1. Space Exploration Our Solar System
New Discoveries
“Its Bigger and Stranger Than You Thought”
April 8, 2016
By Stevan Akerley,
NSS Space Ambassador #1129
Planetary Society Space Advocate

2. Presentation Outline Our Solar System (Today - NASA Webpage)
Primary Credits
NASA Web Page
“How The Universe Works”
Planetary Probes & Telescopes
Voyager 1 & 2
Galileo - Jupiter
Cassini – Saturn
Huygens to Titan
DAWN - Asteroids
New Horizons -Pluto
Hubble Kepler
IBEX – Interstellar Boundary
James Webb (soon)
Our Solar System (Today - NASA Webpage)
Planets and Moons
Solar System Birth & Time Line
A Photons Journey From The Sun (Fun Fact)
The Solar Wind
Earth-Moon Time Line
Orbital Balances “Just Right”
The Ice Line and the Gas Giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus Neptune)
Asteroids, Vesta and Ceres, and the DAWN Probe
INTERMISSION
Pluto and the NEW HORIZONS Probe)
The Other Plutoids (Trans Neptunian Objects (TNO)
The Kuiper Belt
The Ort Cloud
The Heliosphere / Heliopause / Interstellar Space
A New 9th Planet
The Big Surprise from the Edge of the Solar System

8. A Photons Journey from the Sun
Core
Radiative Zone
The Convection Zone
Solar Atmosphere
Photoshere
Chromoshere
Corona
A Photons Journey from the Sun
(A Fun Fact)
The hydrogen atoms that make up most of the Sun’s mass are under very high pressure and extreme heat
(15 million °C (27 million °F) at the core. They have so much energy, they split into their component parts:
protons and electrons—creating a plasma which enables nuclear fusion to begin.
The hydrogen plasma is able to fuse Hydrogen Nuclei into Helium Nuclei, and in the process release very high energy photons (gamma rays) and lots of energy. The electrons (freed from the plasma, create a magnetic field around the sun.
The radiative zone is just outside the core of the Sun. As the photons leave the core and enter the radiative zone, they encounter other densely packed protons. They are so crammed together, photons can’t travel more than a few millimeters without hitting another one. Each time one does, it loses some of its energy and is scattered in a random direction. As a result, its forward progress is slowed to a crawl. It can take anywhere from a few thousand to a few million years for one photon to escape to the surface of the sun.
It’s not just the light from distant stars that takes millions of years to reach us; the light from our own Sun does too!
Once released from the Sun’s surface photons take approximately 8 minutes to travel the 93,000,000 miles (150 million kilometers) from the Sun to Earth. (1 AU - Astronomical Unit)

10. Earth-Moon Time Line Earth Starts to Form
4.6 Billion Years Ago – Proto Earth starts to form out of the rocky chunks of the Solar Disk
(along with 50 to 100 other proto-planets)
4.5 Billion Years Ago – Theia (Mars sized Proto planet) crashes into Proto Earth.
Moon starts to form out of the Theia impact debris ringing Earth.
4.1 Billion Years Ago - Late Heavy Bombardment of asteroids and comets
(See Grand Tack Theory of the Gas Giants)
Earth Axis Tilt – another collision giving us our seasons.
When the Earth and Moon were young, the moon was closer
–Earth had Shorter Days and Higher Tides.
Earths Evolution continues
3 – 3.5 Billion Years Ago - First Primitive Life on Earth (Mars - Wet and Warm – Life ? - Panspermia ?)
Multicelular life and Cyanobacteria Begin Spreading over the Earth – Oxygenation Begins.
2.5 Billion Years Ago – First Ice Age - High Oxygen Content in Atmosphere (loss of Green House Gases)
2 Billion Years Ago – First Slime Molds Oxydation
1 Billion Years ago – First Super Continent Rodinia forms (Mars - Olympus Mons Active)
510 Million Years Ago – First Fish 410 Million Years Ago – First Forests
360 Million Years Ago – First Amphibians and Seed Bearing Plants (Carboniferous Period)
Recent Events & Extinctions
248 Million Years Ago – Permian Extinction Event (60-90% Extinction - Volcanism in Siberia)
206 Million Years Ago – End of Triassic Extinction (50-80% Extinction) - Super Continent Pangaea Forms
100 Million Years Ago First Flowering Plants (Tyco Crater is Formed on the Moon -Impact)
65 Million Years Ago –Dinosaurs go Extinct – (40-70% Extinction - Asteroid Impactor)
Million Years Ago - Mammals become dominant on Earth during Eocene Epoch (–Warmer than today)
100,000 to 200,000 Years Ago – First Humans
10-12,000 Years Ago - Most Recent Ice Age Ends (They Occur every 150 Million Years, last ~2.5 Million years)
Extinction Events occur every 20 to 30 Million Years on Earth for various reasons. (Top Level Species Lose !)
Survival of the fittest takes on a new meaning. (not the largest and not top of food chain)
Life on Earth has been Formed and Stimulated by Violence and Change.

14. INTERMISSION 10 Minutes Videos;

15. Sunset View of Pluto – Note Atmosphere
Sharon & Pluto Approximate Size is correct, but Distance is not.
Kuiper Belt Targets

23. A New 9th Planet http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/planetx 3 min.
And what about Rogue Planets ?
There may be more than there are stars !
3 min.

26. Back Up Slides to The Solar System
There is a Magnetar 50,000 light years away and on Dec. 27, 2004—the Earth was rocked by a cosmic blast from it so epic its scale is nearly impossible to exaggerate.
Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author of Death From the Skies!  
The flood of gamma and X-rays that washed over the Earth was detected by several satellites designed to observe the high-energy skies. RHESSI, which observes the Sun, saw this blast. INTEGRAL, used to look for gamma rays from monster black holes, saw this blast. The newly-launched Swift satellite, which was designed and built to detect bursts of gamma-ray from across the Universe, not only saw this blast but was so flooded with energy its detectors completely saturated—think of it as trying to fill a drinking glass with a fire hose. Even more amazingly, Swift wasn’t even pointed anywhere near the direction of the burst: In other words, this flood of energy passed right through the body of the spacecraft itself and was still so strong it totally overwhelmed the cameras.
It gets worse.
This enormous wave of fierce energy was so powerful it actually partially
ionized the Earth’s upper atmosphere, and it made the Earth’s magnetic
field ring like a bell. Several satellites were actually blinded by the event.
Whatever this event was, it came from deep space (50,000 LY away)
and still was able to physically affect the Earth itself !
Did you know –
There is a Massive Black Hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, called “Sagittarius A Star” (it is 14 Million Miles in Diameter, with a mass of about 4 Billion Suns)

27. Web Links for Further Study
A Photons Journey from the Sun
Three years of the sun at a pace of two images per day – 3 Minutes long
system.nasa.gov/planets/sun
Hilda Asteroids
Intermission Videos;
3 min.
15 min.
The DAWN Probe
The NEW HORIZONS Probe
What is a Magnetar ?
Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker,
science evangelizer, and author of Death From the Skies!