Space
Key Words
The life cycle of a star:
- Nebula - a cloud of dust and gas. Stars form from Nebulas.
- Protostar - dust and gas pull together through the force of gravity to form a Protostar.
- Main sequence star - the force of gravity pulls everything inwards. It's a stable period in a stars life (our sun).
- Red Giant - the hydrogen begins to run out in a star and it swells.
- Super Red Giant - a large star's hydrogen begins to run out and it swells.
- White Dwarf - the hot dense solid core left by small-to-medium-sized stars when they become unstable and ejects its outer layer of dust and gas.
- Black Dwarf - the White Dwarf cools and no longer emits a significant amount of energy.
- Supernova - a big star that has exploded due to the fusion and constant expanding and contracting forming elements as heavy as iron in various nuclear reactions.
- Neutron star - made from an exploding supernova. The outer layers of dust and gas has been thrown into space leaving a very dense core.
- Black hole - a super dense point in space that not even light can escape from made from an exploding supernova from a very big star.
The Solar System - all the things that orbit our sun (our closest star):
- Planets - large objects that orbit the Sun (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune).
- Dwarf planets - planet like objects that orbit the Sun but smaller than our main 8 planets.
- Moons - a natural satellite that orbits the planets.
- Artificial satellites - man made satellites that orbit the Earth.
Satellite - an object that orbits a second, more massive object
Orbit - the path one object in space takes around another.
Gravity - the force that creates orbits.
The Big Bang - the explosion that came from a very dense, very small space which caused space to start expanding and grow.
Red-shift - wavelengths that have shifted into the red end of the spectrum. It shows that the light from distant galaxies are moving away from us.
Dark matter - an unknown substance which holds galaxies together, but does not emit any electromagnetic radiation.
Also see Forces, Atomic Stucture
Links for Learning
Websites Videos Games Quizzes
Bitesize: The life cycle of a star.
School Observatory: The life cycle of a star.
Sciencing: The life cycle of a star.
Nasa: The life cycle of a star.
Bitesize: The Solar System.
Bitesize: The Solar System.
Pass my exams: The Solar System.
ESA: The Big Bang.
Bitesize: The Universe.
Bitesize: Red-shift.
Bitesize: The life cycle of a star test.
Bitesize: The Solar System test.
Bitesize: The expanding Universe test.
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