Dark Matter

Not much is known about dark matter. Dark matter was discovered 5 years ago and it is practically impossible to detect. Dark matter is nothing like normal matter, for instance, it doesn't give off electromagnetic rays. It was discovered by scientists studying the movement of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.  It forces objects to come together but another force and particle goes against that... but that is something coming tomorrow.

Atoms

This is the starting point for the next four topics. Atoms are matter that make up everything. Atoms cannot be seen by the naked eye, so you need a electron microscope. (Don't get one unless you want your whole neighbour hood to loose all their electricity)  Atoms are simple if you get it. Basically, to make an atom, you need electrons. If you like, think about the atom as a solar system. The sun is the nucleus (centre) and then the protons and neutrons are sun spots, and then then the electrons are planets whizzing around the gravity of the sun or the nucleus and sunspots. The electrical charges of the sub atomic particles are: Protons=positive. nucleus=none. Neutron:none. Electron=negative. The orbit of the electrons or planets are called shells. Well that's it Universe daily fans, Bye.

Solar system:The basics

As i want to make my blog more organised, I'm learning to do a horizontal tabs bar.

This tab is the solar system.

The basics

The solar system has the sun placed slap bang in the centre,the sun produces heat and gravity to keep the 8 planets in orbit. The 8 planets in order of closest to the sun to the farthest are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (Don't laugh!) and Neptune. You may be wondering why Pluto isn't in there, well, in 2006, the European astronomy association decided that Pluto was one of many Dwarf planets in the solar system. Dwarf planets are small planets that don't have a clear orbit. (meaning there isn't a large amount of material in it's orbit. Between Mars and Jupiter is the asteroid belt, home to the other 3 most famous dwarf planets. They are: Eris, Makemake and Ceres. Another asteroid belt but a smaller one is in Pluto's orbit called the Keiper belt and beyond that, a bigger asteroid belt than the Keiper belt is the Oort cloud. And that is where our solar system is complete.

Galaxy clusters

Galaxy clusters are bassiclly big clumps of galaxies. Each Galaxy cluster has 1,000 galaxies to 1,000,000 (Anything above 1,000,000 is a supercluster) Our galaxy is in the local galactic group galaxy cluster and the virgo supercluster. With the Hubble telescope, sciencetists made a picture of the whole known universe which contained all the galaxy clusters and superclusters. If you look at it, it's like a sponge.

Long time, no fact

Sorry I haven't been able to post for nearly 2 months, it's just because information is running low. Any way, today's topic is active galaxies, to understand this, you must read the galaxies post i did. Basically, active galaxies are highly, radioactive galaxies, most of these are young galaxies, probably 1 billion years old. There are 4 mains types of active galaxies, Seyfert,Quasar (not to be confused with the caravan manufacturer) Blazar (similar to Quasars) and six packs (not to be confused with muscles in the abdomen) Quasars are active galaxies with streams of highly charged sub atomic particles emanating from it's centre. These streams can spread across 2 light years! Seyfert are spiral galaxies that have a highly radioactive centre, scientists think all spiral galaxies are seyferts in one point in there life. Six packs are 6 seyferts near each other and Blazars are not really clear, they are like Quasars but emanating protons.

galaxies

Galaxies are clusters of stars and gas. We are in the galaxy called the Milky way named after a Greek myth in which I cannot remember. The milky way is a spiral type galaxy but some scientists think it's a barred galaxy. The type of  galaxy depends on its shape.The spiral type being a spiral shape, barred galaxies are spiral galaxies but with two arms instead of many. Then there are elliptical galaxies are flat an contain billions of old stars. Lenticular galaxies are like a CD, with a "hole" in the middle and  a circular shape. Finally there are irregular galaxies which come in all shapes and sizes. All galaxies have one thing in common, a super-massive black hole or an ultra-massive black hole in the middle of the galaxy. Most galaxies have older stars near the centre and new stars near the outer regions. Galaxies types also have sub-divisions. For example, one type is spiral Sb. These sub divisions each have a different feature to a spiral type Sc or any other of its type.

Well bloggers, thats it for today, see you!

eras of the big bang

The first era was the planck epoch which did't last very long.Next was the  inflationary epoch that lasted less than a millisecond , after that the electroweak epoch was when the weak force and the electromagnetism forces went into the universe and combined. The next period was he quark epoch when quarks flooded into the universe. Then the Hadron epoch where quarks and anti quarks formed to make sub atomic particles. The lepton epoch came first this is where the battle between matter and antimatter took place or should I say anti leptons and leptons. After that battle the photon epoch began. This was when the photons dominated the universe and the sub atomic particles still had a part in the universe. The era of nucleosynthesis was where photons formed the first helium and hydrogen. The opaque era was when the sub atomic particles interacted with photons to make the universe full of gas and "fog." The last era is the atomic epoch where the first atoms appeared.

     

neutron/proton stars

These are the remnants of a exploded high mass star. These are x ray emitting very dense but small stars. That was the small introduction to a neutron star. A proton star is slightly different, they emit in fared light waves. A neutron star is only 15 meters but its mass is incredibly heavy, a pinhead of it's material would weigh more than 2 supertankers. It's gravity is extremely powerful, scientists still don't know how strong. A neutron stars goes "on" and "off" on the position its spins round. To be honest it nearly the same with a proton star. One last thing is that a neutron star has so much gravity that you could barely lift your your head. Well that's all see you tommorow

The big bang

The big bang is where everything was created. The big bang is where the universe was born. The big bang was 13.7 billion years ago. But before that the universe was just a bit bigger than the smallest unit of measurement. It was hot,about 1 trillion trillion trillion billion Centigrade. It was dense, very dense. Suddenly, the earliest universe exploded to the size of a tennis ball and kept growing. Every particle that exists nowadays was created in the big bang. Infact even anti matter existed. Anti matter is like normal matter except the electrical charges in the sub atomic particles are opposite. This imbalance created a large scale war between antimatter. This could decide the fate of the universe. A universe full of matter, no universe at all or a universe full of antimatter. There was one small imbalance that made us have a universe matter. A dense matter called an X boson and an anti X boson have half -lives (when the matter decays to create another matter or element) this imbalance is for when every X boson decays into 1,000,000 particles, there are 99,999 anti particles when an anti X boson decays. After the gargantuan fight to decide the fate of the universe was over, matter joined to make the first atoms and they kept joing to make heavier elements and chemicles and compounds until we have the universe we have today. So all thanks to the big bang, we could be born and live on this wonderful planet of ours. Well that's it folks, tune in tommorow  for another fact.

stars part 2

This is the final part of the stars subject. This is about star deaths. When a star runs out of hydrogen, its starts burning helium and keeps burning heavier elements until it reaches iron. As soon as it gets to iron, the stars cannot withstand its own weight and it starts to collapse. A star can burn for anything from 1 trillion years, a really small star to a million years, a massive star. A low mass star will just fizzle out and turn into a black dwarf. A sun like star will grow to 100 times it's mass and then shrink and form a white dwarf. The red giant which is the bit where the sun expands will burn mercury,Venus and possibly Earth and mars. A high mass stars will explode as a supernova or even bigger, a hypernova, and then collapse into a proton star or a neutron star or a black hole. Sometimes a star refuses to collapse and resists it, but it explodes and a gamma ray burst out as it explodes. A gamma ray could easily cause mass extinction or even wipe out all life! Of course this gamma ray would have to be 100 light years away and there is no big enough star to cause one. A supergiant is the expanded high mass star but a hypergiant is a star and not a remnant  of a dieing star. Well that's it, good bye and tune in tomorrow

Kelper's supernova

Stars part 1

This part of the stars subject is about the main sequence stars. The main sequence stars can range from the O type star to the M type star. But mass is the bit that divides it into the main sequence, there's low mass stars, sun like stars and high mass stars. All stars are produced in nebulae which i explained yesterday. Most stars contain of hydrogen and helium. Stars also contain of super heated plasma which can sometimes start violent explosions on the suns surface called solar flares which is where negative charged electrons explode out of the star and fly out of the solar system. Some stars have so powerful solar flares that they could easily overload the national power grid. Watch the video above to learn more about solar flares. all suns have  photosphere, a corona, a transition layer, a radioactive zone and the core. Some stars have a thicker transition layer and some have a thinner transition layer. Well thats it, tune in for part and also enjoy this diagram of a sun like star.

nebulae

A nebula (nebulae is the plural) is a cloud of gas in a galaxy which stars are born in. As the soon to be star's gravity grabs the gas surrounding it, it ignites into a protostar. Some protostars are so massive that they explode before they start a nuclear fusion. A nuclear fusion is where the star starts burning hydrogen. Some nebulae take animal or human-like shapes like the horse head nebula which I posted yesterday. Or the Eskimo nebula which is going to be posted at the end of this post. Most nebulae contain of the gasses hydrogen,helium and a very,very small amount of methane. The amount of gas the star gets to grow usually depends on how big the nebulae, nebulae can grow from less than a light year to 100 light years or more. A nebulae called a planetary nebulae are the remnants of a sun like stars death. These rarely produce stars and sometimes don't before the white dwarf in the middle of the nebulae fades away. A famous planetary nebula is the cat's eye nebula, which I will also be posting at the end of this post, which is now do tune in tommorow for another juicy fact!

 Eskimo nebula

cat's eye nebula

The horsehead nebula

Beautiful isn't it

intelligent civilizations

This equation was thought of in the 1960's by the scientist Frank Drake. It states that there are 10,000 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, it's Drakes equation!. The first bit of the equation is how many stars are made per year in our galaxy's nebulae. The answer is 10 per year. Then how many of these planets will have planets. the answer is 90% to 100%. Then how many of those planets are in the habitable one of their star where it is neither too hot or too cold. The average is 1 or 2. The next bit is how many of those planets will develop life. The answer is 50% (I think) Then the ones that will develop intelligent life. Well that can be anything from 1% to 100% depending on how many natural disasters there are every year. So once the intelligent life develops there are two more keys for intelligent life, the important of the two is that the life form must learn not to destroy themselves with their own technology and the last one being that the life must develop interstellar communications. Also i mentioned that i would tell you how to prevent our extinction, well most natural disasters are not bad ebough to make us extinct but meteorites and climate changes. Well climate changes happen over hundreds of thousands of years so our descendents will figure out that. But meteorites are very common so we need to prevent our extinction one idea is to put rocket engines on the meteorite and push it out of its orbit, and the more possible idea is that we blow up the bject with a nuclear bomb, well thats it followers tune in tommorow for a new update!

first post,first fact

I will be posting about space facts everyday (if I can) i will explore space in depth or maybe in 2 parts or more. Ok, so my first fact, Exoplanets. Exoplanets are planets outside of our own solar system. Most exoplanets are Jupiter sized planets or bigger. But out of the 500 exoplanets discovered in our galaxy, a small fraction are rocky like Earth.And those that are, are not in the habitable zone of their star. But scientists have estimated that there are more than 1 trillion planets in our galaxy alone. Some containing single celled organisms and some containing intelligent life like our own. Despite Humans attempts to contact other intelligent life in other solar systems, most that arrived at their destination have failed, however,a majority of the ones that have not reached their destination yet will reach the destination in the next decade. And the rest will span from 100 years to 50,000 years. So the future to contact other civilizations looks bright and promising. Unfortunately, the SETI programme ran out of funds this year so it may damage our chances of finding other life but it probably will be set up again after the current recession is over. On the next post I will be covering drakes equation and the key points for intelligent life in our universe and what we can do to prevent our extinction. That is your daily post from my blog, universe daily.