re: Lets learn something about space

Groovy. I like space. Thanks

When I was in Sixth Grade we had a girl in our class whose nose was so big you could see it from space. At least that's how rumor had it.

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Pretty cool that atoms heavier than iron are made in supernova explosions. So, atoms in our body... in everything we see was once part of a star that blew up.

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To take this to the next level, everything that is or will be, came from the original ingredients that was squirted out in the big bang. Now the bigger question is what was the original 'thing' that the big bang exploded from?

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I guess my number one question would be: How do we (as a civilization) know what we know about things going on in the universe? I mean, it’s not like we have the ability to physically measure things.

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Mostly we study the electromagnetic radiation from these objects. That includes pretty much the entire spectrum - x-rays, gamma rays, radio waves, infrared, "millimeter wave", and of course, visual light.

There are numerous tools we can use but two big ones are spectral analysis and the Doppler effect. Spectral analysis basically involves splitting an object's light into a spectrum, sort of like using a prism to break a light beam into its component colors. It turns out that specific elements emit light in very specific frequencies, so if we see those emission lines in the spectrum we know that element is present. The Doppler effect tells us an object's speed toward or away from us, by shifting those lines up or down.

Here's another one. You know how a hot object glows red and then gets whiter as it gets hotter? Stars do that too, and the relationship between color and temperature is well known. So just by looking at a star we can tell what its temperature is. Google "blackbody radiation" to learn more.

My favorite is Cepheid variable stars - someone figured out that these stars shine with very predictable luminosities. Since they appear dimmer to us with distance, that means we can tell how far away they are by comparing what we see vs. how much light they really emit.

There's lots and lots of tools like that, too many to list.

Are you Rocky Jones, space ranger? Hopefully not just Winky or Bobby. I like Cleolanta's boobs. Are they real or was it some crazy space surgery?

Ok, that was all pretty damn awesome. You would have had my first graders enraptured with all of that.

I loved telling them all of kinds of cool things to find what they really liked and what they retained and comprehended.

So after a talk about space (including how very far it is from us and how hot it is) I asked them why can't we go land on the sun.

One kid piped up " Cuz it's too pointy, it has all them pointy things on it".

He was thinking of the way all kids draw the sun with all the points on it, lol.

It is

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This makes their mutual gravity so strong that it actually distorts each star into an egg shape, rather than spherical.

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Surely you meant to say flat, right?