Pangea

It is very interesting how the continents look like a broken up puzzle. At one point in time they actually were pieced together. This super continent is known as Pangea. The word Pangea means "all lands" in Greek. But, over time the continents appear to move. Plate Tectonics caused this really dramatic change.This change may seem great over time but, day to day it is almost unnoticeable. In a year it will move 5 centimeter on average. Never the less Plate Tectonics are constantly moving and recycling rocks and land within the earth. Plate Tectonics are 100 to 120 kilometers thick and lay in the crust and upper mantle.  It took these plates 200 million years to move to where they are today from when they formed Pangea. One question you might be asking your self is how these gigantic plates move and why? The Mantle underneath the Earth crust pulls the plate tectonics with the convection currents it produces. Basically the mantle is rising with heat and falling when it release energy. This Energy and motion is pulling the plates along. This is what made Pangea change to what is is today. Although this is the accepted theory we still have much to learn about the earth and it's movement.
http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/tectonics/boundaries.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/17701/high/pangaea/
http://http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/interior/plate_tectonics.html
www.nature.nps.gov/geology/usgsnps/animate/pltecan.html



Go to this website to see pangea like never before!!!!
http://www.scotese.com/sfsanim.htm

  There are three major requirement to sustain life, as we know it. The first is that the star the planet with life orbit has to be a main sequence star. Secondly, the planet has be solid so that there is the allowance of a liquid-solid surface. The last requirement is that the planet has to be the right distance away from the star to allow liquid water.

Jupiter

The Theory of how the Planets form is called Accretion. It is the idea that during the process of Nebular Hypothesis all the gas and dust that didn't go into making the sun started to collide and gravitate towards each other. Eventually all this matter sticking together, forms a planet. Accretion is still happening today. In July of 1994 A comet named "Shoemaker-Levy 9" collided with Jupiter.  That day Jupiter grew, just a little. The Accretion Theory isn't completely perfect but, the planet Jupiter supports it. Because Jupiter is 778,369,000km from the sun it was cool enough for ice-forming compounds to condense and form the planet just like the other gas giants in the outer disk.Which looking at all the planets explains their different compositions and temperatures. Another reason for the Accretion theory with Jupiter is that it has a diameter of 142,984 km across, which proves the accretion theory because it shows the abundance of materials farther away from the sun and that more gravity would explain it's size. Jupiter as you can see supports the accretion theory. It's days are 9 hrs and 55 minutes. It takes 11.86 years to orbit the sun. And is primarily composed of Hydrogen and Helium. It was also named after the Greek god Jupiter because of it's great size.

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/
http://www.bobthealien.co.uk/jupiter.htm