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IGCSE Space Physics Revision Notes! (by Ayesha)

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1. Motion of the Earth

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Day and night are caused by the Earth spinning on its axis and making one complete revolution every 24 hours.

Rising and setting of the Sun is due to the Earth’s rotation on its axis causes the Sun

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to have an apparent daily journey from east to west.

The seasons: Two factors are responsible for these.

The first is the motion of the Earth around the Sun once in approximately 365 days (i.e. in one year).

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The second is the tilt (23.5°) of the Earth’s axis to the plane of its path around the Sun

2. Motion of the Moon

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The moon is a satellite of the Earth and travels round it in an approximately circular orbit approximately once a month at an average distance
away of about 400 000 km. It also revolves on its own axis in a month and so always has the same side facing the Earth.

Phases of the Moon A thin new crescent appears along one edge as it travels in its orbit, gradually increasing in size until at the first quarter
phase, when half of the Moon’s surface can be seen. At full Moon, the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun and appears as a
complete circle. After that it wanes through the last quarter phase until only the old crescent can be seen.
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3. Orbital speed
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4. The Solar System
The Solar System consists of one star (the Sun) and eight planets moving around it in elliptical orbits (slightly flattened circles).

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It also includes dwarf planets and asteroids which orbit the Sun, moons that orbit many of the planets and smaller Solar System bodies such as comets and natural
satellites.

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The four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are all small, of similar size, solid and rocky, with a layered
structure, and have a high density.

The four outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are much larger and colder and consist mainly of

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gases; their density is low. These outer planets have many moons and other natural satellites in the form of rings
of icy materials.

The asteroids are pieces of rock of various sizes which mostly orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter; their

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density is similar to that of the inner planets. If they enter the Earth’s atmosphere they burn up and fall to Earth as
meteors or shooting stars

Comets consist of dust embedded in ice made from water and methane and are sometimes called ‘dirty
snowballs’. Their density is similar to the outer planets and they orbit the Sun in highly elliptical orbits and are much closer to it at some times than others.
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The Sun is a star and produces its own light. The planets and our moon are seen from Earth by reflected solar light.

5. Origin of the Solar System

Our Sun is thought to have formed when gravitational attraction pulled together swirling clouds of hydrogen
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gas and dust (called nebulae) in a region of space where their density was high. The Solar System may well
have been formed at the same time, about 4500 million years ago, with the planets being created from the
disc of matter left over from the nebula that formed the Sun. As this material rotated around the Sun,
gravitational attraction between small particles caused them to join together and grow in size in an
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accretion process. A rotating accretion disc is thought to have formed from which the planets emerged.

The view that the whole Solar System was formed at the same time from a rotating disc of accreting
material is also supported by the fact that the orbits of the planets are more or less in the same plane and all
revolve around the Sun in the same direction
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As the Sun grew in size, it become hotter. In the region of space where the inner planets were forming, the temperature would have been too high for light molecules
such as hydrogen, helium, water and methane to exist in a solid state. As a result, the inner planets are built from materials with high melting temperatures such as
metals (for example, iron) and silicates. Small nodules collided with each other to form larger bodies, and the planets began to grow. Since less than 1% of a nebula is

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composed of heavy elements, this means that Venus, Mercury, the Earth and Mars only grew to a small size and are solid and rocky.

Further away from the Sun, in the cooler regions of the Solar System, light molecules could exist in a solid icy form and, being more abundant than the heavy elements,
the outer planets could grow to a size large enough to capture even the lightest element, hydrogen. These outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are large,

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gaseous and cold; together their mass constitutes 99% of the mass orbiting the Sun

6. Gravitational field strength of a planet

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For a planet the gravitational field strength at its surface depends on its mass, and is nearly uniform across its surface. The strength of the gravitational field decreases
as the distance from the planet increases

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7. Travel times
The planets and their moons are visible from Earth only because they reflect light from the Sun. The outer regions of
the Solar System are over 5000 million kilometres (5 × 1012m) from the Sun and even light takes time to travel to
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8. Gravity and planetary motion

In the case of the planets orbiting the Sun in near circular paths, it is the force of gravity between the Sun and the planet
that provides the necessary centripetal force.
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The strength of the Sun’s gravitational field decreases with distance so the further a planet is away from the Sun, the weaker the centripetal force; this results in a lower
orbital speed and longer orbital duration.

In the case of a comet with a large elliptical orbit, its speed increases as it approaches the Sun and decreases as it moves further away. Energy is conserved, with some of
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the kinetic energy it has when close to the Sun being transferred into potential energy as it moves away.

The Moon is kept in a circular orbit around the Earth by the force of gravity between it and the Earth.
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9. The Sun as a star
The Sun is a medium-sized star which consists mainly of hydrogen and helium. The radiant energy it emits is mostly in the infrared, visible and ultraviolet regions of the
electromagnetic spectrum. This radiation is emitted from glowing hydrogen which is heated by the energy released in nuclear reactions

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within the Sun.

The high temperature in the core required to sustain the nuclear reactions is maintained by the large amount of energy released in the
fusion process; the Sun is powered by nuclear fusion. Some of the energy generated in the core is transferred to the outer layers of the

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star. These are cooler and less dense than the core, but are still hot enough for the hydrogen gas to glow, and emit electromagnetic
radiation into space.

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10. Stars
Although the stars may seem close on a dark night, in fact the distances involved are
enormous compared with the distances across our Solar System.
So great are they, that we need a new unit of length, the light-year.
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this is the distance travelled in (the vacuum of) space by light in one year
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11. Galaxies
A galaxy is a large collection of stars; there are billions of stars in a galaxy. As well as containing stars, galaxies
consist of clouds of gas, mostly hydrogen and dust. They move in space, many rotating as spiral discs like huge
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Catherine wheels with a dense central bulge. The Milky Way, the spiral galaxy to which our Solar System belongs, can
be seen on dark nights as a narrow band of light spread across the sky.
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12. Origin of Stars

When interstellar clouds of dust and gas containing hydrogen collapse under the force of gravitational attraction, a protostar is formed. As the mass of the protostar
increases, its core temperature rises; gravitational potential energy is transferred to kinetic energy as the protostar contracts under internal gravitational forces. When

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the core is hot enough, nuclear fusion can start; hydrogen is converted into helium, and a star is born. If the young star has a
very large mass, it forms a blue or white star. If it has a smaller mass, such as our Sun, it forms a yellow or red dwarf and this is
more common

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13.Life cycle of Stars

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In a stable star, such as our Sun, the very strong forces of gravity pulling it inwards are balanced by the opposing forces trying
to make it expand due to its extremely high temperature. This thermal pressure arises from the kinetic energy of the nuclei in
the core.

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When the forces are balanced, the star is in a stable state, during which time most of the hydrogen in the core is converted to
helium.

When the star starts to run out of hydrogen as a fuel for nuclear reactions, it becomes unstable. There is less energy being produced by nuclear fusion to sustain the
outward thermal pressure and the core collapses inward under gravitational attraction; potential energy is transferred to kinetic energy, so that the core becomes hotter.
There is a fast burn-up of the remaining hydrogen envelope (in contrast to the core)
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and a huge expansion and subsequent cooling of the surface gases;

the star turns into a red giant (or red supergiant if the star is very massive). As the
core heats up, its temperature becomes high enough for the nuclear fusion of helium
into carbon to occur.
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14.Life cycle of Low Mass Stars
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For stars with a mass up to about eight times that of our Sun, when all the helium is
used up, the core of the red giant collapses under its own gravity, and enough energy
is released to cause the outer layers to be expelled.

The small core becomes a white dwarf at the centre of a glowing shell of ionised gas
known as a planetary nebula.

The white dwarf has a lifetime of about a billion years and eventually cools into a cold
black dwarf consisting mainly of carbon.
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15.Life cycle of High Mass Stars

Stars with a mass greater than about eight times that of our Sun are hotter than the Sun and use up their hydrogen more quickly; their stable stage is shorter and may
last for only about 100 million years.

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The core then collapses into a red supergiant and nuclear fusion of helium into carbon occurs.

When all the helium has been used up, the core collapses further under gravity and it becomes hot enough for the nuclear fusion of carbon into oxygen, nitrogen and

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finally iron to occur. Nuclear fusion then stops and the energy of the star is released in a supernova explosion.

The centre of the supernova collapses to a very dense neutron star, which spins rapidly and acts as a pulsar, sending out pulses of radio waves. If the red giant is very
massive, the remnant at the centre of the supernova has such a large density that its gravitational field stops anything escaping from its surface, even light; this is a black

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16. The Universe (Redshift)

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In developing a theory about the origin of the Universe, two discoveries about galaxies have to be taken into account.

The first is that light emitted from glowing hydrogen in stars in distant galaxies, is ‘shifted’ to the red end of the spectrum (longer wavelength) in comparison with the
value on Earth. The second is that the further away a galaxy is from us, the greater is this redshift.
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These observations can be explained if other galaxies are moving away from us very rapidly, and the further away they are, the faster is their speed of recession. Evidently
the Universe is expanding. This interpretation is based on the Doppler effect, which occurs when a source of waves is moving. I

if the source approaches us, waves are crowded into a smaller space and their wavelength seems smaller and their
frequency greater. If the source moves away, the wavelength seems larger. The redshift in the light from distant
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galaxies provides evidence that the Universe is expanding and gives support to the Big Bang theory of the formation
of the Universe.
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17. The Big Bang theory
if the galaxies are receding from each other, it follows that in the past they must have been closer together. It is therefore possible

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that initially all the matter in the Universe was packed together in an extremely dense state. The Big Bang theory proposes that this
was the case, and that the Universe started about 14 billion years ago from one place with a huge explosion – the Big Bang.

18.Microwave background radiation

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The Big Bang produced radiation energy which still exists in the universe today in
the form of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) of a specific
frequency.

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This radiation, left over from the Big Bang, has maximum intensity at a wavelength of 1.1mm and it has been
suggested that slight variations in this value, ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ spots, may act as seeding sites for galaxy formation.

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Since the Big Bang, the Universe has continued to expand, resulting in a redshift of the cosmic background radiation
into the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The existence of the cosmic background radiation
provides strong evidence in support of the Big Bang theory, and gives us an insight into the earliest days of the Universe.

19. Age of the universe

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the speed of recession v of a galaxy is directly proportional to its distance away d. This is called Hubble’s law and can be written
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The Hubble constant, H0, is defined as the ratio of the speed at which the galaxy is moving away from the Earth to its distance from the Earth, so
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The Hubble constant represents the rate at which the Universe is expanding at the present time. Its value is found by measuring the speed of recession of large numbers
of galaxies whose distances are known. The more distant a galaxy is from us, the faster it is receding. Hubble’s law provides further evidence in support of the Big Bang
theory