The Solar System comprises the Sun and the objects that orbit it, whether they orbit it directly or by orbiting other objects that orbit it directly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets that form theplanetary system around it, while the remainder are significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies (SSSBs) such as comets and asteroids. The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, also called the terrestrial planets, are primarily composed of rock and metal. The four outer planets, called the gas giants, are substantially more massive than the terrestrials. The two largest, Jupiter and Saturn, are composed mainly of hydrogen and helium; the two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune, are composed largely of substances with relatively high melting points (compared with hydrogen and helium), called ices, such as water, ammonia and methane, and are often referred to separately as "ice giants". All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a nearly flat disc called the ecliptic plane.

CONTENT : A–F , G–L , M–R , S–Z , See also , External links

Quotes

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A–F

  • You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a universe. You are a purely biological entity, different only in degree but not in kind from a microbe, virus, or amoeba. You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist entirely. In short you come from nothing and are going to nowhere.
  • It is the sun-fluids or emanations that impart all motion, and awaken all into life, in the Solar System. It is attraction and repulsion, but not as understood by modern Physics or according to the law of gravity, but in harmony with the laws of manvantaric motion designed from the early Sandhyâ, the Dawn of the rebuilding and higher reformation of the System.
  • The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author and Sustainer. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of Astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system; the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light a [[w:Fixed stars|fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years, of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a foot-ball; of starry hosts—suns like our own—numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces.

G–L

  • If you look at the history of big obstacles in understanding our world, there's usually an intuitive assumption underlying them that's wrong. In the case of the Solar System it was intuitively obvious that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System and things moved around us, but that just turned out to be wrong. … And it intuitively seems correct that the brain is just some sort of computer—it just seems natural. … But it has undermined almost all of our work to build intelligent machines and understand thinking. It's just wrong … the brain isn't like a computer at all.

M–R

  • The Sun, Moon, and brightest planets were visible to the naked eyes of ancient astronomers, and their observations and calculations of the movements of these bodies gave rise to the science of astronomy. Today the amount of information on the motions, properties, and compositions of the planets and smaller bodies has grown to immense proportions, and the range of observational instruments has extended far beyond the solar system to other galaxies and the edge of the known universe. Yet the solar system and its immediate outer boundary still represent the limit of our physical reach, and they remain the core of our theoretical understanding of the cosmos as well. Earth-launched space probes and landers have gathered data on planets, moons, asteroids, and other bodies, and this data has been added to the measurements collected with telescopes.
    • Tobias Chant Owen in: "Solar system".

S–Z

  • The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place for the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand hand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system, and the history of our study of the solar system shows clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and the fundamental insights can arise from the most unepected sources.
  • The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way
  • In that case, on behalf of Earth life, I urge that, with full knowledge of our limitations, we vastly increase our knowledge of the Solar System and then begin to settle other worlds.
    • Carl Sagan in: “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p. 337.
  • The solar system is off center and consequently man is too, which is a rather nice idea because it means that man is not such a big chicken. He is incidental – my favorite term is peripheral.
  • From days of long ago, from uncharted regions of the universe, comes a legend. The legend of Voltron: Defender of the Universe. A mighty robot, loved by good, feared by evil. As Voltron's legend grew, peace settled across the galaxy. On Planet Earth, a Galaxy Alliance was formed. Together with the good planets of the Solar System, they maintained peace throughout the universe until a new horrible menace threatened the galaxy. Voltron was needed once more. This is the story of the super force of space explorers. Specially trained and sent by the alliance to bring back, Voltron: Defender of the Universe.
  • In the present motions of the bodies which constitute the solar system there are motions in planes inclined to that equatorial plane.... The effort to eliminate the comets from the solar system, so as to avoid the responsibility of accounting for their origin, is a confession of the hypothesis [nebular hypothesis that all planetary motion began in one plane – the plane of the equator of the cosmical [[sphere] But the stability of the solar systems supposed to have been demonstrated by mathematical analysis.

Anonymous

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