AS101 Lecture Notes - Chondrite, Outgassing, Oort Cloud
Document Summary
Chapter 12: the origin of the solar system. Asteroid small, rocky world; most asteroids orbit between mars and jupiter in the asteroid belt. Comet one of the small, icy bodies that orbit the sun and produce tails of gas and dust when they approach the sun. Terrestrial planets small, dense, rocky worlds with little or no atmosphere. Jovian planets large, low-density worlds with thick atmospheres and liquid or ice interiors. Kuiper belt the collection of icy objects orbiting in a region from just beyond neptune out to 50 au+ Oort cloud the hypothetical source of comets, a swarm of icy bodies understood to lie in a spherical shell extending to 100,000 au from the sun. Meteor a small bit of matter heated by friction to incandescent vapour as it falls into earth"s atmosphere. Meteoroid a meteor in space before it enters earth"s atmosphere. Meteorite a meteor that survives its passage through the atmosphere and strikes the ground.
