By PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU (Vrs.Somanchi)
Our aim in these articles is mainly
the study about the various living systems of planet Earth—our Mother Earth.
Before attempting this we have to know about the place of planet Earth in solar
system ,its age and history and also a little about its air(the
Atmosphere), its oceans, seas, lakes, rivers etc (the Hydrosphere) and its
world of mountains and hills and land,its stones and sand (the Lithosphere).
The sun around which earth rotates
along with eight other planets and their moons since “endless time” is a huge
sphere of 98% Hydrogen and Helium gases (in their ionized plasma form)
with its surface layers burning at about 6000 degrees centigrade and interior
having temperatures of ten million degrees with endless nuclear reactions.
Nuclear fusion reaction takes place in interior of sun every moment and energy
equivalent to millions of atomic bombs is produced and radiated into
space every second! Eeven the surface of burns at 6000 degrees !( The melting
temperature of iron is just 1500 degrees and H2O boils only at 100
degrees centigrade).scientists say that sun can exist with this rate of energy
release for another four and half billion years!
The stone sphere of earth has
diameter of 7900 miles.Each of the other eight planets are either a little bigger
or smaller. Compared to the earth,the sun is a sphere of gaseous and plasma
matter with diameter of 864,600 miles. The sun weighs 333,000 times
more than the sphere of earth. Scientists say that 1,300,000 earths
can fit inside the sun!
Scientists tell that sun formed from
an un-imaginably big cloud of huge mass of gas and cosmic dust . After
slowly gathering colossal quantities of material from the surrounding hydrogen
and dust cloud for about 4500 million years(450 crore years) it went through an
“imploding” stage— (matter falling at violent speed towards a
gravitational center)— and a star with a million degree hot core formed
in which nuclear fusion reactions started. Hydrogen ions fused to create helium
ions and also colossal quantities of energy at millions degrees heat and other
radiations. Thus was the sun created.
A colossal flat cloud of matter
consisting of white hot gaseous and dusty matter rotated around sun and
was dragged by the sun around itself. Earth and the other planets were
formed from this white hot gas and dust cloud and appeared
like white hot liquid drops of melted metals and melted stone . The
planets started moving in elliptical orbits around the sun at distances of
hundreds of millions of miles.
All the the planets and perhaps the
moons were thrown to a big distance (hundreds of millions of miles) by the
centrifugal force created by the sun at time of creation. These
distance are really small compared to the distances of the faraway cosmic
bodies like galaxies and stars. The earth and other planets and moons could not
escape the terrific gravity of sun. The planets with their moons rotate
endlessly around sun at a very great distance but are firmly bound to sun
for endless time due to terrific invisible gravitational pull. The comets move
around the sun ,in extremely long orbits requiring decades of time.
The comets originate in an extremely cold area at border of our solar system
called “Oort cloud” where thousands of big and small icy objects (some
round and some of irregular shapes) exist and take long elliptical routes for
century-long journeys around the sun. The comets are a few hundred meters
or a few kilometers long and are thought to be concrete-hard sand and
ice masses melting and disintegrating when they move near to the sun in
their extremely long elliptic orbits
The most distant planets and comets
are generally very cold masses at nearly “minus 100 to minus 200 degrees”
temperatures. But all these move in strict solar orbits controlled by the terrific
gravity of sun. There are big and small stone pieces called meteors in
the vicinity of some distant planets but all floating in orbits and now
and then disturbed by the gravity from heavy planets passing nearby heavy
during their orbits round the sun. Some small stone-size meteors get
attracted by earth’s gravity and burn up in our atmosphere as they enter
earth’s air envelope at terrific speeds of 20 or 30 kilometers per
second.
Now onwards all our discussion
is limited to planet earth. But we move to a time 4500 million
years back(450 crore years) in our imagination. Though temperature deep
inside the sun may be ten million degrees and though the heat on
the surface too may be 6000 degrees centigrade, it is horribly cold
in cosmic space —thousands of millions of miles from the stars and sun.
The temperatures in the dark, silent and cold cosmic space may be “minus
200 degrees” or even far colder –quite near to the “Absolute Zero”( minus
273 degrees)!
Though the earth and other
planets in their formative stage existing near the sun were very hot ,
they cooled quickly in course of a few million years when they
moved into faraway orbits at hundreds of millions of miles distance from the
sun. In the beginning the planets including our earth were like white hot
liquid drops of molten metal and molten stone. But all of them soon lost all
that heat by radiation into space . Some planets moved so far away from sun
that they become extremely cold
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