Hey Bill Nye, 'Is the Expansion of the Universe Gaining Speed?' #TuesdaysWithBill
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Edwin Hubble's discovery that the universe is expanding changed not only the way we think of the universe, but also how we understand the passage of time. Bill Nye the Science Guy explains... Do you want to ask Bill a question for a future "Tuesdays with Bill?" Click here to learn how to submit: (http://goo.gl/Joiqzo). Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-on-the-accelerating-expansion-of-the-universe Follow Big Think here: YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink Transcript - Marty Behsman: Bill. How are you doing? My name is Marty Behsman. I'm from Boston Massachusetts, New England. My question for you is do you believe that as space expands it starts moving at a faster and less controlled rate? I've always wondered this given our ancestors had such a closer view of time and space than we have now and it seems to have been moving pretty much faster away from us than as they had says a huge view of galaxies and what they originally mapped out. Thank you very much. Bill Nye: Marty. Marty. Marty. So you're asking a great question. Keep in mind that in my grandfather's time it was believed by a great many people that the universe was static, that it just is the way it's always been. It's big, some extraordinarily huge size and it had always been that way. Then in my father's time relativity was discovered and furthermore the expanding universe was discovered. It was discovered nominally or largely credited to Edwin Hubble and that's what we named the space telescope after Hubble because he was looking at the stars, he was an astronomer studying various types of stars and he could identify different types of stars and then realized that all of them of a certain type were moving farther away at a very high speed. And you determine this through this famous expiration the red shift. He noticed that the stars were slightly redder than he would have expected. And this he attributed to their speed stretching the wavelength of light out. It's amazing. And this was around 1927, 1928/29. Hubble realized the universe was expanding and this was consistent with certain aspects of relativity of Einstein's postulations or theories. All right, well then, in your lifetime Marty, people discovered that the universe is not only expanding – in fact after Hubble made the discovery everybody presumed or question or tried to figure out at what rate the universe would slow down. In other words everybody figured there's gravity, there's a big - if everything is expanding it expanded from a place. And keep in mind the big insight is not just that the matter that you and I are made of and the sun is made of that space itself is expanding. It's a hard idea. If you're not troubled by this idea you're odd, but that space itself is expanding. And furthermore, it was presumed that it would slow down, that gravity would make things slow down in their expansion and people were trying to figure out that rate. But what they discovered around the year 2000, Nobel Prize I think was awarded in 2004, what they discovered is the universe is accelerating. And do you know why it's exhilarating? Nobody knows why Marty and this is the fascination. This is a source that just makes us all crazy in a good way. And so in this mix now it's been discovered that there is about five times as much matter or whatever it is that we can't see that has come to be called dark matter. And it's about five times as much of that as there is of the stuff that you and I are made of. And you know why? Nobody knows why, but it's gravitational influence is of great significance when you start to study the cosmos. So you Marty are living at a time where the next great discovery about the expansion of the universe, the nature of space and time is understood. You may be here when the next amazing world changing insight in astrophysics or physics or science is made. So when you go to vote Marty vote to support basic research because these discoveries are important to us. That's how we have nuclear power plants. It's how we have the Internet is understanding this physics of subatomic particles and how they relate to the physics of the cosmos, our place in space. And so who knows what the next great discovery will lead to, but it's worth pursuing because we all want to know where we came from. We want to know where we fit in the cosmos, our place in space. Cool question. Carry on!
Comments
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I think the easiest way to explain space-time expansion is a cone. The tip of the cone is the beginning, the big bang, or as I like to call it, the initial nudge. As the cone spreads it cools, up until now and the line of the base (which is always extending and expanding) is the current moment in time. Keep in mind as we understand it the universe is relatively flat, like a carpet with some ripples in it and maybe a fold or two. Space accelerates expansion because at it expands the bonds of gravity between objects weakens.
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He mentioned dark matter but didn't mention dark energy :O
Just to clarify, dark matter is whatever stuff is holding galaxies together.
Dark energy is whatever stuff is accelerating the expansion of the universe. -
i thought of theory not to far fetch. Maybe even too simple. Scientists put this on your check lists. Let's imagine that dark matter is just conscienceness. Any conscience being in this universe that passes on adds to that pool of dark matter. The universe always getting bigger, population in every habitable planet always increassing. Makes for a faster expansion. Just an idea. hehe...
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I know why its 'accelerating'.
It's because the big bang was a huge explosion of photons, and at the speed of light something happens and matter is released, initially traveling near the speed of light, slowly deccelerating because of gravity and as the big bang explosion expands it leaves more and more matter. So lets assume were not a static point in the universe like scientists for some weird reason assume and we too are moving away from the origin point of the big bang but slowly deccelerating, all matter around us (not tied to the milky way galaxy) would seem to move away from us at an accelerating pace, while in fact it is all just slowing down. Matter behind us is just going relatively slower than us, matter in front relatively faster, and matter to our 'sides' or on the explosion curve is slowing down at a similar rate but moving away from us.
So there's no dark energy, matter is slowing down, people are just dumb and while our part of the universe might be 14 billion years old, the actual universe could be much much older and the microwave echo from the big bang could very well be the actual big bang still in progress on the edge of the universe ever expanding out at the speed of light. -
I heard "Know why? Nobody knows why, Morty!"
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Hey will the element hydrogen go extinct if all the stars in the universe combine hydrogen into helium
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He should have said: How should I know? I am an Engineer, not a astrophysicist. Next.
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maybe it's evaporated antimatter
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The reason we have the internet, is because humans needed a faster way to obtain pornography, look at cats, and have a wider audience for their holocaust jokes.
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the next amazing insight to the expansion of the universe is Hubble made a mistake in his calculation of the expansion.
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I know why the universe is speeding away from us, and it's NOT "dark matter"
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What if the fabric of space is like a chewed up piece of bubble gum?
When its in a tight little ball it's harder to pull apart cuz it's thick and dense, but the more you pull it the more it gets thinned out and the easier it is to pull apart.
Maybe the expansion of the universe is accelerating because the fabric of space is being thinned out as it expands, therefore making it even easier for it to expand, causing it to go faster. -
Most of the universe is empty space. All that empty space is filled with photons. If photons would actually have matter that our present day instruments cannot yet detect then dark matter would actually be light travelling? This is deductive reasoning is from someone that has virtually no background or knowledge in science. Set me straight please.
https://www.facebook.com/michel.gpops/posts/19719510731225 -
Unless, red shift is caused by something other than velocity of expansion. In which case, the dark energy: gone.
Unless, plasma currents along spiral arms produce magnetic fields. In which case, the dark matter: gone. -
What is up with the camera angle? Short man syndrome I guess. Hoping the low angle will make him look bigger on camera while at the same time he desperately attempts to show off his "guns."
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i hope Bill Nye lives forever!!
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Was it really the questioners view that people in the past had a better understanding of space and time because 'time and space' hadn't expanded to the extent that we currently perceive.
Wow, so wrong, on all the levels of wrong............
Love how Nye bypasses his retarded assumption entirely and actually gets to some science anyway. -
Wrong, it can not be proven. because no one has been to the edge of the universe to truly say by observation that the universe is expanding or it slowing down.
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I wouldn't say Nuclear Power was a great discovery, those putrid and neglected monstrosities are poisoning the ecosystem at an alarming rate indeed.
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Hey Billy, I can tell you why. Because the "Big Bang" is STILL HAPPENING!
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