Our Cosmic History

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Our Cosmic History

• Saturday Symposia
• Lecture 2
• Our Cosmic Context - A Brief Tour of the
  Universe
• Dr. Todd Duncan
• Center for Science Education, Portland State
  University
• October 18, 2008, 10 a.m.

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Goals of the series

• Big picture view of science to give the details a
  meaningful context. (In this case, the story of
  our own origins, relevant to our perspective on
  who we are and where we are headed.)
• Help weaving big picture motivation provided by
  the series into the details of science curricula
  (complement broad-brush view with nitty-gritty
  details)
• Building a community of people curious about the
  universe and our place within it (regardless of
  professional role teacher, student, researcher,
  or other member of the public)

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• After the lecture
• Roundtable discussion for teachers
• 1130 am - 1230 pm
• in the entryway of Hoffman
• Wiki Site for resources continuing discussion
• http//oregonteacherscholars.pbwiki.com/Our-Cosm
  ic-History
• (or link from www.scienceintegration.org)

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l

• Upcoming
• Lecture 3
• The Early Universe -
• big bang to stars galaxies
• Dr. Aparna Venkatesan
• Dept. of Physics Astronomy, University of San
  Francisco
• Oct. 25, 2008
• 10 a.m.
• Hoffman Hall, PSU

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Warm-up Questions

• 1. The radius of Earth is about
• a. 64 km
• b. 640 km
• c. 6,400 km
• d. 64,000 km

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• 2. About how far away from us is the closest star
  other than our Sun?
• a. About the same distance as the Sun.
• b. Ten times farther than the Sun.
• c. One hundred times farther.
• d. One thousand times farther.
• e. More than a thousand times farther.

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• 3. Which answer shows the most accurate
  arrangement of the three objects in order from
  closest object to Earth to farthest from Earth?
• a. center of Milky Way --gt Andromeda galaxy --gt
  North Star
• b. center of Milky Way --gt North Star --gt
  Andromeda galaxy
• c. Andromeda galaxy --gt North Star --gt center of
  Milky Way
• d. North Star --gt Andromeda galaxy --gt center of
  Milky Way
• e. North Star --gt center of Milky Way --gt
  Andromeda galaxy

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Today A quick tour of the universe The
series overall presents the history of the
universe as a framework for how that history made
our existence possible. So first we need to know
something of the structure and arrangement of
this universe whose history we want to describe.
Theme - Gaining perspective on how we connect
to the universe we are products of the whole
universe, not just our immediate surroundings

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• In human affairs an idea is a greater moving
  force than any physical influence... So the shape
  of our future will depend to a large extent on
  our understanding of our role in the cosmic
  process.
• Louise B. Young (The Unfinished Universe)

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Your Self-image within the Universe

• I am one cog in a giant machine.
• I am the eyes of the Milky Way a way for the
  universe to notice and appreciate itself.
• I am a cosmic artist a contributor to a
  universal creative process.
• I am a participant in a definite cosmic plan or
  purpose, with some assigned role to play in
  carrying out that purpose.
• I am a random speck in a vast uncaring universe.

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• On the maps provided by science, we find
  everything except ourselves.
• Bryan Appleyard (Understanding the Present
  Science and the Soul of Modern Man)

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• Small as we are, minute as is the point by which
  the cosmos impinges upon each one of us, each one
  desires to feel that his reaction at that point
  is congruous with the demands of the vast whole
• William James (The Sentiment of Rationality)

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Wilson quote
A healthy consciousness is like a spiders web,
and you are the spider in the centre. The centre
of the web is the present moment. But the meaning
of your life depends on those fine threads which
stretch away to other times, other places, and
the vibrations that come to you along the
webNormally, your consciousness is like a very
small spiders web its threads dont stretch
very far. Other times, other places, are not very
real to youAnd our lives are turbulent, like
living in a strong wind, so the web gets broken
pretty frequently. But sometimes the wind drops,
and you manage to create an enormous web. And
suddenly, distant times and distant places become
realities, as real as the present moment, sending
their vibrations down into your mind.
Colin Wilson (The Philosophers Stone)
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Cassini-Saturn-Earth
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Cassini-Saturn-Earth zoomed
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Sun From Earth
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Earth-Sun scale

• About 109 Earths fit across the face of the Sun

Distance from Earth to Sun (1 Astronomical Unit)
is about 150 million km
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Astronomical Distances

• To make the numbers somewhat manageable, take the
  fastest thing we know of (light 300,000 km/s),
  and express distances in terms of how far light
  would get in a certain amount of time.
• 1 light year the distance light travels in 1
  year
• about 10 trillion km (1013 km)
• To convince yourself that this really is a
  distance, think of looking at a car speedometer.
  If you ride in a car at 50 miles/hour, for 1
  hour, you will go 50 miles. If you travel at
  that speed for 2 hours, you go 100 miles. Most
  people would just call that 100 miles, but you
  could also call it 2 car hours. A light year is
  the same sort of unit.

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Solar system scale

• 40 AU (about 5 light hours) to Pluto

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How far away are the stars?

• The closest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light
  years away
• Thats almost 7,000 times the Sun Pluto
  distance!!

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We reside in a galaxy of 300 billion stars. On
this image of our Milky Way Galaxy, diameter of
green circle is 1000 times bigger than the
distance from our solar system to Proxima
Centauri !!!

• Red dot is still 100 times too big!

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Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
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Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)

• Image Credit S. Beckwith (STScI), Hubble
  Heritage Team

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http//astro.uchicago.edu/cosmus/projects/sloangal
axies/animations.html
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Summary of Distance Scale

• Portland to Eugene -------------- about 150 km
• Earth (circumference) ------------ 40,000 km
• Distance to Moon ----------- 384,000 km ( 1
  light second)
• Distance to Sun --------------------- 8
  light-minutes
• Distance to nearest star (beyond sun) --- 4
  light years
• Milky Way Galaxy (diameter) ---- 100,000 light
  years
• Distance to nearby galaxy ------ 2 million
  light years
• Most distant visible galaxies ----- billions of
  light years

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Cassini-Saturn-Earth
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• Precisely when we grasp the vastness of the
  universe we also grasp an equally vast interior,
  the enormous geography of the soul, so to speak.
  Words may fail afterward, forcing us to rely on
  hackneyed descriptions that emphasize our
  insignificance, but what we actually sense, if
  only for an instant, is largeness of spirit.
• Edwin Dobb (Harpers, Feb. 1995, p.40)

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Einstein mystery quote

• The most beautiful experience we can have is a
  sense of the mysterious.A knowledge of the
  existence of something we cannot penetrateI am
  satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and
  with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous
  structure of existence as well as the humble
  attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the
  Reason that manifests itself in nature.
• Albert Einstein
• What is demandedis notto endure the
  meaninglessness, of life, but rather to bear
  our incapacity to grasp itsmeangfulness.
• Viktor Frankl

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Composition of the Universe

• The stuff were made of (baryonic matter, e.g.
  protons and neutrons) only comprises 4 of the
  energy content of the universe
• 4 of energy is baryonic matter, 23 exotic
  dark matter, and 73 dark energy

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Bullet Cluster
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Dark Matter Survey
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Large Hadron Collider

• Search for dark matter WIMP particles
• LHC rap -
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vj50ZssEojtM

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Sun From Earth
The Sun, with all the planets revolving around
it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch
of grapes as though it had nothing else in the
Universe to do. Galileo Galilei
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Seal
There are more things in heaven and Earththan
are dreamt of in your philosophy. Shakespeare
(Hamlet)
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Cosmic History in a Nutshell

• Adapted from Girl Meets Boy A Comedy about the
  Universe, by Melinda Lopez
• (http//cfa-www.harvard.edu/seuforum/exhibit/resou
  rces/GMB_CUESCRIPT.pdf)

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Thanks to

• Oregon Dept. of Education Math/Science Partners
  Grant (primary funding for this lecture series)
• Portland State University Center for Science
  Education
• Beaverton and Hillsboro School Districts
• Pacific University
• Science Integration Institute

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References

• Duncan Tyler, Your Cosmic Context An
  Introduction to Modern Cosmology (Addison-Wesley,
  2009)
• Poitier, The Measure of a Man A spiritual
  autobiography (HarperCollins, 2000)
• Cosmus education web site (tour of the universe,
  etc.) http//astro.uchicago.edu/cosmus/
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey http//www.sdss.org/
• Science Integration Institute http//www.sciencein
  tegration.org

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Appreciating Timelines

• Four thinkers since Galileo, each informing his
  successor of what discoveries his own lifetime
  had seen achieved, might have passed the torch of
  science into our hands as we sit here in this
  room about 1900. Indeed, for the matter of
  that, an audience much smaller than the present
  one, an audience of some five or six score
  people, if each person in it could speak for his
  own generation, would carry us away to the
  unknown of the human species, to days without a
  document or monument to tell their tale.
  William James

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Timeline Activity

• Think back and identify the oldest person you
  can remember talking to as a young child. Imagine
  a conversation in which you are ten years old and
  this person from a previous generation passes on
  to you a sense of what the world was like when
  she was ten. For example, if you were ten when
  your great grandmother was ninety, then go back
  eighty years from the date when you turned ten.
  Now continue the chain backward, imagining
  successive eighty-year intervals and a
  great-grandparent talking to a child in this way.
  Imagine handing off a torch of knowledge
  representing the experience passed from one
  person to the next.
• How many intervals like this would you have to
  go back to get to the time of the first written
  language? The first humans? The first dinosaurs?
  The first life on Earth? The birth of the solar
  system? The birth of the universe?