Extras
Meteors
A brilliant meteor, called a fireball, may weigh many kilograms, but even a meteor weighing less than a gram can produce a beautiful trail. Some of these visitors from space are large enough to survive (at least partially) their trip through the atmosphere and impact the ground as meteorites. Fireballs are sometimes followed by trails of light that persist for up to 30 minutes; some, called bolides, explode with a loud thunderous sound.
Meteoroids
The term meteor comes from the Greek meteoron, meaning phenomenon in the sky. It is used to describe the streak of light produced as matter in the solar system falls into Earth's atmosphere creating temporary incandescence resulting from atmospheric friction. This typically occurs at heights of 80 to 110 kilometers (50 to 68 miles) above Earth's surface. The term is also used loosely with the word meteoroid referring to the particle itself without relation to the phenomena it produces when entering the Earth's atmosphere. A meteoroid is matter revolving around the sun or any object in interplanetary space that is too small to be called an asteroid or a comet. Even smaller particles are called micrometeoroids or cosmic dust grains, which includes any interstellar material that should happen to enter our solar system. A meteorite is a meteoroid that reaches the surface of the Earth without being completely vaporized.
Meteorites
Meteorites have proven difficult to classify, but the three broadest groupings are stony, stony iron, and iron. The most common meteorites are chondrites, which are stony meteorites. Radiometric dating of chondrites has placed them at the age of 4.55 billion years, which is the approximate age of the solar system. They are considered pristine samples of early solar system matter, although in many cases their properties have been modified by thermal metamorphism or icy alteration.
Comets
Now we know that comets are lumps of ice and dust that periodically come into the center of the solar system from somewhere in its outer reaches, and that some comets make repeated trips. When comets get close enough to the Sun, heat makes them start to evaporate. Jets of gas and dust form long tails that we can see from Earth. These tails can sometimes be millions of miles long.
In 1985-1986, a spacecraft called Giotto visited the most famous comet, Halley, on Halley's most recent visit to the inner solar system.
Asteroids are tiny, airless rocky worlds orbiting around the sun and most of them are too small to be called planets, yet, some asteroids are too big too not to be acknowledged and are known as planetoids or minor planets. The mass asteroids are puny but despite their size, asteroids can be deadly. The earth has been hit by many asteroids in the past and can potentially be hit by some again. That's one reason why scientists study asteroids and find ways to avoid them from hitting us or at least predict if they are coming.
A comet is a small icy body that travels in an elliptical orbit around the sun. Halley’s Comet, or 1P/Halley, is the most well-known “periodic” comet that orbits the solar system and returns to Earth’s vicinity approximately every seventy-six years. It is one of the only comets that can be seen from Earth that is visible to the naked-eye, and can appear twice in one’s lifetime. The comet’s last visit was in the year 1986, and it is calculated to return mid-2061.
Now that the history is covered, I can get down to the nitty gritty of how they are able to appear in the sky. Auroras are caused by the collision of e...
In Kate Chopin’s “The Storm”, sin happens to make a bond stronger than before. The story illustrates a couple who seems to be similar to the nature surrounding them. Both Calixta and Bobinôt happen to be going through a stormy period in their marriage. Although they are going through this turbulent period, Bobinôt’s actions display his imperfect but unconditional love for his wife. Bobinôt may not be the husband Calixta dreams of but throughout the story he illustrates that it does not matter what happens, the storm will pass and he will love her no matter what.
The Kuiper Belt is an icy-bodied disc shapes area of the Solar System. Kuiper Belt has a circular shape, to be exact, it is a curved plane. It is over 4.5 to 7.4 billion kilometers from Sun. This is roughly 30 to 50 times the distance of Earth from Sun. The Kuiper Belt has been said to resemble the Asteroid Belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. The difference between the Kuiper Belt and the Asteroid Belt is that the bodies are icier due to their distance from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt objects includes Pluto and other comets that orbit beyond Neptune. Most Kuiper Belt objects are made up of frozen volatiles such as methane, water and ammonia. In 1950 astronomer Gerald Kuiper predicted the existence of the Kuiper Belt and the find was named
...l meteorites that collide with the earth often leave a crater or some type of fragments left behind. But this event was only getting remarkable by the day. One thing that really stunned scientists as they searched were the tree patterns. In fact, the forest fall left a butterfly pattern which was significant but yet oddly strange. According to Ol’khovatov, the forest-fall disappears just a few kilometers to the west of the epicenter, and the farther to the west are where rare fallen trees exist. And similar to what was stated above, there were attempts to stimulate the forest fall by a meteoroid explosion. Though, the results were remarkable they knew from large observational data-set that a meteoroid would disintegrate before impacting with the earth. In order for the trees to have a significant pattern the meteoroid had to be an enormous block of super-explosive.
“The Storm” may be interpreted as a condemnation of societal constraints upon feminine sexuality. As Calixta “unfastened her white sacque at the throat” she was taking off chains of oppression of her sexuality. When Calixta “nervously began to gather up from the floor the lengths of a cotton sheet which she had been sewing” she is putting her duties away for pleasure and is finally going to fulfill her birthright for passionate sex. In “The Storm” Calixta is a shameless married woman who “lifted her pretty chin in the air and laughed aloud” after committing an adulteress act. Kate Chopin had a unique style of writing for her time.
Most meteors burn up when they enter Earth’s atmosphere. There are a few meteors however, that make it to the surface. The ones that make it to the ground are called meteorites.
Solar nebula is a rotating flattened disk of gas and dust in which the outer part of the disk became planets while the center bulge part became the sun. Its inner part is hot, which is heated by a young sun and due to the impact of the gas falling on the disk during its collapse. However, the outer part is cold and far below the freezing point of water. In the solar nebula, the process of condensation occurs after enough cooling of solar nebula and results in the formation into a disk. Condensation is a process of cooling the gas and its molecules stick together to form liquid or solid particles. Therefore, condensation is the change from gas to liquid. In this process, the gas must cool below a critical temperature. Accretion is the process in which the tiny condensed particles from the nebula begin to stick together to form bigger pieces. Solar nebular theory explains the formation of the solar system. In the solar nebula, tiny grains stuck together and created bigger grains that grew into clumps, possibly held together by electrical forces similar to those that make lint stick to your clothes. Subsequent collisions, if not too violent, allowed these smaller particles to grow into objects ranging in size from millimeters to kilometers. These larger objects are called planetesimals. As planetesimals moved within the disk and collide with one another, planets formed. Because astronomers have no direct way to observe how the Solar System formed, they rely heavily on computer simulations to study that remote time. Computer simulations try to solve Newton’s laws of motion for the complex mix of dust and gas that we believe made up the solar nebula. Merging of the planetesimals increased their mass and thus their gravitational attraction. That, in turn, helped them grow even more massive by drawing planetesimals into clumps or rings around the sun. The process of planets building undergoes consumption of most of the planetesimals. Some survived planetesimals form small moons, asteroids, and comets. The leftover Rocky planetesimals that remained between Jupiter and Mars were stirred by Jupiter’s gravitational force. Therefore, these Rocky planetesimals are unable to assemble into a planet. These planetesimals are known as asteroids. Formation of solar system is explained by solar nebular theory. A rotating flat disk with center bulge is the solar nebula. The outer part of the disk becomes planets and the center bulge becomes the sun.
Preventing a meteor impact depends on how soon before it hits that we find it. We have the technology right now to alter most meteor orbits away from earth. But if we never discover a meteor intercepting the Earth, these meteor 'weapons' are useless. Because much less than half of all near Earth objects are still undiscovered, we most likely will not have any warning before a meteor hits.
From many observations and studies it now appears certain, that stars comparable to our Sun formed in the centres of cold dense molecular clouds. Consisting mainly of hydrogen, helium with smaller amounts of heavier gases and dust; the residue of minerals and elements left by explosions from...
Comets have a predictable orbit. There are one thousand comets that have been charted. Some comets go by the sun once and others, which are called periodic comets, pass the sun repeatedly following a predicable pattern. I have chosen a periodic comet called Tempel-Tuttle. Ernst Wilhelm Liebrecht Tempel and Horace Parnell Tuttle discovered this comet. This comet has been witnessed as early as 1366. The best apparition was that of 1366 when it passed 0.
There are more than 20,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball orbiting the Earth. This debris can travel at speeds up to 17,500 mph. Even a relatively small piece of space debris can damage a satellite or a spacecraft at these speeds. Additionally, there are more than 500,000 pieces...
We stood imperially on the summit of this wondrous peak. We had conquered the mighty North face of the Eiger, the most treacherous ascent in the Alps. Daniel Anker and I sat astonished on the summit grinning insanely at each other, unable to fathom words to describe our exultation.
The idea behind the Solar Nebular Hypothesis is that the solar system was condensed from an enormous cloud of hydrogen, helium, and a few other elements and rocks. Around five billion years this cloud of materials began to spin and contract together into a disk shape under their own gravitational forces. The particles started combined together, protoplanets, to eventually form planets. A great mass of the material eventually began to form together, protosun, and make up the sun.