Earth Science Lain
Miller
Current events for 4th Quarter 5/21/14
Wall, Mike. "Cosmic Anniversary:
'Big Bang Echo' Discovered 50 Years Ago Today." Space.com.
20 May 2014. Web. 20 May 2014.
For
my current events report I read the article “Cosmic
Anniversary: ‘Big Bang Echo’ Discovered 50 years ago today” by Mike Wall on
space.com. 50 years ago today (March 20th), as we learned in class
when looking for proof of the big bang theory Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias
were in New Jersey when they heard a background humming in their telescope and
looked to figure out what it was. They discovered cosmic microwave background
radiation (CMB) across space. This CMB was from ancient light that began
saturating in the universe 380,000 years after creation. At that moment they
realized that they had discovered the origins of the universe. They found, and
were able to prove, that the cosmos grew from a single point (which was the big
bang) about 3.8 billion years ago. CBM is the oldest light in the universe.
The
discovery of the CBM was so important because it was the first solid, provable
evidence of the big bang occurring. It helps support the theory in proving that
all light began saturating at one point of extreme energy. It also supports the
theory of cosmic inflation, which explains how after the big bang, the universe
expanded faster than the speed of light. The various temperatures and densities
in the CBM help connect to the explanation of the formation of the first stars
as they emerged after the big bang, which then gave rise to galaxies and solar
systems toady. Today (march 20th) the Penzias and Wilson, who won
the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in 1978 will attend a 50th
celebration party in their honor and in honor of CMB.
Overall
this was a very well written article. The author, Robert Wall, did an excellent
job explaining the relevance of Penzias’ and Wilson’s discovery and emphasized
the important research and proof of the big bang which has come out of CMB. He
made great use of other sources of research such as the two minute clip
inserted in the paragraph, which explains how the CMB was formed through the
big bang. Unfortunately the later half of the article was focused more on the
celebration of the discovery, which was less helpful for my Current Event, but nonetheless,
very interesting. I especially took an interest in this article, and chose this
article, because it connected so well to the astronomy unit we learned in
class. The background that I had on Penzias and Wilson, as well as the big bang
itself made the article not only easy to follow, but easy for me to see the
value and impact of it. I loved learning the details of how CBM connects to the
big bang through cosmic inflation theory. If I had one suggestion for Robert
Wall I would say to add another paragraph on the impacts of this discovery, and
to focus less on the story of how it was discovered.
Lain, you did a really good job on this current event report! The entire report was well-written and easy to understand. The summary was concise and contained a lot of information. I could tell what you were talking about because you explained everything really well without putting too many facts in. Another part I really liked in your report was the connection paragraph because you put an emphasis on how important it was and made connections that were relevant and insightful. I knew about most of the facts you presented because we learned about most of them in class, but it was still fascinating because I honestly didn't remember that the cosmos grew from a single spot, the Big Bang, 3.8 billion years ago. I also thought it was cool that it was the 50th anniversary of this discovery. I thought you wrote this report extremely well, but if I had to critique anything it would be your critique paragraph. I thought you included more of the strengths of the article than the weaknesses, although that may have been because it was just a really good article. Good job Lain!
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