Introducción
El Observatorio Vera C. Rubin detectará millones de supernovas y galaxias tenues desconocidas hasta ahora, proporcionando una gran cantidad de datos que revelan que el Universo se está expandiendo y que la velocidad de expansión está cambiando con el tiempo. Los estudiantes examinan la velocidad de expansión del Universo en diferentes galaxias y descubren que el Universo parece expandirse de manera uniforme, independientemente de su ubicación. En conjunto, estas observaciones proporcionan pruebas que apoyan la teoría del Big Bang.
Prerequisite Concepts
- Students should know the definition of light-year (ly) as a distance unit.
- Students should be able to distinguish between Doppler shift (due to a galaxy’s recessional velocity) and cosmological redshift (due to the expansion of the Universe.
- Students should understand look back time: the image of a galaxy with a look back time of one million years shows what the galaxy looked like one million years ago.
- Students should be familiar with the way mass and distance affect gravitational forces (Newton’s Laws).
- Students should be familiar with the Law of Conservation of Mass.
- Students should be familiar with the Hubble-LeMaitre Law as supporting evidence for the expansion of the Universe.
Learning Outcomes
- Students interpret the redness-distance plots of galaxies to show that the Universe is expanding (cosmological redshift).
- Students make observations of galaxy distributions to determine that the Universe is the same in all directions (the cosmological principle).
- Students calculate a minimum size for the observable Universe using galaxy redshift data.
- Students analyze galaxy concentration maps to determine how the large scale structure of the Universe has become less homogenous (more clumpy) over time due to gravitational interactions.
Essential Questions
- How can observations of light from distant galaxies be used to determine some characteristics of the observable Universe, such as its minimum size, early history, and expansion?
- How has the distribution of galaxies in the Universe (the large-scale structure) changed over time?
- What is the role of gravity in the evolution of the large-scale structure of the Universe?