Density
The density, or more the volumetric mass density, of a substance is its mass per unit volume. The symbol most used for density is ρ, although the Latin letter D can be used. Mathematically, density is defined as mass divided by volume: ρ = m V where ρ is the density, m is the mass, V is the volume. In some cases, density is loosely defined as its weight per unit volume, although this is scientifically inaccurate – this quantity is more called specific weight. For a pure substance the density has the same numerical value as its mass concentration. Different materials have different densities, density may be relevant to buoyancy and packaging. Osmium and iridium are the densest known elements at standard conditions for temperature and pressure but certain chemical compounds may be denser. To simplify comparisons of density across different systems of units, it is sometimes replaced by the dimensionless quantity "relative density" or "specific gravity", i.e. the ratio of the density of the material to that of a standard material water.
Thus a relative density less than one means. The density of a material varies with pressure; this variation is small for solids and liquids but much greater for gases. Increasing the pressure on an object decreases the volume of the object and thus increases its density. Increasing the temperature of a substance decreases its density by increasing its volume. In most materials, heating the bottom of a fluid results in convection of the heat from the bottom to the top, due to the decrease in the density of the heated fluid; this causes it to rise relative to more dense unheated material. The reciprocal of the density of a substance is called its specific volume, a term sometimes used in thermodynamics. Density is an intensive property in that increasing the amount of a substance does not increase its density. In a well-known but apocryphal tale, Archimedes was given the task of determining whether King Hiero's goldsmith was embezzling gold during the manufacture of a golden wreath dedicated to the gods and replacing it with another, cheaper alloy.
Archimedes knew that the irregularly shaped wreath could be crushed into a cube whose volume could be calculated and compared with the mass. Baffled, Archimedes is said to have taken an immersion bath and observed from the rise of the water upon entering that he could calculate the volume of the gold wreath through the displacement of the water. Upon this discovery, he leapt from his bath and ran naked through the streets shouting, "Eureka! Eureka!". As a result, the term "eureka" entered common parlance and is used today to indicate a moment of enlightenment; the story first appeared in written form in Vitruvius' books of architecture, two centuries after it took place. Some scholars have doubted the accuracy of this tale, saying among other things that the method would have required precise measurements that would have been difficult to make at the time. From the equation for density, mass density has units of mass divided by volume; as there are many units of mass and volume covering many different magnitudes there are a large number of units for mass density in use.
The SI unit of kilogram per cubic metre and the cgs unit of gram per cubic centimetre are the most used units for density. One g/cm3 is equal to one thousand kg/m3. One cubic centimetre is equal to one millilitre. In industry, other larger or smaller units of mass and or volume are more practical and US customary units may be used. See below for a list of some of the most common units of density. A number of techniques as well as standards exist for the measurement of density of materials; such techniques include the use of a hydrometer, Hydrostatic balance, immersed body method, air comparison pycnometer, oscillating densitometer, as well as pour and tap. However, each individual method or technique measures different types of density, therefore it is necessary to have an understanding of the type of density being measured as well as the type of material in question; the density at all points of a homogeneous object equals its total mass divided by its total volume. The mass is measured with a scale or balance.
To determine the density of a liquid or a gas, a hydrometer, a dasymeter or a Coriolis flow meter may be used, respectively. Hydrostatic weighing uses the displacement of water due to a submerged object to determine the density of the object. If the body is not homogeneous its density varies between different regions of the object. In that case the density around any given location is determined by calculating the density of a small volume around that location. In the limit of an infinitesimal volume the density of an inhomogeneous object at a point becomes: ρ = d m / d V, where d V is an elementary volume at position r; the mass of the body t
Photosphere
The photosphere is a star's outer shell from which light is radiated. The term itself is derived from Ancient Greek roots, φῶς, φωτός/phos, photos meaning "light" and σφαῖρα/sphaira meaning "sphere", in reference to it being a spherical surface, perceived to emit light, it extends into a star's surface until the plasma becomes opaque, equivalent to an optical depth of 2/3, or equivalently, a depth from which 50% of light will escape without being scattered. In other words, a photosphere is the deepest region of a luminous object a star, transparent to photons of certain wavelengths; the surface of a star is defined to have a temperature given by the effective temperature in the Stefan–Boltzmann law. Stars, except neutron stars, have no liquid surface. Therefore, the photosphere is used to describe the Sun's or another star's visual surface; the Sun is composed of the chemical elements hydrogen and helium. All heavier elements, called metals in astronomy, account for less than 2% of the mass, with oxygen, carbon and iron being the most abundant.
The Sun's photosphere has a temperature between 4,500 and 6,000 K and a density somewhere around 1×10−3 to 1×10−6 kg/m3. The Sun's photosphere is around 100 kilometers thick, is composed of convection cells called granules—cells of plasma each 1000 kilometers in diameter with hot rising plasma in the center and cooler plasma falling in the narrow spaces between them, flowing at velocities of 7 kilometer per second; each granule has a lifespan of only about twenty minutes, resulting in a continually shifting "boiling" pattern. Grouping the typical granules are super granules up to 30,000 kilometers in diameter with lifespans of up to 24 hours and flow speeds of about 500 meter per second, carrying magnetic field bundles to the edges of the cells. Other magnetically-related phenomena include sunspots and solar faculae dispersed between the granules; these details are too fine to be seen. The Sun's visible atmosphere has other layers above the photosphere: the 2,000 kilometer-deep chromosphere lies just between the photosphere and the much hotter but more tenuous corona.
Other "surface features" on the photosphere are solar sunspots. Animated explanation of the Photosphere. Animated explanation of the temperature of the Photosphere. Solar Lower Atmosphere and Magnetism
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process, it is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 1.39 million kilometers, or 109 times that of Earth, its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth. It accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen; the Sun is a G-type main-sequence star based on its spectral class. As such, it is informally and not accurately referred to as a yellow dwarf, it formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that became the Solar System; the central mass became so hot and dense that it initiated nuclear fusion in its core. It is thought that all stars form by this process.
The Sun is middle-aged. It fuses about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, converting 4 million tons of matter into energy every second as a result; this energy, which can take between 10,000 and 170,000 years to escape from its core, is the source of the Sun's light and heat. In about 5 billion years, when hydrogen fusion in its core has diminished to the point at which the Sun is no longer in hydrostatic equilibrium, its core will undergo a marked increase in density and temperature while its outer layers expand to become a red giant, it is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large to engulf the current orbits of Mercury and Venus, render Earth uninhabitable. After this, it will shed its outer layers and become a dense type of cooling star known as a white dwarf, no longer produce energy by fusion, but still glow and give off heat from its previous fusion; the enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, the Sun has been regarded by some cultures as a deity.
The synodic rotation of Earth and its orbit around the Sun are the basis of solar calendars, one of, the predominant calendar in use today. The English proper name Sun may be related to south. Cognates to English sun appear in other Germanic languages, including Old Frisian sunne, Old Saxon sunna, Middle Dutch sonne, modern Dutch zon, Old High German sunna, modern German Sonne, Old Norse sunna, Gothic sunnō. All Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *sunnōn; the Latin name for the Sun, Sol, is not used in everyday English. Sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet, such as Mars; the related word solar is the usual adjectival term used for the Sun, in terms such as solar day, solar eclipse, Solar System. A mean Earth solar day is 24 hours, whereas a mean Martian'sol' is 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35.244 seconds. The English weekday name Sunday stems from Old English and is a result of a Germanic interpretation of Latin dies solis, itself a translation of the Greek ἡμέρα ἡλίου.
The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star. The Sun has an absolute magnitude of +4.83, estimated to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way, most of which are red dwarfs. The Sun is heavy-element-rich, star; the formation of the Sun may have been triggered by shockwaves from more nearby supernovae. This is suggested by a high abundance of heavy elements in the Solar System, such as gold and uranium, relative to the abundances of these elements in so-called Population II, heavy-element-poor, stars; the heavy elements could most plausibly have been produced by endothermic nuclear reactions during a supernova, or by transmutation through neutron absorption within a massive second-generation star. The Sun is by far the brightest object in the Earth's sky, with an apparent magnitude of −26.74. This is about 13 billion times brighter than the next brightest star, which has an apparent magnitude of −1.46. The mean distance of the Sun's center to Earth's center is 1 astronomical unit, though the distance varies as Earth moves from perihelion in January to aphelion in July.
At this average distance, light travels from the Sun's horizon to Earth's horizon in about 8 minutes and 19 seconds, while light from the closest points of the Sun and Earth takes about two seconds less. The energy of this sunlight supports all life on Earth by photosynthesis, drives Earth's climate and weather; the Sun does not have a definite boundary, but its density decreases exponentially with increasing height above the photosphere. For the purpose of measurement, the Sun's radius is considered to be the distance from its center to the edge of the photosphere, the apparent visible surface of the Sun. By this measure, the Sun is a near-perfect sphere with an oblateness estimated at about 9 millionths, which means that its polar diameter differs from its equatorial diameter by only 10 kilometres; the tidal effect of the planets is weak and does not affect the shape of the Sun. The Sun rotates faster at its equator than at its poles; this differential rotation is caused by convective motion
Corona
A corona is an aura of plasma that surrounds the Sun and other stars. The Sun's corona extends millions of kilometres into outer space and is most seen during a total solar eclipse, but it is observable with a coronagraph; the word corona is a Latin word meaning "crown", from the Ancient Greek κορώνη. Spectroscopy measurements indicate strong ionization in the corona and a plasma temperature in excess of 1,000,000 kelvins, much hotter than the surface of the Sun. Light from the corona comes from the same volume of space; the K-corona is created by sunlight scattering off free electrons. The F-corona is created by sunlight bouncing off dust particles, is observable because its light contains the Fraunhofer absorption lines that are seen in raw sunlight; the E-corona is due to spectral emission lines produced by ions that are present in the coronal plasma. In 1724, French-Italian astronomer Giacomo F. Maraldi recognized that the aura visible during a solar eclipse belongs to the Sun not to the Moon.
In 1809, Spanish astronomer José Joaquín de Ferrer coined the term'corona'. Based in his own observations of the 1806 solar eclipse at Kinderhook, de Ferrer proposed that the corona was part of the Sun and not of the Moon. English astronomer Norman Lockyer identified the first element unknown on Earth in the Sun's chromosphere, called helium. French astronomer Jules Jenssen noted that the size and shape of the corona changes with the sunspot cycle. In 1930, Bernard Lyot invented the coronograph, which allows to see the corona without a total eclipse. In 1952, American astronomer Eugene Parker proposed that the solar corona might be heated by myriad tiny'nanoflares', miniature brightenings resembling solar flares that would occur all over the surface of the Sun; the high temperature of the Sun's corona gives it unusual spectral features, which led some in the 19th century to suggest that it contained a unknown element, "coronium". Instead, these spectral features have since been explained by ionized iron.
Bengt Edlén, following the work of Grotrian, first identified the coronal spectral lines in 1940 as transitions from low-lying metastable levels of the ground configuration of ionised metals. The sun's corona is much hotter than the visible surface of the Sun: the photosphere's average temperature is 5800 kelvins compared to the corona's one to three million kelvins; the corona is 10−12 times as dense as the photosphere, so produces about one-millionth as much visible light. The corona is separated from the photosphere by the shallow chromosphere; the exact mechanism by which the corona is heated is still the subject of some debate, but possibilities include induction by the Sun's magnetic field and magnetohydrodynamic waves from below. The outer edges of the Sun's corona are being transported away due to open magnetic flux and hence generating the solar wind; the corona is not always evenly distributed across the surface of the sun. During periods of quiet, the corona is more or less confined to the equatorial regions, with coronal holes covering the polar regions.
However, during the Sun's active periods, the corona is evenly distributed over the equatorial and polar regions, though it is most prominent in areas with sunspot activity. The solar cycle spans 11 years, from solar minimum to the following minimum. Since the solar magnetic field is continually wound up due to the faster rotation of mass at the sun's equator, sunspot activity will be more pronounced at solar maximum where the magnetic field is more twisted. Associated with sunspots are coronal loops, loops of magnetic flux, upwelling from the solar interior; the magnetic flux pushes the hotter photosphere aside, exposing the cooler plasma below, thus creating the dark sun spots. Since the corona has been photographed at high resolution in the X-ray range of the spectrum by the satellite Skylab in 1973, later by Yohkoh and the other following space instruments, it has been seen that the structure of the corona is quite varied and complex: different zones have been classified on the coronal disc.
The astronomers distinguish several regions, as described below. Active regions are ensembles of loop structures connecting points of opposite magnetic polarity in the photosphere, the so-called coronal loops, they distribute in two zones of activity, which are parallel to the solar equator. The average temperature is between two and four million kelvins, while the density goes from 109 to 1010 particle per cm3. Active regions involve all the phenomena directly linked to the magnetic field, which occur at different heights above the Sun's surface: sunspots and faculae, occur in the photosphere, spicules, Hα filaments and plages in the chromosphere, prominences in the chromosphere and transition region, flares and coronal mass ejections happen in the corona and chromosphere. If flares are violent, they can perturb the photosphere and generate a Moreton wave. On the contrary, quiescent prom
Granule (solar physics)
Granules on the photosphere of the Sun are caused by convection currents of plasma within the Sun's convective zone. The grainy appearance of the solar photosphere is produced by the tops of these convective cells and is called granulation; the rising part of the granules is located in the center. The outer edge of the granules is darker due to the cooler descending plasma. In addition to the visible appearance, which would be explained by convective motion, Doppler shift measurements of the light from individual granules provides evidence for the convective nature of the granules. A typical granule has a diameter on the order of 1,500 kilometers and lasts 8 to 20 minutes before dissipating. At any one time, the Sun's surface is covered by about 4 million granules. Below the photosphere is a layer of "supergranules" up to 30,000 kilometers in diameter with lifespans of up to 24 hours
Atmosphere
An atmosphere is a layer or a set of layers of gases surrounding a planet or other material body, held in place by the gravity of that body. An atmosphere is more to be retained if the gravity it is subject to is high and the temperature of the atmosphere is low; the atmosphere of Earth is composed of nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide and other gases in trace amounts. Oxygen is used by most organisms for respiration; the atmosphere helps to protect living organisms from genetic damage by solar ultraviolet radiation, solar wind and cosmic rays. The current composition of the Earth's atmosphere is the product of billions of years of biochemical modification of the paleoatmosphere by living organisms; the term stellar atmosphere describes the outer region of a star and includes the portion above the opaque photosphere. Stars with sufficiently low temperatures may have outer atmospheres with compound molecules. Atmospheric pressure at a particular location is the force per unit area perpendicular to a surface determined by the weight of the vertical column of atmosphere above that location.
On Earth, units of air pressure are based on the internationally recognized standard atmosphere, defined as 101.325 kPa. It is measured with a barometer. Atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing altitude due to the diminishing mass of gas above; the height at which the pressure from an atmosphere declines by a factor of e is called the scale height and is denoted by H. For an atmosphere with a uniform temperature, the scale height is proportional to the temperature and inversely proportional to the product of the mean molecular mass of dry air and the local acceleration of gravity at that location. For such a model atmosphere, the pressure declines exponentially with increasing altitude. However, atmospheres are not uniform in temperature, so estimation of the atmospheric pressure at any particular altitude is more complex. Surface gravity differs among the planets. For example, the large gravitational force of the giant planet Jupiter retains light gases such as hydrogen and helium that escape from objects with lower gravity.
Secondly, the distance from the Sun determines the energy available to heat atmospheric gas to the point where some fraction of its molecules' thermal motion exceed the planet's escape velocity, allowing those to escape a planet's gravitational grasp. Thus and cold Titan and Pluto are able to retain their atmospheres despite their low gravities. Since a collection of gas molecules may be moving at a wide range of velocities, there will always be some fast enough to produce a slow leakage of gas into space. Lighter molecules move faster than heavier ones with the same thermal kinetic energy, so gases of low molecular weight are lost more than those of high molecular weight, it is thought that Venus and Mars may have lost much of their water when, after being photo dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen by solar ultraviolet, the hydrogen escaped. Earth's magnetic field helps to prevent this, as the solar wind would enhance the escape of hydrogen. However, over the past 3 billion years Earth may have lost gases through the magnetic polar regions due to auroral activity, including a net 2% of its atmospheric oxygen.
The net effect, taking the most important escape processes into account, is that an intrinsic magnetic field does not protect a planet from atmospheric escape and that for some magnetizations the presence of a magnetic field works to increase the escape rate. Other mechanisms that can cause atmosphere depletion are solar wind-induced sputtering, impact erosion and sequestration—sometimes referred to as "freezing out"—into the regolith and polar caps. Atmospheres have dramatic effects on the surfaces of rocky bodies. Objects that have no atmosphere, or that have only an exosphere, have terrain, covered in craters. Without an atmosphere, the planet has no protection from meteoroids, all of them collide with the surface as meteorites and create craters. Most meteoroids burn up as meteors before hitting a planet's surface; when meteoroids do impact, the effects are erased by the action of wind. As a result, craters are rare on objects with atmospheres. Wind erosion is a significant factor in shaping the terrain of rocky planets with atmospheres, over time can erase the effects of both craters and volcanoes.
In addition, since liquids can not exist without pressure, an atmosphere allows liquid to be present at the surface, resulting in lakes and oceans. Earth and Titan are known to have liquids at their surface and terrain on the planet suggests that Mars had liquid on its surface in the past. A planet's initial atmospheric composition is related to the chemistry and temperature of the local solar nebula during planetary formation and the subsequent escape of interior gases; the original atmospheres started with a rotating disc of gases that collapsed to form a series of spaced rings that condensed to form the planets. The planet's atmospheres were modified over time by various complex factors, resulting in quite different outcomes; the atmospheres of the planets Venus and Mars are composed of carbon dioxide, with small quantities of nitrogen, argon and traces of other gases. The composition of Earth's atmosphere is governed by the by-products of the life that it sust
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. According to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago. Earth's gravity interacts with other objects in space the Sun and the Moon, Earth's only natural satellite. Earth revolves around the Sun in a period known as an Earth year. During this time, Earth rotates about its axis about 366.26 times. Earth's axis of rotation is tilted with respect to its orbital plane; the gravitational interaction between Earth and the Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes Earth's orientation on its axis, slows its rotation. Earth is the largest of the four terrestrial planets. Earth's lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earth's surface is covered with water by oceans; the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere.
The majority of Earth's polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet and the sea ice of the Arctic ice pack. Earth's interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earth's magnetic field, a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earth's history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earth's atmosphere and surface, leading to the proliferation of aerobic and anaerobic organisms; some geological evidence indicates. Since the combination of Earth's distance from the Sun, physical properties, geological history have allowed life to evolve and thrive. In the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely. Over 7.6 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and natural resources for their survival.
Humans have developed diverse cultures. The modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most spelled eorðe, it has cognates in every Germanic language, their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō. In its earliest appearances, eorðe was being used to translate the many senses of Latin terra and Greek γῆ: the ground, its soil, dry land, the human world, the surface of the world, the globe itself; as with Terra and Gaia, Earth was a personified goddess in Germanic paganism: the Angles were listed by Tacitus as among the devotees of Nerthus, Norse mythology included Jörð, a giantess given as the mother of Thor. Earth was written in lowercase, from early Middle English, its definite sense as "the globe" was expressed as the earth. By Early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, the earth became the Earth when referenced along with other heavenly bodies. More the name is sometimes given as Earth, by analogy with the names of the other planets.
House styles now vary: Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, with the capitalized form an acceptable variant. Another convention capitalizes "Earth" when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the, it always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as "what on earth are you doing?" The oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4.5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4.54±0.04 Bya the primordial Earth had formed. The bodies in the Solar System evolved with the Sun. In theory, a solar nebula partitions a volume out of a molecular cloud by gravitational collapse, which begins to spin and flatten into a circumstellar disk, the planets grow out of that disk with the Sun. A nebula contains gas, ice grains, dust. According to nebular theory, planetesimals formed by accretion, with the primordial Earth taking 10–20 million years to form. A subject of research is the formation of some 4.53 Bya. A leading hypothesis is that it was formed by accretion from material loosed from Earth after a Mars-sized object, named Theia, hit Earth.
In this view, the mass of Theia was 10 percent of Earth, it hit Earth with a glancing blow and some of its mass merged with Earth. Between 4.1 and 3.8 Bya, numerous asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the greater surface environment of the Moon and, by inference, to that of Earth. Earth's atmosphere and oceans were formed by volcanic outgassing. Water vapor from these sources condensed into the oceans, augmented by water and ice from asteroids and comets. In this model, atmospheric "greenhouse gases" kept the oceans from freezing when the newly forming Sun had only 70% of its current luminosity. By 3.5 Bya, Earth's magnetic field was established, which helped prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. A crust formed; the two models that explain land mass propose either a steady growth to the present-day forms or, more a rapid growth early in Earth history followed by a long-term steady continental area. Continents formed by plate tectonics
