I found this article to be very interesting it ties very well into what we have been learning about with the universe. The article talks about how astronomers have used old stars to determine the age of the universe. The article tells how Timothy Beers and his associates have discovered a radioactive isotope, uranium-238, in a metal-poor star located on the outskirts of the milkyway.
I suppose I should give a little back that the article talked about first. Astronomers have found the age of many stars by using radioactive dating. See astronomers are able to calculate the age of a star by using this radioactive dating.
This method does work for older stars that were formed from just hydrogen, helium and lithium these are nonradioactive elements that are called metal poor-stars. Well it is believe that some of these stars were massive and exploded and set off nuclear reactions that made a second generation of metal-poor stars and some of these stars contained radioactive isotopes. So now that leads us to were I started until the discovery of uranuim-238 astronomers were only able to detect isotope-thoruim-232.
Well with the discovery of this star that contained uranuim-238 researchers were able to calculate the age of the star and make an estimated minimum age of the universe. Astronomers hope that with the discovery of more of these stars they will be able to find the minimum age of the universe.
I know that was a long explanation I just don’t think I could have made it shorter. Any ways I picked this article because I found it so interesting. I mean to think that for thousands of years astronomers have been studying the stars and here in the year 2001 they are still making discoveries.
On the other hand is knowing the age of the universe going to make some big impact on our lives. I guess what I am wondering is I am sure that they are spending millions of dollars for this research.
Overall we can get a pretty good insight on how or Solar System was formed, yes there are still certain aspects of it that are hard to make sense of, as well as debates over which theory is correct, such as Core Accretion vs. Disk Instability, but overall I feel it is pretty amazing what we have learned about the nature of system and look forward to future discoveries.
In conclusion, this experiment helped me understand the many different items that are relevant to identifying a star. I found it interesting that the stars are all different even in the slightest ways. The most luminous stars are in the upper right section of the HR Diagram. These stars are the most developed stars and are where the Supergiants are mostly populated. These super stars are at the end of there life and are the most evolved. I believe that we can learn the most from these stars. Then that knowledge can then be applied to monitor the younger stars. The information we gather from our stars is; “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong; July 20,
...niques, as I mentioned, such as radiocarbon dating. Obviously, the more analytical techniques there are applied to a sample, the greater the accuracy of the results will be. Although this is the case though, on its own dendrochronology is still invaluable to archaeologists. Kuniholm explains:
Chapter 4 of The Disappearing Spoon describes the origin of all elements, which was theorized to have occurred during the big bang. People discovered that if this theory was accurate, than the elements would be seen in equal amounts throughout the universe. In reality, the abundance of an element relies on the stars located near by and the history of the area. In 1939, scientists proved that a process called nuclear fusion heated the sun and other stars. It was also discovered that the elements of a star could determine its age. Younger stars usually contained only Hydrogen and Helium, while
In reading the article “The Origin of Old-Earth Geology and its Ramifications for Life in the 21st Century by Dr. Terry Mortenson, I discovered the different points debated by Christian and non-Christian scientists about how the universe was created. Dr. Mortenson says” Almost everyone living today takes for granted that the universe and earth are billions of years old” (Mortenson, 2003). I will discusses the author’s strengths and weakness in the article that affected my views on the theory.
Absolute dating uses radioactivity to discover the geological age of strata. Prior to the discovery of radioactivity, relative dating was the only available option for scientists. Absolute dating can be done through several methods, one of which is radiometric dating. This process uses the known rates of decay for isotopes that have been accurately measured and do not vary under altered physical conditions, to determine the exact age of strata
Scientists have also found something as a result of our travels to the moon. They have noticed that the moon collects dust from outer space. They have found the rate at which the dust accumulates on the moon. So they now can tell that the moon is relatively young, because if it were billions of years old there would be a lot more dust on the moon than there is right now. Evolutionists have slipped up and said that the earth and moon are about the same age. So this pushes them into a corner once again. Creation three, Evolution zero.
There are many strategies an archaeologist can use in order to determine how old the human was at death. The most common way is by investigating the skeleton and teeth. Archaeologists are able to make inferences about age using the cranial bones. The main
The Big Bang Theory is one of the most important, and most discussed topics in cosmology today. As such, it encompasses several smaller components that attempt to explain what happened in the moments after creation, and how the universe we know today came from such a fiery, chaotic universe in the wake of the Big Bang. One major component of the Big Bang theory is nucleosynthesis. We know that several stellar phenomena (including stellar fusion and various types of super novae) are responsible for the formation of all heavy elements up through Plutonium, however, after the advent of the Big Bang theory, we needed a way to explain what types of matter were created to form the earliest stars.!
The relative age of the earth is not often seen as a topic of controversy. Much of the scientific data published in school textbooks and taught to students indicate an age on the order of billions of years. Radiometric dating, as well as geological rock studies, have been used as evidence to support such a large expanse of time. However, a small but determined minority, mostly composed of fundamentalist Christians, has been vehemently challenging this age.
Uranium was discovered by Martin Heinrich Klaproth, a German chemist, in the mineral pitchblende (primarily a mix of uranium oxides) in 1789.Klaproth, as well as the rest of the scientific community, believed that the substance he extracted from pitchblende was pure uranium, it was actually uranium dioxide (UO2). After noticing that 'pure' uranium reacted oddly with uranium tetrachloride (UCl4), Radioactivity was first discovered in 1896 when Antoine Henri Becquerel, a French physicist, detected it from a sample of uranium. Today, uranium is obtained from uranium ores such as pitchblende, uraninite , carnotite and autunite as well as from phosphate rock , lignite (brown coal) and monazite sand . Since there is little demand for uranium metal, uranium is usually sold in the form of sodium diuranate , also known as yellow cake, or triuranium octoxide).
Radiocarbon dating is used to tell how old something is. When some normal carbon gets hit by the rays of the sun it turns into carbon 14. Plants absorb this radioactive carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. Animals receive this carbon from eating the plants. When the organism is dead it loses the carbon 14. Scientists can tell how old something is based on the amount of carbon 14 in a dead object. Carbon dating is accurate if the amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere has remained the same throughout time. The second is if carbon 14 has always decayed at the same
The first person to ever observe the Milky Way was Greek philosopher, Democritus, who said the galaxy may consist of distant stars. In 1610, Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that it was composed of billions and billions of faint stars. Then, in 1750, Thomas Wright c...
McDaid, Liam . "44 Common Misconceptions About Astronomy." Sacramento City College. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. .
Throughout the mid-20th century, the Big Bang theory and the steady-state theory dominated scientific thinking about the origin of the universe; however, discoveries in the1960s dealt a serious blow to the steady-state model. The discover of radiation in microwaves hurt the steady-state theory. Following World War II, Martin Ryle led a study at Cambridge in which he tested over 2,000 different radio sources from outside the Milky Way, and he concluded that the different radio sources showed a different distribution, thus supporting the Big Bang theory (“Big Bang” 1). In the early 1960s, Robert Dicke of Princeton University verified Gamow’s idea that there was a microwave background in the sky consistent with an initial explosion (Cowen, “Journey” 394). Further support for the Big Bang model came in 1963 when two scientists