Module 5

GALAXIES and the UNIVERSE

Topics:

5.1. GALAXIES

5.2. UNIVERSE

Objective: Describe the galaxies and the universe.

Galaxies — those vast collections of stars that populate our universe — are all over the
place. But how many galaxies are there in the universe? Counting them seems like an
impossible task. Sheer numbers is one problem — once the count gets into the billions,
it takes a while to do the addition. Another problem is the limitation of our instruments.
To get the best view, a telescope needs to have a large aperture (the diameter of the
main mirror or lens) and be located above the atmosphere to avoid distortion from
Earth's air.

Perhaps the most resonant example of this fact is the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field
(XDF), an image made by combining 10 years of photographs from the Hubble Space
Telescope. The telescope watched a small patch of sky in repeat visits for a total of 50
days, according to NASA. If you held your thumb at arm's length to cover the moon, the
XDF area would be about the size of the head of a pin. By collecting faint light over
many hours of observation, the XDF revealed thousands of galaxies, both nearby and
very distant, making it the deepest image of the universe ever taken at that time. So if
that single small spot contains thousands, imagine how many more galaxies could be
found in other spots.

While estimates among different experts vary, an acceptable range is between 100
billion and 200 billion galaxies, said Mario Livio, an astrophysicist at the Space
Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. When the James Webb Space
Telescope launches in 2020, the observatory is expected to reveal even more
information about early galaxies in the universe.

The Milky Way: One of the Many Galaxies

The idea that each star is a sun, many with their own solar systems, is a powerful
reminder of the immense scale of the cosmos. However, the distances to stars in our
galaxy are tiny in comparison to distances to other galaxies.
Since antiquity, observers have noted the existence of nebulous stars; diffuse smudgy
or cloudy looking stars. Some of them turned out to be what we now know as nebulae,
the places where stars form. Many turned out to be something else entirely. It wasn't
until the 1920s when it was confirmed that many of these nebulous stars were in fact
completely different galaxies, whole other sets of billions of stars like the Milky Way, far
beyond our own.
We now know the Milky Way is but one of the billions of galaxies in the universe.
Looking back at how astronomy developed this concept over time one can see how
philosophers and scientists struggled with comprehending the nature of galaxies, and
thus the enormity of our universe.
The Milky Way Resolves into More Stars
To the naked eye it is unclear exactly what the Milky Way is. In ancient Greece, the
atomist philosopher Democritus had proposed that the bright band of light might consist
of distant stars. The atomists' views were eclipsed by Aristotle's perspectives on the
universe.
In Aristotelian Cosmology, the Milky Way was understood to be the point where the
celestial spheres came into contact with the terrestrial spheres. One of the important
observations Galileo noted in his 1610 Sidereus Nuncius was that, under the view of a
telescope, parts of the Milky Way resolved into a cluster of many stars. Once again a
weakness in Aristotelian Cosmology was found - the Milky Way wasn't the result of
interactions between the terrestrial and celestial spheres. Galileo's observations
demonstrated the Milky Way was a massive grouping of individual stars, planets and
other nebulous elements.
Island Universes and External Creations
In 1750, English astronomer Thomas Wright, published An original theory or new
hypothesis of the Universe. In this book, Wright speculated that the Milky Way was a
flat layer of stars, a part of which which was our solar system.
Beyond this he suggested that many of the very faint nebulae "in all likelihood may be
external creation, bordering upon the known one, too remote for even our telescopes to
reach." The idea that the faint nebulae could be their own "external creations"
suggested the universe was much large than previously imagined. In 1755, philosopher
Immanuel Kant elaborated on Wright's ideas and referred to these faint nebulae as
"island universes." Both the notions of external creations and island universes struggled
to capture the implications of this new larger scale of the universe. Beyond the fact that
our sun was a star, could nebulae be their own universes or completely separate
creations?
Surveying the Milky Way
In the 1780s William Herschel surveyed the stars in a range of different directions. He
found that the stars were much denser on one side of the sky than those of the other
side.
His son John Herschel conducted a similar study of the sky in the southern hemisphere
and found the same pattern. What they were seeing was the core of the Milky Way
galaxy, where there is a much greater density of stars.
Herschel had placed our sun nearly at the center of the Milky Way; it wouldn't be until
the 1920's when Harlow Shapley's demonstrated that our sun was far from the center of
the Milky Way.
Andromeda and Other Nebulae
Nebulous stars have been observed for thousands of years. In 964 Islamic astronomer
Al-Sufi had observed and recorded what he called "a small cloud" in an illustration of the
constellation Andromeda. We now understand this description as the Andromeda
galaxy. Only with the advent and refinement of the telescope was it possible to start to
document different kinds of nebulous stars.
As already mentioned, Thomas Wright and Immanuel Kant had published their
speculations that faint nebulous stars like this were in fact independent entities like the
Milky Way. In the late 18th century Charles Messier compiled a catalog of the 109
brightest nebulae, which was followed by a William Herschel's much larger catalog of
over 5,000. Even while documenting all of these nebulae it remained unclear as to
exactly what they were.
Finding and Interpreting Red Shift
Studying the light spectrum of nebulae like Andromeda would ultimately provide the
information about what exactly these objects were. A range of astronomers worked on
this issue in the early 20th century. In 1912 astronomer Vesto Slipher studied the light
spectra of some of the brightest nebulae. He was interested in determining if they were
made of the kinds of chemicals one would expect to find in a planetary system.
Slipher found something very interesting - it is possible to calculate the relative speed
and distance of a star or nebulae is moving by examining the light spectrum it gives off
and seeing how much the indicators for elements have shifted into the blue or red color
spectrum. Objects shifted blue are moving closer to us and red shifted objects are
moving away from us. In Slipher's analysis, the spectrums for the nebula were shifted
so far into the red that these nebulae must be moving away from the earth at speeds
beyond the escape velocity of the Milky Way. Along with this evidence, in 1917 Herber
Curtis observed a nova, the brightening of an exploding star, inside the Andromeda
Nebula. Looking back over photographs of the Nebula he was able to document 11
more novae that were on average 10 times fainter than those of the Milky Way. The
evidence was mounting to suggest that these nebulae were well outside the Milky Way.
In 1920, Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis debated the nature of the Milky Way,
nebulae and the scale of the universe. Using the 100 inch telescope at Mt. Wilson,
Edwin Hubble was able to resolve the edges of some spiral nebulae to identify they
were in fact collections of stars, some of which matched standard patterns that enable
astronomers to calculate that the stars were too distant to be part of the Milky Way.
Thus, the idea of the Milky Way as just one of many galaxies came to be the dominant
scientific perspective.
Where the Earth was once understood to be the center of a relatively small universe we
have come to understand it as one world orbiting one of the 300 billion stars in our
galaxy which is itself just one of more than a hundred billion of galaxies in the
observable universe. Even today it remains difficult to grasp just how tiny and small our
planet is in the vastness of the observable universe.
A Universe of Galaxies
A universe of galaxies
The universe is awash in islands of matter — some 100 billion galaxies make up the
basic building blocks of the cosmos.
By David J. Eicher | Published: Friday, February 22, 2019
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, explodes with color in this image taken in Chile’s high
Atacama Desert, perhaps the darkest sky on Earth. The semicircular arc of the Milky
Way is peppered with bluish and pinkish light from glowing star clusters and nebulae.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds lie above and to the right of the Milky Way.
P. Horalek/ESO
On the evening of October 4, 1923, near Los Angeles, a young astronomer got into his
car and began a motorized trek up to Mount Wilson. There, he arrived at the
observatory that housed the 100-inch Hooker Telescope, at the time the largest
telescope in the world.

Edwin Hubble was a fourth-year astronomer at Mount Wilson; he enjoyed using the
Hooker Telescope because he was interested in, among other things, studying spiral
“nebulae.” These mysterious gas clouds were scattered across the sky, and no one
understood their nature. In the early days of the 1920s, Hubble had assigned himself
the task of figuring them out.

He pointed the great telescope toward his favorite object: the nebula in Andromeda,
M31. This spiral-shaped cloud is faintly visible to the naked eye under a clear, moonless
sky. He then captured its image on a photographic plate. Hubble was excited by the
result. On it, he found a suspected nova, an exploding star. The next night, he
photographed M31 again, hoping to catch the nova and record it under better
atmospheric stability. The second plate did indeed record the nova, but little did he
know, he also had captured a plate that would become legendary in the history of
science.

His observing time over, he returned to his office to analyze the catch. Suddenly,
Hubble made an astonishing realization: The nova was not a nova at all, but a particular
type of star that changed its brightness, a Cepheid variable. Checking earlier plates, he
was able to confirm that, and he realized that the star’s faintness had incredible
implications.

The star, and the nebula that encompassed it, must lie at a distance of a million light-
years — three times larger than anyone at the time believed the size of the whole
universe to be. Today, thanks to improved measurements, astronomers know the object
is 2.5 million light-years away.

Aided in part by earlier work done by Vesto M. Slipher and by his own colleague Milton
Humason, Hubble had at once discovered that the universe was far larger than anyone
had believed, and that spiral nebulae like Andromeda were actually distant galaxies.
They were whole systems of stars and gas, separated from our own Milky Way by a
long hike.
Astronomer Edwin Hubble made an exposure of the “Andromeda Nebula” with the
Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles on October 5, 1923.
He was initially excited, believing he recorded a nova, an exploding star. He marked the
star, which lies between two tick marks he drew at the top right on the plate, with the
letter N. The star turned out to be a Cepheid variable, and Hubble used it to prove that
the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy was far greater than astronomers thought.
Courtesy of the Carnegie Observatories/Cindy Hunt
At Arizona’s Lowell Observatory, as early as 1912, Slipher had recorded the apparent
velocities of spiral nebulae and, with the work now done by Hubble, it was clear the
universe was expanding — the galaxies were flying apart from one another over time.
The universe was not only far larger than anyone had previously believed, but it was
growing as time went on.

By 1929, astronomers had put a cosmic picture of the past together. If you traced the
histories of many of the galaxies backward in time, it meant that the cosmos began with
a small, infinitely dense point at its origin. This research was an extension of work
originally done by Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître. Astronomers understood this
cosmic point of origin, later called the Big Bang, as the start of the universe, and it must
have occurred billions of years ago, they calculated. The Big Bang had commenced the
expansion that was driving all the galaxies away from each other as time rolls on. The
whole universe seemed to be flying apart.

In the 1930s, Hubble began to study and classify galaxies into their various so-called
morphological types, the array of structures astronomers saw in photographs. He
eventually assembled the types of galaxies he observed into a tuning fork-shaped
diagram. It contained spiral galaxies, barred spiral galaxies — spirals containing a linear
“bar” of material passing through their centers — lenticular (lens-shaped) galaxies, and
elliptical galaxies. He also identified irregular galaxies, clouds of stars and gas that
lacked an organized shape. Later on, astronomers identified peculiar galaxies, systems
that appeared to be wracked with explosive or disruptive events. They also identified a
class of galaxies called dwarf spheroidals, which seemed to be numerous in the local
universe.

By the 1950s, French astronomer Gerard de Vaucouleurs of the University of Texas had
expanded Hubble’s classification scheme into a more complex system that took into
account many observed properties of galaxies. De Vaucouleurs produced a pseudo-
three-dimensional plot showing the galaxies’ relationships, nicknamed the “Cosmic
Lemon” due to its shape. De Vaucouleurs included details on bars in galaxies,
descriptions of rings of matter visible in them, and an evaluation of how loosely or tightly
the spiral arms of a galaxy were wound. He also included evaluative details about the
nature of irregular and peculiar galaxies.
The last generation of extragalactic astronomy has moved into far more sophisticated
analyses than cataloging. By using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have
estimated that some 100 billion galaxies must exist in the cosmos. And the number may
be much greater than that. Probably some 2 trillion galaxies existed in the early
universe, but it seems clear that galaxies near each other are drawn together by gravity
and combine over cosmic time. Despite the universal expansion, then, normal galaxies
like the Milky Way are probably made of dozens or more protogalaxies that merged into
larger systems. You can see these primitive blobs of matter, bluish protogalaxies, in the
early universe within the Hubble Ultra Deep Field pictures.

One of the greatest edge-on galaxies in the sky, and the one most people say looks like
a flying saucer, is the Sombrero Galaxy (M104) in Virgo. It consists of a great rotating
disk with a prominent dust lane edging it, consumed by a glowing halo of gas and stars.
It lies 10 million light-years away and is about half the size of the Milky Way, sporting a
diameter of 49,000 light-years.
NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)
Our own galaxy

As astronomers have studied greater numbers of galaxies over the past few decades,
they’ve discovered many things, but one that is impossible to ignore is that the universe
is incredibly large. If you look at a galaxy in your telescope’s eyepiece tonight, the
photons striking your eye have been traveling at the fastest speed there is — 186,000
miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second). Nonetheless, they have taken 2.5
million years at that velocity to reach us from the Andromeda Galaxy. And that object is
nearly on our cosmic doorstep.
Of course, the knowledge of our own galaxy, in a primitive sense, goes back to
antiquity. The name Milky Way comes from the Latin via lactea, which derives from the
original idea, the Greek term, galaxías kýklos, “milky circle.” The band of Milky Way
visible in our sky, most prominently in the summer and winter evenings, is the
unresolved light from billions of stars lying along the plane of our galaxy.

But only in the past few decades have we come to understand that the Milky Way is one
of the 100 billion galaxies in the universe, and that its disk stretches some 100,000 light-
years across. It contains some 400 billion stars, although we don’t know exactly how
many because dwarf stars are faint and difficult to see over long distances. For
decades, astronomers believed the Milky Way was a simple spiral galaxy. But studies in
this century have shown the Milky Way is a barred spiral, and that our Sun and solar
system lie some 26,000 light-years from the center, in one of the galaxy’s arms.

The Milky Way consists of a bright disk, a slowly spinning platter of stars and gas that
contains most of the stars we see. Our Sun orbits the center of the galaxy once every
220 million years, meaning that we’ve rotated around the galactic center about 20 times
since the formation of the solar system. Far away, in the center of the galaxy, lies a
supermassive black hole containing around 4.3 million times more mass than the Sun.
In recent times astronomers have discovered that supermassive black holes in the
centers of galaxies are the norm. Nearly all galaxies, except for dwarfs, have them.

The galaxy’s disk is encapsulated by a halo of a small number of stars, along with huge
spheres of ancient stars called globular star clusters, and a big envelope of dark matter.
Astronomers don’t yet know what dark matter consists of, but they know it is there
because of the gravitational influence it has on the visible matter they can observe.

The Local Group

The Milky Way is hardly alone in the cosmos. It belongs to a group of at least 54 objects
called the Local Group of galaxies, a name Hubble gave to this local cloud of objects as
he mapped the nearby cosmos. The primary members of the Local Group are the Milky
Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Pinwheel Galaxy (M33). But each of these big
three spirals has a cloud of attendant galaxies, too. The Milky Way’s satellites include
the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, visible to the naked eye in the Southern
Hemisphere, and many dwarf galaxies. The diameter of the Local Group is about 10
million light-years, some 100 times the diameter of the Milky Way.
The Whirlpool Galaxy in Canes Venatici, another galaxy near the Big Dipper, is also
known as M51 and is a top telescope target. An interacting pair of galaxies, the
Whirlpool is being passed by a little interloper, NGC 5195, which is drawing material off
one of the larger galaxy’s spiral arms. The pair lies 23 million light-years away, and
M51’s disk stretches across 60,000 light-years.

Tony Hallas
And moving outward into the deeper universe, we encounter more examples of those
100 billion galaxies. These majestic islands of stars and gas exist in groups, like our
Local Group, but also in larger assemblages called clusters and very large ones called
superclusters. Despite the overall expansion of the universe, meaning that most
galaxies are moving away from each other as the cosmos grows, gravity keeps smaller
numbers of galaxies bound to each other on their journeys. Our Local Group, for
example, is a member of the so-called Virgo Cluster of galaxies, named so because its
richly populated center lies in the constellation Virgo in our sky.

The Virgo Cluster contains at least 1,500 galaxies and is centered some 54 million light-
years from Earth. You can see some of the brightest galaxies near the core of the Virgo
Cluster in amateur telescopes, in an array called Markarian’s Chain. This line of
galaxies contains supermassive elliptical galaxies such as M49, M84, M86, M87, and
others, and a variety of spiral galaxies, too. For backyard astronomers, this playground
of galaxy types is one of the really entrancing areas of the sky, and it is best visible on
springtime evenings under clear, moonless conditions.
Most of the Virgo Cluster galaxies contain supermassive black holes in their centers.
M87 is quite an example. Whereas the Milky Way’s central black hole weighs in at 4.3
million solar masses, the colossal black hole inside M87 contains an estimated mass of
5 billion to 7 billion suns, some 1,000 times more massive than ours. M87 is one of the
largest galaxies in our part of the universe — it is a so-called cD galaxy, short for
centrally dominant, and it has “eaten” many of the smaller galaxies that once
surrounded it. That’s what massive galaxies do — they consume their neighborhood
partners.

Superclusters

A cluster containing 1,500 galaxies is one thing, but much larger assemblages of
galaxies also exist. The Virgo Cluster itself is a member of the so-called Virgo
Supercluster, or Local Supercluster, which holds thousands of galaxies on a scale an
order of magnitude larger yet. The Virgo Supercluster holds our Milky Way, the Local
Group, the Virgo Cluster, and altogether some 100 galaxy groups and clusters. This
amazingly large framework stretches some 110 million light-years across, and it is one
of about 10 million superclusters that make up the entire cosmos.

Despite the huge number of galaxies existing in the Virgo Supercluster, astronomers
now know that most of the space in this volume is essentially empty, consisting of great
voids. The diameters of these voids range from dozens to hundreds of millions of light-
years. Filamentary chains of galaxies wind their way around the dark voids. On large
scales, galaxies in clusters and superclusters are like soap bubbles, with galaxies
coating the surfaces and voids lying in between.

By the end of the 1980s, astronomers had identified the Great Wall, a sheet of galaxies
measuring 500 million light-years across. More recently, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
uncovered the Sloan Great Wall, an assemblage of galaxies at least twice the size of
the Great Wall, which covers a long dimension of some 1.4 billion light-years.
M83, a magnificent barred spiral galaxy in the southern constellation Hydra, is often
called the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. It resembles the Milky Way in overall form but is
considerably smaller, spanning only 60,000 light-years. Hubble captured this close-up
portrait of the center of M83, which floats majestically in space some 15 million light-
years away.
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
As astronomers discovered more and more distant galaxies, they found that some large
mass seemed to be tugging on the local universe, pulling us in the direction of the
southern constellations Triangulum Australe and Norma. Called the Great Attractor, this
anomaly — some 200 million light-years away — puzzled astronomers. They eventually
discovered that an even larger mass in that direction was pulling us. This mammoth
structure, called the Shapley Supercluster, is 650 million light-years away and contains
the greatest concentration of galaxies in our local part of the cosmos.

The big picture

Additional surprising discoveries have occurred, too. In 2014, astronomers identified a

new supercluster based on the relative motions of galaxies analyzed in a more
sophisticated way than ever before. University of Hawaii astronomers concluded that
the Laniakea Supercluster exists, and named it after the Hawaiian word for “immense
heaven.”

Laniakea, which is also sometimes called the Local Supercluster, contains some
100,000 galaxies, including the Local Group and the Milky Way. This massive cluster
and all its members are traveling together through space, but not all of the galaxies
within it are gravitationally bound. Some will splinter apart from the rest of the cluster as
time rolls on.

The Laniakea Supercluster has four major components — the Virgo Supercluster, the
Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster, the Pavo-Indus Supercluster, and the Southern
Supercluster. Altogether, Laniakea contains around 500 galaxy clusters and groups.
And surrounding Laniakea in the local universe are other galaxy superclusters — the
Shapley Supercluster, the Hercules Supercluster, the Coma Supercluster, and the
Perseus-Pisces Supercluster. Each of these structures holds hundreds of galaxy
clusters and are linked by the fabriclike web of cosmic structure.

And beginning in the 1980s, astronomers found evidence of structures even larger than
superclusters. At first, objects now called Large Quasar Groups (LQG) baffled
astronomers. In 1982, Scottish astronomer Adrian Webster found what would become
known as the Webster Large Quasar Group, a collection of five quasars stretching over
330 million light-years. Now, nearly two dozen LQGs are known. A structure known as
the Huge LQG contains 73 quasars over a diameter of some 4 billion light-years. This
massive structure, dismissed by some astronomers, may hold the title as the largest
collection of related matter in the cosmos.

Truly, the universe is so big that it’s hard to comprehend. On one hand, the enormity of
the universe makes us feel small. Our brief lives happen so quickly, and we wink out,
mostly unaware of the incredibly large cosmos around us. But the fact that we are
sentient, that we can ponder the stars and galaxies far away from us, makes life in the
universe a truly amazing thing. And we’re just starting to get to know the immense world
of galaxies.
COSMOLOGY
Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that involves the origin and evolution of the
universe, from the Big Bang to today and on into the future. According to NASA, the
definition of cosmology is "the scientific study of the large scale properties of the
universe as a whole."
Cosmologists puzzle over exotic concepts like string theory, dark matter and dark
energy and whether there is one universe or many (sometimes called the multiverse).
While other aspects astronomy deal with individual objects and phenomena or
collections of objects, cosmology spans the entire universe from birth to death, with a
wealth of mysteries at every stage.
History of cosmology & astronomy
Humanity's understanding of the universe has evolved significantly over time. In the
early history of astronomy, Earth was regarded as the center of all things, with planets
and stars orbiting it. In the 16th century, Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus suggested
that Earth and the other planets in the solar system in fact orbited the sun, creating a
profound shift in the understanding of the cosmos. In the late 17th century, Isaac
Newton calculated how the forces between planets — specifically the gravitational
forces — interacted.

The dawn of the 20th century brought further insights into comprehending the vast
universe. Albert Einstein proposed the unification of space and time in his General
Theory of Relativity. In the early 1900s, scientists were debating whether the Milky Way
contained the whole universe within its span, or whether it was simply one of many
collections of stars. Edwin Hubble calculated the distance to a fuzzy nebulous object in
the sky and determined that it lay outside of the Milky Way, proving our galaxy to be a
small drop in the enormous universe. Using General Relativity to lay the framework,
Hubble measured other galaxies and determined that they were rushing away from the
us, leading him to conclude that the universe was not static but expanding.
In recent decades, cosmologist Stephen Hawking determined that the universe itself is
not infinite but has a definite size. However, it lacks a definite boundary. This is similar
to Earth; although the planet is finite, a person traveling around it would never find the
"end" but would instead constantly circle the globe. Hawking also proposed that the
universe would not continue on forever but would eventually end.
Cosmological missions & instruments
Launched in November 1989, NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) took
precise measurements of radiation across the sky. The mission operated until 1993.
Although NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is probably best known for its astounding
images, a primary mission was cosmological. By more accurately measuring the
distances to Cepheid variables, stars with a well-defined ratio between their brightness
and their pulsations, Hubble helped to refine measurements regarding how the universe
is expanding. Since its launch, astronomers have continued to use Hubble to make
cosmological m
measurements and refine existing ones.

Thanks to Hubble, "If you put in a box all the ways that dark energy might differ from the
cosmological constant, that box would now be three times smaller," cosmologist Adam
Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute said in a statement. "That's progress,
but we still have a long way to go to pin down the nature of dark energy."
NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) was a spacecraft that operated
from 2001 to 2010. WMAP mapped tiny fluctuations in the cosmic microwave
background (CMB), the ancient light from the early universe, and determined that
ordinary atoms make up only 4.6 percent of the universe, while dark matter makes up
24 percent.
"Lingering doubts about the existence of dark energy and the composition of the
universe dissolved when the WMAP satellite took the most detailed picture ever of the
cosmic microwave background," said cosmologist Charles Seife in the journal Science.
The European Space Agency's Planck space mission ran from 2009 to 2013 and
continued the study of the cosmic microwave background.
The ESA is currently developing the Euclid mission, which should fly by the end of the
decade. Euclid will study dark matter and dark energy with greater precision, tracing its
distribution and evolution through the universe.

"At the heart of the mission is one of the billion pound questions of physics," the
ESA's David Parker said in a statement.
Common cosmological questions

Some researchers think concentric ring patterns in measurements of the cosmic

microwave background are evidence of a universe that existed before our own was born
in the Big Bang. (Image credit: Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan)

What came before the Big Bang?

Because of the enclosed and finite nature of the universe, we cannot see "outside" of
our own universe. Space and time began with the Big Bang. While there are a number
of speculations about the existence of other universes, there is no practical way to
observe them, and as such there will never be any evidence for (or against!) them.
Where did the Big Bang happen?
The Big Bang did not happen at a single point but instead was the appearance of space
and time throughout the entire universe at once.
If other galaxies all seem to be rushing away from us, doesn't that place us at the center
of the universe?
No, because if we were to travel to a distant galaxy, it would seem that all surrounding
galaxies were similarly rushing away. Think of the universe as a giant balloon. If you
mark multiple points on the balloon, then blow it up, you would note that each point is
moving away from all of the others, though none are at the center. The expansion of the
universe functions in much the same way.
How old is the universe?
According to data released by the Planck team in 2013, the universe is 13.8 billion
years old, give or take a hundred million years or so. Planck determined the age after
mapping tiny temperature fluctuations in the CMB.
"Patterns over huge patches of sky tell us about what was happening on the tiniest of
scales in the moments just after our universe was born," said Charles Lawrence, the
U.S. project scientist for Planck, in a statement.

Will the universe end? If so, how?

Whether or not the universe will come to an end depends on its density — how spread
out the matter within it might be. Scientists have calculated a "critical density" for the
universe. If its true density is greater than their calculations, eventually the expansion of
the universe will slow and then, ultimately, reverse until it collapses. However, if the
density is less than the critical density, the universe will continue to expand forever.
[More: How the Universe Will End]
Which came first, the chicken…er, the galaxy or the stars?
The post-Big Bang universe was composed predominantly of hydrogen, with a little bit
of helium thrown in for good measure. Gravity caused the hydrogen to collapse inward,
forming structures. However, astronomers are uncertain whether the first massive blobs
formed individual stars that later fell together via gravity, or the mass came together in
galaxy-sized clumps that later formed stars.

ASTROBIOLOGY
Astrobiology, formerly known as exobiology, is an interdisciplinary scientific field that
studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe.
Astrobiology considers the question of whether extraterrestrial life exists, and if it does,
how humans can detect it.[2][3]
Astrobiology makes use of molecular
biology, biophysics, biochemistry, chemistry, astronomy, physical
cosmology, exoplanetology, geology, paleontology, and ichnology to investigate the
possibility of life on other worlds and help recognize biospheres that might be different
from that on Earth.[4] The origin and early evolution of life is an inseparable part of the
discipline of astrobiology.[5] Astrobiology concerns itself with interpretation of
existing scientific data, and although speculation is entertained to give context,
astrobiology concerns itself primarily with hypotheses that fit firmly into existing scientific
theories.
This interdisciplinary field encompasses research on the origin of planetary systems,
origins of organic compounds in space, rock-water-carbon interactions, abiogenesis on
Earth, planetary habitability, research on biosignatures for life detection, and studies on
the potential for life to adapt to challenges on Earth and in outer space.[6][7][8]
Biochemistry may have begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during
a habitable epoch when the Universe was only 10–17 million years old.[9][10] According to
the panspermia hypothesis, microscopic life—distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and
other small Solar System bodies—may exist throughout the universe.[11][12] According to
research published in August 2015, very large galaxies may be more favorable to the
creation and development of habitable planets than such smaller galaxies as the Milky
Way.[13] Nonetheless, Earth is the only place in the universe humans know to harbor life.
[14][15]
Estimates of habitable zones around other stars,[16][17] sometimes referred to as
"Goldilocks zones,"[18][19] along with the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planets and
new insights into extreme habitats here on Earth, suggest that there may be many more
habitable places in the universe than considered possible until very recently.[20][21][22]
Current studies on the planet Mars by the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are
searching for evidence of ancient life as well as plains related to ancient rivers or lakes
that may have been habitable.[23][24][25][26] The search for evidence
of habitability, taphonomy (related to fossils), and organic molecules on the planet Mars
is now a primary NASA and ESA objective.
 Even if extraterrestrial life is never discovered, the interdisciplinary nature of
astrobiology, and the cosmic and evolutionary perspectives engendered by it, may still
result in a range of benefits here on Earth.[27]
Ever since early humans first looked skyward and imagined the stars as distant
campfires, humanity has wondered if we are alone in the Universe. The ancient Greeks
argued against our home planet being the only cradle for life, but lacked the technology
to prove their beliefs. In the late 20th century, the near-simultaneous discoveries of the
possible remains of bacterial life in a Martian meteorite, and the first planets orbiting
other stars, brought the question of the existence of life beyond the Earth to the
forefront of scientific endeavor. In the 21st century, the new field of Astrobiology
harnesses the required technological and scientific capability to seriously address this
ancient and fundamental question.

Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe. The search for life beyond the Earth
requires an understanding of life, and the nature of the environments that support it, as
well as planetary, planetary system and stellar interactions and processes. To provide
this understanding, astrobiology combines the knowledge and techniques from many
fields, including astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, atmospheric science,
oceanography and aeronautical engineering. Astrobiologists can work alone on
particular scientific questions, but often astrobiologists from different scientific
disciplines work together to examine complex questions that no one field can answer
alone. These questions cover topics such as:

 How does life originate?

 How does life evolve?
 What kind of environment is necessary for life to survive?
 What are the environmental limits or “extremes” under which life can survive?
 What might life look like on another world?
 Is there or has there been life elsewhere in our solar system?
 How can we observe and identify a habitable – or even inhabited – world?
 What is humanity’s future on Earth and beyond?

What Is Happening In The Field Of Astrobiology?

While astrobiology is a relatively young field, it has a secure and promising future.
Astrobiology research has a significant impact on how agencies such as the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency plan
for current and future space missions. For example, many recent missions have
focused on exploring worlds in our own solar system for signs of past, present or the
precursors of life, including Mars (Phoenix , Pathfinder , Global Surveyor, and others)
and Titan (Cassini-Huygens). At the same time, significant advances and investments in
telescope technology (Kepler, James Webb Space Telescope) have allowed
researchers to begin planning and searching for habitable planets outside our solar
system.
In the United States, NASA and the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) are leading policy
makers and funders in astrobiology. An overview of the research goals and objectives
they have articulated can be found in the NASA Astrobiology Roadmap. Internationally,
astrobiology networks and institutes have been established in Europe, Australia,
Canada, Mexico and South America, including the Centro de Astrobiologia in Spain,
the Nordic Network of Astrobiology Graduate Schools, and the Australian Center for
Astrobiology.

The University Of Washington And Astrobiology

As the field of astrobiology has grown, there has been an increased need to train the
next generation of astrobiology researchers and educators. This is why, in 1999, the
University of Washington established its Astrobiology Program (UWAB) – an
interdisciplinary education and research program dedicated to advancing our
understanding of current astrobiology issues and training the astrobiologists of
tomorrow. UWAB is home to many cutting edge research projects, an internationally
recognized graduate program, and an ever-growing collection of teaching-and-learning
resources for astrobiologists and astrobiology enthusiasts of all levels.