What is meant by differential rotation?
In a rotating solid body, regions that are adjacent at one point in time will remain adjacent as the body rotates. This means that points further from the rotation centre will travel at greater speeds than those closer in.
What is differential rotation in the Sun?
However, unlike Earth which rotates at all latitudes every 24 hours, the Sun rotates every 25 days at the equator and takes progressively longer to rotate at higher latitudes, up to 35 days at the poles. This is known as differential rotation. The Sun rotates in the same direction as Earth.
What causes differential rotation?
Differential rotation is caused by convection in stars. The movement of mass is due to steep temperature gradients from the core outwards.
What is differential rotation quizlet?
Differential rotation. The tendency for a gaseous sphere, such as a jovian planet of the Sun, to rotate at a different rate at the equator than at the poles. More generally, a condition where the angular speed varies with location within an object. Great Red Spot.
Who discovered differential rotation?
Christoph Scheiner Christoph Scheiner (“Rosa Ursine sive solis”, book 4, part 2, 1630) was the first to measure the equatorial rotation rate of the Sun and noticed that the rotation at higher latitudes is slower, so he can be considered the discoverer of solar differential rotation.
What is differential rotation and why its important in galaxy evolution?
Differential rotation causes any disturbance in the disk to wind up into a spiral form. The trouble with this simple explanation is that the differential rotation would cause spiral features to wind up too quickly, so galaxies would not look like spirals for any appreciable length of time.
Does Earth rotate differential?
The "effective" rotation of Earth thus increases as we move poleward, and thus Earth's atmosphere and ocean are said to be in differential rotation. We take this effect into account by allowing the Coriolis parameter, f, to equal twice the vertical component of the rotation.
What is differential rotation and how is it observed on Jupiter quizlet?
What is differential rotation, and how is it observed on Jupiter? Differential rotation: rotation of a planet is not constant from one location to the other. (Equatorial zones rotate faster on Jupiter, the interior rotates at the same rate as the polar regions).
How is the differential rotation of Uranus unusual?
Uranus is an oddball in the solar system. Its rotational axis is tilted by almost 90 degrees, like a spinning top lying on its side. One lap around the sun takes about 85 years.
Why do we speak of differential rotation of the Sun?
0:004:14Astronomy – The Sun (7 of 16) Differential Rotation – YouTubeYouTube
What is differential rotation in astronomy?
Differential rotation is seen when different parts of a rotating object move with different angular velocities (rates of rotation) at different latitudes and/or depths of the body and/or in time. This indicates that the object is not solid. In fluid objects, such as accretion disks, this leads to shearing.
What does differential rotation tell us about Jupiter?
What is differential rotation, and how is it observed on Jupiter? Differential rotation: rotation of a planet is not constant from one location to the other. (Equatorial zones rotate faster on Jupiter, the interior rotates at the same rate as the polar regions).
How does Jupiter exhibit differential rotation?
Jupiter also exhibits differential rotation. A solid body rotates at a single angular speed, but a liquid or gaseous body need not rotate as a solid. In the case of Jupiter, rotation is slightly faster at the equator than at the poles.
Why does Uranus spin backwards?
Uranus was likely hit by a very large planetoid early in its history, causing it to rotate "on its side," 90 degrees away from its orbital motion.
Will Uranus collide with Earth in 13 years?
Uranus lived a quiet life on the outskirts of our Solar System, about 3 billion kilometers (1.9 billion miles) away from us. And then suddenly, it began to move closer. Astronomers would be the first to push the panic button. By their calculations, it would take Uranus 13 years to reach the collision point.
How do you determine differential rotation?
There are many ways to measure and calculate differential rotation in stars to see if different latitudes have different angular velocities. The most obvious is tracking spots on the stellar surface. By doing helioseismological measurements of solar "p-modes" it is possible to deduce the differential rotation.
Why does Jupiter spin the fastest?
When Jupiter formed, it accreted its atmosphere (over 95% of the planet's total mass!) from the hydrogen and helium gas in the protoplanetary disk surrounding our Sun. As Jupiter ate up this gas mass, it must have begun to spin faster as it also ate up the gas's angular momentum.
Does Venus have differential rotation?
Compared to Earth, Venus twirls at a leisurely pace on its axis, with its surface taking 243 Earth days to complete one rotation. However, the hot, deadly atmosphere of Venus spins nearly 60 times faster than its surface, whirling around the planet once every 96 hours, an effect known as super-rotation.
Why is Uranus called the tilted planet?
The Uranian system has a unique configuration because its axis of rotation is tilted sideways, nearly into the plane of its solar orbit. Its north and south poles, therefore, lie where most other planets have their equators.
Why is Pluto not a planet?
Answer. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a dwarf planet because it did not meet the three criteria the IAU uses to define a full-sized planet. Essentially Pluto meets all the criteria except one—it “has not cleared its neighboring region of other objects.”
Why does Venus spin so slowly?
One possible cause for the slowed spin is friction caused by Venus' thick atmosphere and high-speed winds. The motion of the atmosphere on Earth, for example, has been observed to affect the planet's rotation rate, albeit to a much smaller degree.
What planet rains diamonds?
Deep within Neptune and Uranus, it rains diamonds—or so astronomers and physicists have suspected for nearly 40 years. The outer planets of our Solar System are hard to study, however. Only a single space mission, Voyager 2, has flown by to reveal some of their secrets, so diamond rain has remained only a hypothesis.
What if you fell into Saturn?
So, if you tried to walk on this part of Saturn, you would sink through its atmosphere. Saturn's atmosphere is very thick and its pressure increases the deeper you go. After a while, you would stop sinking and unfortunately be crushed by the high pressure deeper in Saturn's atmosphere.
Why is Pluto no longer a planet?
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a dwarf planet because it did not meet the three criteria the IAU uses to define a full-sized planet. Essentially Pluto meets all the criteria except one—it “has not cleared its neighboring region of other objects.”
What is the slowest planet?
Venus Venus takes 243 Earth days to complete one rotation on its axis, making it the slowest of all planets. Our Earth is extremely tiny in comparison with our Sun. Venus is the second planet from the Sun, circling it each 224.7 Earth days.
Are there any planets that don’t rotate?
A star or solar system is formed from a collapsing cloud of gas. In the highly unlikely event that this cloud has no angular momentum and therefore no spin, the result would be a non-spinning star without any orbiting planets.
What planet is blue green?
It is the second least dense planet; Saturn is the least dense of all. Uranus gets its blue-green color from methane gas in the atmosphere. Sunlight passes through the atmosphere and is reflected back out by Uranus' cloud tops. Methane gas absorbs the red portion of the light, resulting in a blue-green color.
What planet crashed into the Earth?
Theia Theia is a hypothesized ancient planet in the early Solar System that, according to the giant-impact hypothesis, collided with the early Earth around 4.5 billion years ago, with some of the resulting ejected debris gathering to form the Moon.
Are there 6 dwarf planets?
Currently, there are six dwarf planets officially designated by the IAU: Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Makemake, Haumea, and 2015 RR245, discovered in July.
What is the hottest planet?
Venus It has a strong greenhouse effect, similar to the one we experience on Earth. Because of this, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system.