the history of the solar system

[milkyrain]

here is an article i wrote about the solar system let me know what you think .

 

The History of the Solar System.

The cloud of gas surrounding the dull yellow star cooled. From the remains everything in our solar system was born, the last skin of the dead star made our blood, all of the material that makes our skin and faces, our hearts and brains were all first made together in a colourful ball of light in the sky.

The exploded debris circled the left over star like water circling a drain, and eventually the lumpiness of the matter meant that it fell together again making different balls at different distances, some so heavy that the matter near them began to circle them too, and from this the planets and their moons formed.

Far away from the Sun's warmth lay an icy edge to the solar system where one hundred thousand million comets grew. Much further in than this, just outside of the orbit of Neptune, another cloud of comets formed, debris of the explosion that were too small to form a planet. The largest of these we call Pluto. Five times less massive than our Moon and covered in frozen methane Pluto spins with its twin planet Charon crossing the orbit of Neptune every few hundred years.

The furthest properly formed planet, Neptune, circles forty times closer to the Sun than the first belt of comets. Neptune is beautifully dark blue with huge dark methane storms and small white clouds. A number of large moons and millions of small ones circle it's cold, gaseous body. The small moons make a ring around it's centre whilst one of it's larger moons, Triton, explodes with volcanic activity producing gases similar to those that used to dominate Earth, possibly even water.

Uranus, the next planet in, is the same deep blue as Neptune and has the same type of ring around it, but it has been knocked sideways from all of the other planets. It's violent past is evident from this and one of it's moons, Miranda, which shows deep scars from being blown apart and fused back together again.

Further in still is a yellow planet with a million colourful small moons circling around it in hundreds of separate rings. Saturn's outermost moon, Iapetus, is split into two colours, one side is as black as tar and the other as white as snow. It too once had a ring like Saturn's but the rocks fell in making a huge range of mountains around the centre. Another of Saturn's moons, Titan, is shrouded in bright orange clouds which contain within them the molecules needed to make life. Like Neptune's Triton, Titan contains the same materials Earth used to have but it is cold and its ocean of methane and water is frozen and slushy.

The next closest planet to the Sun is also the largest. Had Jupiter been any larger it may have lit up to become a star too, but it is just a bit too small and instead it is a stormy, electronic, red ball of gas containing a cyclone three times the size of Earth that spins around it at tremendous speeds. Europa, one of it's moons has an ocean of liquid water separating it's rocky core and icy surface. In this ocean heat rises like in the underwater volcanoes on Earth, icebergs float above. On another moon, Io, volcanoes explode making clouds of sodium above a rocky surface of yellow sulphur. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, and is bigger even than Mercury, it is a huge ball of ice and shines like a giant crystal in the sky.

Jupiter is so large that it pulled apart the planet which was to form next leaving a scattering of boulders made of iron and semi-precious stones. The asteroids alone are not massive enough to become spherical. A sphere is formed because everything falls to the centre just like apples falling down to Earth instead of up to the sky. On the other side of the world the apples also fall to the ground. Here people walk with their feet nearer us than their heads and the see the moon and the Sun upside down from the way we see. There is no up and down only the pull of gravity, things always fall towards the heaviest object. Planets and moons are so large that everything falls inwards at the same rate and a sphere is formed, any dents will even out as matter falls in to fill the gap. But the asteroids are too small to pull everything inwards and so are dented and distorted.

Two of these asteroids, Phobos and Deimos fell into the valley of space made by Mars and orbit it as moons. Mars is made of the same thing that makes our blood, and because of this it is red. The plains of Mars make a sandy desert blown by a carbon dioxide wind, just like the Earth used to be. It was warmed by volcanoes, some three times taller than Mt Everest, but like the Earth it is cold at the poles and dry ice snows down.

On the other side of the Earth from Mars lies Venus. Venus is incredibly bright as it is covered in a thick layer of white clouds made from greenhouse gases and gaseous sulphuric acid. This insulates the planet so that the volcanic and cratered surface exists at the same temperature throughout the day and across it's whole surface.

Closest to the Sun lies Mercury, a rocky planet covered with dust, lava flows, and a surface as cratered as the moon.

[Martin]

here is an article i wrote about the solar system let me know what you think .

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here are some things that I think:

you have an evocative stye with sometimes poetical turn of phrase

which I think is nice

 

you give a link to your website which I gather from the name is about the stars. I hope you get visitors and that they enjoy what you have prepared.

 

your style is impressionist and visual to such an extent that it really needs photographs or other graphics. I'll bet that you have already seen to that and that your website has a lot of photographs.

 

I can't take time to check thru the facts. they are probably all or nearly all OK but I can't verify this.

 

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If I were going to crit your writing, I would go to your website and see whether it covers the HISTORY angle.

 

Who first observed the moons of Jupiter?

who realized the planets go in ellipses not circles?

who first measured the speed of light and how did he do it? (Roemer in 1675 by observing the moons of Jupiter)

who first got the heliocentric idea and how did he estimate the size and distance of the sun?

how was the first reasonably accurate estimate of the sun's distance made?

who first measured the distance to another star? how did he do it?

 

Maybe none of these questions would be important in your treatment of the solar system. they are only what occur to me to ask. But there must be SOME historical content. Because the solar system is not just an awe-inspiring sight, it is a STORY. People's gradual appreciation of the extent and variety and mechanics of it is an interesting story that makes the thing itself more interesting.

 

Maybe you have that angle covered too. Hope you get visitors.

 

I'd say you should start some real discussion threads, or join in some already existing ones---not just give a taste of your website.

[Fred56]

here is an article i wrote about the solar system let me know what you think .

...

you should start some real discussion threads' date=' or join in some already existing ones---not just give a taste of your website.[/quote']

He's right, you know. Discussing any ideas at all helps you explain it to yourself better, which is kind of the point of communicating...