Top 10 Misconceptions about our Solar System Do you think you know what’s what about
our Solar System? I'm Humblebee and you’re watching Astrum. We’re
going to count down the top ten misconceptions about our Solar System. Let’s see if you
believed any of these before watching this! 10. The Sun is a burning ball of fire.
The Sun is glowing, not burning like a fire. The Sun glows because its temperature is about
5,500 degrees Celsius. This heat is not produced by burning (a chemical reaction), but rather
by fusion (a nuclear reaction). This nuclear fusion takes place deep in the Sun’s core
at a temperature of about 15 million degrees. As the heat travels out through the Sun’s
layers, it becomes much cooler, but still very much hot enough to glow in visible light.
Now, while 5,500 degrees seems cool compared to 15 million degrees, that’s still hot
enough to melt most metals. Just to give a comparison, a wood fire burns at about 500
degrees. 9. Pluto is the most-distant and last object
in the solar system. Pluto resides within a region of icy objects
called the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt extends from Neptune’s orbit outward. Beyond Pluto's
orbit is another vast region of icy objects called the Oort Cloud, which, like the Kuiper
Belt, is a home to icy comets. There’s even three dwarf planets that we know about that
are further, and some even bigger than Pluto. There’s Haumea, Makemake and Eris. Eris
is currently about 3 times as far away from the Sun as Pluto.
8. Saturn is the only planet with rings. While many of us were taught in school that
Saturn had amazing rings, made up of small rocks, ice and other particles, there are
actually several other planets that also have rings around them. In fact, all of the larger
planets in the solar system have been found to have rings. This is true of Jupiter—whose
rings cannot be seen from our planet—as well as Neptune. Even Uranus has nine bright
rings around it, as well as a few fainter ones—but all of these are difficult to see,
due to the distance. 7. Comets come from regions outside the solar
system. Comets are part of the solar system. Scientists
believe they come from one of two locations within the solar system: the Kuiper Belt and
the Oort Cloud. The comets that we see often – every 100 years – come from the Kuiper
Belt, and comets that we see rarely – every few thousand years – come from the Oort
Cloud. 6. Asteroids in the Asteroid Belt are very
close to each other. Thanks to Star Wars and other Hollywood space
movies, we have the impression that asteroids are always bashing into each other and spaceships
would have a hard time navigating an asteroid field. Asteroids though are not close to each
other. The asteroid material is so thinly distributed that numerous unmanned spacecraft
have traversed it without incident. On average, they are roughly 1 million miles from each
other, and the total mass of the asteroid belt is only just 4% of the mass of the Moon.
5. Mercury is tidally locked to the Sun like the Moon is to Earth.
For many years it was thought that Mercury was synchronously tidally locked with the
Sun, rotating once for each orbit and always keeping the same face directed towards the
Sun, in the same way that the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. Radar observations
in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance, rotating three times for every
two revolutions around the Sun. The original reason astronomers thought it was tidally
locked was that, whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always nearly
at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, hence showing the same face. This is because, coincidentally,
Mercury's orbit takes almost half the time Earth takes to orbit the Sun. Due to Mercury's
3:2 spin–orbit resonance, a solar day (from sunrise to sunrise) lasts about 176 Earth
days. A sidereal day (the period of rotation) lasts about 58.7 Earth days.
4. Mercury is the hottest planet in the Solar System.
While it is sensible to think that Mercury is the hottest planet due to it being the
closest planet to the Sun, it’s just simply not true. It turns out that Venus is actually
a hotter planet than Mercury, even though it is further away. The reason for this is
that Mercury doesn’t have an atmosphere (because it’s so close to the Sun) which
means that there is nothing to hold the heat in. Venus, on the other hand, has a notoriously
thick atmosphere that traps the heat created by the sun. The max temperature you’ll find
on Mercury is 426 degrees c, while the average temperature on Venus is 462 °C.
3. The Sun only accounts for a small part of what’s in the Solar System.
I’m sure you guessed the Sun is big. But the sun actually makes up over ninety-nine
percent of all of the mass in our entire solar system. Jupiter and some of the other large
planets make up most of the rest, and Earth barely even registers in the equation. We
can be glad the Sun is as large as it is though, as it makes everything in the solar system
work – giving us light, heat and energy – while holding everything together in their
orbits using its massive gravity. 2. Comets always have tails.
Comets do not always have tails. They develop a fuzzy, shell-like cloud called a coma, and
one, two, or three tails when near the Sun. A comet tail and coma are illuminated and
may become visible from Earth when a comet passes through the inner Solar System, the
dust reflecting sunlight directly and the gases glowing from ionisation. Interestingly,
while the solid nucleus of comets is generally less than 50 km across, the coma may be larger
than the Sun, and ion tails have been known to extend 3.8 astronomical units (355 million
mi). Also, the tail will always point away from the Sun. Comets have no coma or tail
when far away from the Sun. 1. The Solar System formed during the Big
Bang, along with the rest of the Universe. The Solar System is a lot younger than the
universe. According to scientific research, the current estimate of the age of the universe
is 14 billion years, while it is believed that the Solar System is only 4 and a half
billion years. The Solar System is said to have formed from the gravitational
collapse of a giant molecular cloud, most of which became our Sun, the rest forming
everything else found in the Solar System. What other misconceptions have you heard about
our Solar System? Post in the comments below. Be sure to check out my channel here and if
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