The Kuyper Belt extends fifty times further away from the Sun than Earth. ibid.
Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet. ibid.
Far beyond the Kuyper Belt the Sun has deployed a deflector shield around the solar system. ibid.
Deducing what the Ort Cloud might look like is a staggeringly complicated task. ibid.
Those long-dead planets could help explain why there is life on Earth. How the Universe Works s6e9: Solar System’s Dark History, Discovery 2018
Astronomers have discovered more than 2,600 planetary systems to date. But none are quite like our home. ibid.
Do we really know how the formation of our solar system evolved? ibid.
For centuries astronomers have been trying to find a planet [Vulcan] between Mercury and the Sun, but without success. ibid.
The area close to our Sun isn’t just missing asteroids and small planets, it’s also missing really big ones. ibid.
So what happens when a planet the size of Jupiter moves inwards? ibid.
Weirdly, we have nothing in the Super-Earth size range which is between Earth and Uranus. ibid.
It takes two hundred and fifty million years to make just one circuit of the Milky Way. In the entire history of the human race we’ve travelled less than a tenth of one percent of that orbit. Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe 1/4: Destiny, BBC 2011
The night sky is ablaze with stars, hundreds of billions in our galaxy alone, many larger, brighter and more majestic than our sun. On the scale of galaxies and stars, the planets of our solar system are little more than grains of sand caught momentarily in the light of the sun. But on those motes of dust for over four billion years great stories have played out unseen. Brian Cox The Planets I: Different Worlds, BBC 2019
Today, Mercury is the closest of all, enduring the sun’s full glare. Further out lies Venus, choked by a thick atmosphere. Then, Venus’s neighbour Earth. And farthest of all, Mars, a cold desert world. Together they form the only rocky so-called terrestrial planets in the solar system. ibid.
Each appears to have a moment when it enjoyed almost Earth-like conditions. Every one of our rocky neighbours has a story of what might have been. ibid.
Mercury is a small tortured world. More than any other planet, it’s endured the unflinching glare of the sun for billions of years. ibid.
The orbits of the planets are not stable over very long timescales. ibid.
Something large kicked Mercury inwards towards the Sun. ibid.
Venus: 108 million kilometres from the Sun. A world which at first sight has the potential to be much more Earth-like … Venus is a vision of hell where no life can survive. ibid.
Our planetary neighbour Mars is a cold barren rock. It’s rusted surface covered in parched sand. But beneath the dust the planet bears the scars of former life. Billions of years ago Mars was just like Earth. A world with a thick atmosphere that supported oceans of water. But today that world is gone. Mars lies dead while the Earth thrives. Brian Cox, The Planets II: Terra Firma
The Viking programme took us down to the ground for the first time. ibid.
A new generation of aircraft has been sent to Mars to investigate the existence of water. ibid.
Mars formed in a region of the solar system with considerably less rocky material and that had a profound impact on the planet’s growth. ibid.
Jupiter: 780 million kilometres from the sun: the largest of the planets is a giant swirling ball of gas. Its marbled appearance is generated by violent winds that rage through its clouds. Jupiter is a world as strange as it is remote. Brian Cox, The Planets III: The Godfather
Jupiter is the godfather of the planet. Understand it and you understand how the solar system came to be. ibid.
You could fit 1,300 Earths inside. ibid.
Beyond the warm worlds of the inner solar system, beyond the gas giant Jupiter, in the freezing regions far beyond the sun, lies Saturn: a planet made union, thanks to a nearly 300,000-kilometre ring of frozen water. Here, trillions of pieces of ice have been sculptured by gravitational forces. Brian Cox, The Planets IV: Life Beyond the Sun: Saturn, Netflix 2019
Saturn is a planet that has undergone some of the most radical transformations in the solar system. A planet that has seen destruction and creation. A planet that harbours hidden worlds, where just perhaps there may exist a second home for life. ibid.
Imagine a place with no surface to stand. Just an endless atmosphere: 1.4 billion kilometres from the sun. ibid.
The storms found on Saturn are amongst the most violent found anywhere in the solar system. ibid.
The mystery of the origin of the rings is an active area of research. ibid.
On average just ten metres thick. Within, moon-sized chunks of ice orbit the structure. ibid.
Over a billion kilometres from the warmth of the sun, just on the outer edge of Saturn’s rings, lies the icy moon Enceladus … The most reflective object in the solar system … Giant plumes of water vapour and ice were erupting from its surface … An ocean of liquid water and it was there because of Saturn. ibid.
Far far away beyond Mars, past the storms of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, conditions become very different. Temperatures plummet and distances between worlds are measured not in millions but in billions of kilometres. Here lies the most mysterious planets of them all. Uranus: a pale blue marble hanging in the dark frozen depths of space. And further out, the solar system’s final true planet: Neptune. Beyond, we thought we’d only ever find tiny lifeless worlds frozen to the core. How wrong we were. Brian Cox, The Planets V: Into the Darkness: Ice Worlds
Uranus: 2.9 billion kilometres from the sun. Just like Jupiter and Saturn, the planet’s upper atmosphere is composed mostly of swirling hydrogen and helium gas. And hidden beneath lies an exotic icy mix of methane, ammonia and water. But unlike the other gas giants, Uranus is almost featureless. ibid.
Just like Saturn, Uranus has rings. ibid.
Neptune: 4.5 kilometres from the sun … Neptune’s atmosphere is bursting with activity. What we found was a planet of extreme weather where high altitude winds whip white methane clouds around at over 2,000 kilometres per hour. ibid.
New Horizons, 2006: Fastest probe ever launched. Flight time to Pluto: 9.5 years … A controversy arose here on Earth about the definition of Pluto itself … that challenged its status as a planet. ibid.
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress. Kurt Vonnegut
Today I announce a new plan to explore space and extend a human presence across our solar system. George W Bush
For three and a half decades they’ve been investigating the outer reaches of our solar system. They are the Voyagers. Voyager: To the Final Frontier, BBC 2013
Two unmanned space probes ... Mission: to explore the outer planets of the Solar System. ibid.
Isaac Newton had showed that gravity governs the motion of the solar system as well, but how? ... Einstein resumed his thought experiment. He now asked, if gravity and acceleration are equivalent, what happens while accelerating that reveals something new about gravity? Horizon: Einstein Fame, BBC 1996
Two ground breaking new instruments have been installed on Hubble. They were designed to peer into deepest space and find black holes ... They were tightly clustered over the centre of South America and the south Atlantic. In fact this region of space has developed a reputation of NASA as a region of strange events ... Space’s Bermuda Triangle ... It also held important clues as to what’s happening in the deep Earth. Horizon: The Core, BBC 2011
If we want to understand the birth of our Solar System we're going to need a brand new model. Strange new worlds that break all the rules have made astronomers question everything. Horizon: Secrets of the Solar System, BBC 2015
It looks like it was Jupiter that defined the fate of the solar system. ibid.
The size of Mars, the formation of the outer planets, the composition of the Asteroid Belt, and the bombardment of the moon ... It all starts a long long time ago. ibid.
Is Jupiter in the wrong place? ibid.
Something stopped Jupiter crashing into the sun. ibid.
This new model of the solar system is now dynamic and turbulent. The prime mover in all this upheaval is the playground bully Jupiter. ibid.
The oceans define the Earth. They are crucial to life … We’ve recently discovered oceans all over the Solar System, and they’re very similar to our own. Now scientists are going on an epic journey in search of new life in places that never seemed possible. Horizon: Oceans of the Solar System, BBC 2016
Four and a half billion years ago the Martian ocean covered nineteen per cent of the planet and was as deep as the Mediterranean. ibid.
In Ganymede’s ocean there’s more water than the whole of the Earth. But it lies under a hundred and fifty kilometres of ice. ibid.
The Sun: What does its future hold? … They foresee an apocalyptic future. Horizon: The End of the Solar System, BBC 2016
‘Over a million Earths could fit inside the Sun’. ibid. Schafer
The Andromeda Galaxy: Scientists have long suspected it will one day crash into our galaxy, the Milky Way … The Solar System will survive. ibid.
The Sun would return our atoms to interstellar worlds. ibid.