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31 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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the space age began when
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the U.S.S.R. launched the Sputnik One satellite into orbit on October 4, 1957
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In cosmology, the Nebular Hypothesis
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the currently accepted argument about how a Solar System can form
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The Sun contains about
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99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System
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The most common visible features on the Sun
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sunspots, which appear darker than their surroundings because of lower temperatures
regions of intense magnetic activity where convection is inhibited by strong magnetic fields, reducing energy transport from the hot interior to the surface |
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Today, planetary geologist, divide the planets, moons, asteroids and comets into three major compositional groups, based upon their melting points (which, in turn, related as to where formation occurred in the Solar System)
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Rocks
Gases Ices |
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a full day-night-cycle takes
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176 Earth days on Mercury
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About 80% of the Venus surface consists of
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subdued plains that are covered with lava flows
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The atmosphere of Venus is over 200 kilometers thick
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It is composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide (CO2) with clouds of sulfuric acid
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Today, we know that the Moon does not have “seas” and that the maria are
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flat plains that were created by immense outpouring of basaltic lava flows 2.7 to 3.5 billion years ago
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The South Pole- Aiken Basin on the Moon is the
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largest impact structure in our Solar System, with a diameter of 2,500 kilometers and a depth of 13 kilometers
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Tidal extremes are greatest when the Earth, Moon and Sun are all aligned, this allows the Moon and Sun to pull together in the same direction causing higher high tides and lower low tides
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These are called spring tides
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When the sun and Moon are at right angles to each other, the tidal differences are minimized
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These are called neap tides
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Due to conservation of angular momentum, the Earth's rotation is gradually slowing down
The Earth's day is lengthening by about 17 microseconds every year (which about one second longer every 60,000 years) |
As a consequence, the young Earth had shorter days than compared to now
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Valles Marineris
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which is a valley over 5,000 kilometers long and 8 kilometers deep, was discovered by the Mariner 7 fly-by spacecraft in 1969
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Opportunity discovered these BB-sized spherules, nicknamed "blueberries“
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which are composed of hematite, a mineral that can only form in the presence of water
Therefore, Meridiani Planum was once a shallow lake |
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MSL is the largest robot vehicle to ever land on another planet
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It has been nick-named “Curiosity”
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The southern hemisphere is composed primarily of highlands and mountains
It includes Olympus Mons, which is the largest volcano in the solar system |
In contrast, the northern hemisphere is a featureless, dust-covered plains, which “may” have been an ancient ocean
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Jupiter
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with a diameter of 88,700 miles (143,884 kilometers)
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The unusual yellow-orange surface color is due to
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native sulfur and various sulfurous compounds being ejected from over 400 volcanoes that occur on Io
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Saturn has thousands of rings made of up
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billions of particles of ice and rock, ranging in size from a grain of sugar to the size of a house
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Titan
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is the largest moon of Saturn, being 5152 kilometers or 3200 miles in diameter, and is the only moon in the Solar System that has an atmosphere
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Uranus axis of rotation lies
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on its side with respect to the plane of the solar system, with an axial tilt of 98 degrees
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Neptune's atmosphere has the
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highest wind speeds in the solar system, reaching supersonic velocities of up to 2,100 kilometers (1,300 miles) per hour, which creates extremely dynamic storm systems
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On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union created a new class of objects in our Solar System,
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the dwarf planet
Pluto, the “ninth planet,” was reclassified as a dwarf planet and is believed to be a Kuiper Belt Object |
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As a comet approaches the Sun, solar energy begins to vaporize the ices, first forming a coma of ionized gases around the comet
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Then, as the comet gets close to the Sun, it may form a tail of streaming gases and dust that is easily seen from Earth
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Ceres
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the first asteroid that was discovered, turned out to be the largest, with a diameter of about 950 kilometers (590 miles)
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99.8% of all species are now
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extinct
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There are 5 big mass extinctions, which are widely agreed upon as the most significant:
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Ordovician-Silurian
Devonian-Mississippian Permian-Triassic Triassic-Jurassic Cretaceous-Tertiary Note that each extinction is so great that it marks the end of one geologic period and the start of a new |
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The explosion is believed to have been caused by the
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airburst of a comet 5-10 kilometers above the surface of the Earth
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In 1991, Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, Mexico is
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confirmed as the impact site that caused the KT extinction
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An asteroid or comet with a diameter of about one kilometer hits the Earth an average of
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twice every million years
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