In 1998 The Accelerating expansion of the Universe was discovered by two competing groups of scientists called the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team that were led by Saul Perlmutter, Adam Reiss, and Brian Schmidt. And In 2011 they were awarded noble prizes in physics for their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe. They did so by applying new technologies like computers and digital cameras to study and measure the spectrum and brightness of the light from other galaxies. The discovery proved the possible existence of a repulsive gravity force called dark energy that is responsible for accelerating the expansion of space. It challenged the previous assumptions of physicists whom believed that the expansion of the universe should be slowing down and it would eventually stop expanding or start contracting again because the attractive force of gravity. It also led to a change in the understanding of the workings of the universe. The discovery made by the two groups of scientists working and competing with each other has greatly added to the understanding of the workings of the universe and of how it began.
In 1912 the astronomer Vesto Slipher who studied the light spectrum of objects in space that first noticed the redness of other galaxies as they appeared the skies. Some years later in 1929 Carl Hubble discovered that the other galaxies are moving away from us. While studying the light from Type 1a supernova explosions he observed a Doppler effect in the light from the supernova the farther away the redder the light that he observed. A Type 1a supernova is a binary star system where a white dwarf star absorbs the gas of the other one and thermonuclear explosion when it get...
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The study of supernova led to discovery of the expanding and accelerating universe and proved the existence of the dark energy that dominates the vacuum of space. The discovery has been a benefit to humanity because it is a significant contribution to our understanding of the workings and origins of the universe we live in. for the by increasing. This knowledge could lead to many more discoveries and expand our knowledge even further. It displays the value of service because of the effects it has on humanity brought us closer understanding who we are and where we come from.
Works Cited
Kruesi, Liz. "Three Cosmologists Win The 2011 Nobel Prize In Physics." Astronomy 40.1 (2012): 19. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Dan, Vergano. "Astronomer sees a 'brake' in cosmic expansion." USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.
Two men named Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis has a debate in 1920 that is still important today for changing how we think about galaxies. They talked about five important things. The first thing they debated was how big our galaxy, the Milky Way, is. Shapley said that the Milky Way was much bigger than we first thought, 100,000 light-years across, and that, because it was that big, it had to be the only one. Curtis said the the Milky Way was smaller than that, and that other galaxies existed past ours. They were both right and both wrong. Shapley was right about the size of the Milky Way, and Curtis was right about there being many more galaxies in the universe.
The Big Bang theory is a theory that states that the universe originated as a single mass, which subsequently exploded. The entire universe was once all in a hot and dense ball, but about 20 million years ago, it exploded. This explosion hurled material all over the place and all mater and space was created at that point in time. The gas that was hurled out cooled and became our stellar system. A red shift is a shift towards longer wavelengths of celestial objects. An example of this is the "Doppler shift." Doppler shift is what makes a car sound lower-pitched as it moves further away. As it turns out, a special version of this everyday life effect applies to light as well. If an astronomical object is moving away from the Earth, its light will be shifted to longer (red) wavelengths. This is significant because this theory indicates the speed of recession of galaxies and the distances between galaxies.
The answer to this last question is the expansion of the universe. According to this theory the subject moves away from us, which makes the light that comes to us has become a long wavelength. This means that our eyes can not see, but which can be detected by other physical instruments that identify it as the famous cosmic background
Hubble, Edwin. 1929, "A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Volume 15, Issue 3, pp. 168-173
Sagan, Carl (January 5, 1995). An Interview with Carl Sagan. (Interview).Charlie Rose. PBS. New York.
In November of 1919, at the age of 40, Albert Einstein became an overnight celebrity, thanks to a solar eclipse. An experiment had confirmed that light rays from distant stars were deflected by the gravity of the sun in just the amount he had predicted in his theory of gravity, General Relativity. General Relativity was the first major new theory of gravity since Isaac Newton's, more than two hundred and fifty years earlier.
Overbye, D. (2014, March 17). Space Ripples Reveal Big Bang’s Smoking Gun.The New York Times. Retrieved March 21, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/science/space/detection-of-waves-in-space-buttresses-landmark-theory-of-big-bang.html?_r=0
Tate, Karl. "Cosmic Microwave Background: Big Bang Relic Explained (Infographic)." Space.com. TechMedia Network, 3 Apr. 2013. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
Waller, William H. The Milky Way: An Insider's Guide. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 2013. 42+. Print.
By 1936, astronomers had realized that the hazy balls they sometimes saw in their telescopes, which looked like stars obscured by gas, were actually galaxies (Hibbison).
Linde, Andrei, Dmitri Linde, and Arthur Mezhlumian. "From the Big Bang theory to the theory
The first person to ever observe the Milky Way was Greek philosopher, Democritus, who said the galaxy may consist of distant stars. In 1610, Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that it was composed of billions and billions of faint stars. Then, in 1750, Thomas Wright c...
An American astronomer named Edwin Hubble showed the world that our galaxy is not the only galaxy out there. He calculated the distances to nine different galaxies. The Doppler Effect was established which is the relationship between wavelength and speed. Hubble observed other galaxies and their spectra. The discovery that the universe is expanding was the greatest revolution of the twentieth century. Additionally, Einstein introduced an antigravity force that said that space time had a bu...
Cosmology is the research of the history and development of the universe. The universe is ever expanding and humanity may never discover all it’s secrets. Cosmology has, however helped us understand a lot more about how the universe is the way it is now. There are many tools and instruments used in cosmology, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. This essay will discuss how the Space Hubble Telescope works, and which parts play which role in discovering news things about the universe and space. The physics and workings of the tools inside this instrument will be explained. What this space telescope helps us discover about the universe and the reliability of that found knowledge will also be discussed and assessed.
Two galaxies which are believed to revolve around our own are the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. Only visible from the Southern Hemisphere, Magellan, the famous European explorer, was the first to describe these galaxies. Even though we know a great amount more than the astronomers in the past, there is still an even larger amount we do not know about the universe to this day. Even our own solar system contains many questions yet to be answered. Some of these include the possibility of a planet beyond Pluto (Planet X), the means by which the system was created, and even the possibility of a sister star to the Sun named Nemesis.