Friday, June 6, 2008

Question #5 (Universe)

Bib:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way(universe), Wikimedia, Milky Way, June 6, 2008.
2.http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm, Chris LaRocco and Blair Rothstein, The Big Bang, 1994?

Our solar system is located in on e of the "minor" arms of the Milky Way galaxy, known as the Orion arm. The milky way is a SBbc A.K.A. barred spiral galaxy, similar to many other spiral galaxies in the universe. The approximate size and age of the known universe is still somewhat shrouded in mystery but from what scientists have come up with we can get a pretty good idea. The age is about 13.73 billion years old, give or take a million years. The size is about 93 billion light years across. The age was determined by NASA's WMAP Project which studied the location of the first acoustic peak of the cosmic Microwave background Radiation power spectrum to find the size of the decoupling surface (size of universe at the time of recombination). Which in turn gave us a relative age of the universe.

The big bang theory states that the universe was once just a ball of matter (which the size is unknown) which later exploded, causing the expansion of the universe (similar to a super massive supernova). after billions of years matter bean to collapse into the various objects in the universe
Our solar system was formed by a nebular mass or molecular clout, of which parts began to collapse into denser pieces. Most of the mass began to clump into the center forming the sun, the other formed the "protoplanetary disk." This in turn also collapsed to create the other objects in the solar system.

A star's gravity is one of the major parts that keep its massive amounts of energy together in space. During it's early stages, its gravity pulls in more and more matter, making it denser and larger. Fusion reactions, happening at millions per minuet, constantly make a star's stellar core more and more unstable. At a particular time, the core can collapse turning it into a neutron star. If the mass is high enough the star could completely collapse into a black hole.

Once again, some may argue against this due to religion or fanaticism. The scientific community worldwide will always be looking into this topic until we find the definite answer. If I get into a scientific career i will definitely use this information to it's fullest.

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