Space Exploration: The Age of Hubble | Free Documentary

[Music] [Music] they are capturing photons racing through space measuring their energies and pinpointing their sources an army of high-tech instruments including the Hubble Space Telescope is peering into ever more distant corners of the universe they are reeling in enormous volumes of data that scientists use within models to explain how galaxies took shape how stars live and die [Music] and how the universe set the stage for life what are we learning about the origins of our world and ourselves in this age of Hubble there is a clarity a brilliance to space that simply doesn't exist on earth wrote the astronaut Gus Grissom nowhere else can you realize so fully the majesty of our earth and be so hard at the thought that it's only one untold thousands of planets [Music] four astronauts and stargazers the universe beckons us to explore and to wonder [Music] how did it all come about [Music] and how do we fit in are there other worlds like our own rich with life today these questions are being raised anew by old advances in the science of astronomy the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in the year 1990 to capture the pristine light of distant space it led a fleet of space-based telescopes sent up to broad distant galaxies black holes stars planets the Vantage of space allows satellites to capture light that is blocked or distorted by Earth's atmosphere from long wave infrared light that passes through dust clouds revealing hidden structures in star forming regions or galaxies to high-energy x-rays from supernova explosions or the environments of black holes [Music] by the time the light of these objects reaches us it has traveled millions or even billions of years [Music] it carries with it information about how the universe came to be what it is sending telescopes into space was part of a larger technological revolution on mountaintops around the world scientists began building a new generation of giant telescopes among them the very large telescope array or VLT in Chile the Keck Subaru and Gemini telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii [Music] these high-tech instruments are equipped with the largest mirrors ever built they have to be nearly flawless to capture the trickle of photons from distant reaches of the universe the VLT mirrors for example are so smooth that if you blew one up to the size of Paris its surface would vary by only a millimeter to the powerful light gathering abilities of these precision mirrors scientists added computer programs and sophisticated optics designed to cancel out distortions in starlight caused by turbulence in our atmosphere for purpose to gain the clarity of space here on earth scientists have now added a powerful new weapon to their arsenal of discovery supercomputer programs that use the laws of physics to simulate important cosmic events they use these virtual telescopes to literally set the universe in motion to test theories about how the cosmos evolved on the largest scales and how objects form and interact from immense galaxy clusters [Music] down two solar systems and planets among the most important revelations in this age of Hubble is a deepening sense of the scales and the forces that define the universe based on their view of the night sky the ancient Greeks saw earth at the center of creation the philosopher Aristotle described a series of 55 celestial spheres with each moving in a way that predicted the positions of planets or stars within them the Stars he said are made of a pure substance not found on earth thus the outer spheres they inhabit are home to the gods [Music] centuries later scientists would learn that Earth revolves around the Sun in an assemblage of planets a solar system a [Music] century ago they deduced that our Sun is one of billions of other stars moving around a disk like structure the galaxy what lay beyond this island universe how far did space extend [Music] working with the new 100-inch telescope on California's Mount Wilson astronomer Edwin Hubble and an assistant named Milt Humason analyzed the light of blurry patches of sky known as nebulae they found that these patches were actually galaxies unto themselves located far beyond our Milky Way many of them in fact are moving away from us the farther away they are the faster they are receding these findings sparked the rise of a whole new model of the universe it's much larger than we imagined filled with countless galaxies and growing larger all the time over six decades later scientists launched Hubble's namesake a telescope in space to nail down the parameters he helped you define the cosmic expansion rate as well as a scale for calculating distances knowing these two numbers would allow astronomers to establish a timeline for cosmic evolution going all the way back to the earliest moments of time the starting point comes to us courtesy of the so called cosmic microwave background radiation light emitted not long after the universe was born reading this light the Kobe W map and Planck satellites showed that the universe began with widespread variations in its density from this blotchy pattern gravity sculpted the arrangement of galaxies we now see in our telescopes our galaxy and its neighbors are tied to a larger building the Virgo cluster some 50 million light years away it's at the center of a super cluster 10,000 galaxies strong from this intergalactic help filaments of galaxies extend outward in all directions forming a vast luminous web how far out does this cosmic web extend how did it come to be and how will it evolve in the future astronomers sought answers in even more precise measurements of cosmic expansion using a combination of Hubble and ground-based telescopes they looked for a type of sun-like star that had burned itself out called a white dwarf if one of these tiny dense remnants happens to orbit another star or another white dwarf it may begin to draw mass from its companion at a critical threshold it begins to undergo a thermonuclear reaction scientists of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Lab have been simulating the chain of events that follows hot ash begins rising to the surface as it breaks out it wraps around the star a collision on the other side triggers the explosion these type 1a supernovae are thought to all explode in the same way with the same luminosity wherever they are in space and because they are so bright they are ideal for measuring extreme distances it's like looking at cars with identical headlights approaching on a highway the dimmer they appear the farther away they are [Music] but when astronomers began looking at these cosmic beacons they noticed something unexpected they combined their brightness with another measure how far their light had shifted to the red the larger the shift the more the universe had expanded since the star exploded some explosions looked dimmer than expected based on their redshift that met their light had traveled an even greater distance to reach us that led astronomers to conclude that the cosmic expansion rate was slower in the deep past it must have accelerated for the universe to reach its current size the force causing space to speed up is still unknown scientists refer to it as dark energy and it may be all around us [Music] far from being empty the vacuum of space is filled with energy that constantly Wells up in the form of particles of an opposite charge matter and antimatter [Music] according to a theory that has gained wide acceptance the universe began when this vacuum was somehow tipped into a higher energy state causing space and time to suddenly inflate [Music] tiny fluctuations in the primordial energy generated pressure waves or ripples they gave rise to density variations which gravity amplified over time into the web-like structure seen in telescopes taking cosmic expansion into account galaxies out at the edge of the visible universe are 46 billion light years away from us in each direction there may be much more to it the fury of cosmic inflation would have caused the universe to go from atomic science to cosmological size within an infinitesimally short time the universe as a whole would have grown to some 10 billion trillion times the size of the observable universe put another way the new theory says the whole universe is to the observable universe as the observable universe is to an asthma so where does that leave us in the grand scheme of things since the discoveries of the solar system and the galaxy we find ourselves confined to an ever-smaller corner of creation [Music] and yet in this age of Hubble we have learned just how much we are a product of the universe if ever great cosmic continuum that reaches back to the beginning of time [Music] in a sense our own story looms large it began with the earliest generation of stars and galaxies at a time when the universe was awash in hydrogen gas when the first stars formed they began generating oxygen and carbon in their cores some exploded generating heavier elements like iron or gold or magnesium while spreading these elements far and wide in the form of dust [Music] this animation depicts a supernova spotted by chinese astronomers in the year 1054 ad the star was utterly destroyed except for a spinning of Prudence core the size of a city a neutron star and an expanding cloud of gas and dust still growing at a rate of a thousand kilometers a second [Music] astronomers have been poring over the Grad nebula what they found is that the filaments of matter that rolled out of a blast contain large volumes of dust an array of mostly carbon or silicate compounds that absorb visible light [Music] these solid particles are crucial for the formation of solar systems [Music] within the Crab Nebula there is enough dust to make some 30 to 40,000 births over time and after countless stellar explosions dust has collected in dense pockets throughout our galaxy but best grains can be found throughout intergalactic space as well some might have come from the earliest supernovas there is another source as well since the 1960s astronomers have been studying bright beacons of light that shine from the Centers of distant galaxies a quasars power source they found is a black hole that has grown to millions even billions of times the mass of our own Sun the thinking is that magnetic fuse leap off a disk of matter its spiraling into the black hole drawn by its extreme gravity these fields channel a portion of the inflowing matter out into powerful particle beams the jet is part of a larger rush of matter away from the black hole [Music] you can see it in a large spiral galaxy called NGC 3783 30 million light years from Earth [Music] astronomers used the very large telescope array in Chile's Atacama Desert to peer into the core of this galaxy to study the environment of a supermassive black hole from a disk of matter flowing into the black hole intense radiation had created a dusty wind it is moving up and away from the black hole [Music] the source of the dust is likely generations of giant stars that lived and died in the galaxy's central region [Music] black hole winds are now thought to have had a major impact on the universe at large you can see it in a simulation of early cosmic evolution from a starting point 12 million years after time zero this computer simulation shows the evolution of a cosmic patch some 350 million light years across not everything is known about what happened including the nature of a dominant substance known as dark matter within the volume of this simulation tens of thousands of galaxies take shape all along the strands of the cosmic web where the filaments intersect something happens that will affect the character of every galaxy star and planet gigantic bubbles of hot gas begin to expand outward [Music] they formed when matter flows into large central galaxies and gets blasted out by supermassive black holes lurking in their cores [Music] in time these hot bubbles push out well beyond the central galaxies this has the effect of limiting the amount of gas that can fall into central regions allowing smaller galaxies like ours to form on the periphery the bubbles spread huge volumes of gas and dust created in earlier generations of stars [Music] galaxies all around the universe bear witness to this dusty legacy [Music] [Music] the bright central region of the famous pinwheel galaxy is surrounded by dark dusty lanes [Music] in spiral galaxies the most common type hot winds from exploding stars hoped push these clouds toward the periphery [Music] as well as above and below their flat disks [Music] you can see evidence of this in our view into the disk of the Milky Way galaxy dark dust lanes and ominous clouds dominate our view into the disk while tendrils of dust reach far above it [Music] here above the plane of the galaxy just 400 light-years from Earth is a dense irregular cloud of dust called lupus for our Sun our solar system likely formed in a cloud like this lupus for may one day give rise to a star cluster like NGC 3590 a region of dust and glowing gas near the plane of the galaxy these young stars were probably all born at the same time within the same cloud [Music] the manufacturer and spread of dust is an ongoing process in our galaxy consider the Carina Nebula located 7,500 light-years away it spans some 250 lightyears across [Music] at its center is the giant star at a coronae one of the largest and most unstable stars known in our galaxy it is surrounded by an expanding bipolar cloud of dust and gas known as the homunculus or little man in Latin astronomers believe it was expelled during what they called the great eruption in the years 1838 to 1845 [Music] with a mass over 100 times that of our Sun this star could explode at any time and yet in the larger cloud of dust and gas stars are being born at a fever pitch [Music] here a pillar of dust is being eroded by a torrent of ultraviolet light from hot massive stars nearby [Music] a dense region at the top resists these scouring winds giving a young star time to incubate [Music] gas and dust flowing into the star are being blasted out in Jets coming from its poles of all the constellations few attract more admirers than Orion within it is a stargazers dream the great Orion Nebula a luminous castle of gas and dust 1300 light-years away it's roughly the size of a full moon on the sky and its heart is a star cluster called the trapezium a brilliant formation first discovered by Galileo it pumps out a wind of ultraviolet radiation that causes the surrounding region to glow these large stars emit streams of charged particles that collide with dust clouds forming a frothy landscape of arcs and bubbles these winds are also disrupting the growth of hundreds of solar systems in the making despite these winds some solar systems still manage to come to life using the Hubble Space Telescope scientists have been drawing them out of their bright and hazy surroundings [Music] thousands of solar systems are being born in and around the Orion Nebula in a rich chemical soup provided by large exploding stars amid all the dust scientists have detected huge volumes of water where does it come from and how does it form in some cases water is the byproduct of a star's death when a medium-sized star like our Sun uses up the hydrogen in its core it becomes unstable shedding its outer layers the helix nebula is a star that has puffed out into a colorful ring of glowing gas and dust a tiny remnant of the original star called a white dwarf scours the ring with harsh ultraviolet light that destroys particular compounds including carbon monoxide the oxygen that set free combines with hydrogen in a molecule that forms water dying stars are not the only source of water 750 light-years from Earth a protostar called el 14 48 mm is shooting matter out in high speed Jets containing oxygen and hydrogen when these molecules reach a cooler environment they form water at a rate 100 million times the flow of the Amazon River [Music] water then becomes part of the dynamic of a solar system's birth scientists have sought to better understand the formation of planets by simulating it in a supercomputer [Music] gravity causes a central region to collapse and dust and gas to flow in it forms a disk that swirls around the newborn star along the way water acts like a glue allowing dust grains to form larger bodies from rocks to comets asteroids and finally planets [Music] [Music] upon the high deserts of Chile astronomers have been using the Atacama Large millimeter/submillimeter telescope array to peer into the turbulent environments of newly born stars one of them 450 light years away is known as HL Tauri the star is no more than a million years old but there are signs that planet formation is already underway it's hot core is cocooned in a cloud of gas and dust the solar nebula as matter flowed into the star it has settled into a protoplanetary disk this disc has a series of telltale grooves where the gravity of planets has begun to sweep up the dust [Music] dust within the solar nebula carries all the material needed to build a planet like ours including organic compounds [Music] [Music] so how did earth get its water [Music] the answer may begin with our star as the Sun vents heat from nuclear burning in its core it generates a steady wind of protons that reach to the edges of the solar system this wind encounters dust particles that are wafting through the solar system attracted by the gravity of planets some 40,000 tons of dust and rocks rained down onto the earth each year leftovers from the birth of the solar system four to five billion years ago interplanetary dust has long been known to carry organic or carbon compounds able to survive the journey through Earth's atmosphere [Music] scientists recently found something else on the dust particles themselves hydrogen ions or protons from the solar wind strike these particles when these protons interact with oxygen in silicate mineral grains they form h2o molecules which then cling to the particles [Music] this process was documented in lunar dust grains picked up by Apollo astronauts it may be the source of water ice that is collected in the bottom of some lunar craters and is strewn about lunar landscapes in addition to watery dust raining down onto the earth this may explain how comets and asteroids were able to generate stores of water and to bring them down to earth given that water is created and spread so readily it's not surprising that it pervades our own solar system and it's edges Lucho and it's moon kara aligned with a thick layer of frozen methane and water ice the blue planets Neptune and Uranus get their color from the methane clouds that make up their frigid atmospheres [Music] within charged particles circulates MSc of liquid water producing electrical currents and magnetic fields [Music] within the folds of Saturn's rings are countless particles of ice [Music] hovering just above them is the moon enceladus with an icy surface that makes it one of the brightest objects in the entire solar system the Cassini spacecraft detect the Jets of water ice shooting out of its South Pole scientists believe they are coming from an interior ocean launched by the squeezing action of Saturn's gravity the largest planet Jupiter Barbara's its own storehouse of water [Music] the storms that drift along its surface are the result of water vapor rising and falling like thunderstorms beyond Jupiter's roiling atmosphere lies a water world Jupiter's 2nd moon Europa it's bright smooth surface is crisp crust by channels and grooves carved out by shifts in an ocean of liquid water or slushy ice that lies below the faint emissions of water jets illustrated here were recently picked up by the Hubble Space Telescope then there's earth of water planet vast interconnected bodies of water the oceans cover 71% of its surface and now scientists have detected whole oceans hidden in rocks deep inside the planet [Music] the story of dust and water is central to our understanding of how life can arise these two components can be found throughout the galaxy but does life inevitably follow [Music] for now earth remains our only data point among the thousands even billions of habitable worlds that may be out there [Music] the age of Hubble has brought a new appreciation of how we emerged in a universe that is immense beyond imagining we have only begun to discern its limits new data supports theories of how the universe began in a furious expansion because science is fundamentally concerned with events that repeat in nature some inflationary theories place our universe in an even broader cosmic landscape the idea is that universes like frothy bubbles extend out into the voids of infinity the age of Hubble has brought incredible advances in our understanding of the universe it is surely only the beginning of a long quest to know how it all fits together where we came from and what the stars may tell us of our place in the spread of time and space four astronauts and other stargazers there is both a sense of wonder and connection as we lock our gaze on the heavens searching for the secrets of creation emblazoned on the night sky [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,435,575

Rating: 4.6522846 out of 5

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), astronomy (field of study), space, space documentary, space exploration, space exploration documentary, hubble, hubble telescope, hubble doku, hubble documentary, astronomy, astronomy documentary, Journey Through The Universe, universe, universe exploration, telescope, space telescope, space telescope documentary, discovering space, hubble images

Id: HgC4C4VHhWY

Length: 50min 23sec (3023 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2020