Our Universe 3D Page #4
- Year:
- 2013
- 52 min
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towering over the other Venusian volcanoes.
In total, there are over 50,000 of them.
Another distinctive feature of Venus
are its lava channels of incredible size.
One of them even out-competes the Nile,
Earth's longest river.
It's called Hildr Fossa,
and measures 4,200 miles long.
Even though Venus is our nearest neighbour,
the best-explored extraterrestrial planet
is Mars.
This makes sense, as it would be much
better suited for actual human visitors.
Scientists are currently expecting
a manned mission to the Red Planet
in the '30s or '40s of this century.
So what do we know so far?
Mars is a rocky body, just like Earth.
But it's only half the diameter of Earth,
which makes it the second smallest planet
of our solar system.
Its red colour comes from high amounts
of iron oxide, also known as rust,
that is spread throughout the planet
and its atmosphere.
The air here consists of carbon dioxide
and is very thin,
so Mars cannot store
much of the sun's warmth.
Near the equator, temperatures are around
32 degrees Fahrenheit during the daytime.
At night, it plummets to minus 121.
To explore these conditions in detail,
mankind has sent a number of rovers up here.
And aside from environmental data,
they have also captured
some really nice views.
In summer,
the pole caps made of ice melt down,
which allows for
distinctive cirrus clouds to form.
We can actually see these in the sky here.
In spring, storms are common, which
whip up large quantities of Martian dust.
With wind speeds up to 300 miles an hour,
400 kilometres an hour,
a lot of the surface is
Sometimes, even small cyclones
called "dust devils" come up.
The landscapes on Mars
offer quite a bit of variation.
In the cooler north, we find the low plains,
which are broad dust-covered flatlands.
The southern hemisphere has
geologically older formations
and more craters.
The biggest Mars crater
is called Hellas Planitia.
Its basin has a diameter of 1,300 miles,
2,000 kilometres,
and its bottom marks
the lowest point on the entire planet.
Running in parallel to the equator
are the Valles Marineris.
These "Mariner Valleys" are the largest
network of canyons in our solar system.
They stretch out for over 2,500 miles,
and are up to 440 miles wide.
In the western part they develop
into a maze-like system of valleys
called Noctis Labyrinthus,
the "Labyrinth of the Night".
Speaking of vast proportions,
Mars holds at least two more records.
One being the volcano with the widest base
area, a giant named Alba Patera.
In relation to its 1,000-miles diameter,
its height of 4 miles isn't too impressive,
but Mars also has the Olympus Mons,
reaching 16 miles high,
and the highest elevation
in our whole solar system.
Apart from Earth,
Mars is by far the planet most thoroughly
explored and researched by mankind.
We know that Mars must have had a much
denser atmosphere millions of years ago,
and probably had liquid
water on its surface.
Back then, it offered much better conditions
for the creation of life.
That changed when its atmosphere
was thinned out by solar winds.
Still, in the ice of its polar caps,
there could be primitive life
in the form of bacteria or microbes.
After all, such life has been found
in the perpetual ice of our own poles.
And while the chances for life on Mars
might have been better in the past,
they could be far worse,
like those on Mercury for example.
Things are downright hostile there.
Mercury is the last "Earth-like" planet
in our solar system.
Actually, apart from having
a rocky body like Earth,
it has not many other earthly properties.
Visually, this planet resembles the moon.
This corresponds well with Mercury being
the smallest regular planet
in our solar system.
And just like the moon,
Mercury has no atmosphere at all,
which is evident
from the crater-littered surface.
From up here, these craters may
look like innocent footprints in sand,
but once we get closer, they reveal
their true size. They are gigantic.
The largest one is known
as the Calorie Basin.
It has a diameter of over 1,000 miles.
This means it must have been caused
by the impact of an astral body
more than 60 miles wide.
Mercury is the planet closest to the sun.
Because of this proximity,
its sun-facing half is heated
to extreme temperatures
reaching 750 degrees Fahrenheit.
On the dark night side, on the other hand,
temperatures go as low as minus 275 degrees.
These conditions make Mercury
the planet with the widest range
of temperature variation.
The day-cycles are similarly extreme.
Due to Mercury's eccentric spin
around the sun,
a night on Mercury lasts for 176 Earth days.
On Mercury, we are almost at the centre
of our solar system.
While a lot of data has been gathered
on the planets and the sun here,
the outer reaches of our domain
still hold a number of secrets.
Beyond Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt,
a vast field of asteroids.
It is home to over 70,000 objects
of more than 60 miles in size.
These objects are left over from
the creation of our solar system,
material that wasn't included
in the formation of our planets.
Some of these objects gained
more respectable mass.
Best known among them is Pluto.
Identified in the year 1930,
it was the first discovered dwarf planet.
And in 1978,
its companion Charon was found.
The two of them rotate around each other,
as if they were doing a little waltz
through space.
Near the beginning of the second millennium,
more and more dwarf planets
were discovered.
The biggest one among them is Eris.
It's about a fifth the size of our moon
and its bright surface
is made of frozen methane.
Just like their full-grown counterparts,
all dwarf planets have been
named after earthly deities.
Makemake is a Polynesian god,
Sedna, the lnuit goddess of the sea,
and Haumea,
the Hawaiian goddess of child birth.
Still, all of these are
hardly more than asteroids,
drifting through cold, dark space.
The real wonders are outside the boundaries
of our solar system.
After all, our sun is only one star
of an estimated 400 billion in our galaxy,
the Milky Way.
And recent calculations have
come to the conclusion
that over half these suns could
have one or more Earth-sized planets.
So let's have a closer look at the structure
of our home galaxy.
From Earth, you can see parts
of the Milky Way with your naked eye.
It's made from the light
of millions of faraway stars,
arranged in a disc-like structure.
Since we are looking at it from the inside,
it appears to be a band of milky fog
across the sky.
Seen from outside, two mighty spiral arms
define the appearance of our galaxy.
These arms are occupied
by particularly bright stars.
The dark areas in between are by no means
empty, but the suns there are less powerful.
Our own solar system lies far outside
the centre of our galaxy,
within the Orion-Cygnus Arm.
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"Our Universe 3D" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/our_universe_3d_15417>.
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