JOURNEY TO THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE
Answer the questions below as you watch the film. The film is 1h 32min.
1. Roughly how far is the moon from the Earth? ______
How long does it take to get there? ______.
2. Give 2 reasons why nothing can survive on Venus.
3. One prominence loop on the sun releases more energy than ______on Earth.
4. Sunspots release ______, a superheated stream of electrified gas that blasts radiation into space.
5. When the sun dies, what will happen to Earth and the other planets?
6. When a comet is boiled by the sun’s heat, what feature does it create? ______
7. A comet may have crashed into Earth at one point. This may have contained ______which produced life.
8. What would happen if a comet or asteroid crashed into Earth today?
9. What evidence is there that Mars might be able to support life?
10. If we find ______on Mars, then we might be able to find life.
11. Life on Earth may have originated on Mars. How might this have been possible?
12. Why was it so difficult to land a space probe on a moving asteroid?
13. Europa, one of Jupiter’s moon, has many cracks on its surface. What might this be and what could be underneath?
14. What are Saturn’s rings made up of? What may it be the result of?
15. What are some features of Titan (one of Saturn’s moons) that make it seem similar to Earth? What valuable resource does it contain?
16. Although Titan has organic material in its soil, why hasn’t life formed?
17. What is happening to Triton (one of Neptune’s moons)?
18. What types of celestial objects lie beyond Neptune?
19. What was put on the Voyager 1 space probe? Why do you think we put it on there?
20. We travel ______km, or ______years in a space shuttle to get to the next solar system: Alpha Centauri. It has ____ stars.
21. The next star, Epsilon Eridani, is _____ light years away. What stage is life is this star and solar system at?
22. In Epsilon Eridani, there is a planet that may be similar to Earth. What conditions make it similar to Earth?
23. What might have started and then destroyed life on this planet? ______
24. If we can’t observe planets in other solar systems, how were scientists able to detect them?
25. Algol is about 100 light years from Earth. Why does the narrator mention that they would be hearing the first radio broadcast we ever made?
26. Betelgeuse is a large star, it is about ______times wider than our own sun.
27. 1300 light years from Earth is ______, made up of dense dust and gas. What’s happening inside of it?
28. Stars form inside ______, which is described as an artistic masterpiece.
29. What material is left behind after a star dies? Why is this material important?
30. How much would a teaspoon of white dwarf material weigh? ______
31. A supernova is the death of a large star. But a ______is the death of a very large star! When this occurs, how would it affect nearby planets?
32. Scientists have sent messages to a cluster of stars out in the galaxy. How long will it take for these messages to arrive there? ______
33. Once you go beyond our galaxy, it is called ______. This space is full of a lot of what seems to be “nothingness” called ______.
34. Supernovas produce ______. This makes atoms fuse together, creating new elements such as gold and silver.
35. The next galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy, ______light years away.
36. An entire galaxy can explode, but it won’t completely die. How is it that it can be reborn?
37. There are ______of galaxies in the universe, each with ______or ______of stars.
38. Approaching the edge of the universe, we are now ______light years away.
39. A ______is the deadliest thing in the universe, a supermassive black hole equivalent to a billion suns.
40. Nearing the edge of the universe, we are now ______light years away. How do the galaxies here differ than the ones that were observed before?
41. We are now at the edge of the universe. What do you observe?
42. How many years ago did this process start? ______.
Note: At this point we have now travelled back in time. In order to the find the “edge of the universe”, we have to go back to where it all started: The Big Bang. This created space, time, and matter. Since the Big Bang started, the universe has been continuously expanding and possibly curving in on itself, meaning there is no definitive edge.
43. The energy that was created during the big bang can be picked up by TVs and radios. We see/hear this as ______.
44. In 3 billion years, what could happen to our galaxy?
- We only know of our universe. There are theories that there could be ______universes out there.