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Our Picture of the Universe

A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise”. The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man. very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun – or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (wha tever that may be) will tell.

As long ago as 340 B.C. the Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his book «On the Heavens», was able to put forward two good arguments for believing that the earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. First, he realised that the earth’s shadow on the moon. The earth’s shadow on the moon was always round, which would be true only if the earth was spherical. Second, the Greeks knew from their travels that the North Star appeared lower in the sky when viewed in the south than it did in more northerly regions.

Our modern picture of the Universe dates back to only 1924, when the American astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated that ours was not the only galaxy. There were in fact many others, with vast tracts of empty space between them. In order to prove this, he needed to determine distances to these other galaxies ... Edwin Hubble worked out distances to nine different gala xies by measuring their apparent brightness. We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing thousand milllion stars. We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its centre about once every several hundred million years. Our sun is just an ordinary, average-sized, yellow star. We have certainly come a long way since Aristotle, when we thought that the earth was the centre of our universe!

Choose True/False:

The scientist raises the questions about the Universe.

Read the text and do the task.

Our Picture of the Universe

A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise”. The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man. very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun – or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (wha tever that may be) will tell.

As long ago as 340 B.C. the Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his book «On the Heavens», was able to put forward two good arguments for believing that the earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. First, he realised that the earth’s shadow on the moon. The earth’s shadow on the moon was always round, which would be true only if the earth was spherical. Second, the Greeks knew from their travels that the North Star appeared lower in the sky when viewed in the south than it did in more northerly regions.

Our modern picture of the Universe dates back to only 1924, when the American astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated that ours was not the only galaxy. There were in fact many others, with vast tracts of empty space between them. In order to prove this, he needed to determine distances to these other galaxies ... Edwin Hubble worked out distances to nine different gala xies by measuring their apparent brightness. We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing thousand milllion stars. We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its centre about once every several hundred million years. Our sun is just an ordinary, average-sized, yellow star. We have certainly come a long way since Aristotle, when we thought that the earth was the centre of our universe!

Choose True/False:

Scientific researches in astronomy gave the answers to the questions.

Read the text and do the task.

Our Picture of the Universe

A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise”. The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man. very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun – or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (wha tever that may be) will tell.

As long ago as 340 B.C. the Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his book «On the Heavens», was able to put forward two good arguments for believing that the earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. First, he realised that the earth’s shadow on the moon. The earth’s shadow on the moon was always round, which would be true only if the earth was spherical. Second, the Greeks knew from their travels that the North Star appeared lower in the sky when viewed in the south than it did in more northerly regions.

Our modern picture of the Universe dates back to only 1924, when the American astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated that ours was not the only galaxy. There were in fact many others, with vast tracts of empty space between them. In order to prove this, he needed to determine distances to these other galaxies ... Edwin Hubble worked out distances to nine different gala xies by measuring their apparent brightness. We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing thousand milllion stars. We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its centre about once every several hundred million years. Our sun is just an ordinary, average-sized, yellow star. We have certainly come a long way since Aristotle, when we thought that the earth was the centre of our universe!

Choose True/False:

The Greek philosopher Aristotle put forward an argument that the Earth wasn’t a flat plate.