Study Material for Group C: Grade 10th – 12th

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The course material for Group C is divided into the different topics shown
below. This study material consists of lecture notes, supplementary reading &
different Astronomy Prospect. For the latest updates and Mock questions, Visit our
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India astronomy test on Facebook. Please find below the related topics:

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Why is Earth's core molten?

The Earth's core does, in fact, cool down over time, and eventually it will solidify
completely. Since the Earth's magnetic field (which protects the atmosphere and
biosphere from harmful radiation) is generated by molten iron in the core, the
solidification of the core might seem quite foreboding.

When the Earth formed, it would have been entirely molten due to the release of
gravitational energy; at this time, the Earth became chemically differentiated,
meaning that heavy elements (notably iron, but also scarce species like uranium)
mostly sank to the center to form the core while relatively light elements remained
in the mantle and crust. The energy released by the formation and differentiation of
the Earth is often called primordial heat.

It turns out that, if primordial heat had been all the Earth had to work with, the core
would have completely solidified long ago, which is inconsistent with observation.
As the question suggests, something else must provide additional heat to slow the
solidification of the core; that something so happens to be radioactivity.

As we noted before, heavy elements mostly ended up in the Earth's core. This
means that the core contains most of the Earth's budget of radioactive substances.
As they decay, these atoms release energy as radiogenic heat in the core, which
helps to keep it molten. The timescale for the core to cool and solidify is therefore
related to the half-lives of the species that supply this heat, which range between
700 million and 14 billion years. For comparison, the Earth is currently about 4.57
billion years old, so there is plenty of "fuel" left to maintain a semi-molten core.

In summary, the Earth's core is cooling very, very slowly; some of it has solidified,

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but it will take many billions of years for the rest to follow suit.

Why are Astronomers interested in gravitational waves?

When you look up at the night sky, you see a very particular view of the Universe.
You see electromagnetic radiation, light, at optical wavelengths from objects like
stars. If your eyes could see radio waves, which are another wavelength of light,
they would see a very different picture of the Universe. The sources of radio light
are different than the sources of optical light. Astronomers want to build all
different kinds of telescopes to see the entire spectrum of electromagnetic
radiation.

For almost the entire history of astronomy, we viewed the Universe through an
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electromagnetic window. For many decades, astronomers have been interested in

viewing the Universe through an entirely separate window: a gravitational one.
Unlike electromagnetic waves, gravitational waves are very slight changes in space
time that cause objects to move closer or farther away from one another by

miniscule amounts. They are predicted from Einstein's theory of general relativity,
and so detection provides further evidence in support of the theory. The sources of
gravitational waves are very exotic, the most notable being two compact objects
like neutron stars or black holes in a close orbit. As they orbit around one another,
gravitational waves are emitted from the system. Since energy is leaving the
system, the orbits shrink, until the two objects eventually merge in a violent event.
Observations of gravitational waves will allow us to study the dynamics of these
systems on many different size scales.

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On February 11th, 2016, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory

(LIGO) collaboration announced the detection of gravitational waves from a black
hole binary. This is the first concrete detection of a double black hole system. Both
black holes were the most massive stellar-mass black holes ever detected (over
other candidate objects). They observed the mass of the merged object to be less

than that of the sum, implying that the difference in mass was converted to an
enormous amount of energy that was lost as gravitational waves in the merger
event (as much as 5000 supernovae!). They also measured the spin of the final
black hole, the rate of black hole mergers in the local Universe, and more. So much
new understanding of physics came from a single gravitational wave event.

Ever since, several gravitational wave detections have been reported, most notably
the first event involving the inspiral and merger of two neutron stars in 2017. For
the first time, astrophysicists measured a gravitational-wave event that also had an
electromagnetic counterpart, which was observed by several telescopes on Earth.
Mergers of neutron stars are believed to be among the most energetic events in the
universe, releasing energies that could potentially account for unique physical
conditions where the heaviest elements --such as gold-- would be produced. The
detection of a neutron star binary gave rise rise to an exciting era of multi-
messenger astronomy, which will certainly bring much more exciting knowledge
to us.

What is the universe expanding into?

This is a very good question which is not at all easy to give a satisfactory answer
to! The first time I tried to write an answer to this, we got so many follow-up
questions from people who were still confused that I decided to try to answer it

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again, this time much more comprehensively. The long explanation is below.
However, if you just want a short answer, I'll say this: if the universe is infinitely
big, then the answer is simply that it isn't expanding into anything; instead, what is
happening is that every region of the universe, every distance between every pair
of galaxies, is being "stretched", but the overall size of the universe was infinitely
big to begin with and continues to remain infinitely big as time goes on, so the
universe's size doesn't change, and therefore it doesn't expand into anything. If, on

the other hand, the universe has a finite size, then it may be legitimate to claim that
there is something "outside of the universe" that the universe is expanding into.
However, because we are, by definition, stuck within the space that makes up our
universe and have no way to observe anything outside of it, this ceases to be a
question that can be answered scientifically. So the answer in that case is that we
really don't know what, if anything, the universe is expanding into.

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Comprehensive discussion:

Let begin by saying that "expanding" isn't really the best word to describe what is
happening to the universe, although that is the word that is often used - a word
choice which I think leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion regarding what is
already a difficult topic! A more accurate word for what the universe is doing

might be "stretching".

The difference between "expanding" and "stretching", for me at least, is that an

"expanding universe" conjures up an image where there is a bunch of galaxies
floating through space, all of which started at some center point and are now

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moving away from that point at very fast speeds. Therefore, the collection of
galaxies (which we call the "universe") is expanding, and it is certainly fair to ask
what it is expanding into.

The current theories of the universe, however, tell us that this is not the picture we
should have in mind at all. Instead, the galaxies are in some sense stationary - they
do not move through space the way that a ball moves through the air. The galaxies
simply sit there. However, as time goes on, the space between the galaxies
"stretches", sort of like what happens when you take a sheet of rubber and pull at it
on both ends. Although the galaxies haven't moved through space at all, they get
farther away from each other as time goes on because the space in between them
has been stretched.

Of course, when we think of space in everyday life, we don't think of it as

something which is capable of stretching. Space, to us, just seems like something
which is there, and which everything else in the universe exists within. But
according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, space isn't really as simple as
our common sense tells us. If we want to understand the actual way that the
universe functions, we need to find some way to incorporate Einstein's ideas into
our mental picture and imagine space as a more complicated entity which is
capable of doing things like "bending" and "stretching".

To help us imagine this, a lot of people have come up with analogies for the
universe in which space is represented by something more tangible. For example,
there is the analogy with a sheet of rubber (or sometimes a balloon) that I

mentioned above. My favorite analogy, though, involves imagining the universe as

a gigantic blob of dough. Embedded in the dough are a bunch of raisins, spread
throughout. The dough represents space, and the raisins represent the galaxies. We

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have no idea how big the dough is at this point - all we know is that it is very big,
and we, sitting on some raisin somewhere inside it, are so far away from the "edge"
that the edge can't possibly have any effect on us or on what we see.

Now, someone puts the dough in the oven and it begins to expand. The raisins
move apart from each other, but relative to the dough they don't move at all - the
same particles of dough that start off near a particular raisin will always be next to
that raisin. That is what I meant when I said that the galaxies aren't really moving
through space as the universe expands - here, the raisins aren't moving through the
dough, but the distance between the raisins is still getting larger.

This new picture of the universe which I am asking you to imagine is, on a
practical level, much different from the old picture in which the galaxies are all
moving through space away from some point at the center. A lot of concepts and
definitions that seem simple to us in the old picture are much more complicated
now.

In our new picture of the universe, however, with the raisins and the dough, the
tape measure will not unwind at all as the universe expands, because the galaxies
are not actually moving with respect to each other! Instead, it will read one billion
light-years the whole time. You could be perfectly justified in saying that the
distance between the galaxies has not changed as time goes on. When you bring
the tape measure back in, however, you will notice something unusual; due to the
stretching of space, your tape measure will have stretched as well, and if you
compare it to an identical tape measure which you had sitting in your pocket the
entire time, you will see that all the tick marks on it are twice as far apart as they
used to be. Using the tape measure from your pocket as a reference, you would
now say that the galaxy is two billion light-years away, even though the first tape

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measure said it was one billion light-years away. As you can see, the concept of
"distance" in this new picture of the universe is somewhat more complicated than
in the old picture! It is unclear whether the universe as a whole is really
"expanding" - all that we really measure is a stretching of the space between each
pair of galaxies. (Note that we might have to have an "imaginary" tape measure
whose atoms aren't actually being held together by intermolecular forces in order
for the scenario described above to actually take place as described.)

(By the way, this analogy of the tape measure is pretty similar to what actually
happens to light when it travels between galaxies. When light is emitted from one
galaxy and travels through space to another galaxy, during its trip through space it
also will be stretched, causing it to have a longer wavelength and therefore causing
its color to appear more towards the red end of the spectrum. This is what leads us
to see redshifted light when we look at faraway galaxies, and it is measurements of
this redshift that allow us to estimate the distances to these galaxies.)

Where is the center of the universe?

In the old picture, it is easy to say where the center of the universe is - it's the point
in space that all the galaxies are moving away from. In the new picture, though,
this isn't so clear. Remember, the galaxies aren't actually moving away from each
other - they're sitting still! Let's go back to the dough analogy - sure, you can
imagine that even if the dough is really really big, it has some point within it which
is the geometric center. But this definition is not very useful. Since the dough
represents the space that we live in, we have no way to see "outside" of the dough
to get a sense of the entire shape and figure out where the center is. So if you are
stuck inside the dough, and have no way to see anything except the dough, and if
you are so far from the "edge" of the dough that you can't see it and it can't have
any effect on you, then what difference do you notice between the point where
you're at and the point that is actually at the geometric center of the entire blob of
dough? The answer is that there is no difference, absolutely none. The concept of

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the "center of the universe" loses all meaning, so we don't even think about it.

In fact, we can go a step further and imagine that the center isn't even there at all!
How? Well, what if instead of just being really really big, the dough were infinitely
big - that is, you could walk forever in a straight line and never reach a place where
the dough ends. In that case, there really would be no center of the universe - the
only way you can define the center is to mark out the edges and find the point that's
equally in between all of them. So if the universe is infinitely big and has no edges,
then it also has no center, not even on a theoretical level.

What does the universe expand into?

Finally, we can return to the original question. In our old picture of the universe,
the answer would be simple, although very unsatisfying. The collection of galaxies
that make up the universe is moving through space; therefore, the universe is
expanding into even more space than it already encompassed. In our new picture,
though, the galaxies are just raisins spread throughout the dough - their presence is
largely irrelevant to the question of the universe's expansion. What we really care
about is the dough, and whether or not it has a boundary.

If the dough does have a boundary, then it is legitimate to ask what is beyond the
boundary that the dough expands "into". But for our universe, that is a very
complicated question to ask! The boundary at the edge of the dough represents the
"edge" of space. By definition, we exist within space and have no way to leave it!
So we don't think there is any way to observe or measure what is beyond, unless it
had some effect on us that we currently don't know about. It would be really weird
to imagine reaching the "end" of space. What would it look like, for example?
These are questions that we have no way to give a scientific answer to, so the
simple answer is that we don't know! All we do know is that based on our current

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understanding of theoretical cosmology, the universe does not have a boundary - it

is either infinite or it wraps around itself in some way. Observations seem to agree

with these predictions in the sense that if the universe does have a boundary, we
know that the boundary is so far away from us that we can't currently see it and it
doesn't have any effect on us.

If the universe is indeed infinite, then the simple answer to the original question is
that the universe doesn't have anything to expand into. Thinking about infinity is
always complicated, but a good analogy can be made with simple math. Imagine
you have a list of numbers: 1,2,3,etc., all the way up to infinity. Then you multiply
every number in this list by 2, so that you now have 2,4,6,etc., all the way up to
infinity. The distance between adjacent number in your list has "stretched" (it is
now 2 instead of 1), but can you really say that the total extent of all your numbers
has "expanded"? You started off with numbers that went up to infinity, and you
finished with numbers that went up to infinity. So the total size is the same! If
these numbers represent the distances between galaxies in an infinite universe, then
it is a good analogy for why the universe does not necessarily expand even though
it stretches.

Finally, I should point out that not everything in the universe is "stretching" or
"expanding" in the way that the spaces between faraway galaxies stretch. For
example, you and I aren't expanding, the Earth isn't expanding, the sun isn't
expanding, even the entire Milky Way galaxy isn't expanding. That's because on
these relatively small scales, the effect of the universe's stretching is completely
overwhelmed by other forces (i.e. the galaxy's gravity, the sun's gravity, the Earth's
gravity, and the atomic forces which hold people's bodies together). It is only when
we look across far enough distances in the universe that the effect of the universe's
stretching becomes noticeable above the effects of local gravity and other forces

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which tend to hold things together. (That is why, in the analogy of the tape
measure I discussed above, the tape measure that you keep in your pocket does not
get stretched, while the one that goes between two galaxies does get stretched. I bet
some people were wondering about that!)

DIFFERENT OBJECTS IN SPACE

Binary Stars System

More than four-fifths of the single points of light we observe in the night sky are
actually two or more stars orbiting together. The most common of the multiple star
systems are binary stars. Binary stars are two stars orbiting a common center of
mass. The brighter star is officially classified as the primary star, while the dimmer
of the two is the secondary (classified as A and B respectively). Binary pairs can
be classified based on their orbit. Wide binaries are binary stars that have orbits
that keep them wide apart from one another. These stars evolve separately, with
very little influence from their companions. Close binaries, on the other hand,
evolve nearby, able to transfer their mass from one to the other.

The primary stars of some close binaries consume the material from their
companion, sometimes exerting a gravitational force strong enough to pull the
smaller star in completely.

Black Holes

Black holes are believed to form from massive stars at the end of their lifetimes.
The gravitational pull in a black hole is so great that nothing can escape from it,
not even light. The density of matter in a black hole cannot be measured. Black
holes distort the space around them, and can often engulf neighboring matter into
them including stars. We think of black holes as a 20th century invention, dating
back to 1916, when Albert Einstein first published his theory of general relativity
and fellow physicist Karl Schwarzschild used those equations to visualize a
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spherical section of space-time so badly warped around a concentrated mass that it

is invisible to the outside world. But the true “father” of the black hole concept was
a humble 18th century English rector named John Michell.

Throughout the scientific community, black holes were always considered a

mathematical mystery until 1960 when first neutron stars were discovered. The
black holes can be stationary or rotating.

Types of black holes

Micro Black Holes:

Micro black holes are believed to have formed shortly after the "Big Bang," 13.7
billion years ago. Since universe was very hot at that time, these black holes would
have evaporated. They were introduced by Stephen Hawking in 1971.

Stellar black holes:

Stellar black hole is formed when a massive star collapses. Their masses range
from five to a hundred solar masses and can be observed as either a gamma ray
burst or a hypernova explosion. These types of black holes are also called
collapsars.

Supermassive black holes:

Super massive black holes can have a mass equivalent to billions of suns, likely
exist in the centers of mostly large galaxies, including our own galaxy, the Milky
Way. We don't know exactly how supermassive black holes form, but it's likely
that they're a byproduct of galaxy formation. Because of their location in the
centers of galaxies, close to many tightly packed stars and gas clouds,

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supermassive black holes continue to grow on a steady diet of matter. The black
hole at the center of our galaxy is Sagittarius A.

Ultramassive black holes:

Ultramassive black holes are even bigger and massive black holes destroying their
host galaxies. These black holes are recently discovered, are as far away as 3.5

billion light years from Earth. The ultramassive black holes are growing faster than
the stars in their respective galaxies.

Parts of a black hole:

A black hole has following parts:

1) Singularity – It is the innermost part which is the eye (or center) of the black
hole. It is where the gravity is the strongest.

2) Event Horizon - The event horizon which is a black hole’s defining feature. This
is the boundary where matter and electromagnetic radiation can only pass into the
mass of the black hole and can no longer escape. In a stationary black hole, event
horizon has two parts- inner and outer event horizon. The Inner Event Horizon is
the middle layer. This layer's gravity is strong. If it captures you, then you can't
escape. It would push you toward the center of a black hole where the gravity is
very strong. The Outer Event Horizon is the very outer layer. You would still be
able to escape from a black hole's gravity because the gravity on this layer is not as
strong as the inner layer but if and only if you would be able to travel at the speed
greater than the speed of light.

3) Ergosphere – The structure of a rotating black hole is a bit different from that of
a stationary black hole. There is an additional zone called the ergosphere. The

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ergosphere is an ellipsoidal region located just outside the event horizon of a black
hole. Objects here can no longer remain stationary in space. Since the ergosphere is
outside the event horizon, it is still possible for objects that enter that region with
sufficient velocity to escape from the gravitational pull of the black hole. An object
can gain energy by entering the black hole's rotation and then escaping from it,
thus taking some of the black hole's energy with it.

4) Photonsphere - A photon sphere is a spherical region of space where gravity is

strong enough that photons are forced to travel in circular orbits. Photons orbit the

black hole at the distance of the photon sphere. An interesting thing about this
layer is that you can actually see the back of your head here.

5) Accretion Disk - An accretion disk is the outermost part of a black hole which
forms around the black hole consisting of matter that forms a cloud around the
black hole. Matter in the disk gradually falls into the black hole and the accretion
disk is visible as long as the black hole has a continuous source of matter.

Neutron Stars

Neutron stars are formed when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses. The
core of a star collapses, crushing together every proton and electron into a neutron.
If the core of the collapsing star is between about 1 and 3 solar masses, these
newly-created neutrons can stop the collapse, leaving behind a neutron star.
Neutron stars are the densest object known in the universe, One sugar cube of
neutron star material would weigh about 1 trillion kilograms on Earth – about as
much as a mountain.

Pulsars

The word pulsar is a combination of "pulse" and "star," pulsars are not pulsating
stars. Pulsars are spherical, compact objects that are about the size of a large city

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but more massive than the sun, were discovered in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars observed to have pulses of radiation at very
regular intervals that typically range from milliseconds to seconds. Pulsars have
very strong magnetic fields which emit jets of particles and light out along the two
magnetic poles. When the star rotates these particle beam reach our eyes on
different intervals. One way to think of a pulsar is like a lighthouse. At night, a
lighthouse emits a beam of light that sweeps across the sky. Even though the light
is constantly shining, you only see the beam when it is pointing directly in your
direction.

Magnetars
A magnetar(or a magnetic star) is a neutron star with an ultra-strong magnetic
field. The magnetic field is of 108 to 1011 tesla, which is a quadrillion times
stronger than the Earth’s, and between 100 and 1,000 times stronger than that of a
pulsar, making them the most magnetic objects known in the universe. In a
magnetar, with its huge magnetic field, very fast spining cause the neutron star to
release a vast amount of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. A
magnetar called SGR 1806-20 had a burst where in one-tenth of a second it
released more energy than the sun has emitted in the last 100,000 years! The active
life of a magnetar is short. Their strong magnetic fields decay after about 10,000
years, after which activity and strong emissions cease.

Quasars

The word quasar is short for "quasi-stellar radio source". This name, which means
star-like emitters of radio waves, was given in the 1960s when quasars were first
detected. A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus. Mostly, large
galaxies contain a supermassive central black hole. The black hole is surrounded

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by a gaseous accretion disk. As gas in the accretion disk falls toward the black
hole, energy is released in the form of electromagnetic radiation and makes black
hole more luminous. Many astronomers believe that quasars are the most distant
objects yet detected in the universe.

Blazars

When the galaxy is oriented so that the jets of energy exiting the black hole are
pointed toward Earth, the observations become even more dramatic. These objects
are called blazars. It's the same thing as a quasar, just pointed at a different angle.
Blazars are located at the centers of elliptical galaxies and observed to be sources
of high-energy gamma rays. In July 2018, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
announced that they have traced a neutrino back that hit their Antarctica-based

detector in September 2017, to its point of origin in a blazar 3.7 billion light-years
away. This is the first time that a neutrino detector has been used to locate an
object in space.

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