Chapter 2-Welcome To The Solar System
So we would have the experience of seeing the solar system in the black boards of our early science class. Every diagram that ever depicted the solar system usually has the sun in the centre and nine planets (eight as of now. Poor pluto, I miss you buddy) and each planet separated almost equidistant from each other. Sorry to say this. But that is a lie. A big fat lie.
We didn't find Pluto until 1930 because they didn't point the telescope in the right direction !The problem is that in the words of astronomer Clark Chapman is that we usually think that all the astronomers take their biggest telescope and at night look into planets and stars and find everything so new and exciting every now and then, which is not exactly true. They generally use their telescopes in the space to research about Quasar(a massive and extremely remote celestial object, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy, which typically has a starlike image in a telescope. It has been suggested that quasars contain massive black holes and may represent a stage in the evolution of some galaxies.)
A scientist named Lowell around the 1930's stated that Mars was covered with canals built by industrious Martians for the purpose of conveying water from polar regions to the dry but productive lands near the equator, Which turned out to be a laughing stock.
Even after finding the pluto we were not sure what was the exact size of the planet or the components that was made up of. The motion of the planet it quite different than the rest of the planets as we can't predict where exactly pluto will be situated after hundred years. Pluto's orbital path was out of alignment at an angle of 17 degree, like a girl would tilt her head while looking at her drunk spouse !
So how far is the space ? Imagine we travel in the speed of light(3x10^8m/s ), right from your home it would take seven hours to reach pluto but our quickest space craft can only make 56,000kmph so we can reach pluto by the end of 2026 or early 2027. After reaching pluto ? Will it be the end of the space. Our solar system and outer space takes fills only less than the trillionth of the available space.
See in our school maps of solar system, neptune will be right behind the jupiter but in reality it is way away from jupiter that it is five times away from Jupiter than the distance Jupiter is away from the earth ! Imagine a miniature version of solar system in which the earth is the diameter of a pea, then jupiter will be over 300 meters and puto would be around 3.5 Kms (in the size of a bacteria so it won't matter anyway). In the same scale our nearest star (Proxima Centauri) would be 16,000 kms away. Okay after passing pluto what will be seeing? The name is Oort Cloud (properly called Opik-Oort) after some ten thousand years of travelling and trust me pluto as our school maps showed as the last planet in the space is one- fifty -thousandth of the way !
The basic unit of measure is Astronomical Unit or AU, which is the distance from the sun to the earth. Pluto is about 40AU's from us and the heart of the Oort cloud is about fifty thousand AU and the Oort cloud's existence is probable but entirely hypothetical.
So what is there in the outer space ? Perfect vacuum way better than the ones we create in the laboratory. So is there any living creatures out there ? How do we find it ? We have the Drake's Equation (I have explained roughly as the whole theme is hypothetical, visit (https://www.space.com › Search for Life) for better understanding of this concept.
(Drake's Equation - The Drake Equation is an attempt to encapsulate all the variables that would be relevant to establishing the number of intelligent civilizations that existed in the Milky Way galaxy and which were broadcasting radio signals at this particular point in time.)
Fun fact :
If we are randomly inserted into the universe, the chances that you would be on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion. (That is 10^33 or 1 followed by 33 zeros) .
Info: The Astronomical Union downgraded pluto to a dwarf planet by the year 2006.
P. S: The drake equation is quite a complex assumption since it is hypothetical I have left it out and other interesting and fun facts are in the chapter. Kindly do pass on the information about this book to any teenage kid you know. You never know whom it might inspire and who would make science as their passion.
With love,
Arvi
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