Transcript Our Vast Universe

Danielle Fairweather
Brian S. Glenn
Chelsea Butcher
For thousands of years, many scientists struggle
with the idea of the vastness of our universe.
Is our universe infinite? Or does it have an edge
somewhere far out in space?
Universe believed to consist of earth, moon, sun,
and planets
Outer limit of the universe was the sphere of fixed
stars
Believed the moon was closest to the earth since
it was more visible to the eye and the movement
was noticeable
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No means to estimate distance
Moon 27 days
Mercury 88 days
Venus 225 days
Mars 2 years
Jupiter 12 years
Saturn 29 years
Galileo:
Argued universe was huge and the distance to
the stars was immense
Stars are only points of light and the appearance
of a disk in an illusion
Kepler’s “Third Law”
Relative distance within solar system known
Size of universe unknown until one distance were
known accurately
The ancient Greeks were the first to decide that the
universe had to be one of two things: Finite or Infinite.
Then in the early 1800s, German astronomer Heinrich
Olbers argued that the universe must be finite. He
believed that if the universe were infinite and had stars
in every direction, then the viewer of the sky would
always eventually spot a star. Therefore, the entire
surface of the sky should, therefore, be as bright as a
star. But because there are dark areas in the sky, the
universe must be finite.
But, when Isaac Newton discovered his law of gravity, he
understood gravity to be a force that is always
attractive. Therefore, every object in our universe must
attract every other object and if the universe were finite,
the entire universe would collapse on itself due to this
attraction.
When Einstein developed his theory of gravity in the
General Theory of Relativity, his equations said that
the universe should be either expanding or
collapsing, yet he assumed that the universe was
static. He called it the cosmological constant his
"greatest blunder.”
However, in 1929 Edwin Hubble measured the redshifts
of a number of distant galaxies and their apparent
brightness. When he plotted redshift against relative
distance, he found that the redshift of distant
galaxies increased as a linear function of their
distance. The only explanation for this observation is
that the universe was expanding.
Einstein’s “greatest blunder” proved to be correct.
Scientists decided that one theory for the
expansion of our universe is that all matter of
the universe began at one point and expanded,
and is still expanding. This is called the Big
Bang.
The discovery of the big bang theory is the
beginning of the universe as we understand it
today.
Though the exact size of the universe is still
unknown, the ideas behind universe expansion
still remain today as the prominent way of
thinking.
The universe is still an unknown place, though
throughout the years we have made many
leaps toward understanding it.
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If the universe was said to have boundaries, it
would conflict with ideologies of having a
creator and creation.
Proof of a finite universe would be claiming
there is no god.
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After the discovery that the universe is
expanding, it laid to rest the ideas that troubled
past astronomers
This led us to our predominant theories and
ways of thinking involving the universe today
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The fate of the universe can be determined by
measuring how fast the universe expands relative
to how much matter the universe contains
There are three possible types of expanding
universes (ours is unknown):
Open-the universe will expand forever
Flat-expands forever but expansion rate will slow
to zero after an infinite amount of time
Closed-eventually stops expanding and collapses
on itself (possibly leading to another big bang)
Open
Flat
Closed
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Is the universe expanding into a newer, larger
space?
There is nothing that we have or can measure
at this current time that would show us
anything about the larger space
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The fate of the universe determines
the fate of humankind
Viewer discretion advised
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCpjgl2baLs