-
Unveiling the Solar System’s Flatness: A Matter of Spinning Pizza Dough
If you have carefully observed the solar system model, you may have noticed that the sun, planets, satellites and asteroids are all approximately on the same plane. But why is this so? To answer this question, let us first go back to about 4.5 billion years ago, when the solar system was first formed. At that time, the solar system was just a huge, constantly rotating cloud of dust and gas, with a diameter of about 12,000 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the average distance between the earth and the sun, which is about 150 million kilometers). Because the cloud is so large, even though it contains only dust…
-
The Size of the Universe: It’s Astronomical!
Any writer trying to describe the size of the universe faces a dilemma, because the numbers involved are so extreme that some don’t think it’s necessary to try. But is there any book about the universe that you don’t even try? We need to start by understanding the numbers involved in the physics of space. For example, 1 million seconds is equivalent to 11 and a half days, 1 billion seconds is equivalent to 32 years, and 1 trillion seconds is equivalent to 32,000 years. Keep this comparison in mind as we struggle to think about what is to come. We also need to understand a fact: the distance from…
