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Planetary annihilation titan planet combos12/29/2022 ![]() ![]() When matter formed after the Big Bang it was already on the move. ^ to top Angular momentum puts planets in a spinĮarth and our neighbouring planets have been spinning for about 4.5 billion years now, but the push behind their spin is as old as the universe itself. Of course those horizontally striped clouds it sports don't help. That's why Earth is 40 kilometres wider across its equator than it is from pole to pole, and why super speedy Jupiter has a 10,000 kilometre bulge you can see from space. And even though the whole planet is spinning, the area around the equator is going much faster (because it's travelling through a greater circumference as the planet rotates), so the bulge is greatest there. The faster the spin, the bigger the bulge. But while centripetal force is constantly pulling inwards on a spinning planet, the planet is constantly trying to move in a straight line, and the result is a bit of a bulge. To make a planet or anything else spin you need a centripetal force - a force that constantly pulls inwards, to stop the thing from shooting off in a straight line. Planets with love handles Planets aren't perfectly spherical - most have a slight case of love handles, thanks to their spin. And the shape you get when everything is being pulled towards the centre of a lump? A sphere, which is why all planets are round.īut the spin on planets has a different origin. Things that poke out from the surface of a clump are pulled in, so no matter how lumpy or pointy a proto-planet might start out as, over time the force of its own gravity basically flattens its surface. The centre of gravity (the area everything else is drawn to) is always at an object's midpoint. This proto-planetary buffing process is due to their now enormous gravity. ![]() Pretty soon your humble clump of icy dust isn't just a collision waiting to happen, its gravity makes it a total dust magnet.Īfter the clumps have grown way bigger than an asteroid, they finally start losing their rough edges. The bigger they get, the stronger their gravity becomes, and the more attractive they become to other clumps. Tiny things like dust only have a tiny bit of gravity, but it's enough to keep two stray motes together when they meet.Īs those mini-clumps of ice and dust bump and stick, and bump and stick, they form bigger clumps. When dust and ice meet in space they tend to stick - not because they're manky, but because of gravity. With time, this frozen dusty mess went on to become the planets, moons, asteroids and comets that make up the rest of the solar system. The sun was a freshly minted star with a huge belt of dust and frozen gas swinging around its middle. And if you add two rules of physics to all that cosmic shrapnel, you can't help but end up with lots of big, round, spinning things.įour-and-a-half billion years ago the solar system was a much rougher neighbourhood. Planets, stars and every other lump in the universe are made out of bits of dust and gas that formed after the Big Bang. It's the result of being made from cosmic leftovers and a few simple laws of construction. The uniform shape and movement of planets isn't due to a lack of imagination. Why are most space objects smooth?, Science Online,. ![]()
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