ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Robinson Crusoe was written by Daniel Defoe. The novel was first published in 1719. It tells the story of a young explorer who becomes marooned on a deserted island. His experiences of the island change his outlook on life. Daniel Defoe was a short story writer that came from an poor family. Defoe was poor for most of his life and made his living as a butcher and a writer. Defoe mostly wrote short stories and political essays. Robinson Crusoe was a combination of two short stories. Many believe Defoe used Robinson Crusoe to portray himself in a certain ways. The description was almost identical to his own and after his wife left him, he felt as if he was marooned on a deserted island. The story takes place in the 1700s on a deserted island somewhere off the coast of Brazil. The island is fairly large in size and has a small shore. The interior of the island has many trees, wild pigs and other small animals and a small cave in which Crusoe stores food. I walked about the shore lifting up my hands. Look around, I see nothing but water, a forest, and the remains of my ship. At first, I was afraid of wild animals but after some exploration of the land, the only animals I had seen were wild pigs, squirrels, and some small birds. The only possessions that Crusoe retrieved from the remains of his ship were a small knife, a box of tabacco, a pipe, and a small book that would later become his journal. Robinson Crusoe was a young and stubborn explorer. He was extremely tall and strong. His stay on the island changed him from a mean, stubborn man to an open-minded protestant. Standing at six feet, two inches and having my long, thick brown hair back in a ponytail, I felt as if I was eight feet tall. Without the permission of my parents, I was still sailing away from the misery. I held the cargo box is my strong arms, waiting to board my beautiful ship. Crusoe became a skilled craftsman and was an extremely religious man due to his stay on the island. Being the only man on the entire island, he established a faith in God. He also became more articulate from writing in a journal daily. Overall, his stay on the island changed Crusoe's life greatly. As the story begins, Robinson Crusoe defies his parents and sets out to sea. Crusoe encounters a series of violent storms at sea and ends up in Africa. He sets out on another voyage and is captured by the Sallee, a group of pirates. Luckily, he manages to escape and board a Portuguese ship and sail to Brazil. While in Brazil, Crusoe purchases a large sugar plantation. After leaving Brazil, he encounters another storm in which his ship is destroyed and he is marooned on an island as the only survivor. On the island, Crusoe gathers food and builds a small shelter. He writes in a journal to keep account of his stay. Crusoe becomes a skilled craftsman and begins to feel a spiritual connection with God. He also builds a small boat that he uses to sail around the island. After living on the island for fifteen years, Crusoe discovers that savages had landed on the island and that they perform human sacrifices. Crusoe helps a prisoner escape from these savages. He names the prisoner Friday and teaches him english. Together, they build a new boat and attempt to leave the island. However, Friday learns his father is a prisoner of the savages. Crusoe and Friday return and rescue his father and a Spaniard. The four men board a passing boat and gain control of it. Crusoe sails back to his native land to learn his sugar plantation has made him rich. He sells the plantation and marries. As the novel closes, Crusoe is persuaded to take a final voyage, back to the island. Robinson Crusoe is written using an English dialect. The narration of the novel is simple, informal and extremely easy to understand. However, Defoe uses verbose descriptions for characters. He was a comely, handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with strong limbs, not too large, tall and well-shaped, and I reckon he was about twenty years of age. The color of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not of an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives are; but of a bright kind of a dun olive color that had in it something agreeable, though not very easy to describe. This is a description of Friday. Defoe does an excellent job of introducing the character. This paragraph makes a clear picture of Friday to the reader. The theme of the novel is that nature can change the way a man thinks and his outlook on life. Crusoe was a nasty young man who hated his family and his life as the story began. After being stranded on an island for over fifteen years, nature changed his outlook on life. Crusoe became grateful for what he did have and wanted to make the best out of it. He developed a stronger will power and became more opened minded. He also thought more about the better aspects of his life and had faith in God.

JURASIC PARK

Jurasic Park Richard Graczyk JURASSIC PARK Crichton, Michael Publisher: Ballantine Books City Where Published: New York Date of latest copy: 1990 Edition: First Ballantine Books Edition: December 1991. 399 Pages, Hardcover I. A Brief Summary of the Plot. A billionaire has created a technique to clone dinosaurs. From the left behind DNA that his crack team of scientists and experts extract he is able to grow the dinosaurs in labs and lock them up on an island behind electrified fences. He has created a sort of theme park on the island which is located off the west coast of Costa Rica. The island is called Isla Nublar. He plans to have the entire planet come and visit his wondrous marvels. He asks a group of scientists from several different fields to come and view the park, but something terribly goes wrong when a worker on the island turns traitor and shuts down the power. II. A Description of the Most Important Aspects of the Contents. The main characters in the book are: John Hammond who is a billionaire developer who has used his resources to create the dinosaur filled island known as Jurassic Park. He is an old grandfather, and he dies in the book by a dinosaur known as a Procompsognathus. Dr. Alan Grant who is a renowned paleontologist who agrees to visit Jurassic Park only to find out it is the home of several Dinosaurs. Unlike the movie Dr. Grant loves kids in the book. He also had a of a beard. Dr. Ellie Sattler is a Paleobotinist and Alan Grant who is among the first people to tour Jurassic Park. Tim who is the 11 year old grandson of John Hammond. He is kind of geeky, into computers and loves Dinosaurs. His 7 year older sister is Alexis. She has a kind of tomboy attitude and loves base-ball Ian Malcom is the Mathematician that uses Chaos Theory to predict disastrous results. he only wears black and gray. He is presumably dead in Jurassic Park the book, but miraculously is in the sequel, The Lost World. Finally there is Dennis Nedry. He was the computer genius who's greed and ambition bring chaos to Jurassic Park. There are many other characters that played a big part in the book, but I thought they were the best and the plot revolved around them. The characters show the greatest difference in the movie and the book. There were many opposites in the characters and even the roles and elements of Tim and Lex were reversed. The book starts off when some of the dinosaurs have escaped form the island. John Hammond invites a group of scientists to the park. He also invites his grandchildren. Denis Nedry took a bribe from a rival company to get samples of Dinosaur DNA. In order to make his escape, he turns the power off, even the electric fences. All hell breaks loose when the humans try to warn a boat that it's transporting Dinosaurs to the mainland, and run away from them at the same time. III. The Significance of the Book to the Student. This book had plenty of significance in it, even though a lot of the elements that were significant were hidden. First of all this book thought us a few basic things about DNA. How it's the building blocks of life, and stuff can be cloned. Like that sheep, Dolly. Also it taught us what some scientific practices were about when different scientists visited the island. Suchexamples are paleontologists, paleobotanists, and mathematicians. 1 other thing that this book teaches the student is that it is a prime example of the differences between the movie and the book. And yes, the book was better. IV. Evaluation of the Book. Personally, I thought this was a great book. When I saw the movie, it was a blast. I loved the movie, but when I read the book for the first time I was blown away. This has been the second time I've read it and I must say it hasn't lost his touch. When I read the book the first time I was rooting for the different characters and all, and the second time I read it, it still kept those same elements. It still had it's flavor. That's what I loved about this book. There is one thing I must recommend about this book though. Read it as something for fun, not for school. And go at your own pace, but read a lot, it's a big book. The experience of the book it much better then.

JULIUS CAESAR.

In the book Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, Cassius and the conspirators depicted Caesar as being ambitious. He was also said to not be ambitious by Mark Antony. He was, however, ambitious. This is because he refused the crown three times, he did not listen to the warnings that people gave him throughout the book, and he did not end the punishment he placed upon Metellus Cimber’s brother, Publius Cimber. These were all acts of ambition. On the Lupercal, Mark Antony presented Caesar with a crown. Caesar then proceeded to turn down the crown three times. The reason he did this is because the crown was not the real one, but only a coronet. This is known when Casca tells Brutus and Caesar, “I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown (yet ‘twas not a crown neither; ‘twas one of those coronets), and as I told you, he put it by once; but for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it.” The reason that this was ambitious is because it shows that he wanted more than they offered him and that he wasn’t satisfied with just that. It also shows that he feels that he is too good for it. After he turned down the crown, the people watching yelled because they wanted him to take the crown. This shows he does not listen to others. Throughout the book, Caesar received many warnings about his death. All of these warnings he refused. The Soothsayer told him to “beware the Ides of March,” Calphurnia told him about her dreams, the owl was seen in the capitol during the daytime, the slaves hand caught on fire, and the sky spit fire. All of these were warnings that Caesar did not listen to. He pushed away the Soothsayer and said, “He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.” This shows that he will not accept advice from anyone. If he does this, then he will be a tyrant. When Calphurnia told him about her dream, he did not listen to her. Instead, he listened to flattery, which he said he disliked. These shows that he was also a hypocrite and that he would only listen to or do what sounded better for him. All of these things reveal that he has a huge ego. This is ambitious because a person with a big ego will only do things that will benefit him. Before Caesar is stabbed, Metellus Cimber and the conspirators approach him and ask him to let Publius Cimber back into the kingdom. “I could be well moved, if I were as you. If I could pray to move, prayers would move me. But I am as constant as the Northern Star,.” He did not back down because he felt that he was right in his decision to banish Publius. He was also very stubborn and did not listen to reason. This is ambitious because he would always feel that he was right and no one else was. This is what tyrants do, and he would have also. Caesar was ambitious because he refused a crown that he felt was not good enough for him, did not listen to warnings from people, and would not back down from his decision to banish Publius. Because he did all these things, it revealed the things that he would do if he were to become king. If Caesar had become king, he would have ruled the Romans like a tyrant.

GULLIVER's TRAVELS

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is without question the most famous literature to emerge from this 18th century Tory satiric tradition. It is the strongest, funniest, and yet in some ways most despairing cry for a halt to the trends initiated by seventeenth-century philosophy. In Book IV, we discover how Gulliver’s journey into a discovery of what man is becomes a journey into madness. We encounter, here, a cruel attack on man. This is an attack using two of the most striking literary metaphors for man: the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. The first are beings in every way like horses except for their possession of absolute reason; the second are creatures bearing an uncanny resemblance to man except for their animalistic brutality. Swift’s use of these creatures, Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, as an approach to the problem of the nature of man, has attracted more critical attention than has any other part of his work. Now, the first important question to ask of any satirist is how he or she achieves the necessary comic distortion, which transforms the familiar into the ridiculous. And Swift’s main technique for achieving this--and a wonderful technique for satire--is the basic plot of science fiction: the voyage by an average civilized human being into unknown territory and his return back home. This apparently simple plot immediately opens all sorts of satiric possibilities, because it enables the writer constantly to play off three different perspectives in order to give us the reader a comic sense of what is very familiar. It can do this in the following ways: If the strange new country is recognizably similar to our culture, then comic distortions in the New World enable the writer to satirize the familiar in a host of different ways, providing, in effect, a cartoon style view of our world. If the strange new country is some sort of utopia--a perfectly realized vision of the ideals often proclaimed but generally violated in our world--then the satirist can manipulate the discrepancy between the ideal New World of the fiction and the corrupt world we live in to illustrate repeatedly just how empty the pretensions to goodness really are in our world. However, the key to this technique is generally the use of the traveler, the figure who is, in effect, the reader’s contemporary and fellow countryman. How that figure reacts to the New World can be a constant source of amusement and pointed satiric comment, because, in effect, this figure represents the contact between the normal world and the strange New World of either caricatured ridiculousness or utopian perfection. We can see Swift moving back and forth between the first two techniques, and this can create some confusion. For example, in much of Book I, Lilliput is clearly a comic distortion of life in Europe. The sections on the public rewards of leaping and creeping or the endless disputes about whether one should eat one’s eggs by breaking them at the bigger or the smaller end or the absurdity of the royal proclamations are obvious and funny distortions of the court life, the pompous pretentiousness of officials, and the religious disputes familiar to Swift’s readers. At the same time, however, there are passages where he holds up the laws of Lilliput as some form of utopian ideal, in order to demonstrate just how much better they understand true reasonableness than do the Europeans. In book II, he does the same: for most of the time the people of Brobdingnag are again caricatured distorted Europeans, but clearly, the King of Brobdingnag is an ideal figure. This shift in perspective on the New World is at times confusing. Swift is, in effect, manipulating the fictional world to suit his immediate satirical purposes. It is easy enough to see what he is doing, but it does, in some sense, violate our built-up expectations. Just how are we supposed to take Lilliput and Brobdingna--as a distorted Europe or as a utopia or what? This lack of a consistent independent reality to the fictional world which he has created is one of the main reasons why Gulliver’s Travels is not considered one of the first novels (since one of the requirements of a novel, it is maintained, is a consistent attitude towards the fictional reality one has created: one cannot simply manipulate it at will to prove a moral point). We can see Gulliver slowly becoming accustomed to a new kind of life, the life of reason that he is forced to imitate from the model supplied by the horses. We can begin to see that Gulliver is impressed by the orderly and rational conduct of life he sees in the Houyhnhnms but, while the Houyhnhnms may provide Gulliver with a model manner of life, Swift is forcing the careful reader to judge whether the life of the horses is indeed a proper model for the life of man. It may be true that a man can subsist on a diet of oats and milk and even thrive on them; but, are oats the only alternative to asses’ flesh, the food of the Yahoos? In other words, Gulliver’s choice of diet is not really the point; rather, his choice of diet signifies his choice of a manner of living. Houyhnhnm life is much simpler than human life because these ideal horses are not possessed with the impulse towards evil that is powerfully present in many. Man’s life is a good deal more difficult; he can be good, but with great effort, while the Houyhnhnms are good without effort and are consequently not nearly so interesting as men are. Gulliver’s great mistake is his blindness to the poignant difficulty involved in man’s attempts to battle his basic instincts in order to lead the good life. Gulliver will be blinded by the glorious but inhuman example of the Houyhnhnms. In Book IV, Swift deals more consistently with this innuendo in the New World by dividing it into two groups; the satirized Europeans, the Yahoos, and the ideally reasonable creatures, the horses. So, here there is less of a sense of shifting purpose at work. That may help to account, in part, for the great power of the Fourth Voyage. For me Swift’s language, though strong, is still in control. The vision is harsh, the anger extreme, but that’s a sign of the intense moral anger Swift feels at the transformation of life around him in ways that are leading, he thinks, to moral disaster. The central Christian and Socratic emphasis on virtue is losing ground to something he sees as a facile illusion--that reason, wealth, money, and power could somehow do the job for us, which had been traditionally placed upon our moral characters. In the New World, faith, hope, and charity, Swift sees, are going to be irrelevant, because the rational organization of human experience and the application of the new reasoning to all aspects of human life is going to tempt human beings with a rich lure: the promise of happiness. Under the banner of the new rationality, the traditional notions of virtue will become irrelevant, as human beings substitute for excellence of character the development of the individual human life according to some telos, some spiritual goal--the idea that properly organized practical rules, structures of authority, rational inquiry into efficient causes, profitable commercial ventures, and laws will provide the sure guide, because, after all, human beings are rational creatures. In the first three books of the Travels, Swift has exposed satiric ridicule to the institutions, the customs, the beliefs, and the behavior of man. In Book IV, however, he turns his attention to human nature itself. He seeks to discover what might be called a definition of man; a definition that will account for the apparent mess man has managed to make of his life and his world. Swift therefore places Gulliver (an ordinary mortal) directly between the figures of impossible perfection, the Houyhnhnms, and the figures of impossible degradation, the Yahoos. Gulliver is shaken to the core of his being when he suddenly sees, in the Yahoos, the terrible sight of man as animal. The Yahoos are images of what man would become were he totally devoid of reason and completely removed from civilization: they are images of the animal potential in man. The fact is, however, that man is neither Yahoo nor Houyhnhnm; he is an imperfect creature who, nevertheless, has the power to live a decent life if only he will recognize how limited he is. Swift presents us with figures like Count Munodi and Captain Mendez who are decent, compassionate, wise and humble men who have become aware of their capabilities only by recognizing their limitations. Without pride, these figures live the kind of good life attainable by humanity. Gulliver, however, goes mad when he realizes that man is incapable of absolute perfection. Unable to come to terms with his limited capabilities, he thus commits the sin of pride as he is in the very process of condemning man for being proud. Ironically, Gulliver’s madness…his own pride…proves how imperfect a creature man is. The tragedy is that, in the name of perfection, Gulliver misses the opportunity to achieve whatever goodness is in his power to attain. Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels is the most famous and most powerful protest against this modern project. The severity of his anger is, I think, a symptom of the extent to which he realized the battle was already being lost. To us, however, over two hundred years later, Swift’s point is perhaps more vividly relevant than many of his contemporaries.

FROM EARTH TO MOON
& AROUND THE MOON.


FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON AND AROUND THE MOON From the earth to the moon and around the moon by Jules Verne, a book about how he foresaw man reaching the moon. Through the infamous Gun Club which was nothing more than a group of disfigured and excitable old war veterans. Since there was no war, they needed to create some grand project as an outlet for their destructive energy. Illustrated in many of the attitudes of the Gun Club members was how they feared no obstacle and were confident that American resourcefulness would conquer all of their obstacles. One of the ways that they vented their destructive power was to build a projectile-vehicle to voyage around the moon and back. The members of the gun club were determined to build the vehicle that will bring them around the moon. They chose a crew of 3 to voyage on the projectile-vehicle, Michel Arden, President Barbicane, and Captain Nicholl. They all successfully made it around the moon but on the way back they had a little trouble and on re-entry to earth they didn’t land quite were they wanted to. They ended up in the Mid-Pacific Ocean. The other members used all the latest equipment that was used to put the transatlantic cable in the Atlantic Ocean to get them out. At the end of the book after it kind of leaves you with a little of Jules Verne’s food for thought, he asks if they would ever be able to colonize the moon, and move on colonizing planet after planet. Even then back 200 years we still have the dream of colonizing other planets and also our own moon. This book was exciting and captivating all at once.  The book was exciting because you never knew what was going to happen.  The book was captivating because you wanted to know what was going to happen. Both of them came from when they were at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and you weren’t sure if The Gun Club was going to have enough influence to get them out of the ocean alive because they were running out of air.

THE MOON.

The Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth: orbit: 384,400 km from Earth diameter: 3476 km mass: 7.35e22 kg Called Luna by the Romans, Selene and Artemis by the Greeks, and many other names in other mythologies. The Moon, of course, has been known since prehistoric times. It is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. As the Moon orbits around the Earth once per month, the angle between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun changes; we see this as the cycle of the Moon's phases. The time between successive new moons is 29.5 days (709 hours), slightly different from the Moon's orbital period (measured against the stars) since the Earth moves a significant distance in its orbit around the Sun in that time. Due to its size and composition, the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial planet along with Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The Moon was first visited by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 in 1959. It is the only extraterrestrial body to have been visited by humans. The first landing was on July 20, 1969 (do you remember where you were?); the last was in December 1972. The Moon is also the only body from which samples have been returned to Earth. In the summer of 1994, the Moon was very extensively mapped by the little spacecraft Clementine and again in 1999 by Lunar Prospector. The gravitational forces between the Earth and the Moon cause some interesting effects. The most obvious is the tides. The Moon's gravitational attraction is stronger on the side of the Earth nearest to the Moon and weaker on the opposite side. Since the Earth, and particularly the oceans, is not perfectly rigid it is stretched out along the line toward the Moon. From our perspective on the Earth's surface we see two small bulges, one in the direction of the Moon and one directly opposite. The effect is much stronger in the ocean water than in the solid crust so the water bulges are higher. And because the Earth rotates much faster than the Moon moves in its orbit, the bulges move around the Earth about once a day giving two high tides per day. But the Earth is not completely fluid, either. The Earth's rotation carries the Earth's bulges get slightly ahead of the point directly beneath the Moon. This means that the force between the Earth and the Moon is not exactly along the line between their centers producing a torque on the Earth and an accelerating force on the Moon. This causes a net transfer of rotational energy from the Earth to the Moon, slowing down the Earth's rotation by about 1.5 milliseconds/century and raising the Moon into a higher orbit by about 3.8 centimeters per year. (The opposite effect happens to satellites with unusual orbits such as Phobos and Triton). The asymmetric nature of this gravitational interaction is also responsible for the fact that the Moon rotates synchronously, i.e. it is locked in phase with its orbit so that the same side is always facing toward the Earth. Just as the Earth's rotation is now being slowed by the Moon's influence so in the distant past the Moon's rotation was slowed by the action of the Earth, but in that case the effect was much stronger. When the Moon's rotation rate was slowed to match its orbital period (such that the bulge always faced toward the Earth) there was no longer an off-center torque on the Moon and a stable situation was achieved. The same thing has happened to most of the other satellites in the solar system. Eventually, the Earth's rotation will be slowed to match the Moon's period, too, as is the case with Pluto and Charon. Actually, the Moon appears to wobble a bit (due to its slightly non-circular orbit) so that a few degrees of the far side can be seen from time to time, but the majority of the far side (left) was completely unknown until the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 photographed it in 1959. (Note: there is no dark side of the Moon; all parts of the Moon get sunlight half the time. Some uses of the term dark side in the past may have referred to the far side as dark in the sense of unknown (eg darkest Africa; but even that meaning is no longer valid today!) The Moon has no atmosphere. But evidence from Clementine suggested that there may be water ice in some deep craters near the Moon's south pole which are permanently shaded. This has now been confirmed by Lunar Prospector. There is apparently ice at the north pole as well. The cost of future lunar exploration just got a lot cheaper! The Moon's crust averages 68 km thick and varies from essentially 0 under Mare Crisium to 107 km north of the crater Korolev on the lunar far side. Below the crust is a mantle and probably a small core (roughly 340 km radius and 2% of the Moon's mass). Unlike the Earth's mantle, however, the Moon's is only partially molten. Curiously, the Moon's center of mass is offset from its geometric center by about 2 km in the direction toward the Earth. Also, the crust is thinner on the near side. There are two primary types of terrain on the Moon: the heavily cratered and very old highlands and the relatively smooth and younger maria. The maria (which comprise about 16% of the Moon's surface) are huge impact craters that were later flooded by molten lava. Most of the surface is covered with regolith, a mixture of fine dust and rocky debris produced by meteor impacts. For some unknown reason, the maria are concentrated on the near side. Most of the craters on the near side are named for famous figures in the history of science such as Tycho, Copernicus, and Ptolemaeus. Features on the far have more modern references such as Apollo, Gagarin and Korolev (with a distinctly Russian bias since the first images were obtained by Luna 3). In addition to the familiar features on the near side, the Moon also has the huge craters South Pole-Aitken on the far side which is 2250 km in diameter and 12 km deep making it the the largest impact basin in the solar system and Orientale on the western limb (as seen from Earth; in the center of the image at left) which is a splendid example of a multi-ring crater. A total of 382 kg of rock samples were returned to the Earth by the Apollo and Luna programs. These provide most of our detailed knowledge of the Moon. They are particularly valuable in that they can be dated. Even today, 20 years after the last Moon landing, scientists still study these precious samples. Most rocks on the surface of the Moon seem to be between 4.6 and 3 billion years old. This is a fortuitous match with the oldest terrestrial rocks which are rarely more than 3 billion years old. Thus the Moon provides evidence about the early history of the Solar System not available on the Earth. Prior to the study of the Apollo samples, there was no consensus about the origin of the Moon. There were three principal theories: co-accretion which asserted that the Moon and the Earth formed at the same time from the Solar Nebula; fission which asserted that the Moon split off of the Earth; and capture which held that the Moon formed elsewhere and was subsequently captured by the Earth. None of these work very well. But the new and detailed information from the Moon rocks led to the impact theory: that the Earth collided with a very large object (as big as Mars or more) and that the Moon formed from the ejected material. There are still details to be worked out, but the impact theory is now widely accepted. The Moon has no global magnetic field. But some of its surface rocks exhibit remanent magnetism indicating that there may have been a global magnetic field early in the Moon's history. With no atmosphere and no magnetic field, the Moon's surface is exposed directly to the solar wind. Over its 4 billion year lifetime many hydrogen ions from the solar wind have become embedded in the Moon's regolith. Thus samples of regolith returned by the Apollo missions proved valuable in studies of the solar wind. This lunar hydrogen may also be of use someday as rocket fuel.

ORIGIN OF SOLAR SYSTEM.

The Origin of the Solar System One of the most intriguing questions in astronomy today is the how our solar system formed. Not only does the answer add insight to other similarly forming systems, but also helps to satisfy our curiosity about the origin of our species. Although it is highly unlikely that astronomers will ever know with absolute scientific certainty how our system originated, they can construct similar theoretical models with the hopes gaining a better understanding. A basic understand of the current physical aspects of our solar system are helpful when trying to analyzing its origin. Our solar system is made of the Sun, nine major planets, at least sixty planetary satellite, thousands of asteroids and comets that all span an immense distance. Each planet has its own individual characteristics and seven of which have one or more satellites. There are thousands of asteroids, mainly congested in the area between Mars and Jupiter, as well as countless comets that all travel in a spherical orbit around our Sun. The Sun contains approximately 99 percent of the mass in the solar system, but only 2 percent of the system’s angular momentum. It lies in the center of our system while all planets, asteroids and alike rotate in elliptical orbits around it in the same plane. The smaller inner planets have solid surfaces, lack ring systems and have far fewer satellites then the outer planets. Atmospheres of most of the inner planets consist of large quantities of oxidized compounds such as carbon dioxide. While on the other hand, the outer planets are far more massive then the inner terrestrial planets, and have gigantic atmospheres composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. Asteroids and comets make up the smallest portion of the solar systems entities and are composed of the remnants left behind while planets were forming. For over 300 years, there has been a very long history of conjecture on the origin of the solar system. These many theories stem from two general categories. The first category called monistic, involves the evolution of the Sun and planets as an isolated system. The second group of theories called dualistic, suggested that the solar system formed as a result of the interaction between two individual stars. The dualistic formation theory has been almost entirely dropped and monistic formation has become the general consensus on the basic formation of our solar system. Most modern theories of the origin of the solar system hypothesize that all bodies in the solar system, including the sun accreted from the formation and evolution of a single primordial solar nebula. It is believed that our solar system began to form around 4.56 billion years ago from a dense interstellar cloud of gas. Because of the conservation of angular momentum, the cloud of gas formed a rotating flattened disk approximately the size of the planetary system. It was this flattened disk that is referred to as the primitive solar nebula and from which our current solar system evolved. Ordinarily, the internal pressures of the cloud are sufficient to prevent if form collapsing. However, from time to time local increases in pressure of the interstellar medium cause the additional compression of interstellar clouds. These compressions caused the clouds to reach their threshold of gravitational collapse. Once the gravitational attraction of matter is greater then any tendency to expand due to internal pressures the cloud begins to collapse inward. Theoretical models suggest that the presolar nebula continued to collapse until the center of the cloud became so dense that heat started to form. This heat increased the thermal pressure of the cloud until the collapse was eventually halted. The existence of our system of planets is entirely due to the angular momentum of the initial cloud. If there were no angular momentum, then the interstellar cloud would have collapsed to from a single star. While at the same time, if the collapse had occurred under a system with too much angular momentum then a binary star would have resulted from our system. Our system formed under intermediate conditions allowing the planets to evolve. The fact that the Sun contains 99 percent of the solar system’s mass but only 2 percent of its angular momentum raises questions about the distribution of masses during the early formation of the solar system. It is suggested that certain processes transported nebula mass inward to form the Sun, and angular momentum outward to the preplanetary region. Thus decreasing the total angular momentum of the Sun. Three separate hypothesizes have been suggested to explain the processes for such a transport. The main theories suggest that gravitational torques, viscous stress, and magnetic fields may have acted individually or in some combination to produce our present system. The first theory including gravitational torques arises from the gravitational forces between segments of asymmetric mass. One example of this case would be between inner and outer regions of the trailing spiral arms of the nebula. Assuming there is a source of asymmetry, then these torques can result in significant outward transportation of angular momentum. Viscous stresses are another possible source of the shift in angular momentum of the solar system during its evolution. Viscous stresses are caused by the friction between adjacent fluid parcels trying to move past each other with different speeds. These stresses result in the outward transport of angular momentum and are one more possible explanation to the outward spread of momentum. The third theory postulates that magnetic fields are the source of this momentum transfer. Magnetic fields may have been produced during the collapse of the initial cloud or even electrically generated between the proto-Sun and the solar nebula. This would eventually end in the same result of an outward spread of angular momentum. Therefore the evolution of the solar nebula involved both the transportation of mass into the central proto-Sun region and the increased angular momentum in the planetary regions. This meant that most of the primitive cloud’s mass fell in to the proto-Sun’s region while the remainder formed the planets. It is not only important to study the evolution of the solar nebula, but also the formation of the planets. There is a general consensus that once the solar nebula settled to rest that solid dust particles began to move toward the central plane of the nebula. It was at this stage that the planets began to form. There are two current theories that resulted in the development of the planets. The first theory suggests that the planets formed in a very basic process where dust particles accumulated into planetesimals which in turn grew to the present planets. The second theory proposes that planetesimals resulted from a gravitational instability in the gaseous portion of the solar nebula. The first theory states process of planet formation began with the settling of dust in into the central plane of the nebular disk. Soon after, the first dust particles began to coagulate into small solid bodies. These bodies then accumulated through a collective gravitational instability in of the dust disk. The thin dust disk became more massive through continual sedimentation and resulted in its breakup into a large number of planetesimals. Through a process of random collisions these planetesimal continued to grow and accumulate mass. There are two possible extremes that ended this process of accumulation. The first involved runaway accreting where one object grows extremely large through the collection of all smaller planetesimals within its area. The alternative extreme would involve the uniform growth of a number of masses resulting in a many equal mass planetesimals. It is currently believed that the formation of the planets resulted from a combination of these two processes. The equal mass accumulation is presumed to have dominated during the early stages of planet formation while the run away accumulation is suggested to have taken over during the latter stages. However, there is one substantial problem with this explanation of the planet's formation. The accumulation theory fails to take into account the rapid formation of the giant planets. By the slow process of coagulation, it would take much longer then the lifetime of the solar system to form the giant planets of Jupiter and Saturn. This incorrectness in the first theory led scientists to contrive the second theory. The second theory of planetary evolution involves a gravitational instability of the gaseous portion of the solar nebula. It is suggested that if the solar system were massive enough then the instability would lead to the fragmentation of the gaseous nebula and the formation of giant gaseous protoplanets. This theory allows plenty of time for the formation of the very large planets Jupiter and Saturn. The one flaw of this theory is its contingency on a very massive planetary nebula, one much larger than ours. Because of this problem many cosmogonists have begun to doubt that the gaseous disk instability led to planet formation in our solar system. Although many of the details on the theories of our solar system will most likely change in the near future, the fundamental concept of solar system formation appear to remain the same. The Sun and planets began forming approximately 4.56 billion years ago out of a solar nebula produced by the collapse of a rotating interstellar cloud of gas and dust. Following soon after, the terrestrial and Jovian planets eventually formed from the collision and accumulation of smaller planetesimals. While there is significant evidence supporting the formation of the Sun and planets in this way, it is not likely that scientist will know with complete certainty about the solar system’s origin for some time. It is highly likely that the details in the theory of the solar system will change. With continued improvements in technology and significant advances in astronomical fields of observation, further understanding of our solar system will undoubtedly come. In recent years, the idea that the Solar System formed from the evolution of a primodial solar nebula, has received significant conformation. The use of satellites such as the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) have detected disks of solid particles around several nearby stars, including Formalhaut, Beta Pictoris and Vega. The uses of satellites have provided scientists with most of the information they currently have on the system’s origin. Another source of information lies in our neighboring planets. Investigations of the other planets in the solar system by means of interplanetary spacecraft have provided a wealth of data pertaining to the origin and history of the solar system. Through the observation of solar-type stars in the Galaxy, we can learn critical information about the properties of the interstellar cloud that collapsed to form our own solar nebula. It is likely that future explorations and observations will help to solidify our understanding of the solar system.

NICOLAS COPERNICUS.

Nicolas Copernicus 1473-1543 Physics February 8, 2000 Nicolas Copernicus Nicolas Copernicus 1473-1543 Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473, he started his education at Cracow University. There he studied mathematics and optics. From here he went to Italy, where he was appointed as a canon in the cathedral of Frauenburg, where he spent a comfortable academic life studding. Copernicus had some small hobbies while at the cathedral, he painted, and frequently translated Greek poetry into Latin. One other hobby that just wasn't small enough to be called a hobby to most of us was astronomy. He made investigations quietly and alone, without any help. He observed from a turret on a protective wall around a cathedral, he also looked with his naked eye rather than with a telescope. He was one of the founders of modern astronomy. Copernicus died in 1543 of a cerebral hemorrhage. In 1530 right before Copernicus died he managed to published his work, De Revolutionibus. Which said that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and traveled around the sun once yearly. This might no sound very controversial but at this time the church and its followers believed in the Ptolemiac theory, which stated that the universe was a closed space bounded by a spherical envelope beyond which there was nothing. (Landry 1999) Copernicus’s works went against the church, and most scientific beliefs. This may be one reason why Copernicus didn’t publish his work until his deathbed. Another reason may be that Copernicus was a huge perfectionist, and continuously redid his works over and over to get them right. (Field 1995) So you can see why Copernicus wasn’t in any big rush to have the world know about his theory. On one hand he would cause a Nicolas Copernicus tremendous stir in the church, and all the scientific community. He would’ve most likely have been fired from the comfortable church position he had for many years, and could‘ve given him a bad name. If it hadn’t been for George Rheticus, a 25-year-old German mathematics professor Copernicus’s might have never published his work. (Field 1995) Rheticus stayed with Copernicus for two years, and convinced him to release his work. “His work the Copernicus's heliostatic cosmology involved giving several distinct motions to the Earth. It was consequently considered implausible by the vast majority of his contemporaries, and by most astronomers and natural philosophers of succeeding generations before the middle of the seventeenth century. Its only defenders included Johannes Kepler (1571 -1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564- 1642). Strong theoretical underpinning for the Copernican theory was provided by Newton's theory of universal gravitation (1687).” (Field 1995) So Copernicus’s whole argument stated that the planets and the Earth were in orbit around the sun, and the moon was in orbit around the Earth. This is called the The Heliocentric System: Nicolas Copernicus In conclusion Copernicus said that the Sun was the center of the universe, and went against all known knowledge, religion, and teachings. He took all his observations with the naked eye and with no help. Many disregarded his book and his theory, which went against everything that the church believed in. However if it wasn’t for Copernicus, modern astronomy would have never made advances as far as it has to today. Copernicus’s hard work and strength is why he is one of the most important founders of modern astronomy.

EARTH POPULATION.

Our Earth has changed more dramatically in the 20th Century then in any other time period previous. During this time the health of our planet has also been both harmed and improved in dramatic ways. Two examples are that in this century, we have produced more air pollution then ever before, but our nature conservation efforts are working. Based on that type of logic, it is usually very easy for a scientist to tell if a particular change in our environment during the 20th Century, was good or bad for our planet. That is where population growth comes in and breaks this idea. Is population growth good or bad for our world? This is a question which scientists around the world have been debating about for decades. The purpose of this essay will address that question. It will also talk about the future growth rate of our world's population, what if any relationship can be drawn from over population and the GNP and literacy levels in a country, what types of population control measures the four largest countries use, and finally determine if there are any population problems and find solutions for them. Despite extensive population control measures, the country with the largest population is China. In fact China contains almost one-fourth of the world's people at around 1.2 billion. During the 1950's the population grew at a rate of 2% per year. The rate of growth slowed to 1.3% by 1990, in part due to population control measures. China's population control measures are based around a cruel policy allowing parents only one child. This policy has led to higher levels of abortion, sterilizations, and inficide than in any other country in the world. The dramatic declines in China's population growth rate have however taken place well before the one child policy went into effect in 1979. This further confuses experts who study population and try to determine why population rates fluctuate. Some of these experts suggest that aside from the one child policy China's growth rate might have decreased from 2.0 to 1.3 percent because of major improvements in infant mortality rates. Thus parents had more confidence that their children would live to maturity. Also, as China has moved to become a more industrialized country families have chosen to reduce family size. For example in our country 200 years ago families were large because the more kids a family had the more successful the farm would be. Those are a few reasons the population rate in China might be lower than in years previous and continue to slow down.