VISUALIZING THE UNIVERSE
By Abbi
Allan. © 2004, 2012
Close your eyes.
We are starting here at home, on Earth. To take this trip into the universe, we are
going to have to travel extremely fast. Even if we were traveling the speed of
light, 186,281 miles per second, turning ourselves into energy, it would still
take us far more time than we have. It
would be billions of lifetimes over.
Sure, it would be fast
locally. We could go from New York to
London in a tenth of a second. It would
only take us less than a second and a half to get to the moon, and only 8
minutes, 30 seconds to make it to the sun.
It’s fast relative to our solar system, but even at the speed of light,
it would take us 4 years and 2 months to reach the closest star within our own
galaxy! And that’s just on the same
block! We are going to go far further
than that.
People are
just one of billions of different life forms on earth. Our rich diversity comes from all the
different solutions to all the different environmental conditions we have on
Earth. Deep-sea vents where the animals
live off sulfur, parasites in an acidic stomach, bacteria in the artic, and
birds in paradise. There isn’t a place
on earth that doesn’t house some sort of life.
Think of all the different plants and animals that have long come and
gone, now extinct. Most of them looked
like they came from another planet! I’m
sure the dinosaur would say the same thing about us if they could.
Now we are going to leave
Earth.
Our planet is just one of 8
planets, if you don’t count planetoids, (and if you do possibly ten or more)
some with Many moons, and some with none, orbiting our only star, the sun,
within our solar system. Approximately 2 light years across. Our Sun is barely notable. It may be special to us, but is only one of
200 to 400 billion stars within our galaxy, the Milky Way. Think of all the
possible planets there might be surrounding those stars? Think of all the variety we see within our
own solar system? Just about anything
you could possibly imagine might possibly exist. Imagine each star as a house on your
block. That would be A LOT of houses!
The Milky Way is beautiful. One of the few spiral galaxies other
there. It looks like a swirly
Frisbee. In the center are all the older
stars, 6,000 light years thick worth of them and at the center, a Supermassive Black
hole! Their heavy mass helps pull the
arms around them. These arms hold the
birthplaces of our galaxy’s newest stars that shine brighter than those in the
center. The Milky Way is a mere 120,000
light years across, and 2,000 light years deep.
Our galaxy is one of 30 or so
other galaxies within our local group.
It is like our celestial neighborhood.
Lucky for us, we are one of the three largest of these galaxies, so a
lot of the little ones orbit around us.
This is because our mass is so great that we are actually denting the
fabric of space, pulling the little ones in!
We can look over and see another
cluster of galaxies far away. It is the
Virgo Cluster, 50 million light years away to be exact. If you lived to be 100, you would have to
live five hundred thousand times to reach it!
(And that’s at the speed of light!)
This cluster holds over 2000 galaxies, and with all of those stars, it
is just breathtaking. A treasure chest
in the sky.
It doesn’t stop there. That Virgo cluster, and ourselves and
surrounding neighborhoods all are part of a Super Cluster, holding a dozen or
so more of these Clusters! It looks like a big soap bubble, with all the
clusters, groups, galaxies, stars, planets, and us, all on the surface, with
big spaces of nothing in-between.
What’s amazing, is our bubble,
larger than 100 million light years across is one of many, and definitely not
the largest. They are all piled on top of each other like a
tub full of soap bubbles – or a collection of balloons that are continuously
being blown up and everything that we can see – all the matter of the universe
is on the skin of each of these balloons.
And this balloon-bubble like structured clusters form these incredible
filaments.
The largest of these is known as
the Great Sloan wall. Ironically, this
looks a LOT like our own brain structure of neurons. We make the small web like threads
surrounding large gaps of dark matter -
which makes up 21% of the universe. Only
4% of the Universe is matter we can see, know and understand – which includes
everything we know of in the universe. This is the largest structure in the
universe that we know of, depending on what you count as a structure – either
the filaments or Dark Matter.
Even crazier, is our Universe is
growing larger and larger, faster and faster each second, thanks to that other
unknown and invisible part of our Universe, 75% of our Universe approximately –
Dark Energy.
We just can’t push ourselves fast enough to catch up
with the edge of this expanding universe.
It looks like red sunset that never slips under the horizon, but recedes
further and further away in the distance, so we’re just going to have to guess
what’s beyond that.
Because Light takes so long to cross such a distance,
each time we look out into space we look back into time. We have an idea about what the first seconds
after the Big Bang were like, but everything before that – and even before the
Big Bang – we still just don’t know.
Each time we look out into space we look back into
time. We have an idea about what the
first seconds after the Big Bang were like, but everything before that – and
even before the Big Bang – we still just don’t know.
As we ride back to Earth we have to think about the
most amazing part of all of this.
Everything in this universe, our super cluster, cluster, local group,
galaxy, star, solar system, planet, region on earth, neighborhood, block,
house, room, you… even every single cell of you, it’s all made of the same stuff. The same 103 plus elements that all came to
be at the instant right before time began.
All of this was crammed into a point smaller than a pinprick, and
heavier than anything we can think of.
The moment this little pinpoint exploded, which we call the Big Bang, it
allowed the opportunity for you to exist.
We all made of stardust and this week, we’re going to find out just how
that is.
(by Abbi Allan - who updates the version any time she can - most recently before this camp. July, 2012)
Fabric of the Universe was the group favorite!
Part 1 - What is Space? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=PL300BF5A42D3C21C4&v=pg2r_y1tsyE Part 2 - the Illusion of Time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkgcKmbsqp8 Part 3 - Quantum Leap http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkuTMoUvDMU&feature=relmfu Part 4 - Universe or Multiverse? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBf16YzWzew&feature=relmfu
Great films you can watch about the universe:
What is the Biggest thing in the Universe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6NoVNqya99M#!
Carl Sagan on Atoms Neil Degrass Tyson on Fusion (from the Origins series) National Geographic Journey To The Edge Of The Universe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcfJoZG_GMo&feature=relate
A great place to see images about the universe
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/
Time to meet the Elements (They Might be Giants)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy0m7jnyv6UHow does a star Fuse the Elements (Neil Degrass Tyson)
Building of the Space Station
http://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm
GREAT SPACE QUESTIONS:
THE GALAXIES
•
• Is there really a secret chamber in black
holes?
• How was the Sun created?
• How are stars made?
• Why do galaxies collide?
• Are there’s aliens in the universe?
• ? - //
• Why is the Sun so hot?
• How are Galaxies are made?
• Are there other planets in other galaxies?
• How did the first black hole be created?
• What are black holes made of?
• How did the Earth get air?
• How can we travel as fast as light?
• What do black holes look like?
• How many stars are in space?
• What are stars made of?
SMILING FLYING BACON
• ? Open to anything! //
• All the Star constellations ///
• What do black holes look like?
• Alien Life forms? //
• What is dark matter and Dark Energy?
• The Subatomic partial that might be going
faster than light? (Neutrinos) //
• How time Flows in space?
• how galaxies form?
• What makes Alien life form?
• Black holes, Wormholes, time travel?
• Is there another galaxies that / universe?
• Multiverse?
• Are there any life forms that we know of?
• is there anything in space that would help us
with nanotechnology?
• is the government hiding anything from us in
space?
• Are there any
- how do stars form?
• Does the more junk we put in our planet
affect space?
• How did we get junk in space?
• Time folds – or any wrinkles in time?
• If there’s a lot of Junk in space – why can’t
we clean it!!!???!
• BIG BANG!
• Proof for the big bang
• Proof for the big bang
• What in space blows up???
• Black holes and worm holes?
GRAVITY DEFIRES
• have they figured out
where to blackholes leads to?
• Do they know how black holes work?
• ? -
////
• How aliens build super rockets and super outer
space travel?
• how do they play in space?
• How do aliens play space
soccer?
• How astronauts get though the atmosphere
without burning up or bouncing off?
• What pets there are in outer space?
• How do they launch rockets back to earth?
• How are wormholes made?
• Do we have any proof of aliens?
• How do they go to the bathroom in space?
• How does the Earth Rotate?
• How do black holes form?
• Where do wormholes leads?
• What do astronauts eat in space?
• What does space ice-cream taste like?
• What do aliens eat? And drink?
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