CONCEPT NOTES 1

I. TOPIC: UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM

(Structure, Composition, and Age of the Universe)
II. LEARNING GOAL: The students should be able to:
a. Describe the structure and composition of the Universe
III. CONCEPTS
Structure, Composition, and Age
● The universe as we currently know
it comprises all space and time,
and all matter and energy in it.
● It is made of 4.6% baryonic matter
(“ordinary” matter consisting of
protons, electrons, and neutrons:
atoms, planets, stars, galaxies,
nebulae, and other bodies), 24%
cold dark matter (matter that has
gravity but does not emit light),
and 71.4% dark energy (a source
of anti-gravity).
● Hydrogen, helium, and lithium are the three most abundant elements.
● Stars - the building block of galaxies-
are born out of clouds of gas and
dust in galaxies. Instabilities within
the clouds eventually results into
gravitational collapse, rotation,
heating up, and transformation into
a protostar- the hot core of a future
star as thermonuclear reactions set
in.
● Stellar interiors are like furnaces
where elements are synthesized or
combined/ fused together. Most stars such as the Sun belong to the so-called “main sequence
stars.” In the cores of such stars, hydrogen atoms are fused through thermonuclear reactions to
make helium atoms. Massive main sequence stars burn up their hydrogen faster than smaller
stars.
● A galaxy is a cluster of billions of stars and clusters of galaxies form superclusters. In between
the clusters is practically an empty space.
● Based on recent data, the universe is 13.8 billion years old. The diameter of the universe is
possibly infinite but should be at least 91 billion light-years (1 light-year = 9.4607 × 1012 km).
 CONCEPT NOTES 2
I. TOPIC: UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
(Expanding Universe)
II. LEARNING GOAL: The students should be able to:
a. Explain the red-shift and how it used as proof of an expanding universe
III. CONCEPTS
• In 1929, Edwin Hubble announced his significant discovery of the “redshift” and its
interpretation that galaxies are moving away from each other, hence as evidence for an expanding
universe, just as predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
• He observed that spectral lines of starlight made to pass through a prism are shifted toward the
red part of the electromagnetic spectrum, i.e., toward the band of lower frequency; thus, the inference
that the star or galaxy must be moving away from us.
Cosmic Microwave Background
 CONCEPT NOTES 3
I. TOPIC: UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
(Origin of the Universe)
II. LEARNING GOAL: The students should be able to:
a. State the different hypothesis that preceded the Big Bang Theory of the Origin of the Universe
III. CONCEPTS
Non-scientific Thought Creationism Theory
● Ancient Egyptians believed in many gods and myths which narrate that the world arose from an
infinite sea at the first rising of the sun.
● The Kuba people of Central Africa tell the story of a creator god Mbombo (or Bumba) who,
alone in a dark and water-covered Earth, felt an intense stomach pain and then vomited the
stars, sun, and moon.
● In India, there is the narrative that gods sacrificed Purusha, the primal man whose head, feet,
eyes, and mind became the sky, earth, sun, and moon respectively.
● The monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam claim that a supreme being
created the universe, including man and other living organisms.
Steady State Model
● The now discredited steady state model of the universe was proposed in 1948 by Bondi and
Gould and by Hoyle.
● It maintains that new matter is created as the universe expands thereby maintaining its density.
● Its predictions led to tests and its eventual rejection with the discovery of the cosmic microwave
background.
Big Bang Theory
● As the currently accepted theory of the origin and evolution of the universe, the Big Bang
Theory postulates that 13.8 billion years ago, the universe expanded from a tiny, dense and hot
mass to its present size and much cooler state.
● The theory rests on two ideas: General Relativity and the Cosmological Principle. In Einstein’s
General Theory of Relativity, gravity is thought of as a distortion of space-time and no longer
described by a gravitational field in contrast to the Law of Gravity of Isaac Newton. General
Relativity explains the peculiarities of the orbit of Mercury and the bending of light by the Sun
and has passed rigorous tests. The Cosmological Principle assumes that the universe is
homogeneous and isotropic when averaged over large scales. This is consistent with our current
large-scale image of the universe.
● The Big Bang Theory has withstood the tests for expansion:
1. the redshift
2. abundance of hydrogen, helium, and lithium, and
3. the uniformly pervasive cosmic microwave background radiation-the remnant heat from the
bang.
 CONCEPT NOTES 4
I. TOPIC: UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
(Big Bang Theory)
II. LEARNING GOAL: The students should be able to:
a. Explain the Big Bang Theory
III. CONCEPTS
Evolution of the Universe according to the Big Bang Theory
● From time zero (13.8 billion years ago) until 10-43 second later, all matter and energy in the
universe existed as a hot, dense, tiny state. It then underwent extremely rapid, exponential
inflation until 10-32 second later after which and until 10 seconds from time zero, conditions
allowed the existence of only quarks, hadrons, and leptons.
● Then, Big Bang nucleosynthesis took place and produced protons, neutrons, atomic nuclei, and
then hydrogen, helium and lithium until
20 minutes after time zero when sufficient cooling did not allow further nucleosynthesis.
● From then on until 380,000 years, the cooling universe entered a matter-dominated period
when photons decoupled from matter and light could travel freely as still observed today in the
form of cosmic microwave background radiation.
● As the universe continued to cool down, matter collected into clouds giving rise to only stars
after 380,000 years and eventually galaxies would form after 100 million years from time zero
during which, through nucleosynthesis in stars, carbon and elements heavier than carbon were
produced.
 ● From 9.8 billion years until the present, the universe became dark-energy dominated and
underwent accelerating expansion. At about 9.8 billion years after the big bang, the solar
system was formed.

CONCEPT NOTES 5
I. TOPIC: UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
(Large scale and Small scale properties of the Solar System)
II. LEARNING GOAL: The students should be able to:
a. Identify the large scale and small scale properties of the Solar System
III. CONCEPTS
Solar System
A. The solar system is located in the Milky Way galaxy huge disc- and spiral-shaped aggregation of
about at least 100 billion stars and other bodies;
B. Its spiral arms rotate around a globular cluster or bulge of many, many stars, at the center of which
lies a supermassive black hole;
C. This galaxy is about 100 million light years across (1 light year = 9.4607 × 1012 km;
D. The solar system revolves around the galactic center once in about 240 million years;
E. The Milky Way is part of the so-called Local Group of galaxies, which in turn is part of the Virgo
supercluster of galaxies;
F. Based on the assumption that they are remnants of the materials from which they were formed,
radioactive dating of meteorites, suggests that the Earth and solar system are 4.6 billion years old.
On the assumption that they are remnants of the materials from which they were formed.
Large Scale Features of the Solar System
1. Much of the mass of the Solar System is concentrated at the center (Sun) while angular
momentum is held by the outer planets.
2. Orbits of the planets elliptical and are on the same plane.
3. All planets revolve around the sun.
4. The periods of revolution of the planets increase with increasing distance from the Sun; the
innermost planet moves fastest, the outermost, the slowest;
5. All planets are located at regular intervals from the Sun.

Small scale features of the Solar System

1. Most planets rotate prograde
 2. Inner terrestrial planets are made of materials with high melting points such as silicates, iron,
and nickel. They rotate slower, have thin or no atmosphere, higher densities, and lower
contents of volatiles - hydrogen, helium, and noble gases.
3. The outer four planets - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are called "gas giants" because of
the dominance of gases and their larger size. They rotate faster; have thick atmosphere, lower
densities, and fluid interiors rich in hydrogen, helium and ices (water, ammonia, methane).

CONCEPT NOTES 6
I. TOPIC: UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
(Origin of the Solar System)
II. LEARNING GOAL: The students should be able to:
a. Discuss the different hypotheses explaining the origin of the solar system.
III. CONCEPTS
Origin of the Solar System
Any acceptable scientific thought on the origin of the solar system has to be consistent with and
supported by information about it (e.g. large and small scale features, composition). There will be a
need to revise currently accepted ideas should data no longer support them.

Nebular Hypothesis
In the 1700s Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant,
and Pierre-Simon Laplace independently thought of
a rotating gaseous cloud that cools and contracts in
the middle to form the sun and the rest into a disc
that become the planets. This nebular theory failed
to account for the distribution
of angular momentum in the solar system.

Encounter Hypotheses:
A. Buffon’s (1749) Sun-comet encounter that sent
matter to form planet;
B. James Jeans’ (1917) sun-star encounter that would have drawn from the sun matter that would
condense to planets,
C. T.C. Chamberlain and F. R. Moulton’s (1904) planetesimal hypothesis involving a star much bigger
than the Sun passing by the Sun and draws gaseous filaments from both out which planetisimals
were formed;
D. Ray Lyttleton’s(1940) sun’s companion star colliding with another to form a proto-planet that
breaks up to form Jupiter and Saturn.
E. Otto Schmidt’s accretion theory proposed that the Sun passed through a dense interstellar cloud
and emerged with a dusty, gaseous envelope that eventually became the planets. However, it
cannot explain how the planets and satellites were formed. The time required to form the planets
exceeds the age of the solar system.
 F. M.M. Woolfson’s capture theory is a variation of James Jeans’ near-collision hypothesis. In this
scenario, the Sun drags from a near proto-star a filament of material which becomes the planets.
Collisions between proto-planets close to the Sun produced the terrestrial planets; condensations
in the filament produced the giant planets and their satellites. Different ages for the Sun and
planets is predicted by this theory.

Sun - Star interaction

Nobel Prize winner Harold Urey’s compositional studies on meteorites in the 1950s and other
scientists’ work on these objects led to the conclusion that meteorite constituents have changed very
little since the solar system’s early history and can give clues about their formation. The currently
accepted theory on the origin of the solar system relies much on information from meteorites.

Protoplanet Hypothesis - Current Hypothesis

A. About 4.6 billion years ago, in the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy, a slowly-rotating gas and dust
cloud dominated by hydrogen and helium starts to contract due to gravity
B. As most of the mass move to the center to eventually become a proto-Sun, the remaining materials
form a disc that will eventually become the planets and momentum is transferred outwards.
C. Due to collisions, fragments of dust and solid matter begin sticking to each other to form larger and
larger bodies from meter to kilometer in size. These proto-planets are accretions of frozen water,
ammonia, methane, silicon, aluminum, iron, and other metals in rock and mineral grains enveloped
in hydrogen and helium.
D. High-speed collisions with large objects destroys much of the mantle of Mercury, puts Venus in
retrograde rotation.
E. Collision of the Earth with large object produces the moon. This is supported by the composition of
the moon very similar to the Earth's Mantle.
F. When the proto-Sun is established as a star, its solar wind blasts hydrogen, helium, and volatiles
from the inner planets to beyond Mars to form the gas giants leaving behind a system we know
today.

CONCEPT NOTES 7
I. TOPIC: UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
(Recent advancement/information on the Solar System)
II. LEARNING GOAL: The students should be able to:
a. Become familiar with the most recent advancements/information on the solar system.
III. CONCEPTS
Recent advancement/information on the Solar System
1. Exploration of Mars
Since the 1960s, the Soviet Union and the U.S. have been sending unmanned probes to
the planet Mars with the primary purpose of testing the planet's habitability. The early efforts in
the exploration of Mars involved flybys through which spectacular photographs of the Martian
surface were taken. The first successful landing and operation on the surface of Mars occurred
in 1975 under the Viking program of NASA. Recently, NASA, using high resolution imagery of the
 surface of Mars, presented evidence of seasonal flow liquid water (in the form of brine - salty
water) on the surface of Mars.

2. Rosetta's Comet
Rosetta is a space probe built by the European Space Agency and launched on 2 March
2004. One of its missions is to rendezvous with and attempt to land a probe (Philae) on a comet
in the Kuiper Belt. One of the purposes of the mission is to better understand comets and the
early solar systems. Philae landed successfully on comet (67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko) on 12
November 2014. Analysis of the water (ice) from the comet suggests that its isotopic
composition is different from water from Earth.

3. Pluto Flyby
On 14 July 2015, NASA's New Horizon spacecraft provided mankind the first close-up
view of the dwarf planet Pluto. Images captured from the flyby revealed a complex terrain - Ice
Mountains and vast crater free plains. The presence of crater free plains suggests recent (last
100 millions of years) of geologic activity.

CONCEPT NOTES 8
I. TOPIC: UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
II. LEARNING GOAL: The students should be able to:
a. Recognize the difference in the physical and chemical properties between the Earth and its
neighboring planes; and
b. Identify the factors that allow a planet to support life.
III. CONCEPTS
● Escape velocity - minimum speed an object needs to escape a planet's pull of gravity.
● Surface pressure - atmospheric pressure at a location on the surface of the planet. It is
proportional to the mass of air above the location.
● Temperature if no GHG - this would be the temperature of the planet without the warming
effect of greenhouse gases. Note that the temperature of the Earth would be ~ 18 0C lower
without greenhouse warming.
● Length of day - a function of rotational speed.
● The Earth's magnetic field is believed to be the consequence of the presence of a solid metallic
inner core and a liquid metallic outer core.
● The ability of a planet to retain its internal heat is proportional to its size. Mars may have lost
much of its internal heat very early in its evolution.
● A planet's temperature is a function of distance from the Sun but is modified by the amount of
greenhouse warming.