Is there only one solar system?

Question

Is there only one sun?
In the entire universe?
Exactly how far can we look?

Answer 1

There are about 250 billion stars (suns) in our galaxy alone. And there are about as many other galaxies in the universe. So far we have found over 100 other solarsystems, that is other stars that have been confirmed to also have planets. More are found every week. The most distant objects we can see are quasars at about 10 billion lightyears away.

Answer 2

Well, as proper names for our own planetary system and star, then yes, there are only one. As general terms for these things in the universe in general, we know for a fact that there are many solar systems out there.

From elsewhere in the universe, the Sun appears just as any other star, and whichever star you were as near to as our own would appear like a sun.

We have discovered close to 200 planets orbiting stars out there. This means that in all likelihood, nearly every star should have planets, but we haven't found enough yet to support such a claim scientifically.

We have looked over 15 billion light years out into space. There are more galaxies out there than there are stars in our own galaxy! There's a lot of universe out there!

Answer 3

A.) No, there are at least 200 Billion stars in our Galaxy which can have from 0 to ten (or more) planets orbiting around them. Beyond our Milky Way Galaxy there are thousands and thousands of other galaxies, each of which also contain billions of stars which could have planets orbiting around them. Each star having planets orbiting around it would be a solar system of its own.

B.) No, there are many,many, many stars just like our own star which we call the Sun. None of the other stars are called
the Sun (by name), however, only our Sun has that name.

C.) In the entire universe there are an untold number of stars, each of which is a Sunlike object. 200 Billion plus stars are in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. With thousands and thousands of other galaxies out there, and each one having billions of stars in it, that is a lot of stars (suns).

D.) According to Ian Ridpath, noted Astronomer and Author of ASTRONOMY, DK Publishing, NY, NY, Astronomers can "see" objects in deep space out to a distance of 13 Billion Light Years in all directions from Earth. Scientists
using Radio Telescopes can detect objects in deep space out to distances of 40 Billion Light Years in all directions. And those are just the limiting distances of our technologies, not the end of space...Beyond those distances our equipment cannot deliver any useable information to us (pictures or signals are mucked up by noise).

Answer 4

There are many solar systems, but no planets exactly like ours. Some are very close though.

Answer 5

A planet is shiny, all the other lights are stars. each time you look into the night sky you are looking back in time to the beginning of the universe, because the light from the stars that you see left those stars thousands if not millions or billions of years ago.

Answer 6

there are infinite number of solar systems i our universe.
thereare infinite number of suns, all the stars you can see in the sky are suns from far far away.
We can see very far as long as the light from that object can reach us , however pollution and our atmosphere can block some of the light and so the light from too far away cannot reach us and thus we cannot see that object

Answer 7

as far we know, there is only one solar system.
no, there are many stars like sun.

Answer 8

by using your common sense, the universe is huge. so there might be life at other planets.

Answer 9

dont worry about it.

Answer 10

Billions of kilometers from Earth, beyond the orbit of Neptune, lies perhaps the most forbidding part of our solar system, a vast realm so cold and dark it sparks a frisson of dread among thoughtful astronauts. The Sun, so cheerful and warming here on Earth, is merely the brightest star in the night sky there. And it's so cold that the atmosphere of Pluto -- the only one of the nine planets orbiting so far from the Sun -- lies frozen on the ground most of the time.

A spaceship exploring the outer reaches of our solar system could go a long time without seeing much. And, indeed, for most of the past century astronomers figured there was little enough to see: only one small icy planet, Pluto, and its oddball moon Charon. Better perhaps to pass them by and head for a far-away star.Lately astronomers have found that the frontier beyond Neptune, far from empty, is swarming with thousands of dark and mysterious objects -- enough to make a star-bound explorer pause for a second look.As seen from Earth those dim companions of Pluto appear to dark comets. It's hard to know exactly what they're made of because their insides are concealed by a layer of ruddy organic goop. Probably they're a mixture of ice, rock, and dust. Most are about the size of small asteroids (a few km to a few hundred km wide), and a few have emerged recently that are 30% to 50% as wide as the planet Pluto (2274 km). Indeed, say astronomers, it may be only a matter of time before observers spot one as big as Pluto itself.

The first of these strange bodies, which astronomers call Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), came to light in 1992, discovered by Dave Jewitt and Jane Luu -- a pair of scientists who didn't believe the outer solar system was empty. Beginning in 1987 they had doggedly scanned the heavens in search of dim objects beyond Neptune. It took five years, looking off-and-on through the University of Hawaii's 2.2 m telescope, but they finally found what they were after: a reddish-colored speck 44 AU from the Sun -- even more distant than Pluto! Jewitt (University of Hawaii) and Luu (UC Berkeley) wanted to name their find "Smiley," but it has since been cataloged as "1992 QB1."A 1992 discovery image of 1992 QB1 (indicated by the arrow) captured by Jewitt and Luu using the University of Hawaii's 2.2 m telescope on Mauna Kea. The bright streak in this CCD image is an asteroid, faster-moving that 1992 QB1 because it lies much closer to the Sun. [more]

That discovery marked our first glimpse of the long-sought Kuiper Belt, named after Gerard Kuiper who, in 1951, proposed that a belt of icy bodies might lay beyond Neptune. It was the only way, he figured, to solve a baffling mystery about comets: Some comets loop through the solar system on periodic orbits of a half-dozen years or so. They encounter the Sun so often that they quickly evaporate -- vanishing in only a few hundred thousand years. Astronomers call them "short-period comets," although "short-lived" is more to the point. Short-period comets evaporate so quickly compared to the age of the solar system that we shouldn't see any, yet astronomers routinely track dozens of them. It was a real puzzle.

Kuiper's solution was a population of dark comets circling the Sun in the realm of Pluto -- leftovers from the dawn of our solar system when planetesimals were coalescing to make planets. The ones beyond Neptune, Kuiper speculated, never stuck together, remaining instead primitive and individual. Nowadays they occasionally fall toward the Sun and become short-period comets.Planetesimals -- the building-blocks of planets -- were plentiful during the early days of our solar system. Are they still lurking unseen beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto? This painting of the early solar system appears courtesy of scientist and artist William K. Hartmann (copyright 2001, all rights reserved).

It was a neat solution to the mystery, but with the arguable exception of Pluto, no one could find any members of the Kuiper Belt -- that is, until Jewitt and Luu did it in 1992. Since then astronomers have been discovering KBOs at a dizzying pace. The International Astronomical Union now catalogues 432 of them. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

"Based on our surveys we think there are about 70,000 KBOs larger than 100 km across between 30 and 50 AU from the Sun," says Jewitt. If you added all of them together they would form a planet about one-tenth the mass of Earth. The Kuiper Belt is about 300 times more massive than the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, he added.

Finding even 400 or so KBOs among the tens of thousands beyond Neptune is impressive. These faraway objects are surprisingly dark. Although they're icy, explains Jewitt, "most KBOs reflect about as much sunlight (4 - 7%) as a lump of charcoal." It's because of cosmic ray bombardment, which darkens and reddens their surfaces by breaking the bonds of molecules in the ice -- molecules that reform as complex carbon-based compounds. The organic goop makes good camouflage against the black of space.High energy cosmic rays blacken a comet's nucleus, which consists of a mixture of ices (yellow) and rocks (red). The penetration depth of the cosmic rays into the ice could be as large as one meter. The time difference T3-T0 is approximately hundred million years. [more information]

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The planet Pluto, itself perhaps a KBO, is an exception. "Pluto has a higher reflectivity (60%) than we suspect for other Kuiper Belt Objects," adds Jewitt. "But this is an artifact of size. Pluto has enough mass and gravity to retain a tenuous atmosphere from which bright surface frosts may be deposited on the surface."

Are there more Plutos out there, yet to be discovered? Jewitt thinks so. "We have known the size distribution of KBOs for some years," he says. "It's a power law with index -4, and it suggests that a few Pluto-sized objects exist, perhaps 5 or 10, of which we know just one."

Relatively large KBOs are already turning up among the many new discoveries. For example, last year Jewitt and colleagues found Varuna orbiting 43 AU from the Sun. Varuna is 900 km wide and nearly as large as the behemoth asteroid Ceres (933 km). Then came 2001 KX76, a discovery of the NASA-funded Deep Ecliptic Survey. 2001 KX76 was a sensation for a while last month when widespread reports credited it with dethroning Ceres as the solar system's largest asteroid. In fact, 2001 KX76, which is icy and lies 39 AU from the Sun, is not an asteroid at all. But no matter, 2001 KX76 is still big, perhaps 1200 or more km across.Lately the technology for finding KBOs, both big and small, has become a lot more powerful. "Our CCD cameras are bigger and better, improving the efficiency of detection," says Jewitt, whose recent work is supported in part by a NASA Origins grant. "For example, we've been using a camera that has 24 times the area of the one we used to find the first KBO in 1992. It pulls in 24 objects for the price of one."

Perhaps soon one of those CCDs will record a real sensation: the next Pluto. "It could happen at any time," says Jewitt. After all, if we've learned anything in the past 10 years, it's that the outer solar system is not only dark, remote, and cold, but full of surprises as well.