AST 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Solar Wind

• School: Syracuse University
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: AST 101
• Professor: Walter Freeman

Document Summary

Final projects announced (see the header on the website) Exam 3 grades on blackboard probably late today. Final exam: 50% new material, 50% from exams 1-3. Asteroids: any unprotected object gets hit repeatedly (more in early solar. Our atmosphere is thick enough to burn up many, but not all, asteroids. If the core of a planet is hot, it has volcanic activity. Radioactive decays of uranium sustain internal heat of planets over billions of years. It didn"t have an atmosphere when this happened. No weathering, geologic activity, or the like has taken place since. We"ve sent robots to mars that have explored it some detail. Rocks with rust in them, making it red. Evidence of interior heat, but not like earth and venus. Evidence that liquid water once ran on its surface. Evidence that it once had an atmosphere of water and carbon. This caused it to cool - no more greenhouse effect!