10 mindblowing facts about our solar system ( episode 2)
Hi, welcome to Insane curiosity.
Here are ten mind-blowing facts about our beautiful solar system. I hope you guys enjoy
this video!
1) The currently known asteroid count is: 1.113.527
Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets, are rocky remnants left over from the early
formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
Most asteroids are irregularly shaped, though a few are nearly spherical, and they are often
pitted or cratered. As they revolve around the Sun in elliptical orbits, the asteroids
also rotate, sometimes quite erratically, tumbling as they go. More than 150 asteroids
are known to have a small companion moon (some have two moons). There are also binary (double)
asteroids, in which two rocky bodies of roughly equal size orbit each other, as well as triple
asteroid systems.
The orbits of asteroids can be changed by Jupiter's massive gravity – and by occasional
close encounters with Mars or other objects. These encounters can knock asteroids out of
the main belt, and hurl them into space in all directions across the orbits of the other
planets. Stray asteroids and asteroid fragments have slammed into Earth and the other planets
in the past, playing a major role in altering the geological history of the planets and
in the evolution of life on Earth. Scientists continuously monitor Earth-crossing
asteroids, whose paths intersect Earth's orbit, and near-Earth asteroids that approach Earth's
orbital distance to within about 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) and may pose
an impact danger. Radar is a valuable tool for detecting and monitoring potential impact
hazards. By reflecting transmitted signals off objects, images and other information
can be derived from the echoes. Scientists can learn a great deal about an asteroid's
orbit, rotation, size, shape, and metal concentration. A very well-known class of asteroids is orbiting
Jupiter. They are called Trojans, and you can find them around the so-called Lagrangian
points L4 and L5. The term ‘Trojan asteroid’ was coined when it was decided to name all
asteroids discovered at the L4 and L5 points of Jupiter after warriors in the Trojan war,
Greek and Trojan respectively. The exceptions are Hector (a Trojan spy in the Greek camp)
and Patroclus (a Greek spy in the Trojan camp), the first two Trojan asteroids discovered
and named before the two camps were established. If seen in the Jupiter rotating frame, the
L5 group of Trojans seems to run after the L4 group: a group of warriors running after
the other.
Speaking of asteroids… 2) We changed the trajectory of an asteroid
in the solar system It has been orbiting for the last million
years. We went there, hit it, and changed its path. Forever. We are talking about Dimorphos,
the smallest component of an asteroid binary system (the bigger one is known as Didymos).
The mission designed for the job is DART, and it was sent to this system to impact the
asteroid. The outcome of this collision seems to suggest the technique could work if we
need to deflect a real killer space rock.
Roughly seven million miles from Earth, DART slammed into Dimorphos just after 7:14
p.m. ET on September 26. As it hurtled toward the moonlet at more than 14,000 miles an hour,
the spacecraft furiously snapped images of its target. In a few minutes, Dimorphos grew
from a hazy clump of pixels to an egg-shaped, boulder-strewn mini-world that filled the
spacecraft’s field of view—growing larger and larger until the transmission abruptly
cut off as the final image was coming in.
TO THE VIDEOMAKER: SHOW IMAGES IN SEQUENCE; OR A VIDEO OF THE REAL MISSION
3) Structure
Another mindblowing fact about the solar system is that…the inner planets are rocky, but
as you go further out, planets become gaseous. Have you ever noticed that?
The order and arrangement of the planets
and other bodies in our solar system are due to the way the solar system is formed.
When the sun was young, it was really hot out there, and only rocky material could withstand
the heat close to the star. For this reason, the first planets - Mercury,
Venus, Earth, and Mars – are terrestrial planets. They are all small with solid, rocky
surfaces. Meanwhile, materials we are used to seeing
as ice, liquid, or gas settled in the outer regions of the young solar system. Gravity
pulled these materials together, and that is where we find gas giants Jupiter and Saturn,
and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
4) Patterns in the solar system We all know Copernicus was right, and all
planets revolve around the Sun. Kepler showed us that their trajectories are
ellipses. These orbits can be described by mathematical formulas, and as such, they are
characterized (at least in the short term) by some nice geometrical properties. If plotted
in the right reference system, you could tell they are basically part of a harmony.
For instance, what would happen if we plotted the orbits of the planets relative to the
Earth’s position?
Well, in the case of Venus, there is a highly noticeable rhythm in its motion.
After eight years, it returns to the same place in our sky on about the same date.
This is known as the eight-year cycle of Venus. This cycle was already known to ancient
peoples such as the Maya. Today, many know it as the pentagram or petals of Venus.
The word pentagram is used because, over the eight years, each phenomenon – each relative
position of Earth, Venus, and the sun – occurs five times. Then, over the next eight years,
they repeat five times almost identically.
But Venus is not the only planet showing interesting
patterns. These are the patterns for all planets in
the solar system, except Neptune:
My favorite pattern is the one of Mercury. What do you think?
5) Sungrazing comets From time to time, some comets get really
close to the Sun. They are called Sungrazing comets and have
been observed for many hundred years. These comets were studied in the 19th century by
Heinrich Kreutz. He found that all the sungrazers orbit discovered until then all followed the
same orbit. Astronomers think those were all fragments
of a single comet that had broken up. The original comets had probably been broken up
repeatedly, as it orbited the Sun. This group of comets is today known by the
name Kreutz sungrazers. But why do such comets exist? How do they
come this close to the Sun? Well, solar system dynamicists seem to know the answer to that
question: the three-body problem. In fact, all sorts of things happen when
more than 2 bodies are orbiting under the influence of each other’s gravity field.
One of these is the so-called Lidov-Kozai migration.
It is a dynamical phenomenon affecting the orbit of a binary system perturbed by a
distant third body under certain conditions. In our case, the Comet-Sun is the binary system,
while Jupiter acts as a perturber. In this framework, the comet is excited
and perturbed by Jupiter. This changes the comet’s orbital parameters, bringing it
closer and closer to the Sun over long timescales. Thus, a non-sungrazer comet can become one.
Thanks, Jupiter!
Hey, if you are enjoying this video, you should really watch the first episode: you
will find other mindblowing facts about our Solar System.
6) The Solar system as seen from Proxima centaury Our sun is actually a pretty ordinary star.
I mean, it is the major responsible for life here on Earth, of course, but out there in
the universe, it is quite anonymous.
If you went out four light-years, the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, the
Sun would be readily visible to the naked eye, unlike Proxima, though nothing spectacular.
And as for the planets, well.. perhaps we would be able to spot Jupiter, it being the
most massive one.
7) Future of the solar system We all know the Sun is going to die at some
point, becoming larger in size and transforming into a red giant.
For decades, astronomers have wondered about the true effect of a Sun-like star’s death
on its system of planets and moons, in particular, whether any planets can survive the onslaught.
Now, we have some ideas. A team from the University of Tasmania found a Jupiter-like exoplanet swirling
around a white dwarf close to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.
The team says the system they’ve discovered is a glimpse into the possible future of the
Solar System. While the dying Sun will likely take out the
terrestrial planets, the outer planets could well survive. This is also the first time
one of these planets in a similar orbit to Jupiter has been found.
8) We are not at the center of our galaxy.
In truth, we’ve only been aware of the fact that we are part of a much larger disk
of stars that orbit a common center for about a century. And given that we are embedded
within it, it has been historically difficult to ascertain our exact position. But thanks
to ongoing efforts, astronomers now know where our Sun resides in the galaxy.
We know our Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, and the Solar System (and Earth) is located
about 25,000 light-years to the galactic center and 25,000 light-years away from the rim.
So basically, if you were to think of the Milky Way as a big record, we would be the
spot that’s roughly halfway between the center and the edge.
9) Venus is the hottest planet Did you know that Venus is the hottest planet
in our solar system, even though Mercury is closer to the Sun?
Surface temperatures on Venus are about 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 degrees Celsius).
You have to be really careful because such temperatures are hot enough to melt lead.
The surface is a rusty color and it’s peppered with intensely crunched mountains and thousands
of large volcanoes. Scientists think some volcanoes may be still active.
10) The moon is drifting away Yes, the Moon is moving away from the Earth
at a rate of about 3.78 cm per year. The reason that the Moon is slowly moving away from the
Earth is due to the interaction of the Moon’s gravity with the Earth’s oceans, also called
tide. What happens is that the Moon exerts a gravitational
force on the Earth which causes the movement of the Earth’s oceans to form a tidal bulge.
Then, since the Earth’s rotating period is shorter than the moon’s revolution period,
this tidal bulge occurs in a position that is slightly ahead of the Moon in its orbit
around the Earth. This creates friction in the interior of the Earth, an energy dissipation.
Part of this energy gets transferred into the moon’s orbital motion, resulting in
the moon being pushed to an orbit that is further away from Earth.
This is the particular case of our moon, but in general, depending on some parameters,
such as the period of revolution of the object, the satellite could also be drifting inwards.
It seems counterintuitive and amazing, but the truth is everything is encoded in boring
and very precise mathematical formulas. And that’s what makes it beautiful.
Hey! This video ends here! Thanks for watching! Make sure to subscribe to the channel if you
enjoyed the video! And maybe turn on the notifications! See you next time!