31
votes
Accepted
Why is it impossible to infer the surface temperature of Venus by spectroscopy observation from earth?
The important difference is that the word "surface" has a different meaning depending on whether we're talking about the Sun or Venus.
When we say "the surface of the Sun," we ...
- 428
29
votes
Accepted
Why did the dust between the planets disappear during the birth of the solar system?
Dust happens in two ways. "Primordial dust" just condenses out of the protostellar material in the disc providing it gets cool enough and dense enough. "Second generation" dust is ...
- 146k
18
votes
Why is it impossible to infer the surface temperature of Venus by spectroscopy observation from earth?
I think the problem is that spectroscopy at visible and infrared wavelengths simply can't penetrate the thick atmosphere of Venus. Thus the information comes from much higher in the atmosphere and not ...
- 146k
9
votes
Accepted
Celestial "orbits"
Physical theories describe how things change in given circumstances (if the theory is right). In practice this means that they are applied in simplified ways, where the simplifications of ...
- 14.4k
6
votes
Celestial "orbits"
You are right. But you miss a few quirks of reality, or some fine-print of the applicable physics.
Yes, the Moon is moving away from Earth as slowing down Earth's spin rotation means that angular ...
- 17.7k
4
votes
Celestial "orbits"
The model of the elliptical orbit is a close approximation of the reality—and even Kepler knew that, when he wrote that “orbits are ellipses.”
In reality, gravitational interactions between the Sun, ...
- 6,721
3
votes
Planets Named After Roman Gods, Except Earth
There are two primary reasons why the planets were named after Roman Gods.
Language - the early astronomers in Europe wrote in Latin, and Latin was the language of the Roman Empire. So they ended up ...
- 4,392
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible