Kwashee Totimeh Physics Project

The universe is everything that we can perceive and more. It is all the mass that exists,

from the largest galaxies to the tiny subatomic particles. Inside there are galaxies, there are more

than 100 billion galaxies which are spiraled shaped. The spiral galaxy that we live in is the Milky

Way galaxy. Like other spiral galaxies, the Milky Way has a bulge, a disk, and a halo. The Milky

Way is at least 10 billion years old. The Milky contains the solar system which we live in, our

solar system formed billions of years ago when gases and dust began to come together to form

the sun, planets and other bodies of the solar system. Our solar system is made up of the sun,

stars, the 8 planets and their 166 known moons, asteroids, comets, dust and gas. The sun is the

closet star to Earth and is the center of our solar system. The sun is like a giant spinning ball of

very hot gas, the Sun is fueled by nuclear fusion reactions. The light from the sun gives our

world heat and makes life possible. All of the eight planets revolve around the sun, the closest

planet to the sun is Mercury. Mercury is also the second smallest planet in the solar system, it

surface is also covered with craters. After Mercury comes Venus, Venus is named after the roman

goddess of love. Also, Venus is one planet that does not have any moons or rings.
There are many stars found all throughout our solar system. A star is formed when a gas cloud, if

big enough, starts to shrink. The density and temperature increase so nuclear fusion can start.

This is when hydrogen is converted into helium.The burning of hydrogen stops he gas cloud

from shrinking. At this point, the gas cloud becomes a star. When a star reaches the last phase it

then becomes a red giant star, a red giant star is a star with a mass like our sun. When a star like

our own sun dies they will become white dwarfs. As a star like our sun is running out of fuel in

its core it begins to bloat into a red giant. This will happen to our sun in 5 billion years. The inner

planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars will all be consumed by the sun’s expanding surface.

The after a few million yearsthe outer layers of the red giant will begin to puff off and form a

planetary nebula. Leaving behind only the dead core of the star made of mostly carbon and

oxygen. This is the white dwarf. A typical white dwarf star is about the size of the earth. Stars

don’t last forever though, stars bigger than our sun will end its life in a huge explosion, called a

supernova. The explosion is caused because the core of the star collapses. All of the outer layers

of star are blown off; all that is left is the core of the star. The materials that fly out of the

explosion can cause the formation of new stars. After the supernova it would depend on how big

it was to determine what would become of. If it was a little bigger that the sun, the core shrinks

into a tiny neutron star. If it was a lot bigger that the sun, the core would shrink down to a black

hole.