Week 8

     In lab this week, we heard our peers give presentations on six different topics: origin of the universe; life cycles of stars' origin of the Earth and Moon; past, present, and future of space travel including Mars; and black holes. Our peers included this information along with preconceptions, misconceptions, historical version, and cool facts about their topics. Each group had a review at the end with three quiz questions to check for comprehension. 

    In Thursday's lecture, we discussed the main points of each of the six topics to further our understanding of what we learned. It included some details that needed to be stressed as well as some things that were left out by our peers that students in other sections may have included. Specifically, we discussed some of the alternative theories to the origin of the universe such as Steady-State Universe, Eternal Inflation - Level II Multiverse, Oscillating Universe, and a few other theories. We also discussed the idea that women are preferred to men in space travel due to the fact that they are lighter in weight, are shorter in height, and consume less food. 

    The textbook reading for this week emphasized the idea we discussed in lecture that the Big Bang was not, in fact, an explosion, but rather it was an expansion of a subatomic particle, which is something I was unaware of until reading the textbook. The Khan Academy video did a great job of explaining this piece of the text further, and it was interesting to hear that space expanded, not just the subatomic particle. The video "The Dust Bunnies That Build Our Planet" left me slightly confused. It discussed how the protoplanetary disks are extremely windy, but we have discussed in past classes that there is no air in space. My question then is, how is there wind in space if there is no air?

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