Wonders of the Universe

ringo747 said:
I never have watched anything by this guy before but he certainly is very easy to listen to and has good ways of explaining things.

What I don't get though is how he can be so certain about all these things? Like how can the temperature of 100,000,000 degrees be estimated during an explosion? It's all huge figures involved but I think perhaps it comes across as being fact when in reality it must surely be fairly rough estimates. No?
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I have a feeling that the answers to these questions are very detailed and far too boring to talk about! (And im a physicist so i shoild love it!)
 
I just can't get my head around so much of it. All the stuff about certain elements only being created in space for example. How are elements meant to get from space to earth? If earth is continually evolving how can it do that without a constant supply of more elements?

And how was the sun and stars and space made in the first place? It seems fairly far fetched that something as complicated as human life was caused by a few things created in space being joined together. The conscience for example - how could that possibly just have happened?
 
What do you mean constantly evolving?

Every star has cosmic flux and irradiates.

Our planet and sun formed at roughly the same time from a collapsing nebula of hydrogen. I assume by consequence, other perodic elements such as gold, etc. had already travelled and been caught by the nebula.

Also, don't forget that the universe is expanding outwards. 4.5 billion years ago, it was a little closer together. It is quite likely that a local dying star contributed to our particular stella nursery. It's not that far-fetched at all. I think you're just missing a few fundamentals.
 
ringo747 said:
I just can't get my head around so much of it. All the stuff about certain elements only being created in space for example. How are elements meant to get from space to earth? If earth is continually evolving how can it do that without a constant supply of more elements?

And how was the sun and stars and space made in the first place? It seems fairly far fetched that something as complicated as human life was caused by a few things created in space being joined together. The conscience for example - how could that possibly just have happened?
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Stars create several elements when they die. Supernovas create even more. All the material is blasted into space and form giant clouds of matter, called a nebula. Nebula's can contain all 92 elements from the periodic table. They will also contain more complex molecules as those elements interact.

Over time, huge parts of these nebulae collapse inward, sparking the creation of a new star. The minuscule amount of gas left over forms the planets, asteroids and such in the star system. I believe in our solar system the Sun accounts for about 99.9% of all the mass in the solar system. :)

As for the planet evolving... it's not. :/

As for life, it didn't just happen. Amino acids have been found in meteorites. Amino acids are a pretty fundamental material to life and evidence suggests it occurs all the time. As for our consciousness, you do realise we are the product of 4 billion years of evolution? To put that in context, it has taken damn near a third of the age of the Universe for us to be here.
 
The Orion Nebular is one of the Closest stellar nurseries, he also explained how we can tell what atoms the star is made of by the colour it shines, whilst the first episode explained the death of our universe this episode explained the birth of our universe and what we are made of.

also would love to see betelglease explode in our lifetime, the interesting thing about this is it sits about 640 light years away, which means it could have already exploded but the light is taking 640 years to travel to us, it would be a bright as our sun in the daytime, and shine as bright as the moon in the night. However once the light dissapears the orion would look odd.
 
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ringo747 said:
? It seems fairly far fetched that something as complicated as human life was caused by a few things created in space being joined together. The conscience for example - how could that possibly just have happened?
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you know you are the result of several billion years evolution and trillions of gererations, and there will have been quadrillions of failed generations / combinstions of dna.

far fatched? thats jsut stupid it happened because you are here to ask the question
 
dave1983 said:
it would be a bright as our sun in the daytime, and shine as bright as the moon in the night. However once the light dissapears the orion would look odd.
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If it was as bright as our Sun during the day, it would be as bright as our Sun, at least, at night! :p

We would see it in the day certainly. It wont be as bright as our Sun.
 
SiriusB said:
As for life, it didn't just happen. Amino acids have been found in meteorites. Amino acids are a pretty fundamental material to life and evidence suggests it occurs all the time. As for our consciousness, you do realise we are the product of 4 billion years of evolution? To put that in context, it has taken damn near a third of the age of the Universe for us to be here.
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4 billion years of evolution - really? That is my point exactly. How can you be so sure? Why 4 billion as opposed to 5 million? Is it not impossible to predict?
 
SiriusB said:
Because there are fossils in 4 billion year-old rocks...
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And how can they even begin to estimate 4 billion year old rocks?! (hides!)

Seriously, this is a genuine question. I just find it strange that most of the stuff that is dated appears to be billions of years old but you rarely hear of stuff being found that is hundreds, thousands and millions of years old. I'd expect to find stuff from hundreds of years ago, piled of top of stuff from thousands of years ago etc etc... Make sense or stupid?
 
Radiometric Dating.

And stuff that is hundreds/thousands/millions of years old are found all the time. Anyone studying dinosaurs, for example, have a time period spanning over 165 million years to study [230 million years to 65 million years ago]. Anyone studying human ancestors go back thousands to millions of years.

I don't think hundreds of years is enough for something to fossilise...
 
Brilliant programme, even my wife who has very little interest in this kind of thing, was captivated due to the interesting yet clear presenting style.
 
Was looking forward to it myself but like a few others.. I've found it a touch boring. He does get to go to some nice locations though.

I've found...

The Story of Science and Civilization: Is the West History?

Both on the same night the last few weeks better tv.
 
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