David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-laws-of-physics"
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
ASTROPHYSICS for PE0PLE in HURRY certainly is short and sweet. I was hoping for something on the Super Collider and the discovery of the God Particle. Tyson alludes to it but doesn't go into any depth.
He does discuss Dark Matter and Dark Energy to an extent, but only to say that we don't know what it is. He suggests that it may have to do with gravity from a parallel universe, but that's pretty much it.
About the most interesting tidbits concern how light came to be, and why we won't be able to see what the universe looked like before 380,000 years after the Big Bang. You see, during those years photons were always crashing into electrons. After the 380,000 year mark, photons before to escape, leaving kind of a background fog; not enough photons had escaped, and they hadn't mated with electrons and protons to form atoms as of yet. This fog is called the Cosmic Microwave Background.
There's another section on moons, asteroids and comets that's pretty interesting. The moon escaped from the Earth's crust or was the Earth's crust at the time. We have a tidal lock with the moon, meaning you can only see one side of the moon anyplace on the planet. Jupiter's moons are the most interesting. There's one, Europa, that has liquid water beneath its frozen surface. Perhaps we might want to go there if we blow ourselves up, but we'll have to remember to wear our union suits. Tyson also says there are thousands of asteroids in the Kuiper belt, and they're always crossing the Earth's path around the Sun. One of them killed the dinosaurs, which was rather helpful because the little mammals who survived were our ancestors. The dinosaurs would've eaten us. I almost forgot. Tyson is quite proud one of the asteroids is named after him.
The last chapter is about why we should care more about the cosmos. It will take quite a stretch for us to reach the nearest possible Goldilocks planet. He says things like: “The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae, but also celebrates the laws of physics.” It also makes us feel small, even insignificant, but so far we're the only self aware, fairly intelligent beings that we know of, so that's something to celebrate.
BTW, you space obsessed geeks out there who think we will eventually be able to go back in time should forget it. Tyson says that violates the law of causality, which is universal throughout the universe. Maybe this universe, but what if quantum mechanics is right about parallel universes. They say, “If you can imagine it, it's possible on some other universe.”
He does discuss Dark Matter and Dark Energy to an extent, but only to say that we don't know what it is. He suggests that it may have to do with gravity from a parallel universe, but that's pretty much it.
About the most interesting tidbits concern how light came to be, and why we won't be able to see what the universe looked like before 380,000 years after the Big Bang. You see, during those years photons were always crashing into electrons. After the 380,000 year mark, photons before to escape, leaving kind of a background fog; not enough photons had escaped, and they hadn't mated with electrons and protons to form atoms as of yet. This fog is called the Cosmic Microwave Background.
There's another section on moons, asteroids and comets that's pretty interesting. The moon escaped from the Earth's crust or was the Earth's crust at the time. We have a tidal lock with the moon, meaning you can only see one side of the moon anyplace on the planet. Jupiter's moons are the most interesting. There's one, Europa, that has liquid water beneath its frozen surface. Perhaps we might want to go there if we blow ourselves up, but we'll have to remember to wear our union suits. Tyson also says there are thousands of asteroids in the Kuiper belt, and they're always crossing the Earth's path around the Sun. One of them killed the dinosaurs, which was rather helpful because the little mammals who survived were our ancestors. The dinosaurs would've eaten us. I almost forgot. Tyson is quite proud one of the asteroids is named after him.
The last chapter is about why we should care more about the cosmos. It will take quite a stretch for us to reach the nearest possible Goldilocks planet. He says things like: “The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae, but also celebrates the laws of physics.” It also makes us feel small, even insignificant, but so far we're the only self aware, fairly intelligent beings that we know of, so that's something to celebrate.
BTW, you space obsessed geeks out there who think we will eventually be able to go back in time should forget it. Tyson says that violates the law of causality, which is universal throughout the universe. Maybe this universe, but what if quantum mechanics is right about parallel universes. They say, “If you can imagine it, it's possible on some other universe.”
