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Cosmology for the 21st Century

George Smoot - The Relics of Creation

Dr. Smoot delivered a welcoming presentation and discussed the current cosmological model and history of the universe. The talk included his Nobel Prize winning research of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).

 

PDF of Powerpoint Presentation

The workshop started each day with discovery stations.  These were designed to introduce topics such as lenses, gravity, centripetal force, and temperature, which would be discussed during the talks.  After discovery stations, one of the principle investigators at the lab gave a lecture.  Following was group work on the main activities using actual data.

The first two days of the workshop utilized the Hands–On-Universe program, which enabled participants to calculate the distances to an asteroid and a galaxy.  The next day, Supernova data was used to calculate the Hubble Constant as evidence of Dark Energy.  On the fourth and fifth days, cosmic ray detectors were the focus.  Other activities were conducted throughout the workshop, and all of these activities can be downloaded and used in the classroom.

 

  • Main Activity

Hands-On Universe - Rich Lohman

Rich Lohman used the Hands-On Universe website to guide students through astronomy concepts such as parallax, expansion of the universe, asteroid & supernovae discovery, periodic measurements, and Kepler's laws. The students processed real telescope images and made physics calculations based on the theory presented.

 

Worksheets and Powerpoint PDFs:

Parallax

 

 

Students learned about astronomical units (arc-seconds and arc-minutes) and also explored parsec measurements. To understand parallax, students see how objects appear when viewed from different angles.

 

 

 

Activity

Universe Adventure with Laurie Kerrigan

This activity explores how the universe started and how it is changing. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is pivotal to exploring this process: Describe how the CMB is evidence of the Big Bang Theory and show how the slight variations in temperature (color) are the seeds of the large scale structures that evolved over cosmic time. Discover how decreasing temperature increases density, and that denser areas have larger gravity and therefore attract more matter. Describe how these low temperature, high density areas in the CMB are the starting points of structure formation in the universe.


Early Map of the Cosmic Microwave Background

 

 

Teacher Resources:

Understanding the CMB classroom lesson
Explains how low temperature, high density areas in the CMB are the starting points of structure formation in the universe.

Rubberbands to Big Bangs classroom lesson
As the universe expands, space itself expands, but not the matter or the galaxies.  With this expansion the wavelengths of light are stretched. In this activity, students explore accelerating expansion.

 

Discovery Station

 

Laurie Kerrigan - History of the Universe on TP

 

Using the Universe Adventure website as a guide, the students chose an appropriate time scale to map the history of the universe on a roll of toilet paper.  Diagrams, pictures, and text were added to help explain the model. 

TP Universe directions

 

What do the different colors on the map of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) represent?

 

Although the temperature of the CMB is almost completely uniform at 2.7 K, there are very tiny variations, or anisotropies, in the temperature on the order of 10-5K. The anisotropies appear on the map as cooler blue and warmer red patches.

These anisotropies, or "ripples" in the temperature map, correspond to areas of various density fluctuation in the early universe. Eventually, gravity would draw these fluctuations into even denser ones. After billions of years, these minute ripples in the early universe evolved, through gravitational attraction, into the planets, stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies that we see today.



Image: NASA WMAP

 

Day two: History and Structure of the Universe

Day three: History and Structure of the Universe

Day four: Standard Model of Particles and Interactions

Day five: Beyond the Standard Model of Particles and Interactions

Day six: Cosmologists for the 21st Century

 

Workshop homepage