Games & Entertainment

Solar System

NES NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT System Game SOLAR JETMAN TRADEWEST HUNT $19.99

The Magic School Bus Solar System PC CD-ROM Microsoft $7.99

Puzzle Quest Galactrix Solar System RPG PC Vista NEW $13.28

Solar Quest for the Vectrex Arcade System $19.99

CD-i Instructive Exploring Our Solar System $9.24

SOLAR JETMAN ! ( Nintendo Nes System Video Game) HUNT FOR THE GOLDEN WARSHIP !! $6.97

Vintage Vectrex Solar Quest Game–Rare Video System Cartridge (SolarQuest) $49.00

Vintage VECTREX Solar Quest Game—Rare Video System Cartridge (SolarQuest) $34.00

Visible Solar System (Commodore 64) $9.99

SOLAR JETMAN NINTENDO NES SYSTEM GAME * combine shipping * $3.95

The Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System PC $14.11

Visible Solar System (Commodore) 64 Computer Video game cartridge $7.49

The Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System (PC) for Windows $11.26

The Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System (PC G… $15.00

The Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System (PC) $11.99

Puzzle Quest Galactrix Solar System RPG PC Vista NEW $12.89

FREE WORLDWIDE SHIPPING Puzzle Quest Galactrix Solar System RPG PC Vista NEW $14.89

Puzzle Quest Galactrix Solar System RPG PC Vista NEW $14.51

SOLAR JETMAN CLASSIC SYSTEM GAME NINTENDO NES HQ $1.00

Microsoft Scholastic’s The Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System (Jewel Ca $3.58

TRON SOLAR SAILER INTELLIVISION GAME System Combine shipping $1 each additional $4.45

Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System [Old Version] $22.97

DK Eyewitness: New Atlas of the Solar System $8.99

Philips CDI CD-I – SOLAR SYSTEM – ATTN COLLECTORS $9.99

rare VISIBLE SOLAR SYSTEM game cartridge for the COMMODORE 64 system $6.99

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Wine and Chocolate Create Solar Power

What do you get when you mix chocolate and wine? In the case of Clean Solar, Inc., you get solar. Silicon Valley Entrepreneur, Randy Zechman, is the founder of City Chocolate Fountains (the largest chocolate fountain rental company in the United States). Jeff Ritchey is a San Jose native and wine guru. He is a wine consultant for Pichetti Winery, San Saba winery, and has two of his own labeled wines. Together, they are the co-founders of Clean Solar, a Silicon Valley solar installer and integrator.

Randy Zechman will readily admit that he is a serial entrepreneur. Just over a year ago, with two successful businesses in his portfolio: City Chocolate Fountains and World 2 Do, Inc., Zechman was ready for a new challenge. Zechman and a friend of eight years, Jeff Ritchey, an award-winning winemaker, regularly attended a monthly Bay Area speaker series with a group of friends. After every speaker they would end up at a local restaurant debating the subject matter of that night’s speech, global warming and the health of the earth were often the center of those debates, which resulted in them seeing Al Gore speak at the State of the Valley conference in early 2007.

After seeing Al Gore speak on solutions for protecting our planet, Zechman began to research the solar power industry. Ritchey, while continuing to grow his label, Sensorium Wines, was also showing increased interest in the green movement, realizing that green technology was an ideal fit with his knowledge in geology, winemaking and construction.

Zechman knew that the scientific and construction skill set that Ritchey could bring to the table would be the perfect compliment to his business and marketing skills, which led him to approach Ritchey about starting a solar power company.

Zechman and Ritchey met weekly for 6 months, discussing the in and outs of the business and making sure that their ambitions would not get in the way of their friendship. “We had a heart to heart regarding our friendship versus business. We both believed we could manage both and that our friendship would not get in the way.” says Zechman.

“We’ve been friends for eight years and never thought about getting into business with each other, but this presented the right opportunity. With the market timing, our passion for doing something good, Randy’s sales and marketing experience and my technical and construction abilities, we figured it was a natural fit.” says Ritchey.

Clean Solar Inc. quickly became a reality and is now the Bay Area’s leading solar installation company. The fuel for their business growth is in the form of state rebates through the 10 year, $3.4 billion California Solar Initiative. While silicon is still in short supply, the rebates offer customers a chance to significantly lower the installation cost of a solar power system. Zechman and Ritchey are committed to staying ahead of the curve and being early adopters of new solar technology as it comes on line. “We want the Clean Solar team to stay abreast of the latest advancements in technology, maintain certifications, and educate ourselves in order to provide our customers with the knowledge they need as a solar owner.” says Zechman.

About the Author

Isaac Riggins is a solar consultant for Clean Solar, Inc. He can be reached at 888-551-7652 or http://www.cleansolar.com

solar system?

What are the general features of the solar system, and the solar nebula theory, and give evidence of planetary formation in other places in the universe

Layout and structure
The principal component of the Solar System is the Sun, a main sequence G2 star that contains 99.86% of the system’s known mass and dominates it gravitationally.[6] Jupiter and Saturn, the Sun’s two largest orbiting bodies, account for more than 90% of the system’s remaining mass.[b]

Most large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earth’s orbit, known as the ecliptic. The planets are very close to the ecliptic while comets and Kuiper belt objects are usually at significantly greater angles to it.

The orbits of the bodies in the Solar System to scale (clockwise from top left)All of the planets and most other objects also orbit with the Sun’s rotation (counter-clockwise, as viewed from above the Sun’s north pole). There are exceptions, such as Halley’s Comet.

Objects travel around the Sun following Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Each object orbits along an approximate ellipse with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse. The closer an object is to the Sun, the faster it moves. The orbits of the planets are nearly circular, but many comets, asteroids and objects of the Kuiper belt follow highly elliptical orbits.

To cope with the vast distances involved, many representations of the Solar System show orbits the same distance apart. In reality, with a few exceptions, the farther a planet or belt is from the Sun, the larger the distance between it and the previous orbit. For example, Venus is approximately 0.33 AU farther out than Mercury, while Saturn is 4.3 AU out from Jupiter, and Neptune lies 10.5 AU out from Uranus. Attempts have been made to determine a correlation between these orbital distances (see Titius-Bode law), but no such theory has been accepted.

Formation and evolution
Main article: Formation and evolution of the Solar System

Hubble image of protoplanetary disks in the Orion Nebula, a light-years-wide “stellar nursery” likely very similar to the primordial nebula from which our Sun formed.The Solar System is believed to have formed according to the nebular hypothesis, which holds that it emerged from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud 4.6 billion years ago. This initial cloud was likely several light-years across and probably birthed several stars.[7] Studies of ancient meteorites reveal traces of elements only formed in the hearts of very large exploding stars, indicating that the Sun formed within a star cluster, and in range of a number of nearby supernovae explosions. The shock wave from these supernovae may have triggered the formation of the Sun by creating regions of overdensity in the surrounding nebula, allowing gravitational forces to overcome internal gas pressures and cause collapse.[8]

Solar System’s Most
Abundant Isotopes[9] Isotope Nuclei per
Million
Hydrogen-1 705,700
Hydrogen-2 23
Helium-4 275,200
Helium-3 35
Oxygen-16 5,920
Carbon-12 3,032
Carbon-13 37
Neon-20 1,548
Neon-22 208
Iron-56 1,169
Iron-54 72
Iron-57 28
Nitrogen-14 1,105
Silicon-28 653
Silicon-29 34
Silicon-30 23
Magnesium-24 513
Magnesium-26 79
Magnesium-25 69
Sulfur-32 396
Argon-36 77
Calcium-40 60
Aluminum-27 58
Nickel-58 49
Sodium-23 33
The region that would become the Solar System, known as the pre-solar nebula,[10] had a diameter of between 7000 and 20,000 AU[7][11] and a mass just over that of the Sun (by between 0.1 and 0.001 solar masses).[12] As the nebula collapsed, conservation of angular momentum made it rotate faster. As the material within the nebula condensed, the atoms within it began to collide with increasing frequency. The centre, where most of the mass collected, became increasingly hotter than the surrounding disc.[7] As gravity, gas pressure, magnetic fields, and rotation acted on the contracting nebula, it began to flatten into a spinning protoplanetary disc with a diameter of roughly 200 AU[7] and a hot, dense protostar at the centre.[13][14]

Studies of T Tauri stars, young, pre-fusing solar mass stars believed to be similar to the Sun at this point in its evolution, show that they are often accompanied by discs of pre-planetary matter.[12] These discs extend to several hundred AU and reach only a thousand kelvins at their hottest.[15]

After 100 million years, the pressure and density of hydrogen in the centre of the collapsing nebula became great enough for the protosun to begin thermonuclear fusion. This increased until hydrostatic equilibrium was achieved, with the thermal energy countering the force of gravitational contraction. At this point the Sun became a full-fledged star.[16]

From the remaining cloud of gas and dust (the “solar nebula”), the various planets formed. They are believed to have formed by accretion: the planets began as dust grains in orbit around the central protostar; then gathered by direct contact into clumps between one and ten metres in diameter; then collided to form larger bodies (planetesimals) of roughly 5 km in size; then gradually increased by further collisions at roughly 15 cm per year over the course of the next few million years.[17]

The inner Solar System was too warm for volatile molecules like water and methane to condense, and so the planetesimals which formed There Were relatively small (comprising only 0.6% the mass of the disc)[7] and composed largely of compounds with high melting points, such as silicates and metals. These rocky bodies eventually became the terrestrial planets. Farther out, the gravitational effects of Jupiter made it impossible for the protoplanetary objects present to come together, leaving behind the asteroid belt.[18]

Farther out still, beyond the frost line, where more volatile icy compounds could remain solid, Jupiter and Saturn became the gas giants. Uranus and Neptune captured much less material and are known as ice giants because their cores are believed to be made mostly of ices (hydrogen compounds).[19][20]

Once the young Sun began producing energy, the solar wind (see below) blew the gas and dust in the protoplanetary disk into interstellar space and ended the growth of the planets. T Tauri stars have far stronger stellar winds than more stable, older stars.[21][22]

Artist’s conception of the future evolution of our Sun. Left: main sequence; middle: red giant; right: white dwarfAstronomers estimate that the Solar System as we know it today will last until the Sun begins its journey off of the main sequence. As the Sun burns through its supply of hydrogen fuel, it gets hotter in order to be able to burn the remaining fuel, and so burns it even faster. As a result, the Sun is growing brighter at a rate of roughly ten percent every 1.1 billion years.[23]

Around 7.6 billion years from now, the Sun’s core will become hot enough to cause hydrogen fusion to occur in its less dense upper layers. This will cause the Sun to expand to roughly up to 260 times its current diameter, and become a red giant.[24] At this point, the sun will have cooled and dulled, because of its vastly increased surface area.

Eventually, the Sun’s outer layers will fall away, leaving a white dwarf, an extraordinarily dense object, half its original mass but only the size of the Earth.[25]
Gaseous cloud from which, in the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system, the Sun and planets formed by condensation. In 1755 Immanuel Kant suggested that a nebula gradually pulled together by its own gravity developed into the Sun and planets. Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace, in 1796 proposed a similar model, in which a rotating and contracting cloud of gas — the young Sun — shed concentric rings of matter that condensed into the planets. But James Clerk Maxwell showed that, if all the matter in the known planets had once been distributed this way, shearing forces would have prevented such condensation. Another objection was that the Sun has less angular momentum than the theory seems to require. In the early 20th century most astronomers preferred the collision theory: that the planets formed as a result of a close approach to the Sun by another star. Eventually, however, stronger objections were mounted to the collision theory than to the nebular hypothesis, and a modified version of the latter — in which a rotating disk of matter gave rise to the planets through successively larger agglomerations, from dust grains through planetesimals and protoplanets — became the prevailing theory of the solar system’s origin.Young stars generally have material widely spread around them that organizes itself into a disk over time. Astronomers believe that this is where planets form. The new image, which is sensitive to the dust around the star but not starlight, shows a horseshoe-shaped structure orbiting AB Aurigae with two denser, brighter clumps of material in a ring around the star next to a darker area. This darker area, a structure relatively depleted of widespread material previously predicted in models of planet formation but never seen before, is thought to be the point at which material is coalescing into a planet or brown dwarf.

Further imaging of this area shows a barely visible spot dead center, a spot too bright to be light reflected off a formed planet but consistent with an object in the process of development that is accreting new material. The two brighter clumps, equidistant from the hole and presumably trailing and leading it in its orbit around the star, seem similar to the Trojan objects that orbit the Sun along with Jupiter. Such a structure has been predicted to form in disks where a planet is present, because of the gravitational interaction between the planet and the star it orbits.

“The deficit of material could be due to a planet forming and sucking material onto it, coalescing into a small point in the image and clearing material in the immediate surroundings. This would look like a h