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The Fabric of the Cosmos: Part One – “What is Space?”

(PBS – NOVA Series)

Answer the following questions while watching the video. You will be responsible for this material.

It is believed that empty space is not nothing…it is something. Space can bend, twist and ripple. The empty space itself shapes everything around us.

1. Space is the most _____________________ thing in the universe. Even __________ are almost entirely made of space.

Scientists are coming up with a bold new picture of space. But the picture has changed over time.

2. What did Newton view space as?

a. A skater

b. A stage

c. Air

d. A trampoline

Newton’s laws all depend on space being a real thing as it provides a benchmark for motion. However, Einstein’s ideas moved us away from looking at space as Newton had viewed it.

3. We would think that if light was coming from a moving object that the light would be “pushed” to move faster. What actually happens?

In order to make sense of the fact that the speed of light remains the same, Einstein determined that space and time work together and are constantly adjusting so that no matter what speed you are moving, the light remains the same speed.

4. What does space look like to an observer when it is adjusting itself? (taxi cab example)

Gravity is a force that attracts objects to each other. Physicists have concluded that the secret to how gravity works lays in the nature of space-time and how it stretches like a fabric.

5. Draw a diagram to illustrate how the fabric of space is stretched and how this results in the force that we call gravity.

A physicist named Leonard Shiff used gyroscopes in an experiment that took 40 years to complete. It was called Gravity Probe B.

6. What was the purpose of Gravity Probe B?

a. Detect a shift in time

b. Detect a warp in space

c. Detect a black hole

There is a separate discipline of Physics that concentrates on probing the universe on a very tiny scale known as Quantum Mechanics. This version of space looks nothing like Einstein’s version.

7. According to Quantum Mechanics space is not empty. What do they believe fills it?

CERN is a particle accelerator that accelerates particles to 99.9% to the speed of light and then smashes them together. When this happens, many new particles are made.

8. As CERN tries to “chip off a piece of space”, what type of particle are they searching for to prove this?

a. Higgs particle

b. Cern particle

c. Field particle

d. Graviton particle

According to early work on the universe, after the Big Bang it was thought that the expansion of the universe would slow down as it runs out of energy from the initial Big Bang explosion.

9. What is actually happening to the universe?

10. What do physicists believe is counteracting gravity?

There is new evidence from black holes about reality and how the universe works.

11. What does this new theory predict about what our universe is?

a. A wallet

b. A supernova

c. A hologram

d. A black hole

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