Astronomy Conversation

By Kelsie Smart
For this paper I decided to go to my sisters house since her and her husband love astronomy. They have a bunch of The Cosmos that theyve recorded on their TV and love learning about the universe. It ended up being my sister Heather, my brother (her husband) TJ, and my good friend Chris. I chose my friend Chris because he is a very intelligent atheist, who I discuss many topics with. The event took place in Heather and TJs basement theater room on a Friday night and lasted around 2 hours. In order for me to prepare for this conversation I went to www.astronomy.com/news. I have come to love this cite and go here for many of the articles we post on Canvas. I found 2 interesting articles: First discovery of an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone and Supermassive black holes dance in a non-active galaxy. After reading the first article I wondered why the planet was considered habitable when its star was a red dwarf. A group member explained that it was more referring to the position of the planet to the star then of what kind of star the planet had. We then found it interesting that it talked about how Mars may have been habitual because it has valleys and crevices made by water on its surface. Next we read the 2nd article about black holes. Someone commented that black holes were made up as just a theory, before they were even discovered! This blew my mind, crazy! It was also mentioned that we have created a black hole here on earth, but it was so tiny that we havent been able to keep it in existence. We also found out that when 2 black holes emerge they will become one big black hole, but this rarely happens because uncommonly are there 2

so close together. This got my wheels turning and I commented that I hope our sun never gets sucked into a black hole or that would be the end of us. These 2 conversations went ok, but didnt quite follow the plan of what I had in mind. I thought I would read the articles and we would all be very interested to comment on the material. Instead the material brought up ideas that had to do with other astronomy topics that led away from what was in the article. The participants and I enjoyed the articles of astronomy at a satisfactory level, but decided it would be even better if we were able to get better visuals on astronomy topics. We then decided to watch the cosmos. As we watched the film, we would take short breaks and discuss the interesting ideas we were hearing and seeing. Here is some of what we learned; Out of all the spacecrafts that we have sent into the universe, Voyager 1 has traveled the furthest. We sent this space craft out in the 60s and it has music playing into the universe that describes the way we felt and thought in that time era. Some of us in the group are still sad to know that Pluto is no longer a planet, when others think we shouldnt have emotional attachments to it. We found out that Rogue planets are molten at the core while frozen at the surface; this is interesting to me that the temperatures on these planets are so extreme. But I guess earth is similar with all our variations of temperatures and weathers. We found out that if we were to send our address to the outermost part of the universe that we know of, then it would go like this: Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Super Cluster, Observable Universe. This is quite and address! In 1599 everyone still believed that we were the center of the universe accept a man named Copernicus who believed we were just another planet revolving around the sun. Then

there was a man named Bruno who had a dream one night that the earth wasnt the center of everything, he awoke and had been enlightened that everything he had seen was true. He traveled around sharing what he had seen with everyone, but no one would believe him. The leaders of the church thought he spoke blaspheme and he was eventually burned at the stake for his beliefs against God. Ironically, 10 years later Galileo with his telescopes and tested theories proved that the earth was not the center of the universe. Next was my most favorite part of the entire astronomy film. It was a calendar that represented the big bang, which was the first second of the first day of January to where we are today, which is the last second of the last day in December. Here are some of the events on the calendar; August 31st our sun is born on, November 9th life on earth begins, Dec 28th the first flower bloomed, the last hour of December 31st humans evolve, the last minute of December 31st we painted our first pictures and we started using astronomy to predict the weather, December 31st - 30 seconds to midnight we invent writing, December 31 st 7 seconds to midnight Moses is on the earth, December 31st 6 seconds to midnight Buddha is here, December 31st 5 seconds to midnight Jesus arrives, and finally on December 31 st all in the last second Galileo is using a telescope and we put the first man on the moon! This was very intriguing to see that since the big bang being the beginning of the calendar, we did not actually start evolving and becoming who we are until the very end of the calendar! This definitely puts things into a perspective in a way that we are not used to seeing. I was most surprised by the fact that we all learned so much more visually in watching a film then we did by reading the articles and discussing them. If I had to do this assignment

again I would not put it off to the last minute and try and get it done earlier so it could be fully enjoyed and I would not have to feel the anxiety of running out of time.

Work Cited
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2014/04/first-discovery-of-an-earth-sized-planet-in-thehabitable-zone http://www.astronomy.com/news/2014/04/a-dance-of-black-holes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8xJJYjOH3k