Chapter 10 The Universe

Ancient Greek astronomers knew Earth is sphere:

 They saw the Earth’s shadow during moon eclipse was circular
 They noticed the north pole star was higher in sky the further north you went
 They saw when ship goes out to see, hull disappears below horizon, then
masts and sails
Planets visible with naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
Retrograde motion: planet moves backwards and retraces its steps
Followers of Pythagoras: Earth was center of sphere that moved around carrying the
stars, sun, moon and planets (doesn’t account for retrograde motion)
Eudoxus: made model to explain retrograde motion
Aristotle: using ideas of Eudoxus, he made model with 55 spheres. Earth was fixed in
the center. All heavenly bodies carried on invisible spheres (spheres are perfect
shape). Heavens are different matter than Earth, because they’re perfect and
unchanging, but Earth has imperfection and change
Apollonius of Perga: each planet moves around a small circle and the center of this
circle moves around a big circle centered on the Earth
Claudius Ptolemy: used Apollonius’ idea and made modifications (circles off center,
planet’s speed change) and added more circles. It was so complex that people didn’t
believe this spheres and circles existed, they were just a way to calculate the
positions of planets
Thomas Aquinas (Christian monk): he combined Ptolemy’s model with Christian
teaching. The heavens were the realms of God, therefore perfect, he made spheres
move
Nicolaus Copernicus: the motion of stars and planets are simpler if the sun is in the
center. The Earth spins on its axis, which causes day and night and explains the
celestial bodies we see in the sky. Retrograde motion: the planets closer to the sun
move faster and overtake other planets which looks like they went backwards.
Copernicus spent years checking his model out of fear of ridiculing by other scientists
and opposition from the Church (Christian bible implies Earth is fixed)
Arguments in favor of geocentric How a Copernican might respond
model
Earth feels fixed We’re moving along with it. In a moving
vehicle you feel fixed
High speed, so why no strong wind? Earth’s atmospheres moves along with it
If you throw something up, why doesn’t Misconception
it go away?
If we look at a star now and again later, We don’t observe parallax because
it should be gone but it’s not (parallax) stars are far away
Typho Brahe was convinced he had to improve Ptolemy’s model. He used the
instruments provided by the king, like the huge quadrant to measure the positions of
planets and stars accurately. He rejected Ptolemy’s model: he saw a supernova, a
bright star that gradually dimmed. This challenged the view that heavens were
perfect and unchanging. He also saw a comet go through the orbits of several plants,
so crystalline spheres were impossible. He then made changes to Copernican mode:
Earth in the center, moon and sun going around it, other plants around the sun.
In the past, to understand something, you read a boom and thought about it. Galileo
Galilei changed that: he did experiments to find out what happens and base your
explanations on that.
He believed in the Church but also in heliocentrism. He got a telescope and found
mountains on the moon and sunspots, so heavenly bodies weren’t perfect. He also
saw the moons of Jupiter, which proved objects can orbit around a center other than
the Earth. He saw that Venus had phases (like the moon), which meant it was behind
the sun.
His book was written in dialogue style. There were three characters:
 Sagredo: Galileo’s own views
 Simplicio: Aristotelian philosopher’s view
 Salviati: open minded, willing to listen to all arguments
Kepler was convinced of the heliocentric model since a young age, because it
explained the movements of planets and stars, rather than just predict them.
Kepler found out the mistake in Copernicus’ model: the orbits were actually ellipses.
Kepler’s laws of planetary motion:
1. The orbits of planets are ellipses
2. Each planet moves round its orbit so that the line joining it to the sun sweeps
out equal areas in equal times
3. The time it takes for each planet to orbit the sun (T) is related to its average
distance from the sun (R) by a simple rule: the number R 3/T2
Newton wondered why objects close to the Earth fall down, but objects far away, like
the moon, don’t. Newton said the moon (around the Earth) is always falling (in a
straight line without Earth’s gravity) and the Earth’s gravitational force makes it
deviate from the straight line, towards the Earth and keeps it in an orbit
The simplicity of Kepler’s model based on elliptical orbits and the very accurate
predictions it made, were what convinced astronomers
Best way to demonstrate that your understanding of anything is correct is to make
something that depends on it and show that it works. Voyager missions provide
strong proof that our model of the solar system is correct. Voyager 1 passed by
Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 passes by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter.
There is stellar parallax (first very hard to find because it’s so far away). The nearby
star changes direction, you can use this to calculate parallax angle and then the
distance from the sun. Scientists used hunches (e.g. brightest star) to decide which
stars were the closest. Scientists can only measure such small parallax angles
because of improved telescopes. The angular width one second is already really
small.
Two new developments in the 19th century played a key role in the growth of
knowledge of the universe:
 Photography: observations could be recorded and studied later, easier to spot
changes. Using long exposure times, it was possible to study objects that were
too faint to be observed in real time
 Spectroscopy: Fraunhofer noticed the spectrum of the sun has many dark
lines. Kirchhoff found out that the lines were due to lights from the sun’s
surface passing through the slightly cooler vapor surrounding it. He used this
to find the composition of the sun: helium and hydrogen and the gases
surrounding it contain the heavier elements found on Earth. This was proof
that celestial objects are made of the same elements as Earth
We can only use stellar parallax to measure stars that are close. There are different
star classes with different colors. With the color of a star, you can estimate the
intrinsic brightness and compare it with its apparent brightness ad then work out how
far it is.
Doppler effect: the apparent wavelength (soundwaves) is shorter when the sound is
approaching you, the frequency is higher, so a higher pitch. The wavelength
becomes longer when the sound moves away. With light, if the source moves
towards you, the wavelength of the light is decreased, so it becomes bluer. If the
source goes away, the wavelength is increased and it becomes redder. If the light is
from a glowing gas, its spectrum will be a series of lines. In a receding object, the
wavelength becomes longer so it’s shifts red. This is how Vesto Slipher found out
nebulae are moving away.
Einstein’s equations conclude that the universe is expanding at a changing rate. The
evidence was provided by Edwin Hubble. He worked out the intrinsic brightness of
the brightest star in each galaxy, they all had roughly the same brightness. He
compared this with their apparent brightness to find out how far away there were. He
then measured the red shifts to see the speed at which they’re moving away. He
found a pattern: the further away the galaxy was, the faster it was moving away from
us.
Stars generate their energy from nuclear fusion in the star’s core, in which hydrogen
atoms are fused together to form helium. Stars form when huge clouds of hydrogen
and other gases are pulled together by their gravitational attraction. When the matter
collapses, temperature rises, starting nuclear fusion. The total mass determines the
temperature it reaches. When the hydrogen is used up, the core of the star collapses,
but its atmosphere keeps expanding and becomes a red giant. When the helium is
used up, it becomes a white dwarf and it cools down. Bigger stars can continue to
have reactions and then explode (supernova) and the central materials collapse
under their own gravitational attraction to become a tiny, dense star. It may becomes
so small and dense that the gravitational pull at its surface is too large to allow light to
escape, it’s a black hole.
When Hubble used his method to see how old the universe was, he got 2 billion,
which isn’t possible. Later, people said 4 billion, and now 15 billion.
The big bang left an echo, left over radiation from the bang. Arno Penzias and Robert
Wilson accidentally found it while working with a radio antenna at Bell Laboratories in
New Jersey.
If the universe’s density is above a certain value, the universe will stop expanding at
a certain point and bring everything back. If it is below this value, it will expand
forever.