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Week 8 - Origins and the Universe

Lab: 

Ted: Origin of the Universe

  • About 13.7 billion years ago there was something that happened, everything came into existence, atomic structure to gravitational pulls, atoms coming together and making bodies that we see planets, stars, mass comes into play, it took about 300 thousand years to create light. 

  • The initial universe was super super hot. It has been cooling down ever since. The universe has been expanding and that expansion is slowing down. 

  • People tell you that the big bang and the creation of the earth are the same thing but you are missing 9 million years if that is what you think. 

  • Scientists are backing up the creation of the universe with 10 to the negative 43? - 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000001 (43 zeros) - they are hunting it down and trying to figure it out

Lifecycle of the Stars: 

  • Stars aren’t actually twinkling - just appear like that due to how light comes through

  • The long process of creating a star

  • Stars travel and they travel in clusters 

  • Stars can form faster in some galaxies than in others

  • Van Allen hosts public observing nights 

  • Our sun is in the main sequence 

  • Star gives birth to a star - interstellar matter

  • Shooting stars - a piece of debris burning up in the atmosphere

Galaxies (us): Galaxy Presentation

Origin of the Earth: 

  • Creation and Myths

    • Cultures have different ideas

  • Modern Scientific Theory

    • Flat Earth Theory

    • Geocentric Model

    • Heliocentric Model

    • Big Bang - massive explosion 13.8 billion years ago, matter spread out forming galaxies, stars and planets

  • Early Earth

    • Started as stardust, supernova is a massive 

    • Solar Nebula Hypothesis: Stardust spun and formed clouds of gas and dust

    • After a supernova occurs, it spreads stardust everywhere which will later come together 

  • Making of the planets

    • The leftover dust and gas clumped together over millions of years - planetesimals 

  • Different cultures have different creation stories

  •  Science explains earth's formation wit the big bang and planetary formation

  • Theories evolve as we learn more about the universe 

Black Holes: 

  • Historical views

    • Black holes are matter that are so dense that it has colla[sed into a tiny space, nothing ever escapes

    • Impossible to find with a naked eye, even a telescope

    • Singularity is the center of the black hole where gravity is the strongest

    • Karl Schwarzaschikd figures out the math behind black holes

  • Preconceptions

    • Our sun will become a black hole not true our sun isn't that big 

    • Black holes suck everything in

  • Current scientific understanding

    • They are born from the death of massive stars ten times the size of our sunn

    • Parts of a black hole: event horizon - makes the hole black, velocity is needed to escape but it needs to exceed the speed of light

    • Photon Sphere: rights on the edge of the black hole, 

    • Corona: strong magnetic fields

    • Singularity: center  of the black hole contains a point where matter is crushed to infinite density 

      • Spaghettification - go into a black hole and are stretched horizontally

  • DSM scientist took the first picture of a black hole 

Exploration of Space: past, present, and future: 

  • Past: 

    • Space race- between US and Soviet Union - who had the best tech

  • Present 

    • NASA, SpaceX, Space Force (2019)

    • 10 astronauts in space rn 

  • Future

    • Robotic exploration

    • Advancement and use of technology 

    • Exploration at greater distances

    • Extended length of travel for humans


  • Current science understanding:

    • Rover is on mars looking for life

    • More radiation exposure outside Earth’s atmosphere

Lecture: 

    In lecture we learned more about the origin of the universe, earth, galaxies, black holes, the life cycles of stars, and the exploration of space. When it came to learning about stars, I didn't know that red giants are given their color due to a cooler surface temp and they are so big because of the hydrogen around the core causing them to inflate.  I also didn't know that light didin't occur until 300,000 years after the big bang. That's a long amount of time with absolutely no light and was a fact that blew my mind this week. 

    We also continued to make sense of the Earth's formation and how it came to be. It was created over 4.65 billion years ago and it came from dust and debris, likely from a star that exploded. From this explosion, gravity pulled this dust and debris in together forming our planet. 



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