10.1 EXPLAINING THE EARLY
UNIVERSE
SCIENCE 9
BLOCK C
LIZ PEREJILO
THE BIG BANG THEORY
• Georges Lemaître came up with the Big Bang Theory
• Astronomers believed it to be a large explosion
• 13.7 billion years ago
• Causing the universe to heat up, then expand
• When the universe began to cool down, subatomic particles and simple atoms began to form
• There is a great amount of supporting evidence
• To this day, evidence is still being found -> proving the theory still correct
CHARACTERISTICS OF AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE
• Edwin Hubble had a theory about the universe expanding
• Hubble made many observations that galaxies were moving away from eachother
• He also discovered that all the galaxies have taken the same amount of time to reach their current
postitions
HOW ASTRONOMERS USE TECHNOLOGY TO ADVANCE
OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE UNIVERSE
• More powerful telescopes are being invented helping us see more celestial bodies clearer
• Using new technologies to mesure radiation and electromagnetic waves, we can see how the stars
radiate
• Astronomers are sending more and more space crafts into space trying to create them so they can
mesure radiation waves more precisely
• Astronomers are also maping where the electromagnetic waves are strongest and weakest
FORMATION AND CHARACTERISTICS OF GALAXIES
• Galaxies are shaped in 3 different ways
• A spiral galaxy is made up of gas, dust, and forming stars and older stars
• An elliptical galaxy is shaped like a football cotaining the oldest stars of the universe, they are also the
largest galaxies
• An irregular galaxy is made up of new and old stars mixed together
• Galaxies are also different in size, mass, colour, brightness and sped of their spin
Astronomers: People who study objects in space/universe
Big Bang Theory: A theory of how the early universe was created
Celestial Bodies: Objects in space (ex: Sun, Moon, etc.)
Cosmological Red Shift: When wave lengths of radiated light are lengthened
Electromagnetic Radation: Energy carried and/or ratiated by waves
Spectroscope: A prism shaped object that helps to seperate light into basic colours
Red Shift: Change that occurs because of light’s wave lengths becoming longer
Radiation: Transmission of energy through the form of waves
Edwin Hubble: Edwin Hubble was an astronomer who made the first discovery that all the galaxies in
the universe were moving farther and farther away from each other.
Hubbles Proposal: Hubble’s proposal was that the universe was expanding in all different directions
and that all galaxies have been taking the same amount of time to for up until now.
Red Shift Analysis is when light is directed at a spectrum and reflects into electromagnetic waves and
is the only visible light
Cosmological Red shift is when wavelengths of radiated light are being stretched when they cross an
expanding universe
COBE stands for Cosmic Background Explorer. COBE is a satellite that was launched into space in 1989
by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The COBE has helped give one of the
strongest supporting evidence that the Big Bang Theory happened
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the most supporting evidence of the Big Bang Theory.
They had been studying the radiation in space, when they started to get a signal interference which
sounded like static. They then discovered it was really “Cosmic Background radiation” left over from
the Big Bang .
Georges Lemaître was a Belgian priest who had first discussed the Big Bang Theory in 1927.
Cosmic Background radiation was the background static noise that Arno Penzias and Robert
Wilson were hearing during their study of microwave radiation in space.
WMAP was another spacecraft that NASA sent into space in 2001, only this time it could mesure more
precise mesurements of microwave radiation. WMAP stands for Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy
Probe.
Hubble Space Telescope that launched April of 1990, sends data to earth weekly with new scientific
data. The HST is expected to stay in space for approximately 20 years. It was named after the famous
astronomer, Edwin Hubble.
Electromagnetic waves are energy transmitted by the form of waves. Electromsgnetic radiation and
other types of radiation such as microwaves, radio waves, and x rays. These radiate various forms of
energy.
CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) is a European organization established in 1954. CERN is
where the largest particle physics laboratory in the world is located.