Recent content by conan

Thanks to all the above for trying to help me understand this. I will try to do some outside reading to make sense of the comments, then probably, come back with more questions. Appreciate the effort everyone. cheers conan

I have no idea at what level your at. So some suggestions to do with maths - Orbits. How to calculate an orbit from a few observations - Mass of galaxys/stars, how to do that - Baryometric centre of two objects. Why is Pluto/Charon considered by some to be a double planet instead of a...

Maybe I need to re-phrase my original question. How about the following. Does something need to happen at the sub-atomic level for normal matter to form into a black hole? I mean, our sun is pretty damm big and so I imagined that amongst the plasma soup there, that the atoms are squashed...

Hi Dimitry, thanks for your answer. I'm still trying to understand what you wrote. What happens with the biggest stars in the universe? If density is not an issue, then these stars would automatically be black holes. What stops these stars from becoming black holes? Thanks for any tips...

Hi, Judging by the questions and answers, there are obviously many talented physics and astrophysics professionals here. I am not one of these professionals, nevertheless I am interested in this field. So please excuse my naïve questions and thanks for any help answering them. I have been...

Hi mgb, Your description seems to fit my picture of the early Earth well. A dustball accumulating crap until it starts very slowly to gravitaitionally collapse in on itself. My problem with the all the classic pictures of early Earth was that is viewed as a molten hell. You describe that the...

Which country are you from?

Hi mgb, thanks for the answer, but perhaps I need to know more about gravitational collapse, at least as far as rocky planets go. There are still things that I can imagine, and stuff that I cant. I can imagine some asteroid or comet type rock ploughing thru zillions of smaller objects...

Thanks for the answer Dave. If I can think of a contradictory example, then it's Saturn's rings and moons. This is part of the solar system that is not vacuumed out and contains moons and chunks of debris circling amongst the fine particles and these objects are anything but hot. Perhaps the...

Just a light-hearted post. What are in your opinion, the freakiest things in our solar system. Here are my votes. 1) The axis of rotation of Uranus. 2) The two moons (Saturn I think) that leap frog each other instead of colliding. 3) The football shaped minor planet 2003 EL61 Any...

Hi, I'm not good enough to contribute answers yet, but I hope to entertain you with questions. Practically all the Earth formation stuff I've read talks about the Earth being molton. That always seems strange to me. If I think of a space body without an atmosphere, I generally think of it...

Thanks very much for your answers. I actually have a statistics major, so the arguments regarding probability were nice to see. Yes, it happened, we have a moon, but as the other posters posted, you have to also weigh up how likely a potential answer to a question is. @Mark, thanks for your...

Hi, I have recently been reading that the currently favoured theory for the origin of the moon is that a Mars sized object smashed into an almost finished earth, ripped off large parts of proto-Earth's mantle and the result debris coallesced into the Earth and moon again. I know the...

Hi, new here, my first post. Like many people here, I'm no astrophysist, but I have an active interest in our solar system, cosmology in general and I guess astrophysics. Here's my first question. "Are black holes cold?". Given my amateur understanding, I would say yes, they are near...