Earth History and Geologic Time

a)

Our solar system took a long time to form, 4.6 billion years ago. Our system formed just like all the other systems in the universe, from a nebula. A nebula is a cloud of gas/dust gives birth to stars. As a nebula collapses on itself, from a disturbance like a supernova explosion, it begins to heat up in the center and compress, this takes about 100,000 years (1, 2). After this it begins to cool slightly and form a star (1). As the energy begins to cool around it partials, like rocks and ice, start to revolve around the star. The partials begin to collide to form larger partials some the size of boulders or asteroids (1). Some of these boulders are big enough to have a gravitational pull and begin to pull particles in by toward it, making it bigger (1). This takes about 100 million years after the nebula has cooled, then another 100 million to form into around 10 or so planets revolving around a star (1).

b)

Many events let to the creation of the earth we know today. Earth formed roughly 4.57 billion years ago, this was also about the time our moon formed (3). Then about 3.9-2.5 simple life forms like bacteria and algae began to form on Earth, releasing oxygen into our atmosphere (4). Oxygen continued to build in our atmosphere and more life forms began to form (2.5 million to .5 million) (4).

c)

Index Fossils can be used to determine time sequences. Depending on the layer of the rock and the rock/fossil observed they can determine the age of the fossil and other things about earth’s history (5, 6). The farther down in the earth’s crust the fossil/rock is the older the fossils is (5).



Bibliography

a)

1)      http://nineplanets.org/origin.html

2)      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System

b)

3)      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale

4)      http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/Geologictime.html

c)

5)      http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/BarBar.html

6)  http://www.ehow.com/about_5097857_index-fossils-used.html

The Earth in Space

a)

Earth is a very small part of our universe. Earth is part of a solar system which is part of the Milky Way Galaxy. Our solar system moves around center Milky Way at 217.215 Km/s (1). Our solar system also moves up and down at 7 km/s and 20 km/s toward the center of the center of the Milky Way galaxy (1). It takes 226 million years for our solar system to do a complete cycle around the Milky Way (1). The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. The universe is about 13.73 billion years old (2).

b)

The Big Bang is a Theory on the formation of the universe. According to the Big Bang Theory, the universe was incredibly small, smaller in a pore on skin (3), but it very density and temperature (3). It began to expand, spreading across space. Before this people thought the universe was fix size (3). The universe continues to expand to this day (3, 4).

c)

Cosmic Microwave Background helped us determine the age of the universe. Cosmic Microwave Background was discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson (5). They noticed under radio telescope that space has a faint glow from radiation (5). Back to the question cosmic microwave background helps us determine the age because the CMB radiation has emitted before the galaxy and stars were created. CMB radiation was emitted from the big bang only few hundred thousand years after it happened. Studying when the radiation was emitted from the big bang can determine the age of universe.

Bibliography

a.

1) http://biocab.org/coplanarity_solar_system_and_galaxy.html#anchor_21

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2) http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/

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b.

3) http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~yukimoon/BigBang/BigBang.htm

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4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

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c.

5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation

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6) http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_tests_cmb.html

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Space Object PP link

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AXsBmTjUbQf0ZDdnZ21uYl82N3NnZzVyY2Y&hl=en&authkey=CLqzmPgG

Bad Astronomy Post

In our class we watched Deep Impact. We were to write down notes which were factual or wrong in the movie. I thought that the Sun would burn your eyes if you didn't have protection, I was right in that it would hurt your eyes if you didn't have some type of protection, like the astronaut in the movie, but a moment of exposure would not have burned his face as bad as it did in the movie. A fact they had in the movie that I thought was wrong was that they can walk on the comet, and i was right. You would only weight 12 grams, You would fly off the comet by just running. A factual thing they said in the movie was about the stars they were observing, Mizar and Alcor which are actual stars. A non-factual thing was in the end the exploded the second comet, one you cant explode a comet with a few atomic bombs, it would take 100s just to maybe move it a faction if that. Also say they did explode the comet the kinetic energy from the comet would destroy the atmosphere.
The article I read was All the Stars are White. I kinda knew stars were different colors. It was interesting to read how they could be all colors of the rainbow depending on the heat of the star. Really hot stars are mostly blue. And cooler stars are mostly red. It was interesting to read.