar probes are impossible with today’s technology. You can throw a baseball in outer space and rest assured that it will travel 4 lightyears, but there’s no guarantee it will manage to hit Proxima Centauri, or any other solar system, at all.

http://Cosmology.com Origin & Creation of the Sun, Solar System, Planets, LIfe on Earth. http://BrainMind.com/Astrobiology.html

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Astronomers have a massive breakthrough as they discover a weird and very bright extraordinary object in the far reaches of our solar system. Is it a planet? Is it a block of ice? Whatever it is, it’s bigger than Pluto. Fascinating science video from BBC Horizon show ‘Bye Bye Planet Pluto.’

Duration : 0:3:53

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When we say milky way, is it what our solar system is called, what exactly is a galaxy and where is our place in it?
How many solar systems are there?

what our solar system is called – Our solar system is nestled inside a very large galaxy of stars called the Milky Way.

what exactly is a galaxy – A galaxy is a cluster of stars, nebulae, dark matter, and other astronomical objects.

where is our place in it? – The galaxy in which we live is probably a typical spiral galaxy, although recent research shows it has a small bar across the center, making it a barred spiral. It is an island of tens of billions of stars together with gas and dust.
It is roughly the shape of a "flying saucer", with a bulge in the middle of a flat disc. Stars and dust are arranged into spirals within the disc, which measures about 100,000 light years across. Ancient globular star clusters form a halo around the Galaxy.
We live near a star (the Sun) roughly half way out along the disc. When we look at the night sky we can see a mass of distant stars in the disc, partly hidden by clouds of dust. These stars we call the Milky Way, and this is how our galaxy gets its name. It is sometimes just called the Galaxy.
The Milky Way is the second largest galaxy in the small cluster to which it belongs.

How many solar systems are there? – Several other stars have disk-shaped clouds around them that seem to be solar systems in formation. In 1983, an infrared telescope in space photographed such a disk around Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. This discovery represented the first direct evidence of such material around any star except the sun. In 1984, astronomers photographed a similar disk around Beta Pictoris, a star in the southern constellation Pictor.
By the early 2000’s, astronomers had discovered that more than 50 stars like our sun have planets orbiting them. In almost all cases, they found only one planet per star. All the planets found are probably gaseous with no solid surface.

So I installed a solar system I bought at harbor freight and was planning on getting the rest of the panels later. It says to leave the regulator on only when your at home. I was thinking what is the difference between my system and the $10,000 system that a solar company would install in houses.

The harbor freight type system is intended to charge a battery, and is low power. It’s good for experimenting, but is not very efficient, and not very powerful. I’ve seen an experimenter say that their 15-watt panel only gave him 5 watts in bright sunlight. If it’s the amorphous silicon thin film type of panel, it wears out quickly, dropping to a fraction of its original output in a few years.

The $10,000 type whole house system usually has no batteries, and instead ties to the electric grid. There is generally a 10-year warranty on anything going wrong, and the panels themselves, the most expensive part of the system, have a performance warranty of 25 years. The nameplate rating on such a system may be 4000 watts, and you can actually expect to get at least 3400 watts, usually.

Neither type of system is easily expandable. The big system can be made expandable later, but that involves spending money up front, and the final system will likely cost more than if the larger system was installed in the first place. An extra panel or two could be added to the small system, since it is generally underpowered anyway, but otherwise expansion means getting a completely new system and running it alongside the first.

For ultimate cost effectiveness, the big system is maybe 1/8 the price of the smaller system, per watt.

Originally saw this video here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtKhDYbsuyg – but I thought it would work better with a little music.

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Geologists generally agree that the Earth has been hit many times by other objects in the solar system, and most predict that another object will again strike the Earth in the near future. Does our knowledge of the solar system give us a better chance of surviving such a catastrophe? How? 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?

I think you need to split this up into several different questions. And some of these don’t have a definite answer.

Obviously, knowing the orbits of various asteroids and comets makes it possible to predict when and if they will hit the earth, although it’s hard to include everything that may affect their orbits. That doesn’t really help us to survive a major strike, except that people could leave the area when it gets close enough to tell exactly where it will hit. I don’t think that there are any serious predictions about collisions in the future (like in 2012), because that’s too far out to calculate.

We have found out enough about the other planets in the last few years to know that none of them can support earth-type life, and we haven’t found anything to indicate life on the moon or Mars, but there is a lot of life here surviving in what we think of as difficult conditions, so there may be something on other planets or moons. We don’t really know how life started here, so we don’t know what conditions are necessary.

How much solar system setup for running power a home might costs ? I am from India and their are too many power cuts , so i have decided to setup solar system instead of buy a generetor or invertor , and can any one tell me which company in India supply Solar system setup for home

I don’t know about companies in India, but what you might do is look around for someone who has a system, then ask where they got it. If you have trouble finding anyone with a system, maybe it’s not a very good deal.

If the home is in a less-developed area, and all you would be powering is a light, and a radio or TV at night, then you might get by with the kind of system they use in some parts of Africa. It has a 40 or 80-watt panel, and basically a car battery. The appliances run right off the battery, and no charger or other devices are used. This sort of system costs $200-300 when implemented by a nonprofit organization – I don’t know what the cost if you were to try to set it up, yourself.

On the other hand, it sounds like you’re already connected to a power grid, and maybe already have a heavy appetite for energy in your house. A solar system with batteries tends to cost about $15 a watt in the USA, when hundreds or thousands of watts are involved. A system for a modest off-grid cabin will cost anywhere from $5000 to $30000, depending on the size.

Why was Pluto demoted? What is the Kaiper belt? Do you know your way around our galactic neighborhood?

Duration : 0:4:20

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The Solar System’s birth was far from peaceful. Witness the spectacular explosion known as the “Big Bang”.

Naked Science: Birth of the Solar System :
TUES NOVEMBER 6 8P et/p : http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/nakedscience/?source=4003

Duration : 0:2:55

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