The Solar System
Our planet, the Earth, is one of the many planets out in the solar system. Our solar system is one of the many solar systems out in space. Let’s focus on our solar system. It has 8 planets and a dwarf planet in it. These eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The dwarf planet is Pluto. All of these revolve around our Sun, a giant star at the centre of the solar system.[i] Planets aren’t the only masses to revolve around another mass. The moon, for example, orbits Earth, and revolves around it. Jupiter’s moons revolve around it, and so on, so forth. The reason planets and moons are in orbit is because of gravity. Gravity is a force that pulls objects towards other objects based on mass. The more mass something has, the stronger the gravity[ii]. The gravity pulls them round in orbit[iii]. [i] When good old Galileo said the sun was the centre of the solar system he was put under house arrest. Nicolaus Copernicus was scared of his own theory and published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) shortly before his death. [ii] Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, protects us from asteroids as it sucks them in due to its large gravity. [iii] The reason they don’t all crash together and orbit around instead is pretty complicated physics. |
