AS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Outgassing, Protoplanet, Planetesimal
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 litle or no atmosphere. Jovian planets large, low-density worlds with thick atmospheres and liquid or ice interiors. Kuiper belt the collecion of icy objects orbiing in a region from just beyond neptune out to 50 au+ Oort cloud the hypotheical 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 mater heated by fricion 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.