OBJECTIVE:  I will work with my team to review for tomorrow's Cosmology Unit Test

WORDS FOR TODAY:

• Planck Time ("10^-43 sec after the Big Bang")
• Dark Matter ("Invisible matter, we can't see it, but we are pretty sure it is there")
• Dark Energy ("The force accelerating the Universe outwards-- we don't know what it is!")
• Big Freeze ("The Universe expands forever getting colder, larger, darker and emptier" | Shape: Like a saddle, it's hyperbolic.)
• Modified Big Freeze ("The Universe exists forever getting colder, larger, darker and emptier" | Shape: Like a disk, it's flat.
• Big Rip ("The Universe accelerates so fast it shreds itself out of existence" | Shape: It is hyperbolic, but we don't really care since it's going to RRRRRIIIIP itself out of existence.)
• Big Crunch ("The Universe stops expanding and reverses itself, eventually coming back into a "Big Crunch" | Shape: Like a sphere, it's round.)
• CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) Light left over from the first moments after the Big Bang that are present throughout the Universe-- considered to be extremely strong evidence to support the Big Bang.

Stars & Star Remnants:

• Red dwarf stars - Small stars that are similar in size to planets, but they do give off heat, light and radiation from nuclear reactions inside their cores

• White dwarfs - cores of stars like our sun that just give off heat. No nuclear reactions remain.

• Black dwarfs - white dwarfs that have cooled off to just chunks of rock.

• Big Bang Time Line Items:

  10^-43 sec: Planck Time- The farthest back in time we think we'll *ever* be able to describe with science & math. We're not quite there now. We can currently describe the early Universe back to ~ 10³⁸ seconds or so (which is kind of amazing)!

  10^-32 sec: Inflation- The Universe expands *suddenly* faster than the speed of light.

  10^-6 sec: First particles (electrons!)

  300,000 years: Light is FREE!

  1 Billion Years: Stars & Galaxies Form

  13.7 Billion Years: Now (The Current Era)

   

  Words that we won't worry about on tomorrow's test:

  • Strong Force
  • Weak Force
  • EM Force
  • Blue Shift
  • Red Shift

  WORK O' THE DAY: 

  That video was kind of cool but a wee bit overwhelming I imagine.

  Here's the time scale involved

  [A] The Radiation Dominated Era. Between Planck Time (10⁻⁴³ sec) and about 300,000 years) after the Big Bang. This era corresponds to the usual time period in which most of the energy density of the universe is in the form of radiation.

  
  [B] The Star Era: Between 10⁶ years and 10¹⁴ years after the Big Bang. Most of the energy generated in the universe arises from nuclear processes in conventional stellar evolution. Red dwarf stars will be the last to shine. But even they will die out in 100 trillion years (or so!)

  
  [C] The Degenerate Era: Between 10¹⁵ years and 10³⁷ years after the Big Bang.Most of the mass in the universe is locked up in degenerate stellar objects: black holes, white dwarf stars (the core of stars like our sun)black dwarfs, , and neutron stars.

  
  [D] The Black Hole Era. Between 10³⁸ and 10¹⁰⁰ years after the Big Bang. The only star-like objects remaining are black holes of widely differing masses, which are actively evaporating during this era.

  
  [E] The Dark Era. η >10¹⁰⁰. At this late time, protons have decayed and black holes have evaporated. Only the waste products from these processes remain: mostly photons of colossal wavelength, neutrinos, electrons, and positrons.