Vocabulary & Basics
What is 13.7 billion years old
What does CBR Stand for?
What is Cosmic Background Radiation?
According to Hubble's Law, almost all galaxies in the deep universe are moving in this direction relative to Earth.
What is away?
These are the two primary elements that make up 100% of the Big Bang's basic universe recipe.
What is Hydrogen & Helium?
An astronomer measures a deep-space galaxy and finds it is flying away from Earth at an incredible speed. According to Hubble's Law, this tells the detective that the galaxy must be located at this relative distance from us. (Very close, moderate distance, very far away).
What is very far away?
What is the word describing how tightly packed material is together?
What is Density
If you look into deep space with a radio telescope, CBR sounds or looks like this television phenomenon.
The name given to the stretching of light waves turning redder as a galaxy races away.
What is Redshift?
The exact baseline percentages of Hydrogen and Helium found across the visible universe.
What is 75% Hydrogen & 25% Helium?
If an astronomer finds a galaxy whose light waves are tightly compressed and turning blue, it means the galaxy is moving in this direction.
What is towards us?
What is the name of the three pillars supporting the Big Bang Theory in order?
What is #1:Cosmic Background Radiation #2: Hubble's Law & #3: Common Elements?
Scientists use this specific type of telescope or antenna to pick up the invisible waves of CBR.
According to Hubble's Law, the farther away a galaxy is from us, the ________ it moves.
What is Faster?
This is the tool that reads the light from elements to determine its type.
What is spectroscope?
A detective wants to watch a security video of a crime, but the camera was unplugged for the first five minutes, creating a blackout period. For cosmic detectives, we cannot visually "see" the exact moment of the initial singularity with standard light telescopes because the early universe was too dense and trapped all of this inside.
What is light?
What is the fancy science word for the tiny, infinitely hot, and super-dense starting point of the universe?
CBR is often described as the "leftover echo" of this specific cosmic property from the start of the universe.
What is Radiation?
If we hit the "rewind button" on Hubble's Law and watch expanding galaxies backward, it proves the universe must have started here.
What is at one single point (singularity).
Regular stars couldn't have cooked up 25% Helium everywhere, meaning the entire early universe briefly had to provide these two extreme environmental conditions to perform widespread fusion.
Heat & Pressure (Gravity)
A detective checks a thermometer outside a house to see if the weather has changed since yesterday. If a cosmic detective takes the temperature of deep space today and finds it is 2.7 Kelvin, this clue tells us that the universe's original heat has undergone this specific change over 13.7 billion years.
What is cooled down/radiation stretched out into radio waves?
The Big Bang did not just move matter through space; it actually created these four fundamental things.
What is all matter, energy, space, & time
The high-energy, hot radiation waves of the early universe transformed into long, cold, lazy radio waves today because of this physical process.
What is stretching/expansion of the universe?
You are looking at three racing galaxies: Galaxy X, Galaxy Y, and Galaxy Z. Galaxy X is moving away from us at a slow crawl, Galaxy Y is moving away at medium speed, and Galaxy Z is absolutely sprinting away at hyper-speed. According to how Hubble's Law works, this is the galaxy that must be located the absolute farthest away from Earth.
What is Galaxy Z?
Elements in deep space can be read like a barcode because every single element burns a totally unique version of this.
Color pattern/light spectrum
If a galaxy is found with 50% heavy metals like Iron and Carbon, it means it was not made during the Big Bang, but rather formed much later from this type of event.
What is an exploding star/supernova?