The Neighborhood that Matters
Is it truly what we think?
The beginning of the universe, or the big bang (as some suggest, though not some, to be honest), was an event approximately 13.772 billion years ago. Trust me, that’s a really, really long time. And it is the rule of life — “The only constant thing is change” ~Heraclitus.
And so did it happen. Billions of trillions of celestial objects were formed. And during all this, the Sun was no exception.The sun, the true godfather, is a spectacular thing to marvel at. This star is the key constituent of this small little township, a township we call — The Solar System.
The sun is a star, a middle aged yellow star. So that means it has a long time to live as of 2018 (Sorry future generations!).
How It All Started
It was created 4.6 billion years ago, in something really big and gassy. This giant gas cloud was made primarily of hydrogen and helium. In its center mass began to accumulate due to entirely random motion. It is a natural law that the density of an object is directly proportional to its gravity. So naturally more and more mass began to accumulate and at one point the force of gravity became so strong that the object collapsed inward. This lead to a huge amount of pressure at the center, a pressure so strong that nuclear fusion started taking place, and in a universe that was created in under a second, this was something important.
What The Hell Is That?
Nuclear fusions, you see, create helium out of hydrogen in the case of the sun. Imagine pressing two blocks of wood with each other so hard that they become metal. That’s how bizarre it is. So when nuclear fusions occur, they emit photons, or in much more easier words, light.
So now we have a star with us, and if we wait for another 100000000 years (that’s 0.1 billion), we notice that the star’s gravitational pull causes matter around it to come together. This lead to more incidences where matter started forming celestial bodies. And now they start looking like planets. And with this there were 9 more major astronomical formations.
As of 2018, Pluto is not a planet. In 2006, it lost its planet status. “RIP Pluto”.
Poor Pluto
It is a very common misconception that the solar system pretty much ends at Pluto. But no, that’s not the case. the solar system extends well beyond that — after which comes the Kuiper Belt.
(Just like the Asteroid Belt the Kuiper belt is another large collection of different types of asteroids. We’ll talk about both of them in later publications)
So beyond that we see there are floating meteoroids, literally in the middle of nowhere. We see comets and we see a large, enormous body of dust and gases, completely surrounding the solar system like a blanket.
Oort Cloud
The Oort Cloud is a gigantic hollow sphere of dust, rocks and other particles. Its end is approximately 2 light years away from the sun. And that is pretty big, considering that one light year is 9.46 X 10¹² km. That would be about 9460000000000 km or 9460000000000000 m — And that is pretty huge. The Oort Cloud is the point where most of the comets are formed. These comets then travel to the Sun. If the comets are large then there is a very high possibility that they may be visible to the naked eye. If not, they are visible with scientific equipment.
Conclusion
So this time, we saw how the solar system around us formed. The next time we will go in depth and see more about these planets. We will also see what the word ‘interstellar’ means (not the movie, folks!). We will shall also explore the basic differences between different types of celestial bodies in later episodes. Then we will come back to the Milky Way Galaxy.
Thanks for Reading, People! We at Technifity would really appreciate if you clap for us. We are open to any criticism in the comments. Goodbye until next time!
