Knowtex

2009 is the 400th anniversary of the publication by Johannes Kepler.“Astronomia Nova” is about his discovery of how the planets move around the sun, correcting Copernicus’s incorrect description of the solar system and establishing the laws for planetary motion on which Isaac Newton based his work.

By slamming materials together, scientists have made a mineral that is found naturally only in meteorites and the deep layers of Earth's mantle. Their successful "shock" experiment reveals new clues about the formation of our early Solar System.

A vast mess of frozen lava and vaporised rock has been found orbiting a nearby star, evidence of a cataclysmic collision between planet-like bodies outside our solar system. Such collisions are thought to have created Earth's moon and left other scars in the solar system.

In one corner of the Solar System, life abounds. From the frozen lakes in Antarctica to the boiling ocean-floor springs of the Pacific, planet Earth is teeming with life. But these diverse locations all share some common ground. They all contain the essential ingredients needed to create life.

Three years ago, the astronomy community voted to downsize the solar system by revoking Pluto's planetary status. Now the land of Lincoln is fighting back, showing that the fate of that small rock, and so the size of the solar system, is still up in the air.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, may have the potential to build the building blocks of DNA. Because Titan seems like a model of the early Earth, these studies might give us an insight of the mechanisms of the creation of life on our planet.

There is a small chance that the Earth and Venus could collide in the next 5 billion years. The video models the possibility where the orbits of the Earth and Venus might switch under the influence of Mercury. More details and information illustrating the model are given in the article.

The Nebular Hypothesis in its original form was proposed by Kant and Laplace in the 18th century. The initial steps are indicated in the following figures.