Shawlee Evans

Phys-1040
Trina Van Ausdal
April 14, 2016

Astronomy Conversation
My class assignment we had to pick three or more friends or family to
have a conversation about astronomy. We had the conversation at my house
before dinner I invited over my husband parents to come over for dinner. I
told them to come over earlier than dinner was done so that we could have
this conversation. My husbands younger brother came along that is also is in
college and has taken the same class that I am in so this helped get ideas
rolling in the conversation, as well as keeping it on track. My husband loves
astronomy and physics and has a very good understanding of it, his brother
has a good background from taking the course already and I wanted to join
in his parents to see what their opinions are about the topics.
Before they came over for dinner I researched some topics that I
wanted to talk about in my discussion. I found some articles to refer too and
videos for them to watch. I got everything ready on my laptop that I would
need. They arrived early as planned and got them sat down in the living
room and started having every day conversation. Then I asked everyone how
big they thought the universe is? Which is my first topic: The scale of the
Universe.

The universe is truly amazing and mind blowing and is unimaginable

the scale of the universe. Humans get so caught up in their everyday lives
and feel so big and invisible to the world but when we take a moment and
look up and realize what is going on around us instead of getting tangled up
in our little material lives, its extraordinary how tiny we are when you take in
comparison us to our little rock we live on and how small we are compared to
our Sun which the sun is 864,400 miles across which in comparison is 109
times the diameter of Earth. The Sun is so large that about 1,300,000 planet
Earths can fit inside of it. Then take to diameter of our whole solar system,
which to us is very large. Though keep going out farther in space and things
get unrealistic how large things are.
The Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years across which in
comparison one light year is about 60,000 AU (astronomical unit) which 1 AU
is the distance from here to the sun 93,000,000 miles. The closest galaxy
from our Milky Way Galaxy is 2.5million light years away. The Andromeda
Galaxy has about a trillion stars in its galaxy which is quite bigger than our
galaxy the Milky Way galaxy has about 200 to 400 billion stars. Then we
have our local super cluster which is the Virgo Super Cluster.
The Virgo super cluster is about 150 million light years across. Then we
go to the super clusters that are near us which stretches out over a billion
light years across which contains millions of galaxies and trillions upon
trillions and trillions of stars. As of right now our observable universe which is
13.8 billion light years across. This is where we get the age of our universe

because thats as far into the universe we can see. With the best estimates
we think there are one hundred billion galaxies in our known universe. If you
hold up one grain of sand in the sky the amount of area it takes up contains
10,000 galaxies. It is truly extraordinary the scale of our universe and it is
really hard for many people to understand that scale of the universe as well
as many physics that have figured this out with math it is truly amazing and
got everyone excited talking about the scale of the universe.
Going over these numbers with my family was an eye opener for my
husbands parents they have heard my husband talk about it multiple times
but I think that having all of us sit down and actually talk about it as a family
and having us have an actual conversation about these things made them
realize a lot and on the grand scam of things how tiny our little world is and
how much more there really is beyond our tiny rock we call home. The scale
of the universe is hard to imagine and is unfathomable but it is so
extraordinary knowing what we know about our universe. Going on to our
next topic how will our universe end the big crunch or infinite expansion?
Me and my husband started talking about how right now the universe
is expanding out faster and faster and everything is moving away from us
this comes to the theory that the universe will just keep expanding into
infinite darkness and at one point everything will be so far away from
everything else that we wont be able to see anything around us just dark
empty skies. My husbands brother thinks this is how the universe will end.
Though on the flip side my husband and I started talking about black holes.

Black holes form when the center of a massive star collapses upon
itself. The collapse of massive stars causes a supernova, neutron stars
usually turn into a black hole. A black hole is a region in space that gravity is
such a strong force that no light or matter can escape its gravitation pull.
The strong gravity force is because matter has been pressed into a tiny
space and literally pierces a whole through space. Super massive black holes
are at the center of galaxies. The event horizon of a black hole is the edge
around the black hole. Its gravity sucks light and matter in at the speed of
light and to escape the black hole it would have to exceed the speed of light
which at this point there is nothing faster than the speed of light. Once you
pass the event horizon there is no turning back and get sucked into its
gravity. My husband and I think that the universe will end up in the big
crunch.
Talking about this we think that once all the stars have died and all that
is left are black holes that these black holes will just keep consuming matter
and space and collide with each other until there is so much gravitation force
being sucked in to all of these black holes that under so much pressure all
the matter has to go somewhere and it explodes again into the big bang and
a new universe is born. I hope that the universe at the end of its life will be a
big crunch and create a new universe because it is a little depressing to think
that the universe will just keep expanding to infinite darkness with nothing
around but just empty space. Everyone after our conversation about this

topic agrees that they hope the universe will be a big crunch in the end
creating a big bang again.
Astronomy and physics is what humans have been studying for many
years now trying to explain where we came from and the origin of the
universe and to explain why things happen around us what is out there in
space. All of us feel like just in the past one hundred years we have learned
so much about the universe and our knowledge keeps expanding with
technology expansion and development. We are so excited to see what we
will figure out and what new theories will come about with our technology
break through. I am so excited for the James Webb telescope to see what we
discover from that telescope.
After having our conversation I feel like we all learned a little bit more
from each other, I was surprised to find out what my husbands parents ideas
are about the universe and I think that they will not take life for granite as
much and kind of get a bigger perception on what Is going on in the
universe. Though I wish I would have had more time to study deeper into the
topics I wanted to talk about and If I could have done something differently I
would have researched more. I feel that my husbands parent have learned
a lot from us and opened there eyes a little more to what is going on around
them and to the universe instead of being so closed minded about it and
really I feel a lot of people take for granite life and how we have become and
how everything around us and all the matter that makes us came from inside

stars and I think it is just extraordinary to study the universe it helps us

understand who we are and what we are.

References

California Institute of Technology

Coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu

Milky Way Galaxy, The cosmic Distance scale- NASA

Imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/milkyway_info.html

NASA- What is a Black Hole?

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-isa-black-hole-58.html

How do we know how many galaxies are in our universe? IOP institute of
physics
Physics.org