Saturn!

 1-Many astronomers consider Saturn the most beautiful planet in the solar system because of its stunning rings. In fact, Saturn’s nickname is “the jewel of the solar system.”

2-Saturn is the second-largest planet in our solar system after Jupiter, which is about 20% larger than Saturn. Earth is the fifth-largest planet in our solar system.

3-Saturn is not the only planet with rings. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings, although they are much fainter and less spectacular than Saturn’s.

4-Saturn is the least dense planet in the solar system, and if there were a body of water large enough to hold Saturn, the planet would float. In contrast, Earth and Mercury would sink the fastest.

5-A year on Earth is 365.256 days. A year on Saturn is 10,759.22 days.

6-A day on Earth is 24 hours. A day on Saturn is 10 hours 39 minutes.

7-The Assyrians, who lived in modern-day Iraq, were the first to record sighting Saturn in 700 B.C. They called the planet the Star of Ninib, after the Assyrian sun god of spring.

8-The planet Saturn is named after the Roman god of farming, Saturn, who was also the father of the Roman god Jupiter. The planet’s symbol is a sickle, a tool that belonged to the Roman god of harvest and was also the weapon Cronos used to castrate and depose his father, Uranus.

9-As the seventh day of the week, Saturday is named after Saturn, the farthest of the seven objects in the solar system known in ancient times.

10-Because Saturn spins on a tilt, it has seasons. Summer on Saturn lasts about eight Earth years.

11-Saturn is called a “naked eye” planet because it can be seen without a telescope or binoculars. Saturn is often the third brightest planet in the night sky and has a yellowish color that does not twinkle. Unlike stars, planets like Saturn do not twinkle because they are much closer to Earth than stars.

How planet Earth was formed

This has been puzzling scientists for many years and has still not been satisfactorily answered even with all our advance technologies we currently have.

Many different ideas have been suggested, ranging from the hand of God to the ‘Big Bang Theory’. ‘Big Bang’ suggests that the Universe was formed 20,000 million year’s ago by the sudden explosion of a small mass of material which was incredibly heavy. These materials where called atoms. Where did they come from in the first place? It seems unlikely that anyone will ever have the final answer.

On the other hand, once we can assume that the Universe does indeed exist, it becomes a little easier to think about the formation of our very own planet because we already have the building material available.

For many years, the most accepted idea concerning the formation of the Earth was the result of a scientist called Kelvin in 1862. He suggested that the Earth has cooled from a melted, that is, a molten, mass. He put forward this idea partly because it had been proved definitely by that time that the Earth is losing heat, and also because this seemed to provide an explanation for the origin of volcanoes spewing their red hot lava from the Earth’s interior.

More recently, however, a great deal of evidence has been gathered, indicating that the planet was probably never completely melted. In fact, the most popular theory nowadays is that the Earth, and also the rest of the solar system, where formed from the coming together of a cloud of dust and gas. This was probably a result of the gravitational attraction which all objects have for each other. Scientist think this occurred about 6000 million years ago. This means that the Earth probably formed cold rather than a molten ball.

Science knows from the evidence of deep mines, however, that the Earth becomes very much hotter towards the centre. Where does the heat come from? Certainly, it must have become hot enough to melt many of the original materials. Scientists think this heat has a twofold origin. When the Sun contracted at the very beginning, its centre become hot. This set off a decay of certain radioactive waves which released a great deal of heat.

It seems likely that the first of the Earth’s rocks were formed from their melted parent materials about 4500 million years ago.

The Sun Plays Music: Scientists

The sun has been the inspiration for hundreds of songs, but now scientists have discovered that the star at the center of our solar system produces its own music.

Astronomers at the University of Sheffield have managed to record for the first time the eerie musical harmonies produced by the magnetic field in the outer atmosphere of the sun.

They found that huge magnetic loops that have been observed coiling away from the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as coronal loops, vibrate like strings on a musical instrument.
In other cases they behave more like soundwaves as they travel through a wind instrument.

Using satellite images of these loops, which can be over 60,000 miles long, the scientists were able to recreate the sound by turning the visible vibrations into noises and speeding up the frequency so it is audible to the human ear.

Professor Robertus von Fáy-Siebenbürgen, head of the solar physics research group at Sheffield University, said: "It was strangely beautiful and exciting to hear these noises for the first time from such a large and powerful source.

"It is a sort of music as it has harmonics.

"It is providing us with a new way of learning about the sun and giving us a new insight into the physics that goes on at in the sun's outer layers where temperatures reach millions of degrees."

The coronal loops are thought to be involved in the production of solar flares that fling highly charged particles out into space, creating a phenomenon known as space weather.

When the sun's activity, and thus solar flare production, increases, the resulting "space storm" can have catastrophic results here on earth, destroying electronic equipment, overheating power grids and damaging satellites.

Nasa warned last week that the sun's activity is starting to increase following an extended period of low activity and is on course to throw out unprecedented levels of magnetic energy into the solar system by 2013.

Professor Fáy-Siebenbürgen said that studying the "music of the sun" would provide new ways of understanding and predicting solar flares before they happen.

The coronal loops vibrate from side to side because they are "plucked" rather like guitar strings by the blast waves from explosions on the surface of the sun.

The scientists also found the loops vibrate backwards and forwards in a way that mimics the acoustic waves in a wind instrument.

Professor Fáy-Siebenbürgen's research has been revealed as the University of Sheffield launches a new project, called Project Sunshine, aimed at finding new ways to harness and understand the power of the sun.

He said: "These loops are oscillating like the strings on a guitar or the air in a wind instrument. Over time the waves die away and that is telling us new things about the physics in the sun's atmosphere."