Week 8: Origins and the Universe

Presentation Link- 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1N_RsLWHDZki6GBpVk1CK1nqDpsncfjiizCP9SeV1I2U/edit?usp=sharing 

Origin of the Universe

- Universe is 13.7 billion years old

- Big bang theory 

- Big bang is actually just an expansion

Life Cycles of Stars

- This is what our presentation is about which is linked above!

- Nuclear fusion has to happen to get light

Galaxies

- Galaxies have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of stars 

- Milky way is more than 100,000 light years in size

- Galaxies started to grow around pockets of space that were slightly denser than their surroundings

- Eventually we will collide Andromeda galaxy

- Galaxies used to be known as Island Universes  

Origin of the Earth

- Gravity pulls gas and dust together to make our planet 

- Scientists believe asteroids caused a lot of our bodies of water 

- It is thought that photosynthesizing bacteria helped start to create life

- Earth is believed to be originally a sphere of molten lava 

Black Holes

- Formed when massive stars collapse under their own gravity 

- Likely millions of black holes in our galaxy 

- A black hole could fit in your pocket

- The idea of a black hole was first announced 1783

Exploration of Space: past, present, and future

- In 2015 the Mars rover captured that sunsets are blue

- Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on the moon and this was in 1969

- There are several different agencies involved in current space exploration 

- Space tourism and private space travel  is a huge thing in current space exploration right now

Thursday Discussion:

- Origin of the universe: time and space were created

- A star can build all the way up to iron

- Our sun likely came from another star blowing up and going supernova 

- 2 pieces of evidence that we look at saying that the sun that created our sun is: 1, bigger suns/stars have a shorter life span than smaller suns/stars, and 2, it had to undergo a supernova to make 26.