MOJZA

Section 6: Space Physics

Earth and the Solar System

- The Earth

➜ The Earth is the Sun’s third planet.

➜ It travels in a nearly circular, ellipse orbit around the Sun.
➜ There is an imaginary line going through the Earth’s north and south poles, which is its axis.
➜ The axis is a little tilted at an angle of 23.4° from the vertical.
➜ The Earth spins on its axis like a top.
➜ Earth’s spinning on its axis is called rotation.
➜ It takes 24 hours to turn all the way around its axis (completing one full rotation), hence, a
single day.
➜ It orbits the Sun and takes approximately 365 days (a year) to travel around the orbit.
➜ The Moon orbits the Earth as a satellite.
➜ The motion of the Earth and the Moon cause natural events.
➜ It takes approximately 500s for light from the Sun to reach the Earth.

- Day and night

➜ Since the Earth is rotating on its axis, one half of it is always facing the Sun.
➜ The other half is facing away from the Sun.
➜ The side of the Earth facing the Sun experiences daytime.
➜ The other half away from the Sun has night.

➜ In an equinox, the Sun rises exactly at the East and sets exactly at the West.

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➜ An equinox means ‘equal night’, meaning that the day’s length and the night’s length is the
same.
➜ It usually occurs on 20th March and 23rd September.
➜ In the northern hemisphere, during summer, the Sun rises north of east and sets north of
west.
➜ During winter, it rises and sets north of these points respectively.
➜ It's highest above the horizon at noon.
➜ In the northern hemisphere, the daylight hours are longest until 21st June.

- Seasons

➜ The Earth’s movement around the Sun (its orbit) and its tilt cause seasons.
➜ Due to this tilt, one part of the Earth leans away from the Sun.
➜ Consequently, the solar energy from the Sun reaching the Earth is not constant, but varies
throughout the year.
➜ Summer and winter occur simultaneously on Earth’s surface.
➜ When the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, there is spring and summer - days
are longer than nights.
➜ When the southern hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, there’s autumn and winter -
days are shorter than nights.
➜ This cycle continues vice versa throughout the year.

- The Moon and its phases

➜ The Moon is lit by the Sun.

➜ It doesn’t produce its own light.
➜ The Sun gives off light and the Moon reflects it, so we’re able to see it.
➜ It takes one month for the Moon to orbit the Earth.
➜ It revolves on its own axis, so it always has the same side of it facing the Earth.
➜ The Moon’s appearance changes over each month’s course; it has phases.

- The new moon phase

➜ The Moon is between the Earth and the Sun.

➜ The sunlight is on the opposite side of the Moon.
➜ This side isn’t visible from Earth.

- The waxing crescent

➜ A thin crescent appears as the Moon travels in its orbit.

➜ It’s partially illuminated by the Sun’s rays.
➜ More of the Sun’s rays are reflected off the Moon towards the Earth.

- First quarter

➜ Half of the Moon’s surface can be seen.

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- Full Moon

➜ The Earth is between the Moon and the Sun.

➜ The Sun’s rays are reflected fully back to the Earth.
➜ It’s seen as fully lit from Earth.

➜ After this, the Moon slowly starts waning and we see less of its surface until we can see the
old crescent again.

- Average orbital speed

➜ The formula for average orbital speed is:

v = 2πr/T, where:

v = average orbital speed

r = average radius of the orbit
T = time taken to complete one orbit ( orbital period )
Always measure the orbit radius r from the centre of the object being orbited to the orbiting
object.

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The Solar System

- The Solar System contains

➜ One star, the Sun.

➜ The eight planets.
➜ Asteroids and dwarf planets, also known as minor planets.
➜ Moons, which orbit planets.
➜ Comets and natural satellites.

- Satellites

➜ Objects that orbit a planet.

➜ The Sun is a star and produces its own light.
➜ It is not at the centre of the elliptical orbit, but just at one focus of the orbit.
➜ An elliptical orbit means it isn’t a perfect circle.
➜ It only sits at the centre of a planet’s orbit if it’s approximately circular.
➜ The more elliptical orbit of a planet, the less that the Sun will sit at the centre of the orbit.
➜ The order of the 8 planets are:

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune.

➜ The four inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) are nearest to the Sun.
➜ They’re rocky and small with a high density and similar sizes.
➜ The four outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) are further away from the
Sun.
➜ They’re gaseous, large and comparatively colder.

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- Dwarf Planets

➜ These have high densities.

➜ Mainly composed of rock and ice.
➜ The best known of them is Pluto.
➜ They are too small to be counted as a major planet.

- Asteroids

➜ Also known as minor planets.

➜ A body orbiting a star, the mass of which is not large enough to be pulled into a sphere by
gravity.
➜ Their density is similar to that of the inner planets.
➜ If they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they fall as shooting stars or meteors into Earth.
➜ The asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter.

- Comets

➜ Consist of dust and ice made of water and methane.

➜ Have very elliptical orbits.
➜ Density is similar to that of the outer planets.
➜ Often travel to the very outskirts of the solar system.

- Accretion model

➜ There was a vast cloud of hydrogen, helium, and dust (nebulae).

➜ Nearby, a hot star burned up its fuel and destroyed itself.
➜ This explosion is a supernova.
➜ The supernova caused the nebula to collapse.
➜ Due to gravity, the nebula flattened into an exploding disc.
➜ In the disc’s centre, a protostar revs up.
➜ This protostar then went through nuclear fusion, ignited and expanded.
➜ As a result, it became our Sun.
➜ Material in the nebula that wasn’t absorbed by the Sun swirled around in a rotating disc of
dust and gas.
➜ It was held in orbit by the Sun’s high gravitational attraction.
➜ This disk is called the accretion disk.

➜ Gases rotating around a star lead to the formation of orbiting planets.

➜ It explains the range of elements in rocky planets.
➜ Each planet began as microscopic grains of dust in the accretion disk.
➜ The atoms and molecules in it stuck together and they formed balls and then objects
➜ These objects were large enough to attract other objects by gravity.
➜ Whilst the planets were forming, the Sun sent out energy and particles known as the stellar
winds.
➜ It would have been too hot for light molecules like hydrogen, helium, water, and methane to
exist in a solid state in the region of space, where the inner planets were forming

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➜ As a result, the inner planets are made of materials with high melting points, like metals
(including iron) and silicates.
➜ Due to this, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are smaller and rocky.
➜ The four outer planets were so far away from the Sun that these stellars winds couldn’t blow
away their ice and gases.
➜ In the Solar System’s cooler regions, further from the Sun, light molecules may exist as solid
ice.
➜ Because the light elements are more common than the heavier ones, the outer planets
could grow big enough to absorb even the lightest element: hydrogen.
➜ Hence, they’re gaseous and large.
➜ They’re made up of lighter elements e.g. hydrogen, as the Sun’s gravity pulls heavier
elements of the original accretion disc to the Sun’s surface.

- Calculating travel times

➜ The time it takes light to travel a significant distance:

➜ total time = total distance/speed

- Gravitational field strength

➜ The strength of a planet's gravitational field at its surface depends on its mass.
e.g. Jupiter’s gravitational field strength will be higher compared to the Earth’s gravitational
field, because Jupiter’s mass is larger (not in terms of size, but mass).
➜ It is nearly constant across its surface.
➜ As one gets away from the planet, gravitational field strength weakens.
➜ Increasing the distance decreases the gravitational field strength.
➜ The Sun has the largest mass in our solar system and therefore has the largest gravitational
field strength, which explains why all celestial bodies orbit it.
➜ The majority of the solar system's mass is in the Sun.
➜ The strength of the gravitational field there is stronger than that of the gravitational field on
the surfaces of the planets.

➜ Gravitational attraction: the force that keeps an object in orbit around the Sun.
➜ Atmosphere: the envelope of gases surrounding a planet.
➜ Surface temperature: the temperature of the air near the planet’s surface.

- Analysing and interpreting planetary data

➜ The following are tables for the Sun, Earth, Moon and other planets.
➜ This data indicates factors that affect conditions on the surface of the planets and
environmental problems that a visit (using manned spaceships or robots) would encounter.
➜ You don’t need to memorise it, but you should carefully analyse it to see if there’s any trend
between the values
➜ e.g. if a value increases whilst the other one decreases, and then develop this analysis with
what you’ve already learnt about the topic.

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➜ The greater the distance the longer it takes for a year to complete.
➜ This is because as we move further away from the Sun, the size of the orbit around it
increases.
➜ The orbital speed decreases with distance from the Sun.
➜ Neptune travels slower than Mercury due to greater distance from the Sun.
➜ Objects farther from the Sun move slower due to a weaker gravitational pull.
➜ Surface temperature decreases with the distance from the Sun except for Venus.
➜ Venus has a hot atmosphere of carbon dioxide gas and a high surface temperature.
➜ Mars has longer seasons than Earth due to:
- its axis being tilted at 24°
- its distance from the Sun is longer
➜ The first 4 planets have heavier elements, thus increasing their density.

- Orbits and the Conservation of Energy

➜ As a comet orbits the Sun, its orbit’s radius increases as it moves further away from the
Sun.
➜ A comet travels the fastest when it’s the closest to the Sun.
➜ Its speed decreases as it moves away from the Sun.

Stars and the Universe

- The Sun

➜ Medium-sized star.
➜ Mainly contains hydrogen and helium.
➜ Emits radiant energy.
➜ This radiation is given off by glowing hydrogen which is heated by the Sun's nuclear
reactions.

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➜ It radiates most of its energy in the infrared, visible and ultraviolet regions of the
electromagnetic spectrum.

- Nuclear fusion in stars

➜ Stars are powered by nuclear reactions which release energy.

➜ Stable stars are hot and dense enough in the centre (core) for nuclear fusion to occur.
➜ This hot temperature in their centre is required for nuclear fusion.
➜ The energy that nuclear fusion releases maintains the temperature at their core.
➜ Some of the heat from the core is transferred to the star’s outer layer.
➜ This transferred energy is relatively cooler and less dense, but it’s enough to make the
hydrogen gas glow and give off electromagnetic radiation into space.
➜ White and blue stars are hotter and brighter than the others.
➜ Surface temperature: 6000 to 25 000°C.
➜ Red or yellow ones are the coolest.
➜ Surface temperature: 3000 to 6000°C.

Stars
- Basics

➜ Galaxies are each made up of many billions of stars.

➜ The Sun is a star in the Milky Way galaxy.
➜ Other stars that make up the Milky Way are much further away from the Earth than the Sun
is from the Earth.
➜ Light-year: the distance travelled in a vacuum by light in one year.
One light-year = 9.5 × 10¹² km = 9.5 × 10¹⁵m

- The life cycle of a star

➜ It starts with a big cloud of dust and gas (nebula) containing hydrogen.
➜ Overtime, the attractive force of gravity pulls the dust together and forms a protostar.
➜ As more and more particles collide and join the protostar, it gets bigger and bigger.
➜ Therefore, its force of gravity gets stronger, which allows it to attract more dust and gas.
➜ The gravity squeezes the protostar, which causes the particles to collide more, and make it
denser.
➜ This increases the temperature of the protostar.
➜ When the temperature’s high enough, nuclear fusion occurs.
➜ The outward pressure, caused by nuclear fusion, and the inward pressure, caused by
gravity, are perfectly balanced.
➜ This thermal pressure arises from the kinetic energy of the nuclei.
➜ The star is stable due to the balance.
➜ At this point, it’s a main sequence star.
➜ At some point, the star will start to run out of hydrogen as fuel for the nuclear fusion
➜ The inward pressure contracts the star into a small ball, until it’s so hot that nuclear fusion
can start again, causing it to expand again.

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➜ Potential energy is transferred to kinetic energy, so the core becomes hotter.

➜ What will happen next depends on the size of the star at the beginning.

If it was a small/medium star, it’ll expand into a red giant:

➜ The remaining hydrogen gets burned and the star turns into a red giant.
➜ Shortly afterwards, the red giant becomes unstable and expels its outer layers.
➜ This leaves behind a planetary nebula with a hot, dense, white dwarf at its centre.
➜ Nuclear fusion doesn’t occur in the white dwarf.
➜ Overtime, the white dwarf gets cooler and darker as it emits all of its energy.
➜ It transitions into a black dwarf, which can’t give off light.

If it was a truly massive star, it’ll explode and expand into a red supergiant:
➜ Red supergiants star shining brightly again due to more nuclear fusion and eventually
explode into a supernova.
➜ A supernova forms a nebula of elements even heavier than iron, with a neutron star at its ➜
centre.
➜ If the star was absolutely massive, it’ll collapse on itself and become a black hole.
➜ Black Holes are so dense that their gravity pulls in any light that passes nearby.
➜ The nebula from a supernova may form new stars with orbiting planets.

- The Universe

➜ The Milky Way is one of the billions of galaxies making up the Universe.
➜ Its diameter is 100,000 light years.

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- The Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory states that:

➜ If the universe is currently expanding, it must have been smaller in the past.
➜ Initially, the universe was densely packed.
➜ The universe was formed 14 billion years ago from one place with a massive explosion (the
Big Bang).
➜ It started to expand after that and still continues to.

- Redshift and the Doppler Effect

➜ In sound, a wavelength defines its pitch.

➜ The shorter the wavelength is, the higher the pitch. The longer it is, the lower the pitch.
➜ When a police car gets closer to you, the sound waves get compressed and become
shorter, causing the pitch to rise so its sirens sound more high-pitched.
➜ When it passes you, the sound waves get longer, lowering the pitch so it sounds more far off
and distant. This is the doppler effect.

➜ The same phenomenon occurs in the case of light..

➜ When an objec heads towards you, the wavelength of the wave it emits gets shorter. In that
case, we say it's blue shifted.
➜ As it heads away from you, the wavelength gets longer and it's redshifted.
➜ If you apply that to a spectrum, you can measure that shift to see if an object is moving
toward or away from you.
➜ In the electromagnetic spectrum, the red end of the spectrum has a longer wavelength, and
the blue-violetish end has a shorter wavelength.

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➜ Wave being emitted by an object heading towards you gets blue-shifted (gets a shorter
wavelength). Wave being emitted by an object heading away from you, gets red-shifted (gets a
longer wavelength).

➜ In the diagram here, we can see that the black lines are moving towards the red end of this
absorption spectrum shown. This depicts the object moving away.

➜ Over here though, the black lines are more towards the blue end. This shows us that the
object is moving towards the observer.

➜ If the object is stationary (in this case we’ll relate it to space, hence the ‘object’ is a galaxy),
then the black lines will be evenly distributed toward both ends:

➜ When we analyse light from distant galaxies, its waves get stretched hence the light
stretches to the red end of the spectrum.
➜ This process of the light shifting to the red end of the spectrum is redshift.
➜ The light waves get stretched when they reach the Earth.
➜ That's because the space between Earth and the galaxies which are giving off/emitting light
are expanding.
➜ Because of the distance, we end up further away from the galaxy and the light waves get
stretched.
➜ The galaxies aren't travelling away from us through space, the space between Earth and the
galaxy is expanding.

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- Evidence supporting the Big Bang Theory

➜ If it wouldn't have been expanding, then the light waves would stay exactly the same to
Earth too as they travel from galaxies.

Redshift:
➜ The increase in the observed wavelength of electromagnetic radiation emitted from receding
stars and galaxies

IGCSE ONLY
- Cosmic background microwave radiation (CMBR)

➜ The Big Bang produced a radiation energy which still exists in the Universe.
➜ It was produced shortly after the Universe was formed.
➜ It exists in the form of CMBR.
➜ It’s present in all corners of the universe.
➜ Initially, it was high energy radiation towards the gamma end of the spectrum.
➜ As the universe expanded more and more, it expanded into the microwave region of the
electromagnetic spectrum.
➜ It’s present everywhere in the form of background radiation.
➜ It has maximum intensity at a wavelength of 1.1mm.

- Evidence for the Big Bang Theory

➜ Because of it being so evenly distributed at all points of the universe, it became evident that
it’s because the universe is expanding.

Recessional velocity:
➜ The velocity at which something moves away from the observer.

- Hubble’s law

➜ Hubble’s law states that recessional velocity is proportional to its distance from the Earth.
➜ It can be written as: v = H₀/d, where:
v = recessional velocity (km s⁻¹)
H₀ = Hubble’s constant (km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹)
d = distance between the object and the Earth (Mpc)
recessional velocity = Hubble’s constant x distance away
➜ Edwin Hubble discovered that the further a galaxy is away, the faster it’s moving away from
us.
➜ Hubble constant isn’t actually constant; it keeps changing because it represents the current
rate of expansion.
➜ Its current agreed value is: 2.2 x 10⁻¹⁸ per second.
➜ H₀ is defined as the ratio of the speed at which the galaxy is moving away from the Earth to
its distance from the Earth.

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