Astronomy [Compatibility Mode]

A Power Point Presentation on the lesson From �Learning English�.

Content developed by V.Ramachandra Reddy M.A., M.Phil., (P.hD)

An ultraviolet image of the Sun's active photosphere as viewedby the TRACE space telescope. NASA photo.

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Did God create this Universe?

Many people- in the olden days and even now firmly believe that the God had created this universe. The reason behind their blind belief is that there are many things in this world that cannot be explained by using our human intelligence. So they believe that there is some thing supernatural, and all powerful and that force is called God and he created this universe.

Introduction

This lesson has been adapted from Stephen Hawking�s A Brief History of Time. Stephen Hawking is one of the greatest Physicists ever born on this earth. In spite of being crippled and completely wheel chair ridden he carried out qualitative research and crippled and completely wheel chair ridden he carried out qualitative research and made path breaking inventions. Big Bang theory is one among them. He is an embodiment of inspiration to the present and future generations.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME A Brief History of Time is a

popular science book written by Stephen Hawking and first published by the Bantam Dell Publishing Group in 1988. It became a best-seller and has sold more than 9 million copies. It was also on the London It was also on the London Sunday Times best-seller list for more than four years.

There is also a documentary by the same name, directed by Errol Morris and released in 1991. Unlike the book, the documentary is primarily a biography of Stephen Hawking.

STEPHEN HAWKING Stephen William Hawking CH, CBE,

FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge (due to retire from this post in 2009), and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is known for his contributions to the fields of contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes, and his popular works in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general. These include the runaway popular science bestseller A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Our Mother Earth Though our universe is vast

and we never know Whether it has a beginning and an ending our mother earth remains the most fascinating thing for the mankind. Because it is the only planet Because it is the only planet that supports life in this universe, though our scientists have found out some traces of Water in frigid form on the planet Mars and we don�t yet know how far it will be able to support life.

Newton

Forces are often described as pushes or pulls. They can be due to phenomena such as to phenomena such as gravity, magnetism, or anything else that causes a mass to accelerate.

elliptical path A small body in

space orbits a large one (like a planet around the sun) around the sun) along an elliptical path, with the large body being located at one of the ellipse foci.

BIG BANG According to the Big Bang model, the universe expanded from an extremely dense and hot state and continues to expand today. A common and useful analogy explains that space itself is expanding, carrying is expanding, carrying galaxies with it, like raisins in a rising loaf of bread. General relativistic cosmologies, however, do not actually ascribe any 'physicality' to space.

North StarThe Greeks Knew from

their travels that the North Star appeared lower in the sky when viewed in the south than it did in more than it did in more northerly regions. Since the North Star lies over the North Pole, but to someone looking from the equator, it appears to lie just at the horizon.

Lunar eclipse

Schematic diagram of the shadow cast by the Earth. Within the central umbra shadow, the Moon is totally shielded from direct shielded from direct illumination by the Sun. In contrast, within the penumbra shadow, only a portion of the sunlight is blocked.

GELELIO Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564� 8 January 1642) was a

Tuscan (Italian) physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy, the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and �the Father of Modern Science.�The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean moons in his honor, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, improving compass design.

Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's presentation of heliocentrism as proven fact resulted in the Catholic Church's prohibiting its advocacy as empirically proven fact, because it was not empirically proven at the time and was contrary to the literal meaning of Scripture. Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Roman Inquisition.

Kepler During the Renaissance, Nicolaus Copernicus

proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system. His work was defended, expanded upon, and corrected by Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler. Galileo innovated by using telescopes to enhance his observations.

Born: December 27, 1571)Weil der Stadt near Stuttgart, Germany

Died: November 15, 1630 (aged 58)Regensburg, Bavaria, GermanyDied: November 15, 1630 (aged 58)Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany

Residence: Baden-Württemberg; Styria; Bohemia; Upper Austria

Fields: Astronomy, astrology, mathematics and natural philosophy

Institutions: University of Linz Alma mater University of Tübingen

Known for: Kepler's laws of planetary motionKepler conjectureReligious stance: Lutheran

Claudius Ptolemaeus.

A medieval artist's rendition of Claudius Ptolemaeus.

Born after 85 ADRoman Province of EgyptDied 165 AD Died 165 AD

Roman Province of Egypt

Occupation mathematician, geographer, astronomer, astrologer

Nikolaus kopernikusNicolaus Copernicus (February 19, 1473 � May 24, 1543) was the Polish astronomer to formulate a scientifically based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. His epochal book, De epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the Scientific Revolution.

ARISTOTLE Name: Aristotle Birth: 384 BC

Stageira, Chalcidice Death: 322 BC Main interests: Politics, Metaphysics,

Science, Logic, Ethics, Theatre (Greek Tragedy)

Notable ideas: The Golden mean, Reason, Logic, Biology, Passion Reason, Logic, Biology, Passion

Influenced by: Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Heraclitus

Influenced: Alexander the Great, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, AlbertusMagnus, Maimonides Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Ptolemy, St. Thomas Aquinas, Ayn Rand, Giordano Bruno, and most of Islamic philosophy, Christian philosophy, Western philosophy and Science in general

Cosmos In its most general sense, a

cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from a Greek term meaning "order, orderly arrangement, ornaments," and is the antithetical concept of chaos. Today the word is generally used Today the word is generally used as a synonym of the word "Universe" (considered in its orderly aspect). The words cosmetics and cosmetology originate from the same root. In Russian, the word cosmos simply means space.

Newton�s Law of Universe The mechanisms of

Newton's law of universal gravitation; a point mass m1 attracts another point mass m2 by a force F2 which is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance (r) between them. Regardless of masses or distance, the magnitudes of |F1| and |F2| will always be equal. G is the gravitational constant.

Newton�s theory of Gravity Gravitation is a natural phenomenon by

which objects with mass attract one another. In everyday life, gravitation is most commonly thought of as the agency which lends weight to objects with mass. Gravitation compels dispersed matter to coalesce, thus it accounts for the very existence of the accounts for the very existence of the Earth, the Sun, and most of the macroscopic objects in the universe.

Modern physics describes gravitation using the general theory of relativity. Newton's law of universal gravitation provides an excellent approximation for most calculations.

Ball falling freely under gravity.

Satellites

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavor. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon.

Quantum Mechanics Quantum mechanics is the study of

mechanical systems whose dimensions are close to the atomic scale, such as molecules, atoms, electrons, protons and other subatomic particles. Quantum mechanics is a fundamental branch of physics with wide applications. Quantum theory generalizes classical mechanics to theory generalizes classical mechanics to provide accurate descriptions for many previously unexplained phenomena such as black body radiation and stable electron orbits. The effects of quantum mechanics become evident at the atomic and subatomic level, and they are typically not observable on macroscopic scales. Superfluidity is one of the known exceptions to this rule.

General Theory of RelativityGeneral relativity is a theory of gravitation developed by Einstein in the years 1907�1915. The development of general relativity began with the equivalence principle, under which the states of accelerated motion and being at rest in a gravitational field (for example when standing on the surface of the Earth) are physically identical. The upshot of this is that free fall is inertial motion: In other words an object in free fall is falling because that is how objects move when there is no force being exerted on them, instead of this being due to the force of gravity as is the case in classical mechanics. This is incompatible with classical mechanics and special relativity because in those theories inertially moving objects cannot accelerate with respect to each other, but objects in free fall do so. To resolve this difficulty Einstein first proposed that spacetime is curved. In 1915, he devised the Einstein field equations which relate the curvature of spacetime with the mass, energy, and momentum equations which relate the curvature of spacetime with the mass, energy, and momentum within it.

Solar System The Solar System consists of the Sun and those celestial objects bound to it by gravity. These objects are the eight planets, their 166 known moons, five dwarf planets, and billions of small bodies. The small bodies include asteroids, icy Kuiper belt objects, comets, meteoroids, and interplanetary dust.

The charted regions of the Solar System are the Sun, four terrestrial inner planets, the asteroid belt, four gas giant outer planets, the Kuiper belt, the scattered disc, and the hypothetical Oort cloud.

A flow of plasma from the Sun (the solar wind) permeates the Solar System. This creates a bubble in the interstellar medium known as the heliosphere, which extends out to the middle of the scattered disc.

In order of their distances from the Sun, the eight planets are:planets are:

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus , Neptune

As of mid-2008, five smaller objects are classified as dwarf planets. Ceres is in the asteroid belt, and four orbit the Sun beyond Neptune: Pluto (formerly classified as the ninth planet), Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.

Six of the planets and three of the dwarf planets are orbited by natural satellites, usually termed "moons" after Earth's Moon. Each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other particles.

The Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (HST; also known colloquially as "the Hubble" or just "Hubble") is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle Discovery in April 1990. It is named for the American astronomer Edwin Hubble. Although not the first space telescope, the Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well known as both a vital and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. The HST is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, and is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope

Shooting Star A shooting star is the

common name for the visible path of a meteoroid as it enters the atmosphere. A shooting star is also shooting star is also broken pieces of meteors that have become broken off in space.

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton, (4 January 1643 � 31 March

1727) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian. His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is considered to be the most influential book in the history of science. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering. Newton showed basis for modern engineering. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution.

KARL POPPER NameSir Karl Raimund Popper Birth July 28, 1902

Vienna, Austria Death September 17, 1994 (aged 92)

London, England School/tradition Analytic

Critical rationalism · FallibilismEvolutionary epistemology

Main interests EpistemologyPhilosophy of scienceSocial and political philosophy

Notable ideas FalsifiabilityHypothetico-deductive methodOpen society Hypothetico-deductive methodOpen society

Influenced by Socrates (via Plato) · AristotleKant · Schopenhauer · HegelEinstein · Kierkegaard · WittgensteinVienna Circle · Tarski · SelzRussell · Campbell · Burke

Influenced Virtually all philosophy of science since 1930s · Hayek · FriedmanLakatos · Feyerabend · SorosMiller · Agassi · Bartley · GombrichJarvie · Levinson · Schmidt · MunzMagee · Lorenz · ShearmurMedawar · Dimitrakos · Albert · Gellner · Soroush ·Taleb

Astronomer of cosmonaut

Once upon a time the moon would look far away to the humankind. But the space research organization NASA has undertaken many manned missions by sending astronauts in specially designed space capsules designed space capsules called space shuttles. A person who undertakes a voyage to space or moon is called an astronaut. In Russian he is called a cosmonaut. Even ISRO has launched its own lunar exploration programme called �Chandrayaan�.

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