Solar System Vocabulary Crossword Puzzle

QUESTIONS LIST:

• accretion : growth in size or increase in amount
• gas giants : the name given to the first four outer planets: jupiter, saturn, uranus, and neptune
• ice giants : uranus, neptune (frozen water, ammonia, methane)
• interstellar cloud : a cloud of gas and dust in between the stars. such clouds may be many light-years in diameter.
• late heavy bombardment : the surge in cratering impacts in the solar system that occurred about 3.8 billion years ago
• planetessimal : one of the small asteroid-like bodies that formed the building blocks of the planets.
• protoplanetary disc : a rotating disk of gas and dust grains surrounding a newly formed star or protostar. over time, accretion within the disk tends to produce planets.
• solar nebula theory : the theory that describes how stars and planets form from contracting, spinning disks of gas and dust
• terrestrial planets : the name given to the four inner planets: mercury, venus, earth, and mars
• jovian planets : jupiter, saturn, uranus, and neptune because they are gaseous
• photo dissociation : solar ultraviolet radiation strips electrons from atoms, creating an upper ionosphere of electrically charged gas
• resonance : a phenomenon that occurs when two objects naturally vibrate at the same frequency
• scarp : cliff on mercury; similar to those on earth but much higher.
• dwarf planet : an object that orbits the sun and is spherical, but has not cleared the area of its orbit.
• roche limit : the closest distance from the center of a planet that a satellite can approach without being pulled apart by the planet's gravitational field.