A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System

Hi Guys, I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while but I'm hoping that this will make up for it. In the time that I wasn't posting, I was on Tumblr writing a mini series about the solar system, which I hope will entertain and inform you all on the wonders of our planetary neighbors, I would also like to add that as it was inspired by the photos of Pluto, I started at the outside and worked inwards, meaning that after the Mars Post, there is a significant drop in quantity. Anyways I guess I should include my outro here as I already uploaded them all in order. The Solar system is massively more magnificent than any human can truly comprehend. One day it may be possible for our descendants to go swimming in the mists of Saturn or to dive deeply under the seas of Ganymede. However at the end of the day we're in the best age of humanity, because what they may take for granted, we have the unrivalled satisfaction of discovering. And with that enjoy my friends, see you soon :)

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Mercury

Here we have Mercury. This is the smallest planet to our solar system and yet is one of the most interesting, purely because being so close to the sun has made it so unique. its slow rotation and fast orbit means that the side facing the sun doesn’t change much (about 3 every 2 orbits) and as a result, the one side can be 427 degrees, while the other can be a, substantially cooler, -173 degrees!

It also has a unique kind of atmosphere, where although solar winds are always blowing it away, they are also constantly replenishing it, through radioactive decay and micrometeors causing dust. It is also very closely the second densest planet with about 5.4g per cubic centimeter.

Its extreme closeness to our sun also makes this planet extremely challenging to study, however two probes have managed to visit mercury, including messenger (a nice reminder of the god for which mercury was named) and together those two probes have mapped out the surface.

It is also the most cratered planet in our solar system, the rocky planets that can suffer craters from meteors usually self heal through geological processes but due to its geological quirkyness, mercury does not. Many of its craters are named after famous humans such as authors and scientists. As well as this, unusual readings mean that it is thought to have a molten core which is extremely unusual for a rocky planet of any size.

This extremely small, fast moving planet is by far one of the more interesting as it has preserved the history of our solar system in its craters where various information on impacts may be found. It is also an oddity as planets go, even in our solar system. Making it seem all the truer that great things come in small packages.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Venus

Next up we have our closest planetary neighbor, Venus. The acidic, boiling hot, toxic, generally deadly planet sized wasteland which was ironically named after the goddess of love (nice going Romans). It is often referred to as the sister planet of Earth, as they are incredibly similar in size (only 638 km in difference) and they are both very close together. Because of this it is also the second brightest object in the night sky after the moon and can even be seen in the day on occasion. Its usefulness, in ancient times earned it the names morning star and evening star, as it could sometimes be seen before sunrise, and sometimes just after sunset.

As romantic as all of the names and coincidences may sound it doesn’t change the fact that Venus is effectively a planet sized death trap. The atmospheric pressure on Venus is equivalent to 92 times that on earth which is the same as in the deep sea. This means that any humans on the surface would simply be squished and that is if the rest of it didn’t kill them first.

Venus is a fair amount closer to the sun than Earth, however it experiences unexpectedly high surface temperatures due to its thick atmosphere of sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide.This is an example of a runaway greenhouse effect where more and more heat is trapped by the sun, which means that the surface temperature of Venus is a cosy 462 degrees and the fact that there is no seasonal variation really does not help.

Despite this (and by the power of human stubbornness) various probes have actually been sent to Venus and several Russian landers actually landed on the planet (where each of them have been promptly destroyed). The most successful mission to date has been Venera 13 which managed to survive 2 hours on the surface of the planet, despite being designed to last 30 minutes) and has also sent back colour photographs of the surface of the planet.

This sister to Earth is fascinatingly deadly, and due to its unique atmosphere and composition, gives extremely interesting data for our scientists to study. However it is also a sharp reminded of how dangerous our solar system is, that even our own “sister planet” would kill us in only a matter of seconds.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Earth

Look where we’ve finally arrived. I’ll admit that ever since I started writing these posts I have both been excited to write this part, but baffled as to what I should include. Our planet is one which is truly unique to us, even with the discovery of a new “superearth” (otherwise known as kepler 452b), our planet remains unique because of one simple factor. Us, the birds outside, the earthworms beneath your feet. Life.

Earth is the largest rocky planet in our solar system. It is also the densest with a Deity of about 5.5 grams per cubic centimeter approximately. Surprisingly it rotates exactly once a day and shockingly it orbits our sun exactly once per year. Although the rotation is currently in the process of slowing down which means that it adds an extra 17 milliseconds per day per 100 years.

Our moon is also pretty special as it is the largest in relation to its planet out of any in our solar system and it is also Earth’s only moon. It is thought to have been created when a few billion years ago, a younger earth collided with a planet about the size of Mars. The debris formed the current Earth and our beloved moon.

But what makes Earth really unique is the sheer amount of life that has flourished there. We have studies thousands of exo planets and have yet to find one where life is likely to be as abundant as Earth. Because not only has life formed on Earth, but life has thrived, for millions and millions of years life has prevailed, our delicate complex carbon structures refusing to be destroyed by meteorites, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts and while our Earth has grown mountains and created whole continents since the first slimy little thing crawled out of the sea there has always been life. And likely as not there will always be life, until the planet itself dies.

If that doesn’t make it the most incredible place we know then I don’t know what does.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Mars

This planet should be a familiar sight for anyone. The red planet, AKA Mars is a massive focus of astronomers and astrobiologists alike as it lies in our sun’s habitable region and there is strong evidence that is once contained flowing water and was very like earth. This also implies a very strong possibility of there having been life on mars at some point or another.
Because of this everyone on Earth is raving over mars with a rover (that has its own twitter page https://twitter.com/marscuriosity ) currently rolling around looking for life and taking selfies and another mission planned for next year to send an european rover to mars. However despite all of these successes only 18 of the 40 missions to Mars have actually been successful.
Something lesser known however is that there are bits of Mars right here on earth. Due to violent collisions with Mars, meteorites have ejected rocks off the planet into space which have traveled for a very long time before crashing into our very own little lump of space rock. This means that scientists could study mars before they even got there in the first place!.
This red lump of rock has the largest dust storms in the universe (which is saying something considering half of our planets are basically made of dust) and its reddish tinge is given by iron rich minerals on its rocky surface.
We may well never know if life inhabited Mars all those millions of years ago, but there almost definitely will be soon, with NASA planning to spend volunteers to live on mars around the year 2030. This planet may be past its glory days, but that doesn’t mean its rusty surface is any less remarkable.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Jupiter

This is the king of our solar system. A truly gargantuan planet, its mass is that of the rest of the solar system COMBINED and consists entirely of gas. 

See the big red spot? That is a storm that is big enough to fit 3 entire earth’s inside it and has been raging for at least 350 years at this point. 

As if that wasn’t cool enough it has an ocean of metallic hydrogen in several of its layers, 67 moons, 4 rings, and spins so fast that it’s day is only 9 hours. This planet may just look like a giant ball of gas but when it gets down to it it really deserves to be the one named after the chief God.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Saturn

This ringed giant is most likely familiar to you all. Saturn, the sixth planet from the sun, the second largest in our solar system and one of the more easily recognisable planets. 

It is a gas giant like its neighbours and its rings are composed of small pieces of rock thought to be from a moon that collided with something long ago. The planet itself is composed of gas which is less dense than water which means that the entire planet could float in a big enough bowl and titan, its largest moon, is thought to be a potential harbour for non earthlike life, due to anomalies observed in the atmosphere and probes will be sent in the near future to investigate.


It might be one of the more easily recognised planets, but, like the rest of our vast, vast universe, there is still a lot about it that most people do not know.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Uranus

Meet Uranus. Aside from being the punchline in many more crude astronomy jokes, it is also the third largest planet in out solar system and the 7th from the sun.

It is also unique as it spins nearly perpendicular to the direction of planets that we are used to, as in it spins on its side. Because on this we still can’t even decide which is its north and south pole because they are both so close to what on our planet would be the equator!

Like its close neighbours it is a gas giant and it even has extremely faint rings like those of Saturn that go around it in its direction of orbit. This planet is so interesting as the odd child out of our solar system and really deserves a bit more respect than as the punchline of a dirty joke.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Neptune

This is Neptune, by far one of the more underappreciated planets in our solar system.

The spotlight might be more focused on Jupiter the giant, Saturn with its pretty rings or Mars with its potential ancient life. Ergo Neptune is long overdue its time in the spotlight.

With stormy winds circling its atmosphere at up to 600 metres per second and a storm recorded lasting 5 whole years, this planet really does deserve a little more attention.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Pluto

In case you’ve been living under a rock these are the pictures that were recently taken of Pluto, a planet that has never previously been photographed in this much detail. 

With a diameter of 2368 km things that are bigger than it include the moon, the perimeter of the Bermuda triangle and the country of Russia. 

However it remains a crucial area of our solar system due to how little we know about it, which is quite a feat given human persistence and the fact that we’ve known about it since 1930. Bravo Pluto. Such a small ball of rock and ice which has been the heart of so many debates on a world 5 planets away, it might be small, but Pluto is no less important than any other planet.

Life Finds a Way - Or does it? (Part 2)

Hi everyone, apologies for the long wait but I've had a lot to do recently. So where were we, dinosaurs right? Okay, where we left off last time we were trying to determine whether or not, assuming we had the technology to create them, a dinosaur would actually be able to survive on the Earth as we know it today. We've already tackled the biggest two so lets get down to it then.

The next big factor that any animal needs, not to survive as such, but to be happy, is company. We are only now beginning to understand the complex social mechanisms that are in other species, not just humans.

For hundreds of years we were arrogant enough to simply assume, without reason that humans were the only animals with a complex social system and that no other animals could even come close. However now that animal psychology is becoming a more accepted field and we are accepting their intelligence we are making striking discoveries. Even Tyrannosaurus Rex is thought to have been a fiercely defensive parent. And if animals need other animals to function properly then whose to say that dinosaurs were not the same?

It is pretty generally accepted that triceratopses traveled in herds, so what would happen if one was brought into the world today with all of the genetic instinct of a herd animal, but no herd? Well it would most likely suffer from extreme loneliness, and like a chained dog it may experience fits of anger, frustration and fear. So if we were going to bring dinosaurs back we would most likely need to bring back more than one of each kind, forming a dino-colony of sorts.

Now we need to think about the biggest factor, how has the Earth itself changed in the 65 million years since the dinosaurs roamed alongside early life and would dinosaurs have adaptions still relevant to survive today?

So how exactly was the Earth different that long ago? Well to make it simpler we'll think about the end of the Cretaceous period when a meteor is said to have wiped out the dinosaurs, as dinosaurs saw a lot of change in the millions of years that they were on earth. At the end of the Cretaceous period the continents weren't all that different to ours. But was different was the surface itself. Primitive flowering plants had begun to flourish and due to the much warmer climate there were no ice caps, resulting in a world of forests surrounded by shallow seas. The land was much lower as this is when many mountain ranges began to form and all of this was ended when a big lump of rock fell out of the sky!

So how do we compare today? Well for one it is a hell of a lot chillier. The temperature could even rise up to 45 degrees which could extend to the poles due to the much more evenly distributed temperature, so we would only have a very narrow band near the equation where dinosaurs could sustainably live under natural conditions.

However altogether there's not much different enough to have a huge effect. Sure dinosaurs my not be so well suited to digest the more complex plants they may come across today, or may be harmed by foreign chemicals in the water, or diseases unfamiliar to them. But none of these are problems that we humans couldn't fix with some clever planning.

In conclusion although there would obviously have to be a lot of very clever planning and, despite the warning from Jurassic world, a tad of genetic engineering; not only is it possible that a dinosaur could survive today, its not even that big of an undertaking. What we would have to do to support, say a triceratops, is not much more than is done currently by zookeepers all over the world holding foreign animals in zoos. And who knows, maybe one day humanity will indeed resurrect some of these prehistoric wonders to witness the world as we know it today.

Apologies this took so long guys I've been really busy recently. However I'm finally finding myself with more time to write these. I'd like to thank everyone for reading, it means a lot that I can make your days just that little bit more interesting :) researching this has really given me an appreciation for how small we are in the grand scheme of life throughout the history of Earth, a mere smear of a paintbrush on the work of art that is life. So this is me going now, but firstly I would highly recommend Jurassic World to anybody who found this interesting as it is a truly amazing film with some excellent points. Until next time :)