ASTR 5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Classical Planet, Exoplanet, Thomas Edison
Document Summary
Is there another life form in the universe: big question, we are fixated on aliens, anthropocentrism - we tend to project ourselves on what we don"t understand, all the aliens are humanoid-shaped, astroids, climate changes, etc. Initial attempts to explain observations: educated guesses, a scientific hypothesis must always be capable of being disproven, experiments, used to test laws and hypotheses. Inferior planet - closer to the sun than earth: mercurcy and venus, superior planet - farther to the sun than earth, saturn, jupiter, tycho brahe died but took very important measurements. Makes perfect sense that these delicate molecules would evolve to be enclosed in some form of membrane: complex organisms like human beings consist of billions of cells. Ionic bonds - metal ion transfers over to the nonmetal ion: carbons has 4 valence electrons. It can form bonds with another c atom: so it can form long chains, carbons can even share multiple electrons with itself.
