Exploring the Universe; 8; How Did the Universe Begin?

Where are you right now? Where are you right now, not just in your house or in your city, but where are you in space and universe? Perhaps we can try to locate ourselves if we start from a familiar friend of ours. This is the sun, while it's really an orange, two and a half or three inches in diameter, and it's about a million miles in scale, why, 880,000 or so. Come with me and we'll show you how big the earth is and where you stand in the solar system, first of all. We'll leave the sun and go in this direction at ten times the speed of light, ten times as fast as man can possibly ever travel, twenty thousand times roughly the speed of our fastest rocket. We're heading toward the planet Mercury, which is much smaller than the earth, about half the size, and here comes Mercury now, I'm prepared to make a landing right on my finger

on the planet Mercury in true scale. There it is, about 112 inches from the sun. Continue. On we go at ten times the speed of light, two space, this would require a long time if we weren't going this fast, the sun takes eight minutes to make the trip we're going to make here in about 90 seconds, we're coming toward Venus now, the evening star shining bright in the evening horizon, there's Venus, the planet just about the same size as the earth, just a little smaller. Leave Venus ten times the speed of light, twenty thousand times the speed of the Atlas rocket, two space, we're about 75 million miles from the sun, 80 million, 85 million, 90 million, 93 million, and here is the earth. That's where all the fuss is right now. That's where you live, maybe whether or not the laundry came back in time next week wasn't so important. We really don't seem very big, do we, and a thing like that.

But that's the true size of our planet in the solar system. Jupiter happens to be right here in this size, but if we were to locate him in here, he'd be one city block north of where we are, and the father's planet out Pluto would be 38 city blocks, and the nearest star would be in Chicago, we're in New York, about a thousand miles from here. And that's just the beginning of how big this universe is. It's very big, greedy, and yet it's mostly empty. You saw how much space there was in 25 feet, almost all space. Scientists have been able to make fairly good measurements of the distances between us and some of the stars, and to learn a good bit about the stars and the galaxies. But actually, the amount that we know is probably very small about the universe compared to what we don't know yet. And there are some very basic, unanswered questions like, for example, how did the universe begin? It's a pretty big question, too, how did the universe begin?

It's far from an original question, as you know, and I've been asking this for, since there were men to record history about the question. And they've tried to answer it in all kinds of ways, each one so far, which is proved to be unsatisfactory, later in time. Today, we're going to look at some of the answers suggested currently by modern astronomers and physicists. And some of the questions, which they can't answer, we will ask and toss around a bit. To help us, we have with us Dr. Robert Jastro, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Professor of Geology at Columbia University. We will join Dr. Jastro in just a moment. Of course, perhaps we could take a brief look at some of those parts of the universe, which we can see, astronomers can see, and photograph through the big modern telescopes. That's, of course, one of the biggest, close to home of this solar telescope we see our friend, the Sun. A huge sphere of violently hot gases, 864,000 miles of diameter, temperature surface, 10,000 degrees.

You're up close now looking at the regulations. Inside, the core is about 25 million degrees. Around the Sun, orbit the planets of our solar system. You saw how far apart they are and how small, comparatively. They're bound to the Sun, though, by the force of gravity. They revolve around it in some way, the electrons used to be sort of revolving around the nucleus of an atom, about the same size, if it's too. The Sun itself appears to be very big and important, but really it's an ordinary star. One of about 100 billion stars, which you bond together by gravity into a disc shape or lens shape mass, called a galaxy, which has 100 billion stars in itself. This is another galaxy, andromeda. We see it from the outside here, from about a million light years away, two million. A galaxy very similar to our own, so we get a good look at it. We're in one like that, kind of in one of the arms out toward the edge of the spiral. Scientists have been able to map those galaxies and classify them by their size and shape, and there are several different kinds.

Spiral galaxies, which look kind of like a pinwheel here, we're in the arm of one of those near the edge. And then there are barred spirals, simplified spirals, older, probably. There are elliptical galaxies, which look like this, and probably are not stars, as the other ones were. And then there are some strange irregular galaxies, like this. Several other classes too. And these galaxies tend to turn to groups, to gather in clusters. Each cluster of galaxies averages about 1,000 galaxies. Each galaxy has 100 billion stars, in roughly. And these clusters of thousands of galaxies, of billions of stars, together make up the universe, as far as our telescopes can now take us. But what's beyond that? By measuring the light of and analyzing the light of the galaxies in which you can see, we know that all galaxies are in motion, moving away from us and from each other. It's kind of hard to comprehend how something could be, everything could be moving away from everything else.

But suppose that this was a solid balloon full of little dots like this, which are galaxies. And we were to blow it up from the inside with the layer. Note how the spots will move away from each other as the air enters. Bigger and bigger, it's expanding. And before, perhaps we'd best leave the galaxy right there. That's what's happening to our galaxy. The further away from us they are, the faster the galaxies go away from us, and for other galaxies. There's one in the constellation Komoberinichae, which is about 87 light years away, moving away 2,400 miles per second. Another group in the constellation Boates is racing away 25 times as fast, the tiny one in the middle there. 25 times as fast, and it's 25 times as far away. So when you look at the sky and it seems serene and beautiful at night, remember you're looking at a very active live universe, which is in rapid movement, a constantly expanding universe. The dots are on that balloon with the ones that blew up

and expanded and moved away from each other. And another simply is a bunch of raisins in a cake, which move out, but still stay in the same relationship to each other. So our galaxies are moving deeper and deeper into space, and we know that's happening. But it's rather hard to believe, I think. And so for an expert opinion about what it means, let's turn to an expert, was Dr. Abber Jester. We spoke to Dr. Jester about the significance of the scientific findings, which showed that the universe is expanding. And I'd like him to tell us now what he told me while I go about that. What is the meaning of this expansion? What's a deeply disturbing implication that's carried? Because if the universe is expanding in this way, it implies that it started at some point in time in space and that it has a finite boundary. And you can't help but ask what the universe can mean if it has a boundary and something lies beyond it. Why do you say it implies that there is a boundary? Is there other evidence that it is finite and limited?

One can't really tell. One has to lay the groundwork in answering that question, yes and no, or not appropriate. You have to go back to the processes, which form the origins of stars themselves and of galaxies. It's believed that all of space is filled with gas and dust, which swirl and are turbulent in the same manner as cigarette smoke that rises to the ceiling. Now in the swirling motion, occasionally condensed region will form through some accidental fluctuation. If that condensation forms by accident, then the forces of gravitational attraction pull the particles together, still more closely. And they run away with themselves. They all move towards the center and form a more and more highly condensed region, which generates high pressures and eventually high temperatures at the center. This highly compressed region is the nucleus of a primitive star. Is there a thermonuclear reaction here, happening? Well, the birth of the star actually

occurs when at the center of this region, the temperature reaches 10 million degrees through the compression, and the pressure gets up to about 100 million times the pressure of the air at the surface of the earth. And the low circumstances, a thermonuclear reaction is ignited in which four protons come together and combine to form a helium nucleus, releasing energy, a very large amount of it, which provides, in fact, the source of the light by which we see the star. Now, the residue of that fusion or joining process is a helium nucleus in which the four particles are bound together. The helium is created gradually in the interior of the star in this way. Well, I should think that eventually, the helium would hydrogenally, should all be used up. The star goes all that way, does it? Yes, quite. That's very much the point. What seems to happen, what's thought to happen theoretically, is that the helium is formed at the center of the star, and eventually, there's so much helium that the star can't burn.

And so it collapses, partly. And the collapse produces still higher temperature, which is high enough to ignite the helium nucleus itself. The helium burns to form carbon. And the carbon later burns to form still heavier elements, going all the way up to the periodic table. Until you reach iron, when iron is formed, it's the unburnable element in the universe. You can't squeeze energy out of it. And so the fire of the star goes out of the center, and the star collapses because the pressure is relieved. The collapse produces a highly compressed region of the center, which is followed by a rebound and explosion, in which all the matter of the star is sprayed out in space. And this explosion is called a supernova. And the Chinese astronomers who were searching the sky in 1054 AD recorded such a supernova. It's called the Crab Nabila. And it is an extraordinary cloud of gas moving away from a point exactly where they saw a star at that time. There's a star that showed up in the daytime.

It's a billion times brighter than the light of the sun. That cloud of gas is now moving apart at the rate of 1,000 miles per second. And it has been since 1054. It's best we can tell, yes. Well, the star got small, and then it suddenly kind of blew up and flying or flying all its material into space. What happens to all that material? Where will this cloud of gas go? Well, it's in the marvel story of the story that modern cosmology has developed. The material is returned to space. It's returned to the gas and dust out of which the star was originally formed, and it mixes with it. So the life cycle of the star is a cycle of dust to dust, just as for humans. Now, in this has implied a story of reincarnation because, for example, we on this planet, all of the matter out of which we are made, consists of materials, elements that were manufactured in the center of some other stars earlier in the history of this galaxy. And then returned to space in the supernova explosion and gathered together once more to form the material of our sun and our primitive planets.

Well, is it kind of a evolving universe that has a evolution kind of like man has on earth? That actually brings us back to the point at which we started, which I promised I would come back to, namely the expanding universe. The implication in this picture is that the hydrogen, which is the basic building block, the raw stuff of the universe, gradually is used up in the course of time and replaced by heavy things, carbon, iron, gold, uranium, et cetera. Now, if all of the basic building blocks, all of the raw material disappears slowly and the universe must be running down. However, it is possible that one circumstance can enter, which could get us away from the implication that the universe is running down. And that is the point at which the so-called steady state school of astronomy enters. The steady state astronomers propose, as Bondi and Gold originally proposed, that matter is actually created out of nothing

in the form of fresh hydrogen at the rate of one hydrogen atom per cube 100 miles on a side per second, very, very slow rate. And that this freshly created matter then makes up the new material. And it gets you away from the conclusion that the universe has a beginning and an end. Now, incidentally, it also explains the expansion of the universe because this freshly created hydrogen produces pressures which would blow the universe apart continuously. Well, that's an assumption or a theory. Is there any proof that matter is actually being created out of nothing? Regrettably no, not one way or the other. The alternative that you have to reckon with, if you don't assume that matter is created out of nothing, seems at the moment to be that the universe started as some great primeval egg in which all the matter of the universe was packed together with a density of 500 million pounds per tons per cubic inch in a 500 million tons per cubic inch in a region which is a small of the size of our solar system, all a matter of an universe

at a very, very high temperature of about 10 trillion degrees. And then it's thought that this great egg blew apart and as it expanded and the density dropped in a matter cooled, the stars and the galaxies were formed. And that winds up with us dying off at the zone where does that cycle around again? No, that's the end of things and that is the problem because we really have not come very far in this difficult, in this basic question of how the universe started where it's going because we either must assume that matter is created out of nothing, which violates our deepest instincts, all we have to assume that the universe started in such an egg that it's expanding outward from a beginning point in time and space and has an outer boundary. And then you have to ask what could be outside that boundary? How did the egg get there? What was before the egg? What lately? Yes, it's a serious problem, it really is. As you say, the big question then remains unanswered how the universe was created.

We're approaching, probably, an answer about our own grain of sand of the universe here, our own earths. We human people are interested in that. How did we originate? How do solar system originate? Do we know that? That situation is more promising. For the solar system in particular, this particular region of space, we can say a number of rather interesting things and perhaps make some real progress in the near future. We know that the solar system was formed about four and a half billion years ago. There are a couple of indications that the sun is about that old and the planets are about that old. We don't know how it was formed, however, although we do know the precise point in time. And how it was formed is one of the fundamental questions that is occupied mankind. Now, there are two theories for this formation of the solar system. One of them suggests, and it's the one I was taught in high school, one of them suggests that the sun and another star were engaged in the near collision, as you can see. And in this collision, great masses of gas were torn out of our sun and then captured to form circling rings of hot material,

which gradually cooled the condense into the planets. The other kind of way, well, it's not as much in favor at the present time, because the other theory is a condensation theory, which very naturally fits into our general ideas on the growth of the universe and the birth of stars. This other theory suggests that in the condensed region, which formed our primitive sun, as the sun contracted with the matter around it, it spun faster and faster, just as an ice skater who goes from a pure wet up into one skate and pulls in her arms, will spin very fast. And in spinning faster, it threw off rings of matter. Again, he was a homely analogy as a wagon wheel throws off bits of mud. These rings of matter, which surrounded the primitive sun, are thought to have gradually condensed into smaller bodies under gravitational attraction, just as the sun itself formed as a minor accompaniment to the birth of the sun, a very natural idea in our current ideas on star formation.

Well, now that the space program is here, and it is, and we can get out into the solar system, we should perhaps see some action and resolving the question, what do you expect yourself, Dr. Justice? I think, in fact, that very great progress will be made, and it's one of the most important scientific aspects of the space program, that we can now get out to explore in detail the moon and the planets and make comparisons with what we see on Earth. And surprisingly enough, in these explorations, the moon, which seemed to be the least interesting object, the most lifeless object, is the unique source of ancient history, the most interesting object of all to study for clues to the origin of the solar system. Well, hasn't it had the same history as the Earth? No, it hasn't. In the case of the Earth, although they probably, the Earth and the moon were, may have been formed at the same time, the Earth is subject to the erosive effects of wind and water. The winds wear away the surface record, storms, batter, the sea, batter, the surface, and tear away surface features.

Rain, you carry matter from the continents into the oceans, and Earth furthermore, earthquakes and tectonic activity of various kinds churn over the surface, and all of this results in destroying the record of ancient history on our planet in the time of 10 or 20 million years, which is very long, but it's very short compared to the 4 1,5 billion years that the Earth and the moon have existed. Well, on the moon, nothing like this happens. We think so, and I think I could explain why to you if we could go over to this blackboard and to these photographs. That right over here, these were taken recently, I believe, although nothing much changes on the face of the moon. Well, there's some suggestion you've changed, not too much. Now, these were taken by it's Donna Copa at the Pique de Mendee Observatory in France, with a 24-inch telescope. This one is a very large, a very substantial enlargement. Now, you see that the surface is marked with a large number of circular regions. They're thought to be the splashes produced

by the impact of large meteorites. There are about 100,000 such circular regions to be seen, circular craters on the surface of the moon, all exactly circular. What about that? That looks like a space. That does look irregular, but that, if you look at it closely, I think you'll find to be the superposition of one, two, and three individual circular craters. Like this one interrupts. Yes, this one, yes. That shows it very clearly. If you were, incidentally, this one seems to be volcano, out of 100,000 craters on the moon, only a dozen or so, look like volcano, volcano is really, and this is one of those rare events. There couldn't really be volcanoes in erupting to form all these, so they'd all have little hits in the middle kind of. There are two schools of thought about it, but I think that the greater weight of opinion at the present time is that these are produced by meteorites rather than volcanoes. But now let me show you what you would expect to find if the moon had earthquakes to destroy its record. On the Earth, if you stake out a circle,

and you go away and come back a billion years later, that circle will be pushed and pulled and distorted out of all resemblance to its original form. But on the moon, as you see, there is no such distortion. And furthermore, on the moon, you do not even see this kind of thing. A circular crater whose two parts have been displaced, as Gordon McDonald, a very brilliant geophysicist, has pointed out, whose two parts are displaced by a fall who are slip in the surface to give this appearance. Nothing of that appears on the surface of the moon. How do we know this is a billion years later that we see here with these 400 billion years ago? Maybe last a minute or so. That's an extremely good question. But we have some feeling for the rate at which meteorites bombard the surface of the moon and the Earth. We have evidences of old meteor formation impact rather on the Earth. And from the number of craters, the density of craters on the surface of the moon, we suspect that its record goes back about 4 billion years. About the same time.

That's a very big one. Yes, that's Copernicus, by the way. It shows in a very beautiful manner, again, the circularity. It's about 60 miles across, as I recall. Incidentally, the first landings of instruments on the moon will probably be in the vicinity of Copernicus crater down here somewhere near another crater called Kepler. Nobody there now, is there? No, not on the photograph, anyway, for sure. 60 miles would make these mountains about size of big Earth miles when they might ever so. Yes, biggest mountains on the moon are some 30,000 feet high. In spite of that fact, however, the moon is not as the artist's conception is suggested. When you look at this terrain, it seems very rough mountainous, steep precipices that comes from the fact that the best photographs are taken with the sun just over the horizon and very long shadows cast that shows up the relief. And it's given rise to an artist's conception of the moon's surface as having craggy peaks and valley floors, something quite different from the true character

of the terrain, that artist's conception is around, here's some of those. And we just had that. Here's the real look. Yes. These are artist's conceptions that will be found on the jackets of most popular books about the moon. But we persuaded our artist to draw something which is a better representation of the surface of the moon based on the measurement of the elevation profiles. And it's shown here. This sketch shows the interior of a crater called Theophilus, which is about 60 miles across. And it has mountains at the center that are 8,000 feet high, which is very high. But actually, one sees that they are very gentle elevations in the distance because that 8,000 feet foot rise is gained over about 10 miles. Back to Jester, who's that man on the foreground there? He may be eventually a NASA astronaut, we hope so. That was the Earth we saw from the sky, that wasn't it? It was, yes.

They have Earth shine on the dark of the moon. Yes, the Earth is going to be a beautiful object, by the way. It's seven times as brilliant in its intrinsic brightness as the moon. And it's four times as large, 16 times the area. That means altogether about 100 times the brightness of the moon. Wow. We must take a good close look at the Earth sometime then. I thought we'll be able to. What on the moon when you get there, specifically, will you do to check the two theories of planetary formation? Do you dig or? Digging is a good, that's a very good way of getting at the matter. Will you do something that's subtler and closer to the way we've learned about the structure and history of the Earth? These two theories of planetary and lunar formation that I describe have some major points of departure, major differences. If the Earth and the moon were formed by collision of two stars and then a cooling of molten masses, all of the iron, which is very abundant in the moon and other bodies, would run together to the center of the moon

to form a dense core. You can see that in a cutaway section, this artist's sketch. Now, on the other hand, if the moon and the planets were formed by a condensation out of cold gas and dust, then the iron probably would never have been heated in the interior of the moon, would never have run to the center. And the iron would instead be sprinkled throughout the interior like raisins in a food cake. Well, didn't the iron run to the center of the Earth pretty much? Would it do the same with the moon? It's an excellent point. The Earth is large, and it has a lot of internal heat generated by radioactive decay. It seals that heat in well enough so that the temperature would be hot enough to melt the iron with or without a high temperature at the beginning. A bunch of people really be very concerned about how the moon was born with the origin. I think that quite apart from the somewhat academic interest, which the astronomers and physicists have and the geophysicists, this matter goes back to very fundamental questions, deep questions that have occupied mankind.

Because if the moon and the planets were formed in the collision of two stars, such collisions are a very rare event. The star is being very far apart. And that means that planets and Earth and life, as we know it, are very rare in the universe. On the other hand, if the planets are formed by condensation as a natural accompaniment to the birth of the sun, then such planets should exist around nearly every star, and in every case where circumstances are favorable, physical life, as we know it, can be expected to develop. And so life should be, if not commonplace, at least duplicated in many places in the galaxy. When will they be putting instruments on the moon? I can ask you that, I think, fairly. Yes. We are working very hard on unmanned instrumentation, and this will occupy our lunar program for the next 10 years. Towards the close of this decade or early in the next day, we will enter on a culminating and most rewarding phase of lunar exploration in which land landing occurs,

and a trained observer will be able to apply the wisdom of mankind to the analysis of what we see. Well, thank you, Dr. Will be right with you, in spirit, if not in the capsule itself. And we'll be remembering this conversation for a good bit about you. Dr. Robert Jester, talking about the moon itself, and although we didn't come to a conclusion about the origin of the universe, nor actually our own solar system was formed, it's fascinating to remember that the moon may be sort of a Rosetta stone when we get there to reveal the history of our planetary evolution of who knows what else. And in our own lifetime, the next few years, we may be able to read that history ourselves, for each. This is NET, National Educational Television.