Final Project: Evolution of the Solar System

Timeline of the Solar System

Timeline Of the Solar System

4.6 Billions years ago the a cloud of dust and gas was disturbed by an explosion of a nearby star called the Supernova. The star exploded with a Bang and its effect traveled in waves all around. These waves squeezed the cloud of dust and gas resulting in its collapse. All the little pieces of matter that started out running away from each other got pulled back together by gravity. Soon the cloud began spinning at a tremendous speed. And there it was, a beautiful Solar Nebula in the making. Just for some extra information, a Solar Nebula is a large cloud of gas and dust from which the sun, planets, and other solar system bodies like asteroids, meteors and moons were formed.When the spinning slowed down, the centre of the Solar Nebula became hotter and denser, which was surrounded by a disc of gas and dust that was cool at the edges. At the heart of the Nebula, there was a ball of Hydrogen gas who's pressure and temperature became quite huge and the particles began to fuse together. There it was, a new, powerful star coming into being a sun. There were infinite number of particles that began to stick together and form clumps. Some clumps got bigger and bigger, forming planets and moons. It is also believed that since the centre of the Solar Nebula was hot, like Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter. The rest of the cold planets like Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, etc, were formed at the edges.

If a planet is habitable depends on many things like what planets affect it and what star or object they are orbiting around. The definition of a habitable planet is a planet that can sustain life. us humans depend on many things such as oxygen, water, food, nutrients and also needs to be in a special location where we are far away from the star we are orbiting so we have a perfect temperature our human body can resist and maintain other living things, not that cold or hot and that means not that far away from the star we are orbiting. and that's what a planet need to be a habitable planet but researchers have discovered that some planets that are habitable can not be habitable for example there are some planets that can be habitable but for small reasons like they are always facing the star makes one side very hot and the other side very cold and that makes the planet unavailable to live in because of little things. and that's why researchers are developing new technology that is helping us discover more about planets and see if we can live in them.

What makes a planet habitable?

The 3 laws of Isaac Newton explains how the masses of 2 planets create attraction between them that decreases with distance. This shows the planetary movement (an orbit) around the sun in the solar system. The first law of motion shows that anything iI space will be moving at straight line iI the same speed forever (including planets). However planets never travel in straight lines because of the sun's gravitational pull on him. Gravity and inertia cause planets to move in circular orbits around the sun.

Newton's First Law of Motion

Newton's Second and Third Laws

The second law of Newton states that the force of an object is the same as the acceleration of that object times its mass.The planets are constantly moving around the sun, this means that it has a constant acceleration as well. Only that in space acceleration means change of direction and not speed. The gravitational force given by the sun constantly warns a planet’s path, changing the direction of the planets towards the sun but never directly at the sun. The third law of newtons says that every action has a reaction. A force can be given on a planet because of the sun, and the sun can also feel the force. However he can’t feel it that much because the sun is hundreds of times more massive than the planets. The force can barely have any effect on the sun's motion, on the other hand it affects planets in more ways.

Newton's Second and Third Laws

The Law of Universal Gravitation

Newton's Law of Universal Gravity takes the mass of 2 objects and the distance between them. The force of gravity attracts both of the objects into each other and the force can be affected by their mass and the distance of both objects. Distance can affect objects from far away, for example the sun and Jupiter, they are very far away but the sun, which is the object with more mass in the solar system attracts all the planets including us and that makes us orbit it (gravitational force).

The Law of Universal Gravitation