By Jose Gonzalez
This is what happens when gas explodes…
The Solar System is thought to have formed from a cloud of gas and dust in space one Sunday afternoon 4600 millions years ago. Its boundaries are defined by the point where the Sun’s gravitational pull stops moving things from where you last left them (this is about 1.5 million light years - almost half way to our nearest star).
Throughout history, entire cultures have become fascinated by this concept. To feed this addiction, the Babylonians had to build towers to watch the heavens more closely, and to see if what the Chinese had written hundreds of years before them was true. Since then, many celebrities who might have otherwise gone on to reach their full potential have fallen prey to this Venus fly-trap of a hobby. Copernicus for one, who really upset everybody by noticing that things were indeed moving, but not the way everybody had thought. And then there was Newton, who constantly tried to set his clock by the planets. And Arthur C. Clarke who, in a moment of madness, wrote that the Solar System is made up of 2 planets and much debris.
The sun is bigger than the Empire State Building,
and hotter than a boiled egg!
This is the star we call Sol (Sun) after which our system is named. Ordinary stars are made up of gas and held together by gravity. They are essentially huge nuclear reactions, which occur from the fusion of hydrogen into helium. Our medium-sized star is expected to last another 5 billion years in its present state, after which time it will swell up and become a red giant star, swallowing up Mercury and Venus - and burning the Empire State building to a crisp! What it will do shortly after that does not really matter.
Had the sun’s mass been 12 times greater, it would collapse much sooner under gravity and blow out its outer layers to become a supernova, shining 10 billion times brighter than it does now. Had then the mass of the remains of the supernova explosion been between x times greater and y times smaller than the mass of the sun, it would have swiftly turned into a neutron star (incidentally: one with the same mass as the sun makes a cute little 20 km ball). This is very worrying, because neutron stars are essentially black holes (stars with a gravitational field so vast that nothing can escape from them, be it particles or radiation). So we really have a lot to be thankful for.
* We only tell little children that stars are pentagon-shaped and come out at night for their own protection.
Mercury is beyond repair!
This is the second smallest planet of the Solar System. Its scorched surface is almost entirely covered by craters. Mercury is only visible for a short period - during sunrise and sunset - when the sun falls below the horizon. The temperature here is extreme: due to the planet’s slow rotation (about 54 Earth days per turn) the outward face can fall well below -300 Fahrenheit whilst the sun-facing side is boiling at an incredible +800 Fahrenheit!
Understandably, this unexpected discovery of rotation caused Dr Isaac Asimov much displeasure, since he had written The Dying Night (P 1956) - based on the assumption that Mercury keeps one side permanently away from the sun - only to be told 9 years later by astronomers that they were terribly sorry but they now realised they had got it all wrong to begin with.
* Naturally, Mr Asimov refused to amend his story.
It always rains on Venus
Venus is visible from the Earth to the trained eyeball. The atmosphere of Earth’s sister planet is always surrounded by dense impenetrable clouds of sulphuric acid. Curiously, this planet rotates in the opposite way to the rest of the planets in the solar System. This may be due to a collision rather than individualism.
Venus rotates slower than all of the planets. However, unlike Mercury, it does not have the extreme temperature problem, because its lung-rattling winds quickly disperse the heat around the planet, so that every rock can share and enjoy the +900 Fahrenheit experience.
* It is no wonder then that nobody lives here.
Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams (1952-2001)
The Red Planet is notorious for causing wars
Early star-gazers from the time when sandals were fashionable claimed that the planet Mars was red, and were hit with big sticks for this unspeakable blasphemy. In 1975 NASA’s Viking probe landed on the Martian surface and confirmed the fact that the planet’s thin atmosphere had a distinctive pink/reddish tinge to it (oops).
Mars is a fraction under half the Earth’s size. Its atmosphere is composed mainly of carbon dioxide, but has a detectable amount of water vapour and a hint of ozone. It seems likely that the planet’s polar caps are a mixture of dry ice and water ice.
2 small moons orbit the planet (Phobos and Deimos). Were water still around in the form of seas and rivers, judging the tides would be nothing short of a nightmare.
* Incidentally: Total Recall was filmed here.
Jupiter is ideal for surfing
Jupiter is a good example of a planet. It took Nasa’s Galileo spacecraft 3 years to reach this sexy planet. There is no need for the Sun here: this baby radiates up to 3 times more energy than it receives from the Sun. Its internal heat (about 5 suns) keeps all that nice hydrogen on the surface in a liquid state. The famous
‘eye’ is actually an ongoing, self-feeding storm about 3 times bigger than the Earth.
Jupiter is over 300 times bigger than the Earth (about 1000 times greater in volume). Its surface magnetic field is about 25 times greater than ours…
* Here everybody has trouble getting out of bed.
Saturn is famous for its rings of CRAP
(Crystalized Rubbish And Particles)
Saturn generates cyclones that make the ones in North America seem like a short-lived sneeze in comparison. This planet’s density is marvellous: Saturn would float in a big enough ocean! More amazing still is the fact that Saturn’s surface gravity is lower that the Earth’s. It is these combined factors, together with the planet’s speedy rotation, that cause Saturn to look like a fat egg. And all this in turn contributes to the formation of the famous rings.
* This is a gas giant, so we are still in sun-stroke territory. Wear a hat if you visit.
Neptune: no place for a kite…
The weather in Neptune is atrocious. Similarly to the other gas giants, this planet suffers from serious wind: its equatorial jet stream approaches supersonic speeds! The planet was found by a mathematical equation, which explained Uranus’s strange orbit… which became less strange after the equation was formulated. Like the other gas giants, this planet radiates more heat than it receives. There is also a giant dark spot about the size of the Earth, which happens to be nothing less than a storm…
* There is a methane-cloud problem in this planet, unless you happen to like methane, in which case there isn’t a problem at all.
Uranus: a tricky pronunciation
Uranus was the first planet to be discovered using a telescope, by a German musician living in England. He proposed the planet be called Georgium Sidus, after king George III, in order to get more gigs at the Royal Court. Thankfully, he International Astronomic Community (who had a better sense of humour) prevented this absurdity from happening… and came up with their own name.
Pluto
Nobody really knows anything about this planet, which has now been de-ranked into a ‘dwarf’ planet (or is that a midget planet? I can’t remember which one…). This is not even a real picture of Pluto (the original looks ridiculous). It was named after Percival Lowe (PL), who is not a God (or a Walt Disney cartoon) but did contribute to its discovery.
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Disclaimer
The cutting-edge facts contained in this site are based on thorough research. However, I would not trust any of it if I were you.
Resources
- Pictures of Venus, Mars, Neptune and Pluto “Courtesy Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Copyright (c) California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. All rights reserved.
- Pictures of Sun, Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus from Bill Arnet’s excellent site.
- The Universe, Robin Kerrod, Book Club Associates, London 1977
- The Universe for Beginners, Felix Pirani, Icon Books Ltd, Cambridge 1993
- The Wordsworth Pocket Encyclopedia, Wordsworth Editions, Hertfordshire 1993
- Orbits 3.0 Voyage through The Solar System, Softkey Multimedia
Thanks also to National Aeronautics and Space Administration for doing what they do, and for putting stars in all our eyes…
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