The Solar System

• A star is born from a spinning, collapsing gas cloud

• Planets form from the surrounding disk of matter
─ explains their codirectional motion and coplanarity
• Moons and rings: form around giant planets from leftover debris trapped in the planet’s
gravity
• Earth’s moon is too large for an inner planet; believed to be formed from a planetary
collision
• Asteroid belt: rocks between Mars & Jupiter that couldn’t coalesce due to gaps in the
belt arising from Jupiter’s proximity
• Kuiper Belt: a ring of icy debris beyond the planets, where Sun’s gravity is too weak for
clumping
• Dwarf planets: solar-orbiting spheres that didn’t clear out their orbits; eg, Pluto
• Oort Cloud: a spherical shell of icy debris beyond Kuiper Belt (the remnants of collisions;
home of long-period comets)

Galaxies
• Galaxies: gravitationally-bound systems of stars and gas
• Galaxies come in different sizes (containing millions to billions of stars) and shapes
(spiral, elliptical, irregular)
• The Milky Way: a giant spiral galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars (including
our Sun)
• The bright strip of stars in the sky is our view of the Milky Way’s disk, from our location
in the outer disk
• Most galaxies are in loosely-bound systems (ie, groups, clusters and superclusters)
• Giant galaxies form via ‘galactic cannibalism’ of smaller galaxies
• The Universe contains at least a few hundred billion galaxies, distributed in a web-like
pattern

The Universe
• Hubble’s Law: the larger a galaxy’s recessional velocity, the further its distance
• Tells us the Universe’s expansion rate and age (~14 Gyrs)
• Since our galaxy is not unique, all galaxies must be receding from each other; therefore,
the Universe is expanding
• Big Bang theory: The Universe expanded into being from a single point
• Big Bang proof: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Studies of distant galaxies reveal that the Universe’s expansion is accelerating, despite
the inward pull of gravity

Dark Matter and Dark Energy

• Only ~5% of the Universe is composed of matter that we can detect (stars, planets, us,
gas clouds, etc)
• Dark matter (~24%): most likely Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS); might
find with sensitive detectors
• Proof of dark matter: gravitational lensing

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 • Dark Energy: responsible for the acceleration of the Universe (comprises 72% of the
Universe, but its nature is unknown)

Exoplanets
• Earth-like planets: Earth-like in mass and size and in their system’s Habitable Zone
• Planetary Transit method: uses the eclipsing of a star by its planets to yield the planets’
size, temperature, orbital radius and period
• Conclusions to date: our Galaxy contains hundreds of billions of exoplanets, billions of
which are Earth-like
• The future: Earth-like planets will be listened to and their spectra will be investigated for
habitability and signs of life

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