OBJECTIVE:  I will be able describe the Universe within the first 3 minutes of "Planck Time" (pronounced "Plonk") after today's class.

APOD

CALENDAR: I'll have your tests back to you on Wednesday. If you haven't taken that please take care of the POST HASTE!

WORDS FOR TODAY:

• Planck Time
• Big Bang

WORK O' THE DAY: 

There weren't ANY scientific theories about the birth of the Universe until the 1920's. Why was that? (Please discuss)

 

 

 

Edwin Hubble was an American astronomer who was one of the first to attach sensitive photographic cameras to large mirror telescopes.

He discovered many new objects that he originally thought were nebulae but in fact turned out to be separate 'island universes' -- a term he coined in a breakthrough scientific paper.

He later went on to measure the speed those galaxies were moving and found that the vast majority of those galaxies were moving away from us.

Further measurements showed that the farther those galaxies were away from us the faster they were moving.

Clearly the Universe was not 'static' (non-moving).

That was a HUGE change from the not moving, not changing, always is as always was view of the Universe that prevailed.

Einstein actually introduced a 'cheat' factor into his equations of gravity in his General Theory of Relativity that he published in 1917. That 'cosmological constant' artificially kept the Universe static and non-moving in line with the science of the time.

He later called that is 'greatest blunder'.

A VERY interesting note is that with the 'discovery' (more on that later in the unit) of Dark Energy in the late 20th century seemed to correlate very nicely with Einstein's Cosmological constant. So even his 'greatest blunder' may have been remarkably insightful!

Some parts of this graphic will be new material, however if you look closely you WILL see some familiar objects...

Please take a few moments to use this graphic to re-write your response to the opening question.

Here are the time line features you need to know:

🌀 Planck Time: Universe begins; rapid inflation expands cosmos from atom-sized to grapefruit-sized in the tiniest fraction of a second

10⁻³² sec — 10²⁷ K
🔥 Post-Inflation: Universe is a hot, dense soup of elementary particles.

10⁻⁶ sec — 10¹³ K
⚛️ Basic Matter Forms: Quarks combine into protons & neutrons as cosmos cools.

3 minutes — 10⁸ K
🌑 Dark Era: The entire Universe is hotter than the core of our sun. It is simply too hot for light particles to exist!

300,000 years — 10³ K
💡 Light Breaks Free The Universe becomes transparent as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is created

~1 billion years — ~200 K
✨ Stars & Galaxies Form: Gravity pulls hydrogen & helium into clouds, forming galaxies & first stars.

13.7 billion years — ~2.7 K
🌌 Current Era: Galaxies evolve, stars die and create heavier elements, leading to new stars & planets.

 

Let's see what National Geographic has to say

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Let's begin by taking a gander at learning targets for this unit.

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Now let's take a look at our opening question....

There are a lot of misconceptions about the Big Bang.... specifically what happened when.

Please work with your team to form as many questions as come to mind about the Big Bang and we'll discuss!

 

Proton Assignment:

At the end of this unit you'll be tracing/reenacting/projecting (however you'd like to think about it) the "life" of a proton from it's "birth" during the Big Bang (as shown above) until such time as the Universe is very large, very cold, very empty and very dark.

You can do that in writing, in a presentation, in a poem or any other manner in which you'd prefer.

Now-- back to the work o' the day.

 

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With that in mind, please remember that you aren't responsible for the minutiae of the Big Bang time line, just the aspects shown above AND the *original* source of the Cosmic Background Radiation....

Please grab your forbidden electronic devices, and see if you can find an explanation of where the original light of the Universe came from in a succinct and coherent way for us to discuss...