Stephan Hawking’s Universe:
Seeing is Believing Video Worksheet
1. Stephen Hawking is a world famous cosmologist
2. His particular sphere is the research of black holes and the history of the universe
3. “All my life I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them”
4. Stephen Hawking has motor neuron disease, but can project his voice through a synthesiser
5. 75 years ago Edwin Hubble changed the way we
6. We now know thanks to Edwin Hubble that there are 100 billion trillion stars with in the observable universe
7. Sumerians and Babylonians were the first to study the workings of the heavens
8. Ancient Greeks were to follow
9. The Greeks wanted a more accurate way to express their views of the universe
10. This eventually developed into mathematics
11. Eratosthenes discovered that the earth is indeed round based on his experiment with shadow lengths.
12. Greeks used mathematics to make theories and applications on all different sorts of phenomena
13. Mathematical theory is not always supported by observations
14. Greeks saw in early astronomy that the stars moved in patterns that defied their logic
15. Greeks discovered 5 planets, dubbed ‘planetos’ or ‘wanderers’
16. Ptolemy developed a model of the universe with earth at the center
17. People accepted it b/c it supported Christianity ; we are God’s pride and are thus at the center of the cosmos
18. His theory went unchallenged for 1500 years, supported by the Church
19. Nicholas Copernicus undoes Ptolemy’s theory
20. He was a scholar-priest
21. Says the sun is at the centre of the universe
22. The church says he is a heretic and dismisses his work
23. 60 years later Johannes Kepler, a German mathematician, works on Copernicus’ theory
24. Realizes that the planets traveled on elliptical circuits
25. Galileo Galilee, an Italian scientist worked on the laws of motion
26. Answered the question raised by Kepler, if the earth is moving, why do we not feel it
27. States that we do not feel the earth move because we are moving with it
28. Remodelled a toy from Holland, produces the first telescope
29. Observed the planets, his observations disproving the Church’s stand point
30. Discovered 4 moons around Jupiter
31. “Something orbiting Jupiter could not be orbiting earth and thus earth is not the center of the universe”
32. Galileo published his work and was condemned by the Church to house arrest, his work stated that what the Bible was saying of the sun’s position was not true
33. Isaac Newton made some refinements in the telescope, adding an internal mirror, doubling its power
34. Began thinking of the law of motion
35. Thought that things would move in a straight line if they were left on their own
36. Began thinking of the forces that might be at work
37. Developed the law of universal gravitation
38. Every single piece of matter in the universe pulls every other piece of matter towards it and vice versa
39. The importance of the apple is that it symbolizes the idea that the laws of nature that are working on the earth are also working throughout the whole universe
40. Newton’s crowning achievement was to unite all that had preceded him in theory of how the world worked
41. He was the first person who has a mathematical description of the universe which manifestly worked
42. His equation for gravity explained the elliptical orbits of the planets perfectly
43. The 3rd Earl of Rosse built a 6 foot telescope
44. It was the most powerful until the present century
45. Images from space are concentrated on a concave mirror in a telescope
46. The earl was the first to see a whirlpool galaxy
47. Spectroscopy is the analysis of light
48. German physicist Joseph von Frauenhofer discovered it
49. Light is from atoms
50. Each chemical element has a particular way of behaving, which results in the placement of lines
51. Using spectroscopy it was found that the chemical content of our sun is identical to that of any star in the universe
52. Light also signals motion of the universe itself
53. Christian Doppler suggested that as an object moves the light it emits will appear to be altered
54. Doppler Shift – sound is also carried in waves. Sound waves when an object is approaching are squashed.
55. As an object departs the sound waves are stretched apart. The change in pitch is audible
56. By analysing stars, scientist found the Doppler Shift would work in the light spectrum as well
57. If a light source moves towards us the lines are shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum
58. If a light source is receding, the lines shift towards the red end of the light spectrum
59. It became possible to tell not only way the universe was made of but in what direction nit was moving
60. Originally the milky way galaxy was thought to be the whole universe
61. What we now know to be other galaxies were once thought to be gaseous clouds
62. Hubble was able to define individual stars with in these gaseous clouds, proving that they were not wisps of gas in our own galaxy, but galaxies in their own right