In Alan Lightman’s, “Our Place in the Universe,” he describes his experiences in the Greek Isles explaining how meek it made him feel to be surrounded by the vast ocean with no land in sight except a small strip of brown in the distance. Great thinkers throughout history, have been exploring the visible variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, though the greatest of these are size, from the smallest atom to gargantuan stars. These massive differences in size change the way we view ourselves in the universe. (470)
Garth Illingworth, from the University of California, has studied galaxies more than 13 billion light years away from us. Distances so vast that the light from those areas in space is billion years old. Illingworth was able to see these ancient giants with the Hubble Space Telescope. A telescope that is high above the atmosphere, because it can distort the image. 100 sextillion miles or 17,010,779,502.32 light years is the most distant galaxy Illingworth
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Many of the heavenly bodies were considered to be the representations of deities. The master of reason, Aristotle, stated once long ago that everything was made of only five elements the final being what makes up the heavenly bodies, after all they lacked the proper technologies to know differently. It was Galileo in 1610, using his telescope, that found dark spots on the sun. So as technological innovations occur our understanding of physics and astronomy grow. Newton in 1687 discovered the laws of gravity, suggested that all the solar and stellar bodies operated the same. However another question still held, “Is inanimate and animate matter the same, or does it operate differently?” Adolf Eugen Fick and Max Rubner painstakingly tabulated the amount of energy required to contract muscles and other living requirements, to find that it was all equivalent to the energy consumed. Yet some people still believe that there is some great plan for us.
In the last hundred years we have made enormous progress in studying not our galaxy but ones billions of light-years away. Only a few hundred years ago our world seemed so big that there were areas of the world that had never been charted and people believed that the Earth was flat (and yes for some reason a few people still believe that today). If we continue to make progress at thus rate the universe will actually begin to seem smaller because of how much more we might know.
Two men named Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis has a debate in 1920 that is still important today for changing how we think about galaxies. They talked about five important things. The first thing they debated was how big our galaxy, the Milky Way, is. Shapley said that the Milky Way was much bigger than we first thought, 100,000 light-years across, and that, because it was that big, it had to be the only one. Curtis said the the Milky Way was smaller than that, and that other galaxies existed past ours. They were both right and both wrong. Shapley was right about the size of the Milky Way, and Curtis was right about there being many more galaxies in the universe.
In the reading, “Why our Future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming” Neil Gaiman discusses the importance of reading, in addition to that he feels going to nearby libraries to check out books is a wonderful thing especially for children. Gaiman also believes that children of all ages along with adults can read any type of book. The books can be fiction or non-fiction and have dissimilar genres as well. The rhetorical devices that were used are persuasive speaking; the tone which was imperative, and Parallelism. The main point Gaiman is trying to make is that more people should have a desire to read, not only to learn but to also have a broad vocabulary and to be well read to have knowledge on the world.
The book, “All the Light We Cannot See” is based during World War ll. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris, who is a locksmith for the Museum of Natural History. Marie-Laure goes blind at the age of 6, which leads her father to build a wooden replica of their city. Marie’s father is entrusted with a precious diamond, the Sea of Flames, so Marie and her father go deliver this stone to an old friend. Werner lived with his sister, in an orphanage. He is very gifted with science and mechanics; he fixes a Nazi’s radio, which then gets him an offer to go to the Nazi’s school. The man Marie’s father wanted to give the diamond to, was sent to London, so the two head off to her great uncle’s house. Father is called back to the museum,
“That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” were the now famous and iconic words or Neil Armstrong as he became the first man to set foot on Earth’s moon. The advanced research mankind has made to further their understanding of the vast, astronomical unknown of space has opened up numerous doors of opportunity to fathom the universe, but not without drastic repercussions.
Anthony Doerr’s work provides a sense of empathy and realism. It is a piece of historical fiction that, although it did not actually happen, very well could have occurred, as it contained true events and no fantastic aspects. He possesses a gift that allows him to grant a captivating documentation of events. The use of language and the present tense, third person narration in All The Light We Cannot See allows the readers to feel as if the stories are occurring right in front of them.
Anthony Doerr used a unique stylistic form of writing when creating the novel, “All the Light We Cannot See” to help establish theme, mood and give the reader a more in depth idea of the thoughts that Doerr possessed. In order to achieve this, Doerr used a third person omniscient point of view, repetition throughout the text, and symbolism.
John Polkinghorne’s The Universe as Creation does its best to not convince the reader of Intelligent Design, but rather to dissuade the reader from the notion that although the is intelligently designed, but in this way, it has made science possible.
All others can be seen as more or less bright circles of light and were known to people since ancient times. Pluto used to be considered a planet but was recently demoted from planetary status to the category of dwarf planet. It belongs to a class of objects that orbit further than Neptune and those objects are part of the Kuiper Belt. We currently know many hypotheses about the origin of the solar system, including two independently proposed theories, one by the German Philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and the second by the French Mathematician and Physicist Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749-1827). The point of view of Kant was that the solar system formed form nebulous material.
This new model was not taken into consideration until a man named Galileo Galilei, who is known as the father of observational astronomy, invented the telescope. Galileo was soon to discover satellites revolving around Jupiter, which led to the observation that the planets may not be ordered hierarchically, which disclaims the previous Ptolemaic model which was backed up by the Church which put God in front. The purpose of these new ideas was to show that inductive reasoning was the proper way to think and gain knowledge for the ideas that were being presented. Sir Issac Newton used observation and experiments to define the new Laws of Motion. (Issac Newton 6.6) “gravity acts equally on all objects regardless of their mass, the gravitational pull between Earth and other planets does.”
The first three chapters of A Brief History of Time cover a variety of topics. In chapter one, Stephen Hawking tries to provide a single theory to describe the entire universe. Chapter two describes some of the ideas that scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and physicians of the past had about gravity and theories of motion. The third chapter in the book talks about the work of many scientists of the past concerning whether the universe is expanding or not. In each chapter, Stephen Hawking describes several different things to solve the huge idea of the entire universe.
He also used evidence based on observation. If the earth were not spherical, lunar eclipses would not show segments with a curved outline. Furthermore, when one travels northward or southward, one does not see the same stars at night, nor do they occupy the same positions in the sky. (De Caelo, Book II, chapter 14) That the celestial bodies must also be spherical in shape, can be determined by observation. In the case of the stars, Aristotle argued that they would have to be spherical, as this shape, which is the most perfect, allows them to retain their positions. (De Caelo, Book II, chapter 11) By Aristotle's time, Empedocles' view that there are four basic elements - earth, air, fire and water - had been generally accepted. Aristotle, however, in addition to this, postulated a fifth element called aether, which he believed to be the main constituent of the celestial bodies.
The Universe is a collection of millions of galaxies and extends beyond human imagination. After the big bang, the universe was found to be composed of radiation and subatomic particles. Information following big bang is arguable on how galaxies formed, that is whether small particles merged to form clusters and eventually galaxies or whether the universe systematized as immense clumps of matter that later fragmented into galaxies (Nasa World book, 2013). A galaxy is a massive area of empty space full of dust, gases (mainly 75% Hydrogen and 25%Helium), atoms, about 100-200 billion stars, interstellar clouds and planets, attracted to the center by gravitational force of attraction. Based on recent research, 170 billion galaxies have been estimated to exist, with only tens of thousands been discovered (Deutsch, 2011).
The cosmological views of the Late Middle Ages revolved around the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic theory. This theory was adapted by the Church to explain the universe, as a result, many people believed the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic theory was perfect because the pope believed it, and he was infallible. The Church took many ideas from the Bible. One example would be that they believed that the universe was six thousand years old. Another major idea was that the universe was made up of a series of concentric spheres with a motionless earth at the center. Planets, commonly referred to as “heavenly bodies”, were made up of crystalline substance and moved in circular orbits. Stars are attached to these planets and are “pushed by angels”.
The book, The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman draws attention to some very good points concerning globalization and the world economy today. Friedman emphasizes the status of America today in relation to the other countries of the world. As I looked at the things in which he warned about or highlighted, I realized the importance of this issue. He talks about a few aspects in which need to be kept competitive in order for America to retain their current standing in the world market.