Related Concept Videos

Detection of Black Holes 01:10

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Although black holes were theoretically postulated in the 1920s, they remained outside the domain of observational astronomy until the 1970s.
Their closest cousins are neutron stars, which are composed almost entirely of neutrons packed against each other, making them extremely dense. A neutron star has the same mass as the Sun but its diameter is only a few kilometers. Therefore, the escape velocity from their surface is close to the speed of light.
Not until the 1960s, when the first neutron...

Schwarzschild Radius and Event Horizon 01:21

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No object with a finite mass can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. This fact has an interesting consequence in the domain of extremely high gravitational fields.
The minimum speed required to launch a projectile from the surface of an object to which it is gravitationally bound so that it eventually escapes the object’s gravitational field is called the escape velocity. The escape velocity is independent of the mass of the object. Merging the idea of escape...

Fermi Level Dynamics 01:12

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The vacuum level denotes the energy threshold required for an electron to escape from a material surface. It is usually positioned above the conduction band of a semiconductor and acts as a benchmark for comparing electron energies within various materials.
Electron affinity in semiconductors refers to the energy gap between the minimum of its conduction band and the vacuum level and it is a critical parameter in determining how easily a semiconductor can accept additional electrons.
The work...

Speciation Rates 01:07

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Overview

Speciation usually occurs over a long evolutionary time scale, during which the species may be isolated or continue to interact. If two emerging species start to interbreed, reproductive barriers may be weak, and gene flow can occur again. At this point, the selection of hybrids across the two populations may either stabilize the newly mixed group into a single population or reinforce the distinction between them as new species. Speciation may occur gradually or rapidly, and in some...

Gravitation Between Spherically Symmetric Masses 01:14

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The gravitational potential energy between two spherically symmetric bodies can be calculated from the masses and the distance between the bodies, assuming that the center of mass is concentrated at the respective centers of the bodies.

Consider that a spherically symmetric mass distribution comprises multiple concentric spherical shells. A point mass is placed at a distance 'r' from the center of mass of the spherical shell. All the particles in a given spherical ring on the surface...

Kepler's First Law of Planetary Motion 01:10

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In the early 17th century, German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler postulated three laws for the motion of planets in the solar system. He formulated his first two laws based on the observations of his forebears, Nikolaus Copernicus and Tycho Brahe.
Polish astronomer Nikolaus Copernicus put forth a theory that stated a heliocentric model for the solar system. According to this heliocentric theory, all the planets, including Earth, orbit the Sun in circular orbits.
On the other hand,...