Goldilocks Universe – 3 Asteroids and Jupiter
What’s the difference between an Asteroid and a Meteorite? Asteroids hang around a region of space known as the Asteroid belt about 132 million miles from earth and between the Planets Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids become Meteorites when they wander away from that region and enter the Earth’s atmosphere. During the flaming entry their outer surface is burned away and the remnants become meteorites. If they were able to, the dinosaurs and other species that suffered extinction would elaborate on
the dangers of meteors. But Meteorites are not always lethal, for when their size is small, meteorite’s showers provide celestial entertainment.
Enter Jupiter and the Outer Planets, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus on the solar scene. Once Jupiter developed into a giant planet, it took over the solar neighbor. Before Jupiter’s arrival, the carbon rich rocky debris from the Sun’s birth was in a circular orbit around the Sun coalescing into planets. Jupiter stopped the formation of new planets and the Earth from becoming many times larger. Yes we could have become a Super Earth but then the stronger gravity would become a huge problem. Birds would have a hard time flying and watching football would be very boring if football players used up the game clock just to get up from the ground. Again a Goldilocks moment, for without the Planet Jupiter being the right size and distance from Earth, our Earth could have been too large to support the evolution that resulted in our being here.
As we study and observe with the Kepler Telescope the other planets orbiting Stars a few hundred to a few thousand light years (1 light year = 6 trillion miles) away from Earth, we discovered 315 Earth size planets along with 816 Super Earths (2 or more times larger than the Earth). But we also discovered that in some of these solar neighborhoods things are not right for life to flourish. Either the orbits are very unstable or the proximity of larger Jupiter size planets causes havoc on nearby by Earth size planets.
It must be noted here that of the 2740 planets discovered by the Kepler Telescope (duration of mission from 2009 to 2016), only 105 have been confirmed as planets. Follow up future space missions will focus on whether these Earth size planets can harbor life.
At this point we need to elaborate how Jupiter saved the day for us. As mentioned above, the rocky debris was in a circular orbit where the rocks would collide at low velocities relatively speaking and coalesce into larger rocky bodies and then planets. Once Jupiter came on the scene, its gravity disrupted the nice circular orbits of the rocky debris, turning their orbits into high velocity elliptical orbits. Now the rocks began smashing and fracturing each other instead of coalescing. From this point on,
new planets could not be form and the earth stopped increasing in size. Jupiter’s gravity also cleaned up some of the rocky debris that was bombarding the inner planets including the Earth by attracting it to the Asteroids belt or ejecting it out our Solar System.
Does this mean we are safe from Asteroids and Meteorites? This is not case at all. As technology improves our telescopes and instruments, we have detected a lot of “near earth objects”, some of them posing a danger to us. Astronomers created a new acronym, PHOs (Potentially Hazardous Objects). They are scanning the sky for PHOs under a program named Spaceguard. On the drawing boards are ideas to intercept and deflect PHOs with rockets.
In "Goldilocks Universe - 4", Jupiter and the Outer Planets will be featured. To be Posted April 1
What’s the difference between an Asteroid and a Meteorite? Asteroids hang around a region of space known as the Asteroid belt about 132 million miles from earth and between the Planets Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids become Meteorites when they wander away from that region and enter the Earth’s atmosphere. During the flaming entry their outer surface is burned away and the remnants become meteorites. If they were able to, the dinosaurs and other species that suffered extinction would elaborate on
the dangers of meteors. But Meteorites are not always lethal, for when their size is small, meteorite’s showers provide celestial entertainment.
Enter Jupiter and the Outer Planets, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus on the solar scene. Once Jupiter developed into a giant planet, it took over the solar neighbor. Before Jupiter’s arrival, the carbon rich rocky debris from the Sun’s birth was in a circular orbit around the Sun coalescing into planets. Jupiter stopped the formation of new planets and the Earth from becoming many times larger. Yes we could have become a Super Earth but then the stronger gravity would become a huge problem. Birds would have a hard time flying and watching football would be very boring if football players used up the game clock just to get up from the ground. Again a Goldilocks moment, for without the Planet Jupiter being the right size and distance from Earth, our Earth could have been too large to support the evolution that resulted in our being here.
As we study and observe with the Kepler Telescope the other planets orbiting Stars a few hundred to a few thousand light years (1 light year = 6 trillion miles) away from Earth, we discovered 315 Earth size planets along with 816 Super Earths (2 or more times larger than the Earth). But we also discovered that in some of these solar neighborhoods things are not right for life to flourish. Either the orbits are very unstable or the proximity of larger Jupiter size planets causes havoc on nearby by Earth size planets.
It must be noted here that of the 2740 planets discovered by the Kepler Telescope (duration of mission from 2009 to 2016), only 105 have been confirmed as planets. Follow up future space missions will focus on whether these Earth size planets can harbor life.
At this point we need to elaborate how Jupiter saved the day for us. As mentioned above, the rocky debris was in a circular orbit where the rocks would collide at low velocities relatively speaking and coalesce into larger rocky bodies and then planets. Once Jupiter came on the scene, its gravity disrupted the nice circular orbits of the rocky debris, turning their orbits into high velocity elliptical orbits. Now the rocks began smashing and fracturing each other instead of coalescing. From this point on,
new planets could not be form and the earth stopped increasing in size. Jupiter’s gravity also cleaned up some of the rocky debris that was bombarding the inner planets including the Earth by attracting it to the Asteroids belt or ejecting it out our Solar System.
Does this mean we are safe from Asteroids and Meteorites? This is not case at all. As technology improves our telescopes and instruments, we have detected a lot of “near earth objects”, some of them posing a danger to us. Astronomers created a new acronym, PHOs (Potentially Hazardous Objects). They are scanning the sky for PHOs under a program named Spaceguard. On the drawing boards are ideas to intercept and deflect PHOs with rockets.
In "Goldilocks Universe - 4", Jupiter and the Outer Planets will be featured. To be Posted April 1
