Universe

and
Solar System
•Cosmology
is the branch of science that studies the origin, evolution, and
fate of the universe.

Cosmogony
the branch of science that deals with the origin of the universe,
especially the solar system.
Different Hypotheses on the Origin of the
Universe

UNIVERSE
is large unimaginable expanse of gas , stars, dust,
clouds, and consists of planets and galaxies.
Big Bang Theory
• the leading explanation for how the universe began.
• the universe as we know its started with an infinitely
hot and dense single point that inflated and stretched
– first at unimaginable speeds, and then at a more
measurable rate – over the next 13.7 billion years to
the still-expanding cosmos that we know today.
Steady State/Infinite Universe Theory
• Matter is constantly created as the Universe expands but with a fixed
average density.
• In this universe model, matter is always created to form galaxies and
stars at the same speed as the old ones become destroyed. Their
relative distances and recession velocity increase to nullify the overall
change in density, There is no overall beginning or end for a steady
state universe.
• In this model, the matter density in the expanding space-time stays
constant as a reason for the ceaseless creation of matter.
Pulsating Universe Theory
• A variation of the Big Bang Theory, in which the Universe goes
through successive periods of expansion and contraction.
• At the end of the compression stage, when the Universe is
concentrated in a small volume of high density, there is probably a
“break-up” of the Universe, called a Bang.
• It is possible that the Universe functions in an infinite series of Big
Bangs that occur periodically-naturally and spontaneously – due to
the intrinsic properties of matter itself.
Solar System
Solar System
• Is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the
objects that orbit around it, either directly or indirectly.
• It is constant motion, with the planets and their moons, comets,
asteroids and other space objects revolving around the sun.
• The order of the planets in the solar system, starting nearest the sun
and working outward is the following: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and then the possible Planet Nine.
• The solar system extends from the sun, goes past the four inner
planets, through the asteroid belt to the four gas giants and on to the
disk-shaped Kuiper Belt and far beyond to the teardrop-shaped
heliopause.
Types of Planets in the Solar System
• The inner four planets closest to the sun — Mercury, Venus, Earth and
Mars — are often called the "terrestrial planets" because their
surfaces are rocky. Pluto also has a rocky, albeit frozen, surface but
has never been grouped with the four terrestrials.

• The four large outer worlds — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune —
are sometimes called the Jovian or "Jupiter-like" planets because of
their enormous size relative to the terrestrial planets. They're also
mostly made of gases like hydrogen, helium and ammonia rather than
of rocky surfaces, although astronomers believe some or all of them
may have solid cores.
• The Sun
• is by far the largest object in our solar system, containing 99.8% of the
solar system's mass. It sheds most of the heat and light that makes
life possible on Earth and possibly elsewhere. Planets orbit the sun in
oval-shaped paths called ellipses, with the sun slightly off-center of
each ellipse.
• Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and the smallest planet in the solar system — it is only a
little larger than Earth's moon. Mercury zips around the sun in only 88 days and because it is so
close to our star (about two-fifths the distance between Earth and the sun).

• Mercury experiences dramatic changes in its day and night temperatures. Mercury
temperatures can reach a scorching 840 F (450 C) in the day, which is hot enough to melt lead.
Meanwhile, on the night side, temperatures drop to minus 290 F (minus 180 C).

• Mercury's atmosphere is very thin and primarily composed of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium
and potassium. Because the atmosphere is so thin it cannot incoming meteors, its surface is
therefore pockmarked with craters, just like our moon.

• MERCURY FACTS
• - Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
• - Named for the messenger of the Roman gods
• - Diameter: 3,031 miles (4,878 km)
• - Orbit: 88 Earth days
• - Day: 58.6 Earth days
• - Number of moons: 0
• Venus is the second planet from the sun and is the hottest planet in the solar system. Its thick
atmosphere is extremely toxic and composed of sulfuric acid clouds, the planet is an extreme
example of the greenhouse effect.

• The average temperature on Venus' surface is 900 F (465 C). At 92 bar, the pressure at the surface
would crush and kill you. And oddly, Venus spins slowly from east to west, the opposite direction of
most of the other planets.

• Venus is sometimes referred to as Earth's twin as they are similar in size and radar images beneath
its atmosphere reveal numerous mountains and volcanoes. But beyond that, the planets could not
be more different.

• VENUS FACTS
• - Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
• - Named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty
• - Diameter: 7,521 miles (12,104 km)
• - Orbit: 225 Earth days
• - Day: 241 Earth days
• - Number of moons: 0
• Earth, our home planet, is the third planet from the sun. It is a water world
with two-thirds of the planet covered by water. Earth's atmosphere is rich in
nitrogen and oxygen and it is the only world known to harbor life.

• Earth rotates on its axis at 1,532 feet per second (467 meters per second) —
slightly more than 1,000 mph (1,600 kph) — at the equator. The planet zips
around the sun at more than 18 miles per second (29 km per second).

• EARTH FACTS
• - Name originates from "Die Erde," the German word for "the ground."
• - Diameter: 7,926 miles (12,760 km)
• - Orbit: 365.24 days
• - Day: 23 hours, 56 minutes
• - Number of moons: 1
• Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. It is a cold, desert-like planet covered in iron oxide dust that gives the
planet its signature red hue. Mars shares similarities with Earth: It is rocky, has mountains, valleys and
canyons, and storm systems ranging from localized tornado-like dust devils to planet-engulfing dust storms.

• Substantial scientific evidence suggests that Mars at one point billions of years ago was a much warmer,
wetter world, rivers and maybe even oceans existed. Although Mars' atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to
exist on the surface for any length of time, remnants of that wetter Mars still exist today. Sheets of water ice
the size of California lie beneath Mars' surface, and at both poles are ice caps made in part of frozen water.

• Scientists also think ancient Mars would have had the conditions to support life like bacteria and other
microbes. Hope that signs of this past life — and the possibility of even current lifeforms — may exist on the
Red Planet has driven numerous Mars missions and the Red Planet is now one of the most explored planets in
the solar system.

• MARS FACTS
• - Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
• - Named for the Roman god of war
• - Diameter: 4,217 miles (6,787 km)
• - Day: Just more than one Earth day (24 hours, 37 minutes)
• - Number of moons: 2 (Phobos and Deimos)
• Between Mars and Jupiter lies the asteroid belt. Asteroids are minor
planets, and according to NASA there are approximately between 1.1
and 1.9 million asteroids in the main asteroid belt larger than 0.6 miles
(1 km) in diameter and millions more smaller asteroids.

• The dwarf planet Ceres, about 590 miles (950 km) in diameter, resides
here. A number of asteroids have orbits that take them closer into the
solar system that sometimes lead them to collide with Earth or the
other inner planets.
• Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun and the largest planet in the solar system. The gas giant is more than
twice as massive as all the other planets combined, according to NASA.

• Its swirling clouds are colorful due to different types of trace gases including ammonia ice, ammonium
hydrosulfide crystals as well as water ice and vapor.

• A famous feature in its swirling clouds is Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a giant storm more than 10,000 miles
wide, first observed in 1831 by amateur astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe. It has raged at more than
400 mph for the last 150 years, at least.

• Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, and with 75 moons, including the largest moon in the solar
system, Ganymede.

• JUPITER FACTS
• - Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
• - Named for the ruler of the Roman gods
• - Diameter: 86,881 miles (139,822 km)
• - Orbit: 11.9 Earth years
• - Day: 9.8 Earth hours
• - Number of moons: 79 (53 confirmed, 26 provisional)
• Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun and is famous for its large and distinct ring system. Though
Saturn is not the only planet in the solar system with rings.

• When polymath Galileo Galilei first studied Saturn in the early 1600s, he thought it was an object
with three parts: a planet and two large moons on either side. Not knowing he was seeing a planet
with rings, the stumped astronomer entered a small drawing — a symbol with one large circle and
two smaller ones — in his notebook, as a noun in a sentence describing his discovery. More than
40 years later, Christiaan Huygens proposed that they were rings.

• The rings are made of ice and rock and scientists are not yet sure how they formed. The gaseous
planet is mostly hydrogen and helium and has numerous moons.

• SATURN FACTS
• - Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
• - Named for Roman god of agriculture
• - Diameter: 74,900 miles (120,500 km)
• - Orbit: 29.5 Earth years
• - Day: About 10.5 Earth hours
• - Number of moons: 82 (53 confirmed, 29 provisional)
• Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun and is a bit of an oddball.

• It has clouds made of hydrogen sulfide, the same chemical that makes rotten eggs smell so foul. It rotates from east to west like
Venus. But unlike Venus or any other planet, its equator is nearly at right angles to its orbit — it basically orbits on its side.

• Astronomers believe an object twice the size of Earth collided with Uranus roughly 4 billion years ago, causing Uranus to tilt. That tilt
causes extreme seasons that last 20-plus years, and the sun beats down on one pole or the other for 84 Earth-years at a time.

• The collision is also thought to have knocked rock and ice into Uranus' orbit. These later became some of the planet's 27 moons.
Methane in Uranus' atmosphere gives the planet its blue-green tint. It also has 13 sets of faint rings.

• Uranus holds the record for the coldest temperature ever measured in the solar system — minus 371.56 degrees F (minus 224.2
degrees C). The average temperature of Uranus is minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit (-195 degrees Celsius).

• URANUS FACTS
• - Discovery: 1781 by William Herschel (was originally thought to be a star)
• - Named for the personification of heaven in ancient myth
• - Diameter: 31,763 miles (51,120 km)
• - Orbit: 84 Earth years
• - Day: 18 Earth hours
• - Number of moons: 27
• Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun and is on average the coldest planet in the solar system.
The average temperature of Neptune at the top of the clouds is minus 346 degrees Fahrenheit
(minus 210 degrees Celsius).

• Neptune is approximately the same size as Uranus and is known for its supersonic strong winds.
The planet is more than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth.

• Neptune was the first planet predicted to exist by using math, rather than being visually detected.
Irregularities in the orbit of Uranus led French astronomer Alexis Bouvard to suggest some other
planet might be exerting a gravitational tug. German astronomer Johann Galle used calculations to
help find Neptune in a telescope. Neptune is about 17 times as massive as Earth and has a rocky
core.

• NEPTUNE FACTS
• - Discovery: 1846
• - Named for the Roman god of water
• - Diameter: 30,775 miles (49,530 km)
• - Orbit: 165 Earth years
• - Day: 19 Earth hours
• - Number of moons: 14
Astronomers had long suspected that a band of icy material known as the Kuiper Belt
existed past the orbit of Neptune extending from about 30 to 55 times the distance of
Earth to the sun, and from the last decade of the 20th century up to now, they have
found more than a thousand of such objects. Scientists estimate the Kuiper Belt is likely
home to hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 60 miles (100 km) wide, as well
as an estimated trillion or more comets.

Pluto, now considered a dwarf planet, dwells in the Kuiper Belt. It is not alone — recent
additions include Makemake, Haumea and Eris. Another Kuiper Belt object
dubbed Quaoar is probably massive enough to be considered a dwarf planet, but it has
not been classified as such yet. Sedna, which is about three-fourths the size of Pluto, is
the first dwarf planet discovered in the Oort Cloud. NASA's New Horizons mission
performed history's first flyby of the Pluto system on July 14, 2015.
• Pluto was once the ninth planet from the sun and is unlike any other planet in the solar system.

• It is smaller than Earth's moon; its orbit is highly elliptical, falling inside Neptune's orbit at some points and far beyond it at others; and Pluto's orbit
doesn't fall on the same plane as all the other planets — instead, it orbits 17.1 degrees above or below.

• It is smaller than Earth's moon; its orbit is highly elliptical, falling inside Neptune's orbit at some points and far beyond it at others; and Pluto's orbit
doesn't fall on the same plane as all the other planets — instead, it orbits 17.1 degrees above or below, taking 288 years to complete a single
orbit according to ESA.

• From 1979 until early 1999, Pluto had been the eighth planet from the sun. Then, on Feb. 11, 1999, it crossed Neptune's path and once again became the
solar system's most distant planet — until it was redefined as a dwarf planet. It's a cold, rocky world with a tenuous atmosphere.

• Scientists thought it might be nothing more than a hunk of rock on the outskirts of the solar system. But when NASA's New Horizons mission performed
history's first flyby of the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, it transformed scientists' view of Pluto.

• Pluto is a very active ice world that's covered in glaciers, mountains of ice water, icy dunes and possibly even cryovolcanoes that erupt icy lava made of
water, methane or ammonia.

• PLUTO FACTS
• - Discovery: 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh
• - Named for the Roman god of the underworld, Hades
• - Diameter: 1,430 miles (2,301 km)
• - Orbit: 248 Earth years
• - Day: 6.4 Earth days
• - Number of moons: 5