Wonders of the Universe - Brian Cox [56]
ORION’S MOLECULAR MAKE-UP: This detailed spectrum, obtained by ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, shows the fascinating chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula.
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The fundamental building blocks of life may have formed in the depths of space and been delivered to our planet by meteorites.
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This is one more beautiful piece of evidence that forces us to think differently about those twinkling lights and smudges of gas and dust in the sky. When we look out into space we are looking at our place of birth. We truly are children of the stars, and written into every atom and molecule of our bodies is the history of the Universe, from the Big Bang to the present day
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Our story is the story of the Universe. Every piece of every one and every thing you love, of every thing you hate, of every thing you hold precious, was assembled in the first few minutes of the life of the Universe, and transformed in the hearts of stars or created in their fiery deaths. When you die those pieces will be returned to the Universe in the endless cycle of death and rebirth. What a wonderful thing to be a part of that universe – and what a story. What a majestic story!
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Supernovae are the long-awaited spectacles of the skies. It is in the death of old stars that new ones are born, and their demise plays a crucial part of the endless cycle of death and rebirth that occurs right across our universe.
NASA
CHAPTER 3
FALLING
FULL FORCE
For all its scale and grandeur, the Universe is shaped by the action of just four forces of nature. Two of these, the weak and strong nuclear forces, remain hidden from everyday experience inside the atomic nucleus. The third force, electromagnetism, is perhaps most familiar to us, as it is the one we marshal to power our lives – electric currents flow because of the action of this force. Finally, there is gravity, the great sculptor – the force that acts between the stars. Gravity shapes the cosmos on the largest distance scales. From the formless clouds of hydrogen and helium that once filled our universe, gravity forged the first stars, sculpted the first planets and arranged them into the exquisite shapes of the galaxies. Having assembled countless billions of solar systems, gravity drives their cycles and rhythms. It is the invisible string behind the revolution of every moon around every planet and every planet around every star. Gravity keeps our feet on the ground and the Universe ticking over.
Gravity is more than a mere gentle presence; it is relentless, and for the largest agglomerations of matter in the Universe – the stars – it is both creator and destroyer. Stars shine in temporary resistance to gravitational collapse, but when they run out of nuclear fuel and the other three forces can no longer rearrange the matter in their cores in order to release energy and resist its inward pull, gravity crushes the most massive of them out of existence. In doing so, it creates the least understood objects in the Universe.
Before embarking on the voyage of their lives, astronauts are prepared for the flight and the sensation of weightlessness in aircrafts such as this C-131 at Wright Air Development Center, which flies at a ‘zero-g’ trajectory. These flight simulators are dubbed ‘vomit comets’ because of the nausea they often induce.
NASA
Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov is perhaps not the luckiest of men. In 1960 he was selected alongside Yuri Gagarin for the Soviet manned space programme. Out of the twenty men who started the programme, only these two made it through a fierce selection process that tested their physical and psychological resilience to the limit. Throughout training the two fighter pilots matched each other point for point, but someone had to be first, and Gagarin was given the ticket into the history books. On 12 April 1961, Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, completing a single orbit in 108 minutes before returning to Earth first in Vostok 1 and then by parachute. In