Chapter 11 The Universe Is the Universe in an infinite or finite area? Can we find the edges? Required Work: CD - Ho m ew o rk W o rkbo o k: Pages 77 -80 Universe Test (Teacher Provided) Teacher Options: Universe Report 97 For the scientific and faith What is the Universe? The answer: communities, the ultimate question Everything! People trying to determine its concerning the beginning of the cosmos is: limits and boundaries will only expand the How can something be made from nothing? known Universe. How old is the Universe? Science has not able to answer this question. What shape does it have? Is it growing or As of now, only books of faith can answer contacting? Does it matter? these questions. But, science can explain many of the processes that have occurred in A fish knows little about the sea it the Universe. lives in. It does not know the ocean‟s depth or its boundaries. It is familiar with only a For those who believe in intelligent few other life forms in the waters. Does it design and have trouble with scientific care about what it doesn„t know? No. timelines and those who detract faith beliefs such as what comes from the bible, please But, there is a difference between allow me to quote two biblical passages: us and the fish. Whereas fish do not actively Part of a prayer of Moses, NIV Psalm 90:vs. seek knowledge, we, as a species crave this 4 For a thousand years that are in your sight knowledge. The fish do not look for are like a day that has just gone by, or like a boundaries. Our “sea” of understanding watch in the night. NIV 2 Peter: 3 vs. 8-9: seems to have no set boundaries, but “With the Lord, a day is like a thousand nevertheless we continually seek them. years and, a thousand years is like a day.” Also the Islam mentions this idea of time in With each discovery we reach the: Kuran 32.5. According to science, greater awareness of our surroundings, our Jewish ,Christian and Muslim faiths, time is past, future and even our capabilities. We relative. are unique. We are aware of our own demise, yet we seek the possibilities and The following theory about the frontiers that reach beyond our individual beginnings of the Universe and how it lives. In a way, when we stop investigating developed is just that; theory. But much that and asking questions, the Universe‟s is in these theories has been proven through boundaries cease to increase. The cosmos math, observations and the results of consists of what we find and what we experiments. haven‟t found, including our efforts to find Co sm o lo gy even more! (The Beginnings) The ultimate A popular postulation (assertion or q uestio n basis of argument) about the beginning of the Universe is called the Big Bang Theory. When it comes to studying the It is an explanation of how the Universe beginning of the cosmos, some of the began and why it is in its present form important questions are: What are the today. boundaries? How did it form? Where are we in it? What will happen to the It is believed by many scientists that universe? at one time, over 13.73 billion years ago; all 98 matter was compacted into a tiny area. There universe is made up of the following: 73% were no distances or differences between dark energy, 23% dark matter and 4% any of the matter (called singularity.), that visible or directly detectable matter. No one was inside an area smaller than an eraser knows for sure what “dark matter” is but head on a pencil. This time is the called the there are two theories; 1) it is made up of Planck Epoch. dense chunks of heavy metals and or brown dwarfs. 2) It is made up of some type of In the beginning of our Universe, an axions or WIMPS - weakly interacting explosion or more accurately huge and very massive particles. rapid cosmic inflation occurred. It is called the Big Bang. Massive amounts of matter, What scientists still cannot factually with the help of accelerating dark energy answer yet is the following: (mysterious form of energy that so far defies 1. Why was there all that material in the first provable description and may be a result of place? the Big Bang), moved outward faster than 2. Where did the mass come from? the speed of light. In those first few 2. How did it get into such a small area? moments particles formed and then began 3. Why did it explode/expand? cooling. This opening scenario can be 4. How could matter, or anything else, travel measured as a tiny fraction of a second. faster than the speed of light? 5. If there was a Big Bang, where was the A cataclysmic and decisive battle now starting point? took place between matter and antimatter. Most of these opposing elements mutually destroyed each other. But, the winning and surviving matter makes up what we can observe today, including our planet and even ourselves. What’s In It? The surviving matter continued to spread rapidly. Anti-gravitational forces There are three elements that make caused the newly - dispersed matter to hurtle up the perceived universe. The first two are outwards, causing the Universe to expand by connected. One is space - time. This 10 to the fiftieth power in less than a second. includes: all matter, their location, the vacuum of space and the energy. The second As time passed particles that were the element consists of the laws of physics that quarks (the building blocks of neutrons and guide the behavior of space - time. protons) and leptons (the building blocks of electrons), gravitated towards each other and WMAP, which stands for: Wilkinson formed the first atoms. These atoms were in Microwave Anisotropy Probe was the form of heavy hydrogen, the simplest launched in 2001. This probe was sent out type of atom. After millions of years of over a million miles from us, pointed away cooling, the matter and radiation from the Earth, Moon and Sun. It attained a disconnected from each other. reading of the temperature, energy and background radiation levels of the Universe. So, what did we end up with? The It made three sweeps of the cosmos and 99 delivered an incredible amount of data that has taken years to be fully understood. Looking at a big picture of observable By measuring microwaves WMAP matter in the Universe, it looks pretty evenly has given us a picture of what the Universe spread out (homogenously). As we look was like when it was 300,000 years old. It closer at the smaller regions, there is has given us a fossil record of the past. clumping, such as galactic groupings. Looking out into space is like looking back Isotropically, meaning in any direction you in time. Since it takes time for light to travel look, the Universe looks consistently the to our eyes, what we see took place in the same and the radiation levels are evenly past. Light can travel 6 trillion miles in a spread. year. The closest star, other than our Sun, is about three light years away. Some of the What is it doing? stars we see in the night may not even exist anymore! Photon light flows like a stream When astronomers look at distant into our eyes. When the light flows down galaxies they find an interesting thing in that photon river to our retinas, we do not common. Under spectrum analysis, the know it will cease until after the last “drop” galaxies show up as red- shifted, meaning has come and gone. Events such as novas, that they are moving away from us at a very star births and collisions that have occurred rapid rate. As they move away, their speed is in the past take time to reach us. This makes increasing. This conclusion is reached by the telescope in essence, a time machine! observing the aging and lengthening of the photons that travel from these far away Throughout the Universe there seems objects. The longer they travel, the longer to be a uniform residue of radiation. It is and weaker (red shifted) the photons get. uniform and constant. This low level radiation is supposed to be leftovers from the Big Bang. WMAP tells us that the Universe‟s background radiation temperature of 2.7 degrees Kelvin (that is, not much above absolute zero); it is constant and measurable. This could be considered the “smoke” from a smoking gun of the Big Bang. Credit NASA 100 are going. The closer objects (1 million light Co smic Concept: Space/Time years away) are moving at 2000 miles per second away from us. Objects much farther Our Universe has space and time. out (3 billion light years plus) are moving at over 40,000 miles - per second - outward! Perhaps there is a way to travel not only forward in space and time, but also, just But, beyond that, the very space itself as you do when looking at light, travel in our Universe is expanding. A galaxy may back in time. Where would you go and have moved, let‟s say, 1 billion light years. what would like to see? But the space between us and the object may have also expanded several billion light Title: Time and Space Travel years. So, not only are the objects moving, the area in which they exist and between Minimum: 100 words other objects is expanding as well.