The following Technical Notes are hyperlinked from appropriate locations within the Site.  They are meant to give a little more information , or background, to a particular issue.

Other methods of Radioactive Dating can be used for longer periods.  For example Uranium-235 has a half life of 700 million years and Uranium-238 has a half life of 4,400 million years!  These methods are used in dating non-living material such as rocks and minerals.       Return     

3. We get to see all sides.   Imagine you are on a Merry-go-round......the carousel horse you are riding is the Earth and it's orbiting the center of the Merry-go-Round, the Sun.  You pass your friend standing on the side and wave to him/her....6 seconds later (6 months later, for the Earth) you cannot see your friend who is now on the other side of the "Sun".  However, you do see many other people, who could not be seen before.  Not to worry, another 6 seconds (another 6 months for the Earth) and there is your friend, still there, just as before.  .....and the cycle repeats itself, over and over again.  Every 12 seconds (months for the Earth) you see the same scenery alongside the Merry-go-Round....it is the same for the night sky as we travel around the sun every year.     

                                                                                   Return   

4. Panoramic view of the Milky Way.  Cool!  A photo of our Milky Way? our galaxy??  Well....not quite.  It's tempting to see this photo as having been taken from outside the Milky Way.  Of course that would be amazing!  ...but it would be a false impression.  It is actually a photo from the inside looking out!  Interesting illusion, ya? This photo is made from many still photos over a period of one year and represents a 360° view of the night sky.    Imagine this photo stretched out and placed in a circle around your head so that as you turned you could see the night sky as it would appear around the earth (ignoring for a moment the sun). 

The age of the photo - 1940 - should be of no concern..... in cosmic terms it is but a fleeting instant. Should the same be taken today with similar photographic equipment there would be no measurable difference in appearance.                             Return    

5. Come back this way.  This refers to the question of whether this universe, which has been expanding ever since the Big Bang, will continue to expand forever, or, if the expansion will slow, then stop, and begin to collapse upon itself. If it is the latter, then we will, in a sense, "come back this way".              Return

6. Big Bang Theory.   Most astronomers today will tell you that the Big Bang theory is "...99 percent certain".  Some few very knowledgeable scientists will tell you "...not so fast, there are a lot of things wrong with that theory".  The most recent is the Witt Theory.  The important thing for us who have day jobs is to understand what the Big Bang theory is...just so we can appreciate the mystery of it all.  As more and more discoveries are made the truth will become more clear.  But for now, the Big Bang theory is front and center.

7. 144 moons.  There are a lot of moons in our Solar System...as noted here:

There will  likely be more moons discovered around the Planets in the near future.

8. Hot gas clouds.  The Gas clouds in intergalactic space consist of individual gas atoms (mainly hydrogen and helium), or particles which can have very high energies.  The energy of these gas clouds is expressed as a temperature, the cooler gas clouds consist of neutral atoms and the hotter clouds consisting of gas plasmas, which are the gas atoms stripped of their electrons.  The latter can be a very high temperature but because the density of these gas molecules in space is so low, the total heat in a given volume is also extremely low, relative to earthly conditions.   Do not confuse the high temperatures of the gas plasmas with the earthly affect of touching a hot object of the same temperature, where the density of the hot object is billions of times more than the density of the gas clouds.  A spacecraft flying through these high temperature plasmas will not melt away simply because the heat available to cause damage is vastly reduced.  The gas molecules are so thin, i.e., widely spaced, that the extreme density of the spacecraft (relative to the plasma) easily absorbs the energy of the small number of gas ions it encounters. 

9. American power of 10

The following table gives the name for the power-of-10.  The number represents the number of zeros...

*  Hummmm...this looks like....google!

10. Large Hadron Collider.  The LHC was recently completed at a cost of several billions of dollars and is located near Geneva, Switzerland.   Colliders of this size and complexity are built by governments since the cost is so high that private institutions cannot afford them.  The LHC will study the physics which existed between .1 and 1 microsecond after the Big Bang.  A Collider of this size was being constructed in the US (New Mexico) in the 70's but was cancelled by Congress.  Cutting edge physics will now be done in Europe....a further erosion of our technology lead!  

A Collider is an energy particle accelerator.  In layman's terms the Collider accelerates particles close to the speed of light and and causes a head-on collision in which matter is destroyed, energy created, and new matter in the form of elementary particles is created from energy.  The collisions result in temperatures of trillions of degrees.  Essentially recreating the conditions which scientists believe existed during the Big Bang.  This is cutting edge physics.....

While the LHC may now be the world's highest energy particle accelerator at energies of 1,000,000 GeV, the US has the 2nd largest Collider...the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider RHIC, known as "rick". The RHIC was completed in 2001 at the Brookhaven Laboratory on Long Island and can attain energies up to 20,000 GeV.  Prior to the RHIC, the largest Collider was the SPS also at Geneva.  The SPS was capable of energies as high as 450 GeV.  It is still in use today, as the last link in the accelerator chain providing beams for the LHC.

11. Hubble Telescope.    The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was the first telescope to be placed in earth orbit.  The single advantage of earth orbit is that the HST is free from the distortion and interference of the earth's atmosphere.  This is a huge advantage and even today, 14 years after its initial operation. the Hubble is capable of observations far better than the newest and larger earth bound telescopes.  The Hubble is capable of observations in a wide spectrum....from ultraviolet, through the visual spectrum, to infrared.  It has a diameter of 95-inches, just over 2-meter, compared to earth telescopes much larger. tens of meters in diameter.

In 1993, shortly after it was placed in service, the Hubble made the first Deep-field observation and recorded images of galaxies further away than ever seen before....peering very deep into the night sky.  The light from these galaxies began their journey over 1 billion years after the Big Bang,  when the galaxies where very young.  In 2002, the Hubble got an upgrade and was able to see further into the night sky....going back to just 700 million years after the Big Bang.  In 2009, the last upgrade of the Hubble will allow it to see even further...just 500 million years after the Big Bang.  these incredible images will allow scientists to further refine their theories on how the universe was formed and the processes that occurred. 

Copyright © 2006 ERM, Inc. All rights reserved.                                                                        La Habra, CA 90631