Unit Two: Lab Questions

Is our universe the only universe?

Explain the concept behind the multiverse.
-The multiverse is a hypothetical group of multiple universes. Together, these universes
comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information,
and the physical laws and constants that describe them.
What did astronomer Edwin Hubble discover in 1929?
- Hubble's brilliant observation was that the red shift of galaxies was directly proportional
to the distance of the galaxy from earth. That meant that things farther away from Earth
were moving away faster. In other words, the universe must be expanding. He
announced his finding in 1929.
Explain what the two teams of astronomers found in the 1990s.
What question did their discovery create?
- There were many discoveries in the 1990's, one of them was carried out by two
independent research teams: the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z
Supernova Search (This discovery made them win the Nobel Prize in Physics).
 Until that moment, the astronomers, including these two teams mentioned before,
believed that the expansion of the universe was slowing down, but  in their search of
supernovas to measure this expansion over time, they discovered that they were wrong:
The expansion of the universe was accelerating. But this created another question: 
What force is driving this behavior in the universe?
What is the mystery Greene discussing and why does he say it is
something we should all care about?
- The mystery that Greene discusses is that dark energy is causing the expansion of the
universe to accelerate.
Describe String Theory. What is the central idea behind it?
- That every subatomic particle is made of little vibrating strings and the way they
vibrate determines what kind of particle is created.
Greene explains that though the Big Bang theory explains how the
universe evolved, it fails to explain what actually powered the Bang.
How does Greene say the Big Bang was powered and based on this
theory, discuss what this means regarding the possible existence of
other universes?
- Greene says that the Big Bang was fueled by an explosion, called inflation. Since this
fuel is very efficient, it could have powered not only our Universe but also other parallel
Universes, with different characteristics from ours. A forever expanding Universe will
lead to galaxies so far away from each other not to be visible anymore because the light
departing from them could not reach us anymore. Therefore, in the future, the sky could
be totally black, and future astronomers could believe that the Universe is nothing else
than the planet they live in.

What Does An Expanding Universe Really Mean? 

Discuss why the article says the fact that we’re in our universe
complicates our understanding of the expansion of the universe.
- The problem of living in our Universe is that we can only see it from inside and we
cannot have the big picture of how things work, we can only see things that are inside
our observational limits.
Explain the significance behind the universe having a flat geometry.
- A flat geometry means that if you draw a triangle the sum of the angles is always 180°,
exactly like in the Euclidean plane. Also, that two parallel lines remain parallel forever,
therefore light travels in a straight line.
Discuss how gravity impacts how galaxies behave when they get
close to one another.
- Gravity is an attractive force, therefore a galaxy can be redirected from its original
direction when passing close to another galaxy. In some cases, the two galaxies start
rotating around each other and at the end they merge, forming a new galaxy.