Greatest Discoveries with Bill Nye Astronomy
Résumé
TLDRThe presentation covers 13 milestones in astronomical discoveries, beginning with ancient Mesopotamian records and culminating in modern advancements like the detection of exoplanets and dark energy. It discusses the transition from the Earth-centered model to the heliocentric model proposed by Copernicus, the adjustments made by Kepler regarding planetary motion, and Galileo's telescope observations. The narrative emphasizes significant figures such as Einstein and Hubble, the theoretical implications of dark energy, and the ongoing quest to understand the expanding universe and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
A retenir
- 🌟 Humanity's quest for understanding the cosmos has spanned thousands of years.
- 📜 The Mesopotamians recorded celestial movements on clay tablets.
- ☀️ Copernicus introduced the heliocentric model, revolutionizing astronomy.
- 🔭 Galileo's telescope revealed moons orbiting Jupiter, supporting the heliocentric theory.
- 📏 Kepler determined that planetary orbits are elliptical, not circular.
- 🔭 Carl Jansky's work led to the discovery of black holes via radio astronomy.
- 💥 The Big Bang theory explains the universe's expansion from a hot, dense state.
- 🌌 Edwin Hubble established that the universe is indeed expanding.
- 🔍 Exoplanets are found using Doppler wobbles of stars indicating gravitational pulls.
- ⚡ Dark energy is a mysterious force accelerating the universe's expansion.
Chronologie
- 00:00:00 - 00:05:00
The presentation introduces the evolution of human understanding of the cosmos, emphasizing how advancements in astronomical observation have revealed a wondrous universe. It highlights the significance of ancient astronomers, particularly the Mesopotamians, who documented celestial movements and contributed foundational knowledge to future astronomers.
- 00:05:00 - 00:10:00
The narrative transitions to the Greek astronomers who built upon Mesopotamian records, resulting in a geocentric view that dominated for centuries, reinforcing the importance of historical observations in shaping astronomical theories.
- 00:10:00 - 00:15:00
The story then focuses on Nicholas Copernicus, who proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system. His revolutionary insights laid the groundwork for modern astronomy, challenging the geocentric perspective and positioning the Earth as just another planet orbiting the sun.
- 00:15:00 - 00:20:00
Galileo's innovations with the telescope led to significant discoveries that supported Copernicus' theory, including the observation of moons orbiting Jupiter. This demonstrated the validity of heliocentrism and the vital role of empirical evidence in scientific progress.
- 00:20:00 - 00:25:00
The narrative discusses Edmund Halley and his prediction of the periodic return of Halley's Comet, showcasing the shift from superstition to a scientific understanding of celestial events, exemplified by predictable comet trajectories.
- 00:25:00 - 00:30:00
William Herschel's discovery of Uranus and the vastness of the Milky Way further reshaped humanity's view of the cosmos, revealing that our solar system is part of a much larger universe filled with numerous stars and galaxies.
- 00:30:00 - 00:35:00
The discussion then introduces Albert Einstein and his theory of general relativity, which altered perceptions of gravity and space. Einstein's groundbreaking ideas explained phenomena that Newton's laws couldn't, leading to a deeper understanding of the universe's structure.
- 00:35:00 - 00:41:42
Finally, modern discoveries, such as the expansion of the universe and dark energy, highlight the ongoing quest to unravel cosmic mysteries, demonstrating humanity's relentless pursuit of knowledge and the need for advanced observations to comprehend our place in the cosmos.
Carte mentale
Vidéo Q&R
What is the significance of the Venus tablet of Ammida?
It contains the earliest record of a planet's motion.
Who proposed the heliocentric model of the solar system?
Nicholas Copernicus proposed that the Sun is at the center of the solar system.
What did Galileo discover with the telescope?
Galileo observed moons orbiting Jupiter, providing evidence against the Earth-centered model.
What are gamma-ray bursts?
They are high-energy explosions in distant galaxies, considered potential causes for extinction events.
What is dark energy?
It is a mysterious force driving the accelerated expansion of the universe.
Who was Edwin Hubble?
An astronomer who discovered that the universe is expanding and identified distant galaxies.
What was Kepler's contribution to astronomy?
He formulated the laws of planetary motion and revealed that planets move in elliptical orbits.
What did Carl Jansky discover?
He identified a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, marking the birth of radio astronomy.
What was the Big Bang theory?
It suggests that the universe began from an extremely hot and dense state and has been expanding ever since.
What are exoplanets?
Planets that orbit stars outside our solar system.
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- 00:00:00[Music]
- 00:00:03the following presentation is brought to
- 00:00:05you by Discovery Education leading the
- 00:00:07world of digital and video
- 00:00:09learning Discovery Education connect to
- 00:00:12a world of
- 00:00:19learning for most of human history the
- 00:00:22only light we knew came from the sky by
- 00:00:25day the Sun by Night an uncountable
- 00:00:29number of stars now from the beginning
- 00:00:32our ancestors believed that the sun and
- 00:00:34the stars were Heavenly out of this
- 00:00:37world and they were right we've been
- 00:00:40watching the sky for thousands of years
- 00:00:43but until recently we couldn't see well
- 00:00:46enough to understand our connection to
- 00:00:48the cosmos but now our astronomical
- 00:00:52Vision has sharpened we can see farther
- 00:00:55and clearer we can observe objects that
- 00:00:57are invisible to human eyes our
- 00:01:00increasingly improving Vision has
- 00:01:02allowed us to make great discoveries
- 00:01:04revealing an astonishing and wonderful
- 00:01:07Universe what follows are 13 of the
- 00:01:10greatest discoveries in astronomy
- 00:01:15[Music]
- 00:01:49[Music]
- 00:01:55our first great discovery happened over
- 00:01:58centuries as the first humans looked
- 00:02:00carefully at the sky in places like this
- 00:02:03the empty cloudless deserts of the
- 00:02:04American
- 00:02:06southwest the Middle
- 00:02:08East Africa and South
- 00:02:13America of these ancient astronomers the
- 00:02:16most important were the
- 00:02:18[Music]
- 00:02:20Mesopotamians they considered the
- 00:02:22objects in the sky gods and built giant
- 00:02:25Towers so they could record the rising
- 00:02:27and setting of the Sun the Moon and the
- 00:02:32stars for more than a thousand years
- 00:02:35they used clay tablets to record what
- 00:02:37they
- 00:02:39saw to find out more I paid a visit to
- 00:02:42Professor of astronomy Owen Gingrich
- 00:02:45ason here for example is one of these
- 00:02:49clay tablets have a read yeah uh These
- 00:02:53Guys these people wrote small yes I was
- 00:02:57perfectly amazed when somebody came into
- 00:02:59my office and picked it up and actually
- 00:03:00started reading it so what language is
- 00:03:03this I think this is in
- 00:03:05Babylonian hundreds of these tablets
- 00:03:07were
- 00:03:08unburied among these hundreds of tablets
- 00:03:12is a tablet called the Venus tablet of
- 00:03:16amoda and this tablet contains the
- 00:03:20motion of the planet Venus that's the
- 00:03:24earliest record we have of a planet
- 00:03:28moving and after the Mesopotamians made
- 00:03:31the first records it was the Greeks who
- 00:03:33took the next
- 00:03:35step some of the Greek astronomers made
- 00:03:38a field trip out to Mesopotamia to find
- 00:03:42out what had been going on there and
- 00:03:44they seemed to have brought back some
- 00:03:46systematic records so that ultimately it
- 00:03:49gave the basis for making a mathematical
- 00:03:51theory of the motion of the
- 00:03:54planets from their observations the
- 00:03:57Greeks developed a vision of the solar
- 00:03:59system that was stand for some 2,000
- 00:04:02years that the planets move revolving
- 00:04:06around the earth it would take our next
- 00:04:09great discovery to set the record
- 00:04:15[Music]
- 00:04:20straight the year is
- 00:04:231543 a 70-year-old man is dying his name
- 00:04:28Nicholas capern
- 00:04:31a doctor and lawyer by trade but for
- 00:04:34nearly 40 years he was also an amateur
- 00:04:37astronomer a Pursuit that had led him to
- 00:04:40challenge one of the most fundamental
- 00:04:42and sacred beliefs of his
- 00:04:46time as a young man kernus had studied
- 00:04:49the heavens and found that the Greek's
- 00:04:51Earth centered system failed when it
- 00:04:53came to predicting planetary
- 00:04:56motion now those he began to wonder if
- 00:05:00the Earth itself
- 00:05:02moved
- 00:05:04but here is cernus is
- 00:05:08idea with the Sun as the center the sun
- 00:05:10is the center and now suddenly all the
- 00:05:13planets are going always the same way
- 00:05:16around they're not stopping cernus
- 00:05:18realized that the movements of the
- 00:05:20planets were better explained if the sun
- 00:05:22were at the center of the solar system
- 00:05:24and the Earth circled it like an
- 00:05:26ordinary Planet it was a revolution
- 00:05:30Insight despite any evidence that the
- 00:05:32Earth was moving he came up with this
- 00:05:36book which uh uh gives his new Theory
- 00:05:41this idea this this book changed the
- 00:05:45world yes because it made the Earth a
- 00:05:49planet and it fixed the sun in the
- 00:05:51center if you don't have that blueprint
- 00:05:54you don't March ahead to the physics the
- 00:05:58physics of the Cosmos as it happened the
- 00:06:02final Pages which were just these here
- 00:06:04in the front of the book came to him on
- 00:06:07the very day he died I suspect I mean he
- 00:06:11was lying there partially paralyzed from
- 00:06:14a stroke he was probably just hanging in
- 00:06:17there till he could make sure that it
- 00:06:20was done
- 00:06:27[Music]
- 00:06:32everyone from the Greeks to cernic
- 00:06:34assumed the orbits of the planets had to
- 00:06:36be
- 00:06:38circular but in
- 00:06:401571 German mathematician Johannes
- 00:06:43Kepler shattered that assumption with
- 00:06:45our next great
- 00:06:50discovery lacking calculus Kepler
- 00:06:52improvised ways to compute the circular
- 00:06:55orbit of
- 00:06:56[Music]
- 00:06:57Mars the work was teach
- 00:07:02keper wrote that he was almost driven to
- 00:07:04Madness considering and calculating the
- 00:07:08matter his calculations began to reveal
- 00:07:11that the accepted notion of planets
- 00:07:13moving in circles simply did not
- 00:07:17work then a new idea came to him Kepler
- 00:07:21realized somehow the sun had to be
- 00:07:25driving the planets in some way that he
- 00:07:27didn't fully understand
- 00:07:30and to get a self-consistent picture he
- 00:07:33found that an ellipse was the path
- 00:07:37rather than a
- 00:07:38circle with this breakthrough Kea
- 00:07:41devised the first method for accurately
- 00:07:43predicting the movement of the planets
- 00:07:45and stars across the sky when his tables
- 00:07:50predicted the planet Mercury to pass
- 00:07:53across the front of the Sun and nobody
- 00:07:55else's tables were
- 00:07:57close that was dramatic proof of the
- 00:08:01accuracy of his
- 00:08:03astronomy it linked the Motions of the
- 00:08:07planets solidly to the sun this was a
- 00:08:11very important point to help stress the
- 00:08:14idea that the capern sun centered system
- 00:08:18really had physical
- 00:08:20significance and in the case of our next
- 00:08:23great discovery his determination led
- 00:08:25him to revolutionize our knowledge of
- 00:08:27the solar system
- 00:08:31the year is 1609 and Galileo is
- 00:08:34fascinated with a new invention called a
- 00:08:37telescope essentially it was a toy out
- 00:08:40of a carnival when Galileo heard about
- 00:08:43it he went to work making
- 00:08:45one he perfected it and essentially
- 00:08:49converted a toy into a scientific
- 00:08:55instrument Galileo turned his telescope
- 00:08:58Skyward
- 00:09:00and was the first to see the mountains
- 00:09:02on the
- 00:09:04moon and the star clusters of the Milky
- 00:09:08Way then an extraordinary
- 00:09:13site a group of four small Bright Stars
- 00:09:16arranged around the planet
- 00:09:19[Music]
- 00:09:20Jupiter we have the manuscript of his
- 00:09:23first week of observations and it it's
- 00:09:26wonderful because you
- 00:09:28see him gradually coming to the
- 00:09:31conclusion that these little stars are
- 00:09:35carried along with
- 00:09:37Jupiter this was the moment of
- 00:09:41Discovery Galileo realized that the
- 00:09:44stars were actually four moons orbiting
- 00:09:48Jupiter he had the Insight that these
- 00:09:51moving dots were orbiting a planet I
- 00:09:55sometimes say he invented the satellites
- 00:09:58and you say wait a minute they were
- 00:10:00there how could he have invented them he
- 00:10:02invented the idea that they were going
- 00:10:04around the
- 00:10:10planet here was proof that cernic us was
- 00:10:13right about the structure of the solar
- 00:10:15system if moons could orbit Jupiter then
- 00:10:18the Earth could orbit the Sun and
- 00:10:20Galileo's Discovery demonstrated that
- 00:10:23knowledge in astronomy can only be
- 00:10:25Advanced by actual observation a theory
- 00:10:28can only be viable when it's supported
- 00:10:30by the facts just like our next great
- 00:10:38[Music]
- 00:10:46discovery for centuries comets had been
- 00:10:48considered harbingers of
- 00:10:50Evil by the end of the Middle Ages a
- 00:10:53comet's appearance invoked fear and
- 00:10:55Terror
- 00:11:00but Renaissance scientist Edmund Hy like
- 00:11:03Galileo was interested in facts not
- 00:11:08Superstition in 1695 he began searching
- 00:11:12for records of ancient and recent Comet
- 00:11:15sightings he found 24 comets whose
- 00:11:18passage across the sky had been recorded
- 00:11:20with enough detail to allow him to
- 00:11:22roughly plot their orbits to his
- 00:11:25surprise he found that three of the
- 00:11:27Comets seemed to follow the same
- 00:11:29approximate orbit circling the Sun every
- 00:11:3276
- 00:11:33years on that basis he figured okay this
- 00:11:37is a comet that's going to be back in
- 00:11:39another 76 years he figured out that the
- 00:11:42three comets were actually the same
- 00:11:43Comet the same
- 00:11:45Comet hie was so certain of the comet's
- 00:11:48orbit that he made a bold
- 00:11:50[Music]
- 00:11:53prediction he said the comet would
- 00:11:55return in the year 1758
- 00:11:59and guess what it was the Comet came
- 00:12:03back unfortunately hie was no longer
- 00:12:06alive to savor his
- 00:12:09Discovery since then hi's Comet as it's
- 00:12:12known has been greeted three more times
- 00:12:14by excited skywatchers across the
- 00:12:20globe no longer a harbinger of evil
- 00:12:24Hal's Comet became a milestone Discovery
- 00:12:26in the history of astronomy replacing a
- 00:12:29superstitious belief with a rational
- 00:12:31scientific understanding of the physical
- 00:12:38[Music]
- 00:12:46Universe in the 18th century William
- 00:12:49herel was a classically trained
- 00:12:51musician whose love of astronomy led him
- 00:12:54to give up music and turn his attention
- 00:12:56to the heavens
- 00:12:59thus setting the stage for our next
- 00:13:01great
- 00:13:04discovery when he discovered the price
- 00:13:06of a refracting telescope which was
- 00:13:09beyond his means he decided to make his
- 00:13:11own and he became the most fabulous and
- 00:13:15successful telescope builder of that
- 00:13:20period he used his telescopes to
- 00:13:23methodically survey the sky cataloging
- 00:13:26what he
- 00:13:27saw as he he was searching the sky he
- 00:13:31came across an object that looked a
- 00:13:33little bit different turned out to be a
- 00:13:35new planet oh wow and what planet was
- 00:13:39that that was the next planet Beyond
- 00:13:41Saturn the planet
- 00:13:43Uranus Uranus was the first new planet
- 00:13:46to be identified in more than 3500
- 00:13:52years but finding a new planet was
- 00:13:55nothing compared to Hershel's larger
- 00:13:56goal
- 00:13:59he built a powerful 20ft telescope then
- 00:14:02divided the sky into equal sections and
- 00:14:05began to systematically count the stars
- 00:14:07in each
- 00:14:09field it was a painstaking Monumental
- 00:14:13task slowly Hershel's star count began
- 00:14:16to reveal something
- 00:14:18extraordinary the Milky Way was much
- 00:14:21larger than anyone
- 00:14:22knew it was a gigantic disc of
- 00:14:27stars some of its fields were jam-packed
- 00:14:30one showed more than a quarter of a
- 00:14:32million stars
- 00:14:35alone other fields farther away were
- 00:14:38practically
- 00:14:41empty Hershel's Discovery was a
- 00:14:45revelation this is a a reasonable model
- 00:14:48of the Milky Way as we know it now but
- 00:14:51hersel was only looking at an
- 00:14:53area about this big is that right what
- 00:14:56herel was seeing was a small range like
- 00:15:01this uh maybe that big uh so it was
- 00:15:05really a small part of the entire Milky
- 00:15:09Way But even that small part
- 00:15:11significantly changed the study of
- 00:15:14astronomy Hershel's Discovery revealed
- 00:15:16that our solar system was just an island
- 00:15:19in a deep and expansive universe
- 00:15:24[Music]
- 00:15:30thanks to the musings of an obscure
- 00:15:32clerk working in the Swiss patent office
- 00:15:35our next great discovery revealed that
- 00:15:37the universe is a strange mysterious
- 00:15:40place every Century Mercury's parhelion
- 00:15:44Advance slightly a change that Newton's
- 00:15:47equations could not account
- 00:15:53for in a bold and startling Move Young
- 00:15:56Einstein proposed his own Theory to
- 00:15:59explain the puzzle of Mercury's orbit
- 00:16:01and in the process developed a theory
- 00:16:03that refined Newton's laws of
- 00:16:06[Music]
- 00:16:08gravity miio Kaku is a theoretical
- 00:16:11physicist at the City University of New
- 00:16:15York Newton says that gravity travels
- 00:16:18instantaneously throughout space and
- 00:16:20that's where Einstein thought there was
- 00:16:22a weakness in Newton's theory he wanted
- 00:16:25a theory that could explain gravity he
- 00:16:27wanted a theory that could explain
- 00:16:29acceleration and zigzag and circular
- 00:16:31motion there has to be waves gravity
- 00:16:34waves it takes time for Gravity to work
- 00:16:36its magic to propagate to propagate so
- 00:16:39if the Su were to disappear it would
- 00:16:41take eight minutes for us to know about
- 00:16:43that fact even gravity travels at the
- 00:16:46speed of light Einstein needed a new
- 00:16:49picture to explain that and that picture
- 00:16:51was curv space that space itself has
- 00:16:55curved and that's why objects move
- 00:17:00Einstein believed that his concept of
- 00:17:02curved space was responsible for
- 00:17:04shifting Mercury's
- 00:17:06orbit Einstein called his idea the
- 00:17:09theory of general
- 00:17:13relativity imagine a trampoline net and
- 00:17:16place a bowling ball in the middle of a
- 00:17:18trampoline net the bowling ball sinks
- 00:17:21into the trampoline net and now shoot a
- 00:17:23marble a marble around the trampoline
- 00:17:25net the marble will orbit orbit around
- 00:17:28the bowling ball now from a distance
- 00:17:31looking down Newton would say that there
- 00:17:33is a force an instantaneous invisible
- 00:17:36force pulling pulling the marble down to
- 00:17:40the bowling ball but Einstein would say
- 00:17:42there's no Force there's no pull it's
- 00:17:46just a trampoline net and why is the
- 00:17:48marble orbiting around the bowling ball
- 00:17:51because a trampoline net is pushing the
- 00:17:54marble therefore why am I sitting on
- 00:17:56this chair not because gravity pulls you
- 00:17:59to the ground it's because space pushes
- 00:18:01me down toward the planet
- 00:18:04Earth the idea that space itself was
- 00:18:07warped by mass was too strange for many
- 00:18:09to accept an approaching solar eclipse
- 00:18:12gave scientists the perfect opportunity
- 00:18:15to put Einstein's new Theory to the
- 00:18:20test photographs were taken of the
- 00:18:22background Stars before the eclipse and
- 00:18:25then afterwards these pictures were then
- 00:18:28compared with photos taken during the
- 00:18:31eclipse the photo showed that the
- 00:18:33positions of the stars in the eclipse
- 00:18:35photo shifted slightly inward bending as
- 00:18:38the light from the Stars past the sun's
- 00:18:41gravitational
- 00:18:43field Einstein's theory of general
- 00:18:45relativity was
- 00:18:47right his great discovery rocked the
- 00:18:51world general relativity strikes a deep
- 00:18:54emotional cord in anyone who's ever
- 00:18:57looked at these equations
- 00:18:59these equations are one inch long and
- 00:19:01yet they answer these Eternal questions
- 00:19:04that have dogged us ever since we first
- 00:19:06looked in the night sky and ask
- 00:19:08ourselves the question what's it all
- 00:19:19mean general relativity had shown that
- 00:19:22space was weirder than anyone could
- 00:19:24imagine anyone but Einstein that
- 00:19:27is to gain a clearer understanding of
- 00:19:30this strange Universe astronomers needed
- 00:19:32more observational
- 00:19:34data and that required larger more
- 00:19:37powerful
- 00:19:38telescopes like the one that led to our
- 00:19:41next great
- 00:19:45[Music]
- 00:19:46discovery when the hersel had finished
- 00:19:48their survey of the heavens in the 1830s
- 00:19:51they had cataloged thousands of these
- 00:19:53beautiful but hazy objects then called
- 00:19:56White nebuli
- 00:20:01at the time no one knew whether they
- 00:20:03were part of our
- 00:20:06galaxy or distant Island universes like
- 00:20:09the Milky
- 00:20:12[Music]
- 00:20:15Way in
- 00:20:171924 astronomer Edwin Hubble was
- 00:20:20studying the stars in several of these
- 00:20:22nebuli using a 100in reflector telescope
- 00:20:25at the Mount Wilson Observatory in
- 00:20:27California
- 00:20:28[Music]
- 00:20:32the telescope enabled Hubble to estimate
- 00:20:35that the galaxies were routinely many
- 00:20:37hundreds of thousands even millions of
- 00:20:40light years
- 00:20:41away here were objects as huge and as
- 00:20:45populated with stars as our very own
- 00:20:47Milky Way
- 00:20:48galaxy which is why we today call White
- 00:20:51nebuli
- 00:20:53[Music]
- 00:20:55galaxies the more Hubble studied these
- 00:20:58galaxies the more he became intrigued at
- 00:21:01the time scientists knew that a beam of
- 00:21:03light from a star appears as a different
- 00:21:06color on the
- 00:21:08Spectrum the color changed according to
- 00:21:10the motion of the star a shift toward
- 00:21:13the blue end of the spectrum meant the
- 00:21:15star was moving closer to
- 00:21:17Earth a red shift meant it was moving
- 00:21:20away the amount of the color shift also
- 00:21:23revealed the speed of that
- 00:21:26movement Hubble found that when he
- 00:21:28measured the distance of a galaxy its
- 00:21:31Spectrum almost always was shifting to
- 00:21:33the
- 00:21:34red and something else the farther the
- 00:21:38distance the greater the red
- 00:21:41shift in other words the universe was
- 00:21:45expanding it was an astonishing
- 00:21:48Discovery with profound
- 00:21:50implications measuring backwards from
- 00:21:53the expansion scientists found that the
- 00:21:55Universe appeared to have a cataclysmic
- 00:21:57beginning but one astronomer labeled the
- 00:22:00Big
- 00:22:08[Music]
- 00:22:14Bang just 3 years after Hubble
- 00:22:16discovered the expanding Universe our
- 00:22:19next great discovery revealed a
- 00:22:20mysterious object hidden behind the dust
- 00:22:23at the center of the Milky Way and gave
- 00:22:25birth to a whole new branch of astronomy
- 00:22:28using wavelengths invisible to the human
- 00:22:33eye in 1930 Carl jansy was a 25-year-old
- 00:22:38physicist working for the Bell
- 00:22:39Laboratories in Hell New
- 00:22:44Jersey jansky's job was to identify the
- 00:22:47kinds of interference occurring at the
- 00:22:4915 M wavelength then used for ship to
- 00:22:52Shore and transatlantic
- 00:22:55communication after spending more than a
- 00:22:57year recording data jansy decided there
- 00:23:00were three forms of stat inside the
- 00:23:03solar
- 00:23:06system eventually jansy pinpointed its
- 00:23:09location as somewhere in the region of
- 00:23:11the constellation
- 00:23:13Sagittarius he believed he had
- 00:23:15discovered an unknown Interstellar
- 00:23:16object at the center of the
- 00:23:19Galaxy and he was
- 00:23:22right later astronomers confirmed that
- 00:23:25Jans skid discovered a super massive
- 00:23:27black hole equal in Mass to 3 Million
- 00:23:32Suns perhaps even more significant he
- 00:23:36was the first human to look at the
- 00:23:37universe using radio astronomy a whole
- 00:23:40new way to study the
- 00:23:43sky it was a landmark
- 00:23:46Discovery jansky had proved that the sky
- 00:23:49does not merely Sparkle with the gentle
- 00:23:51glow of Starlight hidden out there are
- 00:23:54many strange objects many light years
- 00:23:56away that actually radiate more energy
- 00:23:59than whole galaxies like quazars and
- 00:24:02pulsars dead stars spinning madly with
- 00:24:06masses so dense that a single teaspoon
- 00:24:08would weigh millions of
- 00:24:13tons before astronomers could even begin
- 00:24:16to understand the life and death of
- 00:24:18stars new telescopes would have to be
- 00:24:21built that could look at the sky in many
- 00:24:23different wavelengths before that could
- 00:24:25happen though radio astronomy produced
- 00:24:28another great discovery that although
- 00:24:31predicted was as unexpected by its
- 00:24:33discoverers as jansky had been and once
- 00:24:36again it happened at Bell labs in Hell
- 00:24:39New
- 00:24:42[Music]
- 00:24:48Jersey in 1964 Bell Labs had this spare
- 00:24:5220ft microwave antenna sitting
- 00:24:55dormant rather than destroy it the lab
- 00:24:58decided to let astronomers use it for
- 00:25:01research two physicists 31-year-old Arno
- 00:25:05penus and 28-year-old Robert Wilson
- 00:25:08decided to use the antenna for measuring
- 00:25:11the temperature of the gas Halo
- 00:25:13surrounding the Milky Way
- 00:25:17Galaxy what happened next is one of the
- 00:25:19most exciting discoveries in modern
- 00:25:21[Music]
- 00:25:24astronomy hi Dr Wilson and I came to
- 00:25:28cabs to get the story firsthand from
- 00:25:30Robert Wilson himself two of us Arnold
- 00:25:34penus and I had just come to Bell Labs
- 00:25:37from graduate school and we were going
- 00:25:39to measure radiation from the Milky Way
- 00:25:42and that's where this antenna really fit
- 00:25:44in because we could reject the radiation
- 00:25:47from the earth and what was left is uh
- 00:25:51what's coming from the
- 00:25:54sky we were only getting about 2 de from
- 00:25:57the Earth's atmosphere
- 00:25:59maybe pick up one degree from the walls
- 00:26:01of this thing but when we first turned
- 00:26:03it on it was about twice that it was 7°
- 00:26:08and this just wasn't right something
- 00:26:10from the earth must be in our
- 00:26:13instrumentation we of course are on a
- 00:26:15hill here that overlooks New York City
- 00:26:18we had the ideal instrument for checking
- 00:26:20on that though we merely turn it down to
- 00:26:22the Horizon scan the Horizon and bl and
- 00:26:26behold nothing particular extra
- 00:26:30there was a pair of pigeons that lived
- 00:26:32in here and of course it was covered
- 00:26:34with white pigeon droppings so we
- 00:26:37thought well maybe the pigeon droppings
- 00:26:38are doing more than we think AR and I
- 00:26:42got up in here and we cleaned all the
- 00:26:44pigeon droppings
- 00:26:46out got rid of the pigeons what happen
- 00:26:49how'd you get rid of the pigeons well
- 00:26:50first we put them in the company mail
- 00:26:52and sent them as far as we could which
- 00:26:54was riny New Jersey uh to a pigeon
- 00:26:56fancier there who said these are junk
- 00:26:58pigeons and let them go a couple of days
- 00:27:00later they were Back 40 miles away they
- 00:27:03came back yes so then our technician
- 00:27:05brought in a shotgun and then how did
- 00:27:08that
- 00:27:09work I wasn't here I didn't see it but
- 00:27:12basically it didn't didn't solve our
- 00:27:14problem we still had an extra three four
- 00:27:19degrees we were really beginning to be
- 00:27:21perplexed because you know we believe in
- 00:27:23physics it's coming from somewhere we
- 00:27:26can calculate what the horn is doing
- 00:27:28except for this excess
- 00:27:32noise at the time that penus and Wilson
- 00:27:35detected the radiostatic there were two
- 00:27:38competing theories about the origin of
- 00:27:40the universe there was the Big Bang
- 00:27:42Theory which hubbles expanding Universe
- 00:27:45supported and there was the steady state
- 00:27:48Theory which proposed that the universe
- 00:27:50is timeless with no beginning or end
- 00:27:53expanding forever
- 00:27:56[Music]
- 00:27:58when a friend heard what penus and
- 00:28:00Wilson had found he suggested they get
- 00:28:02in touch with some cosmologists at
- 00:28:05Princeton University who were Advocates
- 00:28:07of The Big Bang Theory they believ that
- 00:28:09a big bang would have left a faint
- 00:28:11thermal Afterglow in the universe traces
- 00:28:14of heat from the Roar of the bang itself
- 00:28:16detectable across the entire
- 00:28:20sky and they were about to conduct
- 00:28:22research in hopes of measuring that
- 00:28:26Afterglow we invited the them over they
- 00:28:29came over and looked at what we had done
- 00:28:31and immediately agreed that we had
- 00:28:33measured what they were setting out to
- 00:28:35do so what does your Discovery mean well
- 00:28:38it means that we live in a big bang
- 00:28:41universe and uh that we're seeing the
- 00:28:43radiation from 300,000 years after the
- 00:28:46big bang in many cases when there's a
- 00:28:48paradigm ship in science it takes a
- 00:28:50generation before people really accept
- 00:28:52it but in this case I think the world
- 00:28:55was ready for it Human Society is always
- 00:28:58worried about where they came from they
- 00:29:01their religious stories in every
- 00:29:03civilization that's ever been found and
- 00:29:05I think we have a definitive answer that
- 00:29:08we came out of a big
- 00:29:15[Music]
- 00:29:19bang the coming of the Space Age ushered
- 00:29:22in a golden age of astronomy that is
- 00:29:25still going on today that golden age
- 00:29:28began strangely enough not in space but
- 00:29:31with a turning point in Cold War
- 00:29:33relations that also contributed to our
- 00:29:36next great
- 00:29:39discovery in the 1960s despite a nuclear
- 00:29:43test B treaty the Soviet Union refused
- 00:29:46to allow on-site inspectors at its
- 00:29:48nuclear
- 00:29:50facilities as a result the US opted to
- 00:29:53monitor the Soviets by developing an
- 00:29:55orbital satellite system capable of
- 00:29:58detecting gamma ray bursts produced by
- 00:30:00nuclear
- 00:30:02[Music]
- 00:30:04explosions because the satellites
- 00:30:06detectors looked up as well as down
- 00:30:09scientists decided to use them to see if
- 00:30:11supern noi produced gamma rays when they
- 00:30:17exploded between 1969 and
- 00:30:201972 they detected evidence of 16 short
- 00:30:23gamma ray bursts scattered across the
- 00:30:26sky there was just one problem none of
- 00:30:29the bursts correlated with any of the
- 00:30:31known Supernova
- 00:30:34events and the Mystery deepened over the
- 00:30:38next two decades astronomers detected an
- 00:30:40average of one gamma ray burst a day but
- 00:30:44each burst happened so quickly that it
- 00:30:46was over before astronomers could get a
- 00:30:48telescope aimed at
- 00:30:51it of other gamma ray bursts have been
- 00:30:54similarly documented all just as
- 00:30:56powerful and far away
- 00:31:00as for what it all means the discovery
- 00:31:02of gamma ray bursts have once again
- 00:31:04shown us that hidden out there behind
- 00:31:07the veil of the Earth's atmosphere are
- 00:31:10objects that are not only strange and
- 00:31:12hard to Fathom black holes pulsars
- 00:31:16quazars but they're lethal
- 00:31:18too gamma ray bursts are now considered
- 00:31:21a possible cause of past Extinction
- 00:31:23events on Earth
- 00:31:28the scientist Sir Arthur Edington once
- 00:31:31noted not only is the universe Stranger
- 00:31:33than we imagin it is Stranger than we
- 00:31:36can imagine he could have been talking
- 00:31:38about gamma ray bursts the expanding
- 00:31:40universe or the theory of general
- 00:31:43relativity it also happens to be a
- 00:31:45perfect description of our next
- 00:31:49[Music]
- 00:31:56Discovery once it would have been a
- 00:31:58impossible for astronomers to imagine
- 00:32:00discovering other solar systems with
- 00:32:02planets like our
- 00:32:04own but today astronomers can imagine
- 00:32:07thanks to powerful space and groundbased
- 00:32:09telescopes like the one here at the Lick
- 00:32:11Observatory in Mount Hamilton California
- 00:32:14where Jeff Marcy is hunting for new
- 00:32:16planets how do you go about finding a
- 00:32:19planet around a star well it's very easy
- 00:32:21we watch the star to see if it wobbles
- 00:32:24in response to the planet yanking on it
- 00:32:26gravitationally very easy EAS very easy
- 00:32:30oh you just need one of these that's
- 00:32:32right this is the 3M Lick Observatory
- 00:32:38telescope by definition planets don't
- 00:32:41produce their own energy they shine of
- 00:32:42course by reflected light but planets
- 00:32:44are about a billionth as bright as their
- 00:32:47host star so you can't really see them
- 00:32:49even with the Hubble you need a trick
- 00:32:51and that's what we use with this
- 00:32:52telescope a trick the Doppler effect is
- 00:32:55our trick we measure the wobble of a
- 00:32:57star
- 00:32:58by the changing light waves that come
- 00:33:00from the Star as the star
- 00:33:03wobbles the search for extraterrestrial
- 00:33:05planetary systems gain momentum in the
- 00:33:08early 1990s when a Polish astronomer
- 00:33:10made a surprising discovery there's a
- 00:33:14wonderful Discovery by Alex volchan of a
- 00:33:17system of three planets orbiting a
- 00:33:19pulsar and the way he found him was
- 00:33:21quite exciting he watches the pulses
- 00:33:24coming from the pulsar and the arrival
- 00:33:26of those pulses changes as the Pulsar
- 00:33:28approaches and recedes us these are
- 00:33:31hideous stars pulsars have ultraviolet
- 00:33:34X-rays and gamma rays coming off them
- 00:33:36they're the bizarre end products of a
- 00:33:39supernova explosion and despite that
- 00:33:41bizarre environment here we have
- 00:33:43earth-sized planets going around if
- 00:33:45there are earth-sized planets around
- 00:33:47pulsars you can bet there are
- 00:33:48earth-sized planets around other stars
- 00:33:51there are earth-sized planets around
- 00:33:52Paul stars earth-sized and even
- 00:33:54moon-sized among the three he detected
- 00:33:56those detected them by this wobble of
- 00:33:59the Pulsar well that's just the coolest
- 00:34:01thing in the world it's unbelievable
- 00:34:03since Von's Discovery Marcy and other
- 00:34:05astronomers have found more than 130
- 00:34:08extra solar planets we thought we would
- 00:34:11never find even one planet and we have
- 00:34:13found the world's only triple Planet
- 00:34:15system and quadruple Planet system with
- 00:34:17this telescope oh my so these are these
- 00:34:19are Big Planets though these are planets
- 00:34:22the size of our Jupiter Saturn and the
- 00:34:24smallest are Neptune sized yeah little
- 00:34:27Neptune so it's quite exciting we're
- 00:34:29finding planets of Jupiter size but even
- 00:34:31those a few times bigger than the earth
- 00:34:34while no earthlike planets have yet been
- 00:34:36found the search continues how do you
- 00:34:39pick a
- 00:34:41star as a candidate we indeed try to
- 00:34:44choose stars that are more or less like
- 00:34:46our son some more massive some less
- 00:34:49massive but sort of middle-aged or older
- 00:34:51so they've settle
- 00:34:53down what you want from an earthlike
- 00:34:56planet to make it habitable is the
- 00:34:58temperature has to be just right not so
- 00:35:00cold that the water's locked up into ice
- 00:35:02not so hot that the water's evaporated
- 00:35:05into steam but a planet just the right
- 00:35:07distance from its star so that the
- 00:35:09temperature is just right for liquid
- 00:35:12water over billions of years to let
- 00:35:14darwinian Evolution do its thing sounds
- 00:35:16like Goldilocks and her porridge that's
- 00:35:18right you don't want it to be too hot or
- 00:35:20too cold but suppose you had a telescope
- 00:35:23a gizmo a device sensitive enough to
- 00:35:26find an earth plan mhm would you point
- 00:35:29it at some of the Stars you've already
- 00:35:31identified as having plets absolutely
- 00:35:33the Jupiters and the Saturns we're
- 00:35:35finding are the the signposts the
- 00:35:37benchmarks of systems that might Harbor
- 00:35:39Earths and especially if there's a
- 00:35:41Jupiter far enough from the host star
- 00:35:44that leaves room for an earth in the
- 00:35:46habitable zone to be orbiting that
- 00:35:50star what made you go looking for
- 00:35:53planets on other stars well I remember
- 00:35:56when I was a young kid did I thought to
- 00:35:58myself I wonder if there are other
- 00:36:00Earths out there and if so are any of
- 00:36:02them habitable and then is there life on
- 00:36:04those planets and in particular
- 00:36:06intelligent life we humans I think in
- 00:36:08general would love to know are we alone
- 00:36:10in the universe are there other planets
- 00:36:12like Earth habitable planets are there
- 00:36:14other creatures out there that think and
- 00:36:16dream and indeed are searching for us in
- 00:36:19the end I think we humans are trying to
- 00:36:21find Our Roots out there chemically and
- 00:36:24biologically Among the Stars
- 00:36:28[Music]
- 00:36:33as the universe expanded following the
- 00:36:35Big Bang logic dictated that the
- 00:36:37gravitational attraction of all matter
- 00:36:39should pull at that expanding material
- 00:36:41and cause the expansion to slow but how
- 00:36:44much was the universe slowing down in
- 00:36:46the 1990s the Hubble Space Telescope
- 00:36:49made it possible for teams of scientists
- 00:36:51to answer the question by studying the
- 00:36:53brightness of light from a special type
- 00:36:55of exploding star called a type 1 a
- 00:36:59supernova I paid a visit to the Lawrence
- 00:37:02Berkeley National Laboratory in San
- 00:37:04Francisco and met with astrophysicist
- 00:37:06Saul Pearl who headed up the Supernova
- 00:37:09cosmology
- 00:37:11project so what did you find out so we
- 00:37:15started to make a measurement to try to
- 00:37:17find out how much the universe in its
- 00:37:20expansion is slowing down when we first
- 00:37:23saw the data you you say well that's
- 00:37:25that's kind of funny it kind of looks as
- 00:37:26if the universe isn't isn't slowing down
- 00:37:28um but youum well but you know we're
- 00:37:30also right in the midst of doing all
- 00:37:31these checks and and calibrations and
- 00:37:33confirmations and I'm sure once we um
- 00:37:35get all the numbers you know checked out
- 00:37:37and figured out that the effect will go
- 00:37:38away change of sign somewhere that we
- 00:37:40have to fix there's a minus sign yeah
- 00:37:42right you know say is trivial that you
- 00:37:44check each step of the of the process
- 00:37:46and little by little um you get to the
- 00:37:47point where you start realizing you know
- 00:37:49this effect isn't going away this is the
- 00:37:51right answer it really looks like the
- 00:37:52universe is actually speeding up so why
- 00:37:54is this so important this acceleration
- 00:37:57of the universe doesn't fit at all we
- 00:38:01understand pretty well what all the
- 00:38:02forces are in the universe and what all
- 00:38:04the objects are in the universe and this
- 00:38:06is one of the first times that we've
- 00:38:08come across something that we wouldn't
- 00:38:09have predicted now we're having the fun
- 00:38:10of trying to figure out what does this
- 00:38:12all mean and if you come with me I'll
- 00:38:13show you a little bit about what we're
- 00:38:14doing about
- 00:38:16it why is it accelerating well that's
- 00:38:19the question that has us all dying to
- 00:38:22know the answer and I mean one way to
- 00:38:24think about it is that if you have a
- 00:38:26energy of this sort that would pervade
- 00:38:29all space it can actually speed up the
- 00:38:31universe when gravity is trying to slow
- 00:38:33it down and we're calling that dark
- 00:38:35energy just to reflect the fact that we
- 00:38:36don't know what it is it's a mystery
- 00:38:39it's completely mysterious bizarre we
- 00:38:41have no idea what it is we want to do
- 00:38:43studies to figure out what could dark
- 00:38:44energy be like what we want to do now is
- 00:38:46get data that will help pull apart the
- 00:38:49different answers so where you going to
- 00:38:51get that data the big picture goal that
- 00:38:54we're after is a project that you see
- 00:38:56around you here um which is a satellite
- 00:38:59project the uh design that we have here
- 00:39:01we've called Snap which is short for
- 00:39:03Supernova acceleration probe this would
- 00:39:06be a new Space Telescope with a very
- 00:39:09very big field of view so instead of
- 00:39:11looking through a little Keyhole at the
- 00:39:12universe you'd be looking through a good
- 00:39:13picture window at the
- 00:39:16universe so let me show you what we're
- 00:39:18working on that we think might help us
- 00:39:21get out why the universe is accelerating
- 00:39:23what this dark energy really
- 00:39:26is here we have snap that we're hoping
- 00:39:29to be able to launch not to distant
- 00:39:32future this one goes out to a uh
- 00:39:36location out past the
- 00:39:37Moon from that bage point you can
- 00:39:40measure the expansion history with such
- 00:39:42detail that we could actually see the
- 00:39:44little changes when it goes from
- 00:39:46deceleration to acceleration back when
- 00:39:48the universe was really dense and and
- 00:39:51and uh close together gravity was more
- 00:39:53important and it slowed the expansion
- 00:39:54down as it kept expanding though even
- 00:39:57slower and slower it lost out and
- 00:40:00gradually became less important than the
- 00:40:01dark energy which took over and started
- 00:40:03to accelerate the expansion and we're
- 00:40:05after exactly how that change over
- 00:40:07occurred and that will tell us about
- 00:40:10what different possible theories could
- 00:40:12be right to explain the dark energy
- 00:40:13always expanding but slowly then
- 00:40:16speeding up exactly that's where we are
- 00:40:18now exactly so it's it's this issue of
- 00:40:20did did it slow down and then suddenly
- 00:40:22spurred or did it slow down and you know
- 00:40:24and come to a wobble and then take off
- 00:40:27um you know what was that that
- 00:40:29transition
- 00:40:33like just like the ancient astronomers
- 00:40:36modern scientists have discovered
- 00:40:39something about the cosmos that we
- 00:40:41cannot yet explain it will be up to
- 00:40:43observers and theorists to figure out
- 00:40:45what's going on in our expanding
- 00:40:47Universe for this they'll need new ideas
- 00:40:50and better instruments now whether this
- 00:40:53mystery is solved soon or far in the
- 00:40:56future you can be certain of one thing
- 00:40:58we will keep watching the skies to
- 00:41:01understand our place in the cosmos we
- 00:41:03will continue to
- 00:41:06explore understand and discover
- 00:41:15[Music]
- 00:41:21[Music]
- 00:41:28[Music]
- Astronomy
- Space
- Discoveries
- Copernicus
- Hubble
- Galileo
- Exoplanets
- Dark Energy
- Kepler
- Universe