Robin Oliver B.

Magsombol

How the universe, Solar System and Earth began

Our planet Earth is around 150 million km away from the Sun. (Note: 1
million = 1000,000 = 10 lakhs) Light travels at nearly 300, 000 km in 1
second. So the light from the Sun takes a little more than 8minutes to reach
us. One of the furthest objects in our solar system is Pluto (a dwarf planet)
which is around 6000 million km away from the Sun and the sunlight takes
nearly 5 Hours and a ½ to reach Pluto.

The time taken by light to come to Earth from other nearby stars is of the order of
a few years. So the light from the stars that we see on the sky are really many
years old. The distances among the stars are so great that it is useful consider the
unit of ‘light year’ which is the distance covered by light in one year.

Our Sun (and the solar system) is a member of a bigger system, the Milky Way
Galaxy. There are approximately 100,000 million other stars in this galaxy. In fact,
our Sun is only a very ordinary star; there are many massive stars, much bigger
than the Sun in Milky Way. The Sun lies at a distance of about 30,000 light years
from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, around one third of the dimension of
the galaxy.

Our galaxy is not even a special one! It is estimated that there are 3000 million
other galaxies in the universe that could be searched so far. The dimension of our
universe, that could be ‘observed’, is around 10,000 million light years or more.

Time scales and Masses are also equally enormous. Our earth takes a year to
complete one trip round the sun. The Jupiter takes 12 years. The Sun and other
stars are also orbiting around the centre of the galaxy. They take around 200
million years to complete one trip round the galactic centre. Mass can be so
enormous that the masses of stars and even bigger objects are not measured in
kg or other known units. The unit that is used is one solar mass. If a star is two
times heavier than the Sun, for example, it is called 2 solar mass etc.

Everyone is born and everyone dies.

Everything has a life cycle of its own; the living beings, the rocks, the elements,
the planets, the stars and the galaxies. The life cycle of a star is amazingly
interesting and this is of great concern to the scientists as the study of the
universe and its structure is connected to this.

Stars are born in a nebula, from collapsing clouds of interstellar gas and dust. The
death of a star is inevitable. The thermonuclear reaction (nuclear fusion) in a star
ends one day and the star approaches ‘death’. The nuclear fuel, mainly hydrogen
and helium, in a star ends up sometime and then the inner core of it shrinks
under gravitational pull and the outer core expands so much that it appears to be
a giant and red colored star, a ‘red giant’!

What will be the fate of our Sun?

When the core of an ordinary star, like that of our Sun (mass less than 1.4 times the solar mass, called
Chandrasekhar limit, runs out of hydrogen fuel, it will contract under the force of gravity. It cannot hold
the force of gravity any more by generating heat and radiation pressure. However, some fusion
(thermonuclear reaction) will still go on over the outer layers. As the core contracts, it heats up. This
heat is supplied to the outer core, causing that to expand. As the outer layers expand, the radius of the
star will increase and it will become a red giant. Our sun will also become a red giant one day! It will
become so large that it will swallow the planets Mercury and Venus and possibly the Earth, including the
life on this planet. This will of course take many thousand million years. After this, as the core contracts,
this will become hot enough to cause the helium to fuse into carbon in it. When the helium fuel runs
out, the core will expand and cool. The upper layers will expand and eject materials that will collect
around the dying star to form a planetary nebula. Finally, the core will cool into a white dwarf and then
eventually into a black dwarf. This entire process will take a few billion years.
The fate of Massive Stars:
For a huge star (mass around 1.5 to 3 time the mass of Sun), as the core runs out
of hydrogen, helium atoms fuse into carbon just like that in the Sun. However,
after the Helium is gone, their mass is enough to fuse carbon into heavier
elements such as oxygen, neon, silicon, magnesium, sulfur and iron. Once the
core has turned to iron, it cannot burn any longer. The star collapses by its own
gravity and the iron core heats up. The core becomes so tightly packed that
protons and electrons merge to form neutrons. Here also the outer core expands
and the star becomes a red supergiant! In less than a second, the iron core, which
is about the size of the Earth, shrinks to a neutron core with a radius of about 6
miles (10 kilometers). The outer layers of the star fall inward on the neutron core,
thereby crushing it further. The core heats to billions of degrees and explodes
(supernova), thereby releasing large amounts of energy and material into space.
The shock wave from the supernova can initiate star formation in other
interstellar clouds. The remains of the core can form a neutron star. Massive
stars, we call them Giant stars (over 3 times the mass of Sun), a similar happens
but then it ends up in a black hole through supernova explosion. The massive
stars shrink so much at the end of life, the density becomes so unimaginably high
under its own gravitational pull that even the light cannot get out of it. Black holes
are nearly impossible to detect as no electromagnetic radiation can come out
them.

Supernova:

A massive star, when it reaches the end of its nuclear fuel, can become a
‘supernova’. A supernova arises when the core of the star collapses under its own
gravitational attraction, releasing huge amount of energy (shock waves) which
causes the outer core to explode. The inside core may become a Neutron star or a
Black hole. But the tremendously exploding envelope carries huge amount of
energies with very fast moving particles like electrons, protons etc. This is a
possible source of Cosmic Rays.
The beginning of the Universe: Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang theory is the scientific theory of the creation of the Universe, Big
Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our
universe. It also tries to explain what happened during and immediately after the
beginning. The study of the creation of Universe and the properties of early
universe (immediately after the Big Bang) is called Cosmology.

The Universe today, as we see, is different from what it was in the past and it will
be different in the future. It is not static. Our universe, in fact, has a beginning as
the discoveries in Astronomy and Astrophysics and mathematical calculations in
Cosmology have established that truth beyond doubt. Prior to the moment of
creation, there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something-
our universe.

Infinitely hot matter of infinite density was thought to be concentrated in an

infinitesimally small volume (a point) at the moment of the creation of the
universe. Around 14 billion years ago a tremendous explosion started the
expansion of the universe. This beginning, the explosion is known/called as Big
Bang. Note: 1 billion year = 1000 million year, 1 million year = 1000,000 year = 10
lakh years. Therefore, 1 billion years = 1000,000,000 years = 100 years.

The Big Bang theory tells us that our Universe originated from a singularity.
Singularity is a concept (a mathematical concept) which defies our understanding
of physical reality and imagination. What existed prior to the moment of Big Bang
is completely unknown and is a matter of pure speculation. The space, time,
matter, or energy everything was created with Big Bang.

Where did our Universe come from? We don't know. Why did it appear? We don't
know. Where it is? We don’t know. All we know is that we exist inside the
universe.

The origin of the Big Bang theory can be credited to Edwin Hubble (1889-1953).
Hubble made the observation that the universe is continuously expanding.
Matter was created out of Big Bang and energy propagated at the speed of light
(300,000 km/sec). The temperature of the universe, just after a tiny fraction of a
second after the Big Bang explosion, was of the order of 1000 trillion degree
Centigrade (1 trillion = 1000 billion) as estimated.

As the universe quickly expanded, it had also undergone a rapid cooling enabling
the creation of matter from energy. Universe back then was too hot for anything
other than the most fundamental particles such as quarks and photons. About
one ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang, protons and neutrons formed,
and within a few minutes these particles stuck together to form atomic nuclei,
mostly hydrogen and helium. Hundreds of thousands of years later, electrons
stuck to the nuclei to make complete atoms.

How the Solar system was formed/created?

The leading hypothesis to explain how the solar system was formed is called the
condensation theory, which is based on a related explanation called the nebular
theory.

What is a Nebula? A nebula is a large cloud of gas and dust that exists in the
depths of interstellar space. These clouds typically form during the death of a
giant star when it becomes supernova.

This mighty explosion sends most of the star's mass outward into space as a
massive wave of debris. The nebular cloud from which our solar system formed
may have accumulated from one or more stars that went supernova billions of
years ago. Astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope and other
observatories to discover similar nebular clouds where new stars and possibly
planets appear to be in the process of being created.

Astronomers estimate that the nebular cloud from which our solar system was
formed, contained about two to three times the mass of the Sun and was about
100 astronomical units (AU) across. An astronomical unit is defined as the average
distance between the Sun and Earth, or about 150 million km. This massive
loosely-bound cloud of dust, ice particles, and gases (primarily hydrogen and
helium) had some small rate of rotation due to the method in which it was -
formed. Over time, this nebular cloud began to collapse inward. The collapse may
have itself been triggered by a supernova that sent shockwaves through the cloud
causing it to compress. As the cloud compressed on itself, the gravitational
attraction of the matter within increased and pulled the material in even further.
The nebula continued to contract under the influence of gravity causing it to spin
faster. The more the cloud contracted, the faster it rotated due to the
conservation of angular momentum. The rate of contraction was the greatest
near the center of the cloud where a dense central core began to form. As the
rate of rotation of the nebula continued to increase, centrifugal effects caused the
spinning cloud to flatten into a disk with a bulge at its center. The middle of this
spinning disk further condensed to eventually form the Sun at the center of the
solar system. The material spinning around this new star also condensed into
several large chunks of material called planetoids. As these planetoids collided,
they coalesced into larger bodies to form the planets that exist today. Because
the Sun and planets all formed from the same nebular cloud, they all rotate in the
same direction that was induced on the disk of material as it coalesced. Not only
do the planets all rotate counter-clockwise around the Sun, but the Sun and
nearly all the planets rotate counter-clockwise about their axes. The solar equator
and the plane containing the orbits of the planets are also nearly identical.

Only a few exceptions to this explanation can be found in the solar system. The
planet Venus actually rotates clockwise around its axis in what is called a
retrograde motion. Uranus is also in an unusual orientation since the world is
tilted on its side with its north and south poles in about the same plane as the
planet's orbit around the Sun. Tiny Pluto is also tilted on its side and is the only
planet with an orbit considerably outside of the ecliptic plane. While the reasons
for these eccentricities are unknown, it is believed that large collisions with other
large bodies during the formation of the solar system may account for the
unusual characteristics of these planets.
In short:

 A massive cloud, called solar nebula, was disturbed by the shock wave coming
from a nearby supernova. The cloud then collapsed under its own gravitational
attraction and the sun was formed in the central region.

 The planets were formed from the outer regions of the accretion disk.

 The initial collapse of solar nebula is supposed to take less than 100,000 years.

 The age of formation of solar system is estimated to be little more than 4.5
billion years.