Chapter 01

Science and the Universe

Doc Harris
The Scale of the Universe
Hint: It’s big

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Solar System Scale
• If the sun were the size of a basketball, how far away would Earth be?

• A – 2 feet
• B – 6 feet
• C – 20 feet
• D – 80 feet

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Solar System Scale
• If the sun were the size of a basketball, how far away would Earth be?

• A – 2 feet
• B – 6 feet
• C – 20 feet
• D – 80 feet

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Abut how far away is Jupiter?

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Where do you think the next closest star
would be?

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Where do you think the next closest star
would be?
• Siberia, Brazil, or Ireland, depending on which way you go.
• Also, it’s kinda crazy that all those places are equidistant from here….

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Size of the Galaxy!
• If we made another model, one in which the distance between the
sun and Alpha Centauri was 1 cm apart, how big would the Milky Way
galaxy be? The galaxy is 100,000 light years across, and Alpha
Centauri is 4.4 light years away.

• A. The size of a table

• B. The size of this room
• C. The size of this building
• D. The size of a football field

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Size of the Galaxy!
• If we made another model, one in which the distance between the
sun and Alpha Centauri was 1 cm apart, how big would the Milky Way
galaxy be? The galaxy is 100,000 light years across, and Alpha
Centauri is 4.4 light years away.

• A. The size of a table

• B. The size of this room
• C. The size of this building
• D. The size of a football field
• E. Two and a half football fields, actually!
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Scientific Notation, for obvious reasons
• You must know/learn this.
• Textbook, Section 1.4
• Basics: Move the decimal to the right a number of times equal to the
exponent. Attach zeroes where you need to.

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There are approximately 7.75 x 109 people on
Earth. This is the same as:

• A – 775,109
• B – 828
• C – 7,750,000,000
• D – 77,500,000,000

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The National Debt is $19 Trillion $23 Trillion
$27 Trillion $31 Trillion. This is the same as:
• A – $31x109
• B – $31x1012
• C – $3.1x1013
• D – $31x10-12

• Fun fact:  The total amount of US dollars on Earth is about $5 trillion

$9 trillion, not including “broad money”.
• More fun fact: The total amount of US dollars not on Earth is about $0.

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Calculation!
• At the scale of 4.4 light years = 1 cm, how large would the observable
universe be?
• Take the observable universe to be 30 billion light years across
• Different definitions give very different numbers!

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Our Cosmic Address

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• https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images/gallery/zoomable-imag
e-stephans-quintet
• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Webb%27s_
First_Deep_Field.jpg

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Video – Powers of Ten
• Classic! 1977

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

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Video – Opening scene of Contact
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LcR_B3t7B0

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Units in Astronomy

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Astronomical Unit
• Or A.U. or AU
• The distance between the earth and the sun
• 93 million miles
• 150 billion meters

• Mercury is 0.4 AU from the sun. Mars is 1.5 AU. Pluto is 40 AU from
the sun.

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Light Year
• The distance light travels in one year
• 6 trillion miles
• 10 trillion kilometers
• 65,000 AU

• Next closest star is 4.2 LY away.

• Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 LY in diameter.

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Calculation! How much is a light year?
• …in AU?

• Find the number of seconds in a year.

• Multiply by speed of light in m/s (3x108 m/s).
• For “fun”, use 1 AU = 93 million miles and 1 mile = 1609 m.

• USE DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS

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Light travel time
• Light travels 1 foot per nanosecond, so I see you as you were about 20
nanoseconds ago.
• Light takes 8.3 minutes to get to earth, so we see the sun as it was 8.3
minutes ago.
• Light takes 28,000 years to get from the galactic core to earth, so we
see the galactic core as it was during the last ice age.
• Quasars can be up to 12.5 billion light years away, so we see them as
they were about a billion years after the Big Bang.

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Calculation! Light to Pluto?
• How much time does it take for a signal (traveling at light speed) to
get to Pluto, 4 billion km away?
• c = 3x108 m/s

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The Moving Earth

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Figure 1.11 As Earth rotates, your speed around Earth's axis depends on your location: The closer you are to the equator, the
faster you travel with rotation.
Figure 1.12 Earth takes a year to complete an orbit of the Sun, but its orbital speed is still surprisingly fast.
Calculation! Speed of Earth around the Sun
• How fast does Earth move in its orbit around the sun?
• 1 AU = 150 million km

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Figure 1.13 This painting illustrates the motion of our solar system within our local solar neighborhood and around the center of
the Milky Way Galaxy.
Cosmic Time Scales

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Draw a line across your paper…
• The line is a timeline of the Earth.
• At the left is the formation of the Earth.
• At the right is today.

• Where on the line did the dinosaurs die out?

• Where did they first evolve?
• Where did multicellular life evolve?

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Calculation! Birth of the Universe on a line
• Make a new line across your paper, 8.5 inches long. The left is the Big
Bang, the right is today.

• Where did dinosaurs die out?

• Where was the Earth formed?

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