From the USM Southworth Planetarium
“Out of sight”
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
November 19, 2009
Space Smoke
Tedious? Certainly.
Time-consuming? Undeniably.
Hideously boring to observe? Depends upon your idea of a good time.
Worthwhile? Depends upon what kind of day you’ve had and how that has affected your view of humanity.
We are discussing the creation of our solar system, an event that began more than five billion years ago and required more than 10 million years from initiation to conclusion. We personally believe that this genesis fest was a grand occurrence, for we are truly into the notion of human existence. The problem we often have when explaining what transpired before and during this solar system creation is in the description. Time and again, the phrase “Born from a cold cloud of gas and dust” is employed when we try to explain how the Sun, planets, and other solar system bodies came into being. However, at the very beginning of the process, the particles within the frigid cloud were so minuscule that the word “dust” is far too generous an assessment of the particle size.
Let’s begin this tryst at the true beginning and work our way forward. According to the cosmologists, who are wont to change their minds, of course, at any given moment, the Universe was born from a genesis event called “The Big Bang.” Scientists believe that this “inflation” created all matter, space, time and energy.
Initially, however, the Universe was a tiny sphere of super-hot radiant energy. More than 300,000 Earth years had to elapse before the cosmos was cool enough to allow for the formation of matter. Indeed, all matter is, at its foundation, energy in crystallized form. The composition of the early material Universe was hydrogen and helium.
From this primordial gas the galaxies themselves took shape. Regions within this cloud collapsed, precipitating the formation of the first stars. The most massive of these stars eventually exploded in events called “supernovae.” A supernova explosion’s energy is so high it creates all the elements heavier than iron and disperses the stellar remains to nearby regions.
One such supernova explosion sent heavy elements into an rarefied cloud of hydrogen and helium. So diffuse was this cloud that its constituent particles were about the size of smoke grains, instead of dust. The introduction of these supernovae remnants compressed this smoke cloud, causing it to collapse in on itself. Within the cloud dense pockets formed. These attracted surrounding matter that caused these little areas to grow more massive, thereby becoming more gravitationally powerful. Over time, these pockets became quite large and would turn into proto-stars: the heavy spheres of gas that would one day become stars.
Around one of these infant stars, a disc formed to create all planets, asteroids, comets and all the other objects one finds darting about the solar system. On one of these worlds, animals, including people, took shape and still scurry about.
Today, incidentally, is the Great American Smoke Out. While we will resist any impulse to preach or cajole anybody about anything, we decided that today would be a good time to offer a different view of smoke: as the cosmic cocoon from which we, ourselves, arose.
