The Universe: The Outer Planets

The Universe : THE OUTER PLANETS
History Channel
Season. 01 Episode. 11

http://www.history.com/shows/the-universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Universe_%28TV_series%29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osWm8QygoH4


EXCERPTS:


Pluto:
It has the largest moon in proportion to its own size.
It also has the most inclined and eccentric orbit.
Its orbit is shape like the egg,
Pluto's orbit causes it to get significantly closer to the Sun
and then further away from the Sun.


At its closest, pluto is 2.7 billion miles from Earh.
Diameter = 1485 miles (half the width of US)
Orbit = 248 Earth years
Day length = 6.4 Earth Days.
150 lbs = 10 lbs on Pluto


We can hardly see this thing,
Even with the Hubble Space Telescope,
We get maybe four pixels across, may be 12 pixels total.
(some parts are darker some parts are brighter.)


1000 times dim light of Sun comparing to Earth.
Temp. -388 degrees F.


Scientists would love to chip away at the surface of Pluto
because hidden with its rocks
is a whole missing chapter in the history of our solar system.


Out surface of the Pluto
You don't' have an atmosphere,
You don't have glaciers,
You don't have wind,
You don't have rain,
You don't have erosion,
the only dominant feature that you see on the surface
is probably gonna be a lot of impact craters.


10th Planet, ERIS
it is 5% bigger than Pluto.
It's probably made out of the same materials
Rock in the inside, Ice on the outside.
and a little thin layer of frost on the very outside.
It has moon like Pluto.


The Kuiper belt is a 3.5 billion mile wide region
in the outer solar system near Pluto.


The result of the IAU (2006, Prague) vote stipulate that
a planet is a spherical object that orbits the Sun
and clears out the neighborhood around its orbital path.

The new definition would leave Clyde Tombaugh's
great icy discovery out in the cold.
Pluto's 76 year reign as the 9th planet was over.

Our solar system would now officially consist
of only 8 planets.

Objects like Pluto and Eris were given the new classification,
'Dwarf Planets.'

Dwarf planets posses the same characteristics as planets,
but do not have a clear orbital path.

Under the new definition, Ceres,
the largest asteroid in our solar system is also a dwarf planet.


Some Scientists Does Not Believe 'Dwarf Planets'
"The IAU vote was meant to settle the debate on what constitute a planet,
Bur many scientists refuse to accept the outcome."


The NEW HORIZONS mission
will be the first spacecraft ever to visit Pluto.

Even with its unprecedented speed
(12 miles per second, will cross Jupiter in 13 months, and 8 years after to reach Pluto)
New Horizons won't reach Pluto until July of 2015.


URANUS
1.6 BILLION MILES FROM EARTH
DIAMETER: NEARLY 32,000 MILES
ORBIT: 84 EARTH YEARS
DAY LENGTH: 17.2 HOURS
150 LBS = 133 LBS ON URANUS


AT an angle of 98 degrees,
the planet is spinning on its side.
(40 earth years one hemisphere to Sun, and other Off-side of Sun)

Uranus owes its cool bluish-green color to methane.
The methane absorbs red and orange wavelengths from sunlight
but reflect blue and green.


Uranus rings are dim and thin.
comprised of dark rocky dust.


27 Moons to Uranus.


NEPTUNE
2.68 BILLION MILES FROM EARTH
DIAMETER ROUGHLY 30,000 MILES
ORBIT: 165 EARTH YEARS.
DAY LENGTH: 16.1 EARTH HOURS.
150 LBS = 169 LBS ON NEPTUNE


"Like all the outer planets,
Neptune rotates much faster than Earh,
and this rapid spin helps to create violent winds.

"The highest winds recorded on any planet in the solar system
are on Neptune. we have winds sometimes over 100 miles per hour.

with speeds 2 to 3 times faster than in Jupiter's blustery Great Red Spot.


Neptune has complex system of moons.
13 have been discovered so far.
Some of Neptune's moon may have originally formed elsewhere in the solary system.

COOLEST OBJECT IN SOLAR SYSTEM
Neptune's largest moon, Triton
is roughly the size of Earth's Moon.
It is the coldest object in our solar system,
ever observed by astronomers,
even more frigid than Pluto
-390 degrees.

Triton, spew a mixture of liquid nitrogen, methane and ammonia.

But due to planning and transit times,
it will be at least two decades
before we approach Uranus and Neptune again.
"We've had discussions but there are no current plans."

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The Universe: Life & Death of a Star

The Universe : LIFE & DEATH OF A STAR
History Channel
Season. 01 Episode. 10

http://www.history.com/shows/the-universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Universe_%28TV_series%29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OtkgXnMErc


EXCERPTS:

PILLARS OF CREATION
7000 LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH
EAGLE NEBULA


To form a star like our Sun
which is a million miles across,
it takes a clump of gas and dust
100 times the size of our Solar System.
These clouds start off their lives bitterly cold,
with temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
But as gravity fragments and compresses them,
the heat begins to soar.
[is this explanation equivalent to religious sayings (imam Ali) that Universe is made up of water. Clouds Cold - doesn't resemble to water?!]


"Gravity want to CRUSH the star down to the middle.
For stars, nuclear fusion provides the rope in the form of pressure."
(nuclear fusion of star try to resist this gravity to not be crushed)


"Red Dwarfs are very common in the universe"

"The more massive stars live much shorter lives than the less massive stars."


"it won't be able to fuse that helium into heavier elements,
like carbon and oxygen,
until the core gets sufficiently hot.
And that's because it's harder to get the helium nuclei close enough together
for the strong nuclear force to take over,
grab them, and cause them to fuse together.


"When it reaches 180 million degrees, it can start fusing helium into carbon,
in a desperate gamble to survive."

"The star which took 10 billion years to burn through its hydrogen,
now powers through its supply of helium in a mrere 100 years.

"it runs out of H, starts fusing He,
runs out of He, attempts to fuse C and will fail."


As the star the size of our Sun dies,
it eject its outer layers.
(due to loose gravitational force, and shapes like Planetary Nebula)

"The white dwarf has about 300,000 times the mass of the Earth,
compressed into a volume the size of the Earth.
If you had just a teaspoon full of material, it would weigh several tons."


"The White Dwarf is the final stage in the life of a Sun-like star.
But it's not quite dead yet."


White dwarfs are retired stars, lives billions of years on the energy which they saved in their youth.


Thermonuclear runaway
Type 1 super nova


supernova happens twice in each galaxy per century.


"It goes through its normal life fusing H into He,
then Hel int C and O, then O into Ne and Mg
and then Si and Sulpher.
and then Iron (Fe).


Supernovas are in fact source of heavy elements.

"All the iron you see everywhere came from exploding stars.
And in fact all the elements heavier than iron directly or indirectly were made by
exploding stars."


"If you could trace your ancestry back to its earliest reaches,
you would find an exploding star in your family tree."


"The elements in your body - not generically but specifically -
heavier than H and He,
came from long-dead stars.
The Ca in you bones the O that you breathe,
the Fe in your bloodcells, the C in most your cells...
All those things were created in stars through nuclear reactions.
and then ejected by supernovae."


NEUTRON STAR
"Compared to normal stars, neutron stars are cosmic pebbles.
They can be as small as 10 miles acros.
... extremely dense object.
one teaspoon full of neutron star material would weigh a billion tons."


"Black holes are basically gravity's victory over mass."


"In the fall of 2006,
astronomers observed the largest stellar explosion
ever witnessed by Man.
240 million light years away from Earh,
a massive star blew itself apart.

A normal supernova comes from the explosion of a star
10 times more massive than our Sun.
Incredibly, supernova 2006GY, as astronomers have dubbed it,
seems to have signaled the death of a star
150 or even 200 items more massive."


Fortunately, the chances of this (colliding stars) happening are slim,
because the Sun is in a very uncrowded part of the Milky Way.


"Blackholes, neutron stars and white dwarfs,
all represent the end of remarkable stellar lives."


BROWN DWARF
not quite planets, not quite stars.
"brown dwarfs are basically failed stars."


PROTOSTAR
MAIN SEQUENCE

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