Anyone think that our solar system looks like a big atom.?

Question

Ive seen this question posted lots of different times by different people. Right up front I say it is interesting to thing of our solar system as an atom.

They atom has the middle called the nucleus which is made up of protons and neutrons.

Orbiting all around the nucleus is electrons. Kind of like our plantes orbit around the sun. So the very building blocks that make up matter looks like our solar system.

I bought into this until I came upon what is called an ionized atom.

of course that means two atoms of different elements for what is called a compound and they electrons move right out of one atom into another.

Kind of reminds me how our moon is moving further away from us each year. Or is it being pulled away by another universe or (atom).

Anyone else find this interesting at all.

Also please forgive my spelling im bout to fall asleep and its like 2am in the morning.

Answer 1

Sorry to take an interesting, philosophical, post-midnight mind wander and turn it serious, but that's just me. And it's late Sunday afternoon here.

Electrons don't literally exist in that sense. They only have a probability of being in a certain place.

The nucleus of an atom is many orders of magnitude heavier than the rest of it. The sun is nearly 50 times heavier than all its debris, but that's just nothing compare to the difference between the nucleus of an atom and the rest.

The proportion of size is not a bad comparison, though.

It's an interesting comparison but, like Hollywood, any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Answer 2

Rutherford looked at the atom this way, but alas, this picture was to be shattered by three gentlemen - Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg.

First of all, electrons are just a 'concept' were 99.9% sure they exist. No one has been able to see or visualilse electrons directly. On top of it, they have the irritating habit of acting like waves and particles at the same time. At that scale, their wave character is very evident. And then, the most irritating thing about Physics at that level is that you cannot measure the speed of a particle and its position accurately. The more accurately you measure one, the less accurate the measurement of the other becomes.

So, when you talk of electrons orbiting the nucleus, you're talking in a very Rutherfordian way. Even Bohr thought that for sometime, when he said that they orbit the nucleus in well defined energy levels. But electrons don't do that. Their presence at a particular place is pure probability, which depends on the Eigenstate. E(Psi) = H(Psi). You solve for Psi, and that's the probability that an electron will be somewhere near where you're looking for. There's no 100% probability either.

Again, electrons don't exist in mere 3-D space. Their physics is very complicated. So let's understand for the time being that the Solar System is not an analogue of the Atom.

Answer 3

Many people have speculated that very same idea ever since the model of the atom was conceived that described it as electrons orbiting the nucleus. By the way, the proton is part of the nucleus. Only the electrons orbit. Although I think that atomic scientists no longer think of them orbiting quite like a point mass anymore. That's why they call them orbitals now instead of orbits. The orbital represents the probability of where the electron is at any given instant. Although I really don't understand that, so I've probably totally botched that part of the explanation. By the way, I personally do not believe that our solar system is just an atom in a giant body. Unless you mean the galaxy.

Answer 4

You are mistaking the instructive (but incorrect) image of the atom presented in many introductory textbooks for the real thing.

The fact is you cannot see any atomic structure with visible light. It does not look like dots orbiting a ball. It looks like a fuzzy smear. Additionally, the electrons do not orbit the nucleus in the same way that planets orbit a star.

You can, however, see the structure of the solar system quite easily.

Answer 5

Our solar system does resemble the atom, though proportions are off by quite a bit, but yes, God created the universe in perfect harmony and the resemblances are inevitable. If you put all asteroid, planetary and comet orbits on paper, it almost appears that they form electron sublevels, though this is technically impossible because electrons do not have fixed orbits.
Neils Bohr created his solar system model of the atom, which placed electrons in a fixed orbit around the nucleus. This model worked for only Hydrogen, but it was an essential step in the formation of the Quantum model which gives electrons an orbital. However, like the Solar System resembles an atom, so the Cosmic Background and universe resemble the solar system.

Good Observation!

Answer 6

No, it really doesn't. Electrons do not orbit the nucleus in coplanar orbits, but in a shell all around the nucleus. In the solar system, there is only one object per orbit. In atoms, there are more. Electrons are all the same size, planets vary greatly in size.

Answer 7

Proportions are so much different, and I believe the electron does not really 'orbit' its nucleus as a planet orbits its star.