Unit 6

Space physics
A summary
01. 03.
The Earth Stars

● Motion of the Earth ● The Sun as a star

● Motion of the Moon ● Light years
● Orbital speed ● Life cycle of stars

02. 04.
The Solar System The Universe

● Origin - the acceleration model ● The expanding universe

● Planets, satellites, asteroids and comets ● The Big Bang theory
● Gravity and planetary motion ● Age of the universe
 01.
The Earth
Motion of the Earth
● When the Earth rotates on its axis, day and night is caused. One rotation takes 24 hours.
○ Due to this, the sun appears to be traveling from east to west across the sky.
○ In the northern hemisphere, during summer, the sun appears to be traveling from northeast to northwest and in
winter southeast to southwest
○ During equinoxes (around 20th March and 23 September) the sun travels exactly from east to west
● Seasons are caused by two factors
○ The Earth's revolution (which is about 365 days)
○ The Earth’s tilt (which is 23.5o)
Motion of the Moon
● The Moon revolves around the Earth once a month and is about 400,000 km.
● We see the moon due to the reflected sun rays because the moon does not produces its own light
● It has a gravitational pull due to its mass which it about ⅙ of the Earth’s

Phases of the moon

● The Moon changes its phase during its monthly journey

Orbital speed
● From the speed equation we know that v = d/t
● The distance covered by a celestial body is in the form of a circle hence the
distance covered will be its circumference which is 2πr
● The new equation formed will be v = 2πr/t
02. The Solar System
Origin - The acceleration model
● In this model, it is thought that the Sun was formed from a nebula which are clouds of hydrogen gas and other elements.
● This took place about 4.5 billion years ago
● Once the Sun was formed, the planets were formed from the remnants
● The gravitational pull between two particles caused themselves to spin around the sun. This process slowly grew causing them to grow in
a accretion process
● This created the accretion disk
● As time passed the Sun grew leading to high temperatures
● The rocky planets were exposed to such high temperatures which meant that it would be hard for gases such as hydrogen, helium, methane
to exist in a solid form.
● Due to this the rocky planets were made with substances which have high melting points like iron
● Moreover only 1% of this nebula contained such substances so the rocky planets had to remain small
● The other four planets were far away from the sun so the gases could exist in a solid state (only the inner part is solid the rest is gas)
Planets, satellites, asteroids and comets

● The sun is in the center

Asteroids
Planets
A small rocky object which
Contains : Satellites orbits the sun. They are not
● Mercury considered planets due to there
● Venus low mass
● Earth ● Natural satellites - Made
● Mars naturally (like moons)
● Jupiter ● Artificial satellites - Made by Comets
● Saturn humans which can orbit any
● Uranus celestial body Made of dust and ice which
● Neptune orbits the sun. Their orbits are
elliptical.
Gravity and planetary motion
● From Einstein's theory of relativity it is found that the more mass a celestial body has the more it bends the space time fabric
● This leads to heavier objects having more gravity
● Furthermore ,since the sun is the center of the solar system and also has a lots of mass, this causes the centripetal force required for
planets to orbit around it
● As seen in the picture, the sun attracts the earth towards it.
● This force weakens as the distance increases causing further planets to have greater revolutionary periods
03.
Stars
The Sun as a star
● The sun is a stable star
● Stars release heat using nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium
● The core has a high temperature to sustain all these reactions
● White and blue stars are hotter than red or yellow stars
 15
9.5 x 10 m
Is one light year
Life cycle of stars
● Stable star - A star in which the force of gravity and the force of expansion are equal. These stars have a lifespan of 10 000 million years.
● When a star runs out of hydrogen to fuse, it becomes unstable. Less energy is produced and the core collapses. This causes the star to
expand rapidly into a red giant.

The next process depends upon the mass of the star.

Low mass stars High mass stars

The core then becomes a white The energy is then released into
dwarf amongst a planetary a supernova explosion. From
nebula. The white dwarf there it could turn into a
eventually cools into a black neutron star or a black hole
dwarf
04. The Universe
The expanding universe
● The Doppler effect states that :
○ When an object is closer, the wavelength decreases causing frequency to rise
○ When an object is further away, the wavelength increases causing frequency to decrease
● When a light emitting object moves away the wavelength increases. This is known as redshift as the light moves to the red side of the
spectrum
● The image shows how redshifts take place.
● This shows that galaxies are moving away from the Earth which means the universe is expanding
● It is also stated that the greater the distance greater the redshift
Big Bang Theory
● This theory proposes that the entire universe was made from one massive explosion, known as the Big Bang
● The effect mentioned earlier supports this theory
● Another evidence for this theory would be CMBR - Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
● CMBR is a type of radiation which has been left from the Big Bang
● The explosion made would have emitter thermal radiation
● An image was then recorded by the Planck telescope
● The orange regions show areas with higher density of galaxies
● The blue regions show areas with low density of galaxies
Age of the universe
● Hubble's law states that the speed of recession v of a galaxy is directly proportional to its distance
from earth d
● This can be written as v = H0 d which means H0 = v /d
● H0 is estimated to be 2.2 x 10-18 per second
● Using this equation the age of the universe could be calculated
● Age = 1/H0 = d/v
Thank you