From the Cell to the Universe ...
Each of us is a Universe in its own right!
Physical universe, made up of cells but also a mental universe formed of all perceptions, concepts, all mental images and invisible shades in which we evolve and we can sail but where we can also be a prisoner!
Human Beings, or Universes, share a common universe, a standard universe, with its own characteristics and celestial bodies: the planets.
Thus, as for the human body, composed of different systems(lymphatic system, respiratory system, etc...) operating in homeostasis, the solar system is also formed of a set of parts (planets, asteroids, stars, comets...) that work together in a coherent whole allowing their appearance and their existence!
Psychoanalysis is the study, and the exploration of the mental universes....
Astronomy is the study and exploration of our physical universe... Let us then, let the sky enter into analysis.
Solar system
Birth of the solar system
The sun represents an immense source of energy in the heart of the solar system.
A nuclear hell generating both heat, light and therefore life.
The story of the sun begins more than 5 billion years ago with the death of a giant star...
It explodes into a super-nova.
The shock wave propagates through space in the direction of a large cloud of hydrogen.
This cloud would implodes and gives rise to rings of gas and dust...
In the center of the nucleus, a real nuclear furnace ignites...
Our Sun has just been born!
It is a colossus, a gigantic cauldron of energy, containing 99 % of the material of the original cloud.
The remaining percentage would condenses to give birth to the nine planets of the solar system.
The Sun and its nine planets constitute a kingdom whose boundaries are formed by the heliosphere, a bubble that marks the limits of the influence of the Sun...
Beyond that begins the interstellar space!
Sun is shining...The weather is sweet
Our Star, the Sun!
The sun is a star,
and like billions of others, it is a lighthouse full of energy.
It provides light and warmth to our world, every form of life depends on it!
All our fuels have their source in the solar energy that nourished millions of years ago the plants that have been fossilized since, and which are burned today to give back energy!
Anatomy of the Sun!
At the heart of the nucleus would be a nuclear reactor that with a temperature of 15 million celcius transforms hydrogen into helium.
Every second the sun burns more than 4 million tons of its mass.
Energy would takes more than a million years to pass from the core to its surface.
From the surface, it would takes no more than 8minute 30 to this same energy to cover the 150millions of km that separates it from the earth!
This is what we call the sunlight.
By analyzing its spectrum, and in particular its dark bands, or absorption line, astronomers measure the composition of the Sun.
It consists of 73 % hydrogen, 24 % helium and 3 % heavier atoms such as carbon or oxygen.
Composition
The sun is a star of 1,392,000 km in diameter or 109 times the earth.
It is located in our galaxy: the Milky Way.
It is the main source of energy, light and heat in the solar system, which has allowed life on earth.
It is also the only star whose composition can be observed closely.
The Sun does not rotate everywhere in the same pace: while its surface makes a revolution every 25.40days at the equator, it would takes no less than 36 days at the poles
This rotation is responsible for the activity.
By turning on itself it creates a magnetic field 5000 times more intense than that of the Earth.
Solar energy is created deep in the core of the Sun.
This is where the temperature and pressure ( 340 billion times the ground pressure at the sea level) is so intense that nuclear reactionswould take place.
These réactions would cause the fusion of four protons(hydrogen nucleus) to form an alpha particle ( helium nucleus).
The alpha particle is about 0.70 % less massive than the four protons.
The mass difference is transformed into energy and transported to the surface of the sun by a process of convection, where it is released in the form of light and heat.
Each second, 700 million tons of hydrogen would be converted into helium.
In the process, 5 million tons of pure energy would be released.
The core and the radiative zone
Inside the Sun, there is a nucleus that occupies 15 % of it, at a temperature of 14million degrees where hydrogen is transformed into helium by a nuclear reaction.
During the combustion of hydrogen, photons and neutrinos are created.
Then, higher would be a radiative zone with a thickness of 244.160km, very dense zone which represents 98 % of the mass of the Sun.
A photon will take up to a million years to cross.
The temperature is 500,000 to 10,000,000 degrees C.
At 494.160 km from the center of the sun would be the convection zone of 199.752km which evacuates the heat towards the outside by animations of swirling movements.
These convection mouvements would create a " supergranulation" on the surface that divides the photosphere into cells about 30,000km in diameter.
Result: " spicules" form in the chromosphere and are assembled like the hedges of a Norman grove.
The stellar convection zone
The stellar convection zone is a layer in a star that is thermodynamically unstable.
Energy is mainly or partially transported by convection of the plots within this region, in contrast to the radiation zone where the energy is transported by the emitted radiation and by the conduction.
It is therefore a mass movement of the plasma inside the star which usually forms a circular convection current with the heated plasma rising and the plasma being cooled downwards.
A slightly rising particle of gas will be in a lower pressure environment than the one from which it originates.
Its volume expands and its temperature then cools.
If the ascending plot cools to a temperature lower than that of its new environment, so that it has a higher density than the surrounding gas and
according to the principle of Archimedes it will fall back where it comes from.
The Photosphere
The photosphère would be the area that constitutes the visible surface at the optimal wave length of a star, especially for the Sun.
The solar photosphere, situated above the convection zone and below the chromosphere, emits most of the solar radiation.
It is a layer about 300km thick, whose temperature is about 5800 kelvin, animated with a complex rotation movement.
Sun spots and facules(hot and shiny regions) are phenomena that can be observed on the photosphere.
The stains appear dark because they are colder than the surrounding photosphere.
They correspond to zones of intense magneticfield.
The convective movements of hot ascending and cold descending gases cause the formation of a network of small cells, each having dimensions of the order of a thousandkilometers.
The photosphere sometimes would emits spicules, fine jets of gas that rise for a few minutes in the solar chromosphere, following the lines of force of the magnetic field.
The photosphere is occulted during eclipses, which then make it possible to study the crown!
The Chromosphere
This name was given by M. Lockyear to the hydrogenated atmosphere of the Sun, which would be the outermost layer of the photosphere;
So called because the spectrum of this atmosphere consists of only a few colored lines.
The chromosphere is the lower atmosphereof the Sun.
It is a thin pink layer of gas, transparent for visible light, located between the photosphere and the solar corona.
It is visible only during a total eclipse of the Sun or with the help of a coronograph.
Its pink color is due to the light emission ofionized hydrogen at the wave length Ha( 656.3nm).
Its thickness is of the order of fifteen thousand km.
Unlike the interior of the Sun, the temperature in the chromosphere increases as one moves away from the sun at the same time as the pressure decreases.
The plasma which constitutes the chromosphere is very dense.
It is in the chromosphere that the spicules(gas nets escaping at very high speed) spring up,
protuberances and solar flares, jets of gas and matter hundreds of thousands of kilometers in height.
The protuberances may be eruptive when they eject matter into space.
They often resemble bridges with arches of several thousands of kilometers in range.
The transition zone
The solar transition région would be a region of the solar atmosphere located between the chromosphere and the crown.
It would be the site of several important physical transitions.
The transition area would have a thickness of about 15,000 km.
The transition region delineates two zones:
- A lower zone, where gravity forms most structures, so that the Sun can be described in terms of layers and structures.
In this zone, most of the helium is not fully ionized and efficiently radiates energy, the material is opaque to the particular colors associated with spectral lines,
thus most of the spectral lines formed Below the transition zone are absorption lines located in the infrared, visible light and the near ultraviolet.
- A higher area, where the magneticforces dominate the movement and form structures. The helium is completely ionized.
The ionization of helium in this region plays an important role and constitutes an essential element of the formation of the crown.
Thus, when helium is only partially ionized, the material cools with the "black body radiation" and the influence of the Lymanemission.
This condition is verified in the upper part of the chromosphere, where the equilibrium temperature is a few thousands of kelvin (K).
By applying a little more heat, the helium ionizes completely, so much so that it ceases to couple well with the Lyman continuum and does not radiate as effectively.
The température would jumps rapidly to nearly one million Kelvin, the temperature of the solar corona.
This phenomenon is called the "catastrophe of temperature" and can be compared to the transition phase of hot water to make it steam!
A kingdom and a crown!
The Crown would be the name given to the whole of the outer atmosphere of the Sun... Which extends into the interplanetary medium.
It is a very dense environment.
The température would reaches a few millionKelvin, as we know from the observation of certain ions which can exist only at very high temperatures.
These are regions where the magnetic field lines, instead of closing on the Sun, open towards space, thus promoting the rapid emission of particles in the interplanetary medium.
The coronal holes are located mainly around the solar poles and extend towards the lower latitudes.
Sometimes they are very large, reaching up to 50 % of the solar surface for larger ones.
As the density and temperature are lower, these regions appear dark.
The crown is often the site of violent phenomena such as eruptions, which are characterized by a sudden release of a considerable amount of energy,
or like the ejections of coronal mass, "bubbles" of coronal matter which fly away in the Interplanetary médium.
The study of these phenomena is of particular importance because they are important sources of emission and
acceleration of particles in space that can significantly affect the environment of the planets!
Because of its very low density, the solar corona can be observed in visible wave length only during a natural eclipse(the solar disk is hidden by the moon)
or artificial(the solar disk is hidden by a Mask placed in front of a telescope).
The solar corona is visible during a solar eclipse because the photons emitted by the photosphere are diffused by the particles of the solar corona.
The house of the Solar System!
The Milky Way is the galaxy to which the solar system belongs.
It is a spiral galaxy similar to the Andromeda Galaxy.
Its general shape is a disk of 80,000 light years of diameter with a central bulb.
The bulb is surrounded by a spherical halo of low density of 100,000 light years in diameter.
It contains about 140 billion stars including the Sun!
Milky Way please!
The galactic center houses a compact object of very large mass which is a supermassive black hole whose mass is equal to 4 million times that of the Sun.
The Galaxy is composed of several spiral arms, the Arm of Perseus, the Arm of the Rule and the Swan, the Arm Ecu-Cross , the Sagittarius-Carina and the Arm of Orion!
The Solar System is located in the Arm of 'Orion'.
It is near the periphery at about 28,000light-years from the galactic center and 50 light years from the equatorial plane.
He circles the galaxy in 250 million years.
The solar system would have carried out between 20 and 21 Galactica revolutions since its formation 4.55 billion years ago.
At the same time, it oscillates on both sides of the Galactic plan with a period of 66million years.
The Milky Way belongs to a group of galaxies called the Local Group.
It includes two large galaxies:
The Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, as well as some intermediate objects and more than 25 dwarf galaxies.
The local group is organized according to two sub-groups, each centered on the milky way and M31 respectively.
The local group itself is part of a larger structure, a cluster of galaxies called the Virgo cluster.
This cluster would itself be at the center of a wider structure, a supercluster, called for this reason superamas of the Virgin, or Local super-clusters.
