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Our Universe: Space Exploration NOVA

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today we are on the secrets of the cosmos  exploding Stars supermassive black holes and screaming across the world in in space high-tech telescopes are picking up the signals that reveal a hidden universe Cosmos almost comprehensible in its size age and violence Master investor windows on the universe  scientists are now racing to uncover new Secrets as a good-looking with telescopes that are bigger higher and more advanced than ever before  every time you try and explore and you pumped the universe we have these great discoveries with great surprises since the start of the 20th century telescopes of taking us turn down planets and beyond our galaxy  to see things we never dreamed of they've shown us the very birth of our universe visible matter and the Mystery of dark energy will the next Generation solve the biggest question of all ultimate Destiny dark energy is one of the keys to understanding the Fate the ultimate fate of the universe teen Pikachu space up now on Nova nature ending for Nova is provided by the following David H Koch  and hhmi  Howard Hughes Medical Institute for Corporation for Public Broadcasting and viewers like you additional funding for hunting the edge of space is provided by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation to enhance public understanding of Science and Technology in the modern world and by Mount Cuba turn on the go foundation and  but the dawn of the 20th century our galaxy Milky Way was the entire known universe quick now we live in the Golden Age of cosmic discovery  telescopes are exploding are understand bakeries in Hamburg and working in giant networks across the globe and in space unlocking secrets that astonish and amaze us planets of our solar system in breathtaking to tail The Majestic rings of Saturn  rolling clouds on the surface of Jupiter  but far beyond our solar system we are now discovering exoplanets  Orbitz other songs beyond our galaxy another hundred billion galaxies sombrero  the whirlpool  Beach Harbor in hundreds of billions of Stars  we detected supermassive black holes spinning violently at the very centers of galaxies shooting our own we've witnessed supernovas exploding Stars millions of light-years away doing out superheated gas at 600000 miles per hour defense sign gas and dust billowing trillions of Miles High we can Glimpse new stores being born telescopes have continued open up faster and faster windows on the universe no delay telescope so revealing the invisible mysteries of space that we are only just beginning to understand  dark matter scaffolding our entire Cosmos is built on and dark energy powerful and invisible force it is pushing on Universe apart every time you try and explore and you part of the universe I have these great discoveries great surprises bank at the start of the 20th century  the universe seems to be a much smaller place the sun earth and planets make up our solar system  and beyond them are the millions of stars that make up the galaxy The Milky Way put that s*** that is our universe  unfroze which major question remains at the beginning of the twentieth century was whether or not our Milky Way was all there was was that the whole universe or were there other galaxies so what happened how did telescopes come to reveal so much of our Cosmos and Stewart's very edges the revolution starts in the early 1900s a brand new telescope is being built  it will change our perception the universe forever  explode the edges of the cosmos and set us on a voyage of discovery that is still going today thought telescope is one of the most important in the history of astronomy the first steps in the revolution when astronomers hiking up Mount Wilson 5700 ft above Pasadena California he's Rising above the clowns in he's at the lower atmosphere which just store telescopic images  he wants to see if it is possible to build an observe at the very peak of the mountain where the air is thin and Crystal Clear growing realization that for really good astronomical see you had to find good sites Robin just build a telescope where you happen to have an older move a tree on people to become to realize that the mountains in the West of the United States off of real possibilities  100 years ago the simple video of putting an observatory on top of a mountain is revolutionary  add an enormous logistical challenge hundreds of tons of steel and concrete have to be carefully hauled at the narrow mountain roads but the clear skies are worth Mount Wilson will become the highest Observatory on Earth at a blueprint for observatories all over the world this Observatory is the vision of one man George Ellery Hale news Mission Tucson the greatest mysteries in the cosmos to find out if there is anything beyond our galaxy put for Hail high altitude is just the first step to see deep into the cosmos with stunning clarity he needs his new Observatory to house the biggest telescope in the world  telescopes I like light buckets larger the telescope the more light it can gather bringing the faintest Stars into Focus but he'll faces a challenge moose telescopes at the time use glass lenses to focus light but when glass lenses get really big they've been under their own weight causing distortion  glass lenses just can't get any bigger what teams eats is a radical new design a giant telescope that can collect a lot of light but which doesn't use lenses Sohail turns to a telescope first created by Isaac Newton in 1668 the roof this kind of telescope uses a curved metal mirror instead of glass lenses  it's focuses light by Ruth ticket to a point  now hail is planning to build one on a scale that has never been seen but only revolutionary engineering can support the gigantic instrument he plans and the project will take 11 years to complete the curved mirror spans 100 inches in diameter and weighs sounds of pounds  it sits at the bottom of a 40 ft cast iron chew how's Dan a 100ft Miami door Dome find in 1917 the is telescope the world has ever seen Sparks Wonder amongst the public Copa America Lucky's Farmers from All Nation in the pantheon of telescopes in astronomy Mount Wilson it is known adoration to say is probably the most important telescope in in the history of cosmology  discoveries played here really put on to the map  this great telescope is soon directed towards one of us most enduring Mysteries strange fuzzy clouds of light hanging amongst the stars have puzzle astronomers  they are the nebulae  some are egg-shaped swirls others are Deli spirals of stars others have branching tentacles Fountains of the moon visible through telescopes but nobody knows what they are or how far away they are some astronomers believe that certain types of nebulae couldn't lie side the edges of our Milky Way galaxy they wonder if they could be galaxies like our own so this would shatter the limits of the universe and our understanding of it  but they have never had the technology to solve history  until now Phil invites the world's best astronomers to help crack the mystery once in for among them is a young man called Edwin Hubble Edwin Hubble was one of the greatest observational astronomers ever to have lived he made a tremendous number of important discoveries night after night Hubble examines the nebulae with 100 inch telescope  he examines one in particular the Andromeda nebula which Hubble can now see in unprecedented detail it would be this 100 inch telescope that would finally be powerful enough to bring the nebulae Within Reach and would start a series of discoveries that just completely changed Orange standing of the universe Hubble can see stars within the Andromeda nebula but to find what if it really is an island Universe outside the Milky Way he has to find out how far away it is but that is not an easy establishing distances in the vastness of space he's one of us draw numbers biggest challenge stars like car headlights appear brighter the closer they are you know their true brightness you can work out there distance it's like knowing the wattage of a light bulb if you don't know this you what prompt as NASA astrophysicist Kim Weaver explains a car brightness as a headlamp on this bicycle bicycle lamp  it's the same with stars if we can work out how far away it's from us and that's what we call a standard candle luckily for humble astronomers had recently discovered a special type of are with the true brightness they can calculate it is called a cepheid variable and it's recognizable because it pulsates over a period of days all Hubble has to do now is find one of these Stars in the nebula like Andromeda ignite a scam 100 inch mirror by day he analyzes the photographs he has taken hunting stars that have change brightness then on October 6th 1923 after months of work poppell's strikes gold a cepheid variable on the edge of Andromeda I really the original Discovery played of Edwin Hubble where he first found a cepheid in the Andromeda galaxy and he actually mark song is played between two black lines where the position of the selfie and he writes VAR! When he so he's compared to different plates and he's discovered that this thing is actually changing and its brightness Hubble the poop train history  the distance to one of the nebulae  he works out that Andromeda is about 800,000 here's a way  that's more than eight times the distance to the farthest known stars in the Milky Way Andromeda has to be outside the Milky Way a whole new galaxies beyond our own this is irrefutable evidence. He's very excited he writes it with an! Because he realizes the significance of the discovery  Hubble's discovery is the frontiers of our universe  the Milky Way galaxy is no longer all there is in the cosmos couple goes on to discover that I'm drama that is not alone  Hebrew who's the dozens of nebulae are actually other galaxies Edwin Hubble's research with telescopes profoundly changed our view the universe the most powerful telescopes of today are still exploring the wider Cosmos that Hubble first disc looking across billions of light years they have uncovered 100 billion new galaxies beyond our own  Beach made up of 100 billion stars multiply those together and you have more stars than all the grains of sand on Old beaches and all the deserts on Earth just like that the Universe became 100 billion times larger  Hubble's discovery that there were other galaxies outside our own Blues the universe but what he discovers next will be even more extraordinary several years earlier other astronomers have discovered that men put the nebulae now identified by Hubble as galaxies were moving away from us  now Hubble wants to work out why and he will do it by analyzing life itself  he uses a method first discovered in the 1800's this is a spectroscope made in the body 1880  wanted first generation of instruments used for analyzing the light from the sun it's an instrument like this that transformed astronomy because you can decode the light in a way that you'd never imagine  the spectroscope splits white light into which rainbow spectrum of colors and hidden in the Spectrum are Clues to the behavior of the Stars mind is made up of waves and each color has its own wavelength  blue light has a short wavelength  red light does a longer wavelength  but when a galaxy is racing through the cosmos the wavelengths of the light appear to change from our perspective on Earth if the Galaxy is moving towards us the wavelengths get squashed and appear more blue if the Galaxy is moving away from us the wavelength get stretched out and appear to become more red we call the effect redshift it's like a cosmic spedometer the faster a galaxy is moving away from us the more its light waves are stretched towards the red Sound Works in much the same way because it too is made up of waves as astronomers Alex filippenko explains all this is going to be great I'm going to play on the horn now here we go the pitch of the fixed another car speeding down the road  in the driver's seat filippenko here's the horn at a constant pitch what does change but now he wants to hear what the horn will sound like if he stands on the road sign  car drives past when the car was coming toward me the way from the horn we're being squished together so the pitch sounded higher and as the car passed me and moved away the waves were Shrek the part with Mitch sounded lower so it's where to buy singing like that  if that blue car had been going fast enough the high-frequency Bluelight would have been stretched apart then the blue color would have shifted all the way to read the car would have looked read to me that's known as a red shirt back in 1928 Kabul is looking at the redshift of his new galaxies to find out how fast they are moving he sets out to chart the speeds of galaxies both near and alarm  he wants to see if he can find any correlation between how fast they're moving and how far away they are night after night is spent painstakingly analyzing the light from galaxies the final results Factory  Hubble discovers that the farther away a galaxy is the greater its redshift So the faster it is moving away by 1929 he had established a very interesting relationship between the nebulae that are farther away are moving faster away  Hubbell comes to an astounding conclusion the force is expanding  the galaxies made look like they're traveling away from us but in fact it is space itself that is stretching apart there's a good analogy of how the expanding Universe Works know this hypothetical one dimensional Universe where the ping-pong balls are the galaxies and the hose is the space between them as the space expands all of the ping pong balls receipt away from one another and every bit of space expands the more space there is the faster distant one looks like it's expanding away from us  Hubble's Discovery is one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of astronomy the universe is not static it is growing bigger and bigger  these galaxies are moving apart from one another because space itself is expanding between the galaxies that was a marvelous discovery  Hubble could never have made discoveries without the telescope on Mount Wilson high above the plains of New Mexico one of the most advanced telescopes of today is taking Hubble's groundbreaking work even further the Sloan digital Sky survey is analyzing Starlight from hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies aluminum disk is it Galaxy map for a small part of the night sky  so we've got 640 holes on an aluminum each hole corresponds to a Galaxy optic fibres link Colt version of the spectroscope used by Edwin Hubble it will measure the redshift of the galaxies then technicians insert the map into the base of the telescope and match it up to the right section of the night sky so you can get 640 Spectra at once which is the great way to get a survey done much better than once of the time this survey has now calculated the speeds of over $930,000  giving us a far more image of the universe we live in and how fast it is racing apart but back in 9 129 Hubble's Discovery begs and you question  if the universe is expanding what is it expand from  Hubble saw and realize that things were moving away from each other and then natural leap from that as well if things are now moving away where they all at one time in a central location astronomers put forward of revolutionaries the big bang a single moment in time when the universe was born  the idea is so River mercenary scientist struggled to make sense of it we had no way to observe this it made no sense to people at the time even Einstein didn't believe in this idea we didn't have the belief that it might happen and we also didn't have a telescopes to observe the effects of the big bag to find the proof astronomers will need a completely type of telescope one that can see what I eyes cannot  beyond the colors of visible light are the Rays of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes cannot detect gamma rays x-rays radio waves and microwaves be invisible but they are crucial for astronomers  they hold the keys to some of the most violent events in the universe the human eye is only sensitive to a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum these are all the waves that behave like light we have been able to see in parts of the Spectrum which are not visible to the human eye 1964 astronomers are no pins turn Robert Wilson are working with a new radio telescope  Which Giant antenna enables them to measure microwaves and radio waves in space in the form of heat they expect the stars of our Milky Way to admit a faint glow but when they Point their antenna to empty place where there should be nothing at all they discover something very unusual  we expect find the sky away from the Milky Way to be quite cold we very close absolute zero instead we found you are very great surprise that it was about three degrees hotter than that the mysterious signal seems to come from every direction we had a noise with signal if you want to call it that could be radio sources or something else but I have no idea what it was penzias and Wilson suspect that there was a defect with the equipment which is causing interference  they try everything from sweeping the pigeon droppings from inside antenna  didn't go away from winter summer they denied seasons we've looked at every possible Direction  Joe's high-altitude nuclear explosion of two summers ago do something in the atmosphere charged particles I didn't know  penzias and Wilson are at law until they hear about the work being carried out by a team of scientists just down the road I Princeton University Robert Dickey and colleagues have worked out that the Afterglow from The Big Bang should still be felt today they have even calculated the temperature degrees above absolute zero I called them and I talked about Vicki's office and it happened again  if I learned afterwards watch that you put down the phone and he turned to his call Chinese boys with been scooped  penzias and Wilson have unwittingly found the first physical how to bake bag their radio telescope has picked up the Afterglow of the beginning of the you keep remains one of the most important discoveries of all time I know idea the realistic vehicle of creation in 1978 penzias and Wilson received the Nobel to be on list with Albert Einstein to be on that same was almost too much was too much to bear I just couldn't think of comparing myself against the people who have won Nobel prizes in 1964 when the background radiation from The Big Bang was discovered it was for the first time direct evidence that there was a hot big bang An Origin to our universe penzias and Wilson have found direct proof for the big bag but it would take another 37 years and far more sophisticated microwave technology before we discover Hound the Big Bang form first we see today  heading to an orbit 1 million miles from Earth is the Wilkinson microwave and this trippy Pro or W map  the super Advanced version of Pangea Wilson's giant antenna armed with two reflecting telescopes W Maps mission is to examine the Afterglow of the Big Bang in extreme detail and to try and find out why galaxies formed tell me map we were trying to look way back to the very very earliest times in the universe after year of recording the first results are the W map observations were incredible instead of a smooth background radiation did measure to one thousandth of 1% changes in the temperature of cross the sky W map shows that actually are tiny fluctuations in temperature the dramatic looking temperature changes here are actually tiny going from a redditor hot spot here to a blue or cold spot is only a change of a couple hundred millions of a degree so it's really tiny temperature changes but a very dramatic pattern over the sky which is revealed a tremendous information to us the tiny red spots are where matter is beginning to come ad for clusters of galaxies will eventually form  this is Michael evidence who's to how stars and galaxies first came into being  the W map data helps astronomers work out what happened at the very right after the big bang we can actually deduce from that things that happened in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a send to the universe that I think that's just extraordinary to to be able to probe that early in the in the history of the universe  NW map accuracy allows astronomers to solve another great Cosmic mystery  the exact age of the universe first time astronomers have an accurate figure  we now know that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old that's very old but it's not infinite it could have been infinite but it's not one of the great discoveries of 20th century signs W map has taken us further from the earth and closer to the very birth of the cosmos than any other telescope in history he just revealing the edges of the universe in unprecedented detail  put the microwave data it record is invisible to the human eye would it ever be possible to see the very first galaxies in the universe in order very visible light only if optical telescopes also take a giant leap in technology head for the skies window on the universe NASA launch the most famous telescope ever built if you ask any person on the street do name a Calico they will say the little Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope is probably the most productive telescope in history being compared to the time when cantaloupe lifted his telescope to the sky for the very first time the 12-ton Hubble Space Telescope fitting tribute to the man who first took us beyond the edges of our galaxy  standing by for a car be true sphere and is released into orbit 370 miles above us ever since he'll build his Observatory on a Mountaintop astronomers have Dove having a telescope in space  cheer far above the interference of the Earth's atmosphere there's no Haze or Cloud to obscure the light streaming in from the universe what do you toss I'm speaks canopy clear view of the universe we have seen further and deeper the Hubble that any other telescope in history couple is looking at light that is visible  what we able to do with the Hubble Is essentially captured images as though you had to meet your eyes and your in a vacuum and you could hold them open for a week this is what you would see I don't computer Creations are actually digital pictures that you can ask the crystal clear images taken by Hubble are some of the most extraordinary visions of space ever seen the remains of exploding Stars streaming from space vast clouds of gas and dust when you stars are being born distant galaxies spiraling and giant discs collided to create super galaxies  my favorite image I think must be the butterfly nephew think it's an early but that has gas streaming out 100000 miles an hour telescopes are time machines wishing photons that actually started at Unit 13 billion years ago and have taken that long to Traverse Interstellar space to us and so you'll know only looking out into space You Looking Back in Time in 1995 Hubble's ability to look back in time is put to the test astronomers decide to turn it he's onto one dark point in the universe  just to find out what they can see we picked one time point in the sky in which there was essentially nothing there or nothing special here we stand for 10 days at a single. the sky peering through a tiny Keyhole of our Milky Way galaxy to the universe beyond the size of the spot that we looked was no more than drinking straw what Hubble sees is extraordinary  and what we what 10000 galaxies in that single spot  every point of light that you see in the image represents a galaxy with 100 billion stars like the sun  the image is called the Hubble filled it shows light from galaxies 4 billion times fainter than anything we can see with the human eye life that doubt on its Journey billions of years ago  if there is something to give you a sense of the size of the universe and its debts is this kind of image every time the Hubble Space Telescope has been serviced by astronauts the camera has been upgraded play me down now please. I got to do his final mission in 2009 a new Deep Field image reveals the farthest galaxies ever seen only six hundred million years after the big bang were seeing back as far as we can see because we're seeing back to the time what's a Bersa Galaxy the Hubble Space Telescope is taking images that continue to amaze us I believe that the Hubble Space Telescope in some sense his being really unique in the history of science because taken really the excitement of Discovery in his made it you know to belong to if we home do Youmans all across the globe  Hubble has reviewed the mysteries of Cosmos in stomach Glory now it is working within a vast network of modern super telescopes to investigate Addis read that has rocked the world of astronomy a discovery that threatens to turn everything we thought we knew about the Universe on its head enigmatic Force called dark energy dark energy is most mysterious thing we've ever discovered the energy that seems to be created out of nothing out of the vacuum we have known what is dark energies Discovery comes as a complete surprise in the mid-1990s on Mauna Kea Hawaii at the Keck Observatory the team of astronomers who do Alex filippenko is scouring the distant Cosmos do you know the universe and expanding  put and forever  they have a Siri the universe might actually stop expanding and slowing down  just like when I throw this apple in the air the gravitational attraction of the Earth on the Apple slows it down and eventually stop and reverses its not ocean so to all the galaxies pulling on each other could slow down and ultimately stop the expansion of the universe we followed them by the collapse of the universe into a big crunch  so is the universe really beginning to fall back in turn itself  to measure the speed of the very edges of space astronomers need the most powerful color scopes on Earth the giant mirrors of the Keck telescopes are 33 ft in diameter  made not from one single disk of glass put 36 hexagonal mirrors working together  they give a single image of exceptional clarity the tech telescopes are really fantastic devices they can allow us to see galaxies that are literally the visible edge of the universe 10 11 12 billion light years away  put to find out how far away these distant galaxies Playbar  astronomers need a standard candle for star that will act as a cosmic yardstick  but the Sofia Tribble stars that Edwin Hubble used part to faint at the extremities of the cosmos  astronomers need to hunt for an especially bright kind of star inside the farthest galaxies is when you can explosions known to humankind they are called supernova a supernova is quite literally Annex singstar Stars don't explode at the end of their lives but a few completely destruct themselves in a colossal Titanic explosion it's not just any type of exploding star will do they are looking for a type of supernova that explodes with a very intense and consistent brightness a type 1A they go off as a gigantic nuclear Runaway they're essentially a gigantic nuclear bomb in the most distant galaxies of the universe they find what they are looking for type 1 Supernova there it is  the fast shift to calculate how fast these distant galaxies are moving away finally in 1998 after years of research they come to a shocking clusion the expansion of the universe is slowing down at all it's speeding up but you are surprised we found that the universe is expanding faster now than it used to be so instead of slowing down it's been speeding up so it's like that like that a completely fantastic conclusion  a mysterious force that no one can see is Define gravity pushing the universe apart faster than ever  it is the force astronomers now called dark energy there is the possibility that Einstein's gravity is incomplete that we don't understand gravity there's a possibility that it could change some of the fundamental law physics what Dark Energy actually is and what it will do to our universe remains a mystery to this day dark energy is one of the keys to understanding the Fate the ultimate fate of the universe is it going to expand will it continue to speed up will the speed up speed up in which case the whole universe gets ripped apart  the one thing is how much do know is that dark energy makes up most of the universe  we discovered since that this dark energy is some 70 what percent of the energy density of our universe and yet we don't know what it is just so that you understand the level of the who let me do know about 70% of the surface of the Earth is covered with water right imagine we didn't have a clue what what water was this is situation where an  has it one invisible mystery isn't enough  scientist at NASA's jet propulsion lab are investigating an equally mysterious invisible substance dark matter  dark matter is basically visible we can only see it by looking at how it distorts things that are behind the dark matter images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope are now helping to reveal where dark matter can be found in the universe  Hubble images show that this invisible substance is bending light  a good analogy is a pool of water if you went out can you chew a penny into the bottom of the pool you would look down at that Penny and you can see the penny very clearly because the light from the penny is coming through the water the water is essential play Invisible but the shape of that penny is distorted because that light travels not a straight path but a slightly curvy path through the water to come dark matter has a similar effect  it exerts a powerful gravitational pull on light from distant so what we're looking at here is light from a distant Galaxy coming to us through this dark matter as the light goes through the Dark Matter distribution the path of the light is bent astronomers calculate the dark matter makes up 23% of the universe  add that to dark energy and that leaves just 5% of the entire that is not invisible so after four hundred years of searching the heavens with telescopes we still have 95% of the universe to reveal  and a new Quest is beginning a new generation of telescopes millions of miles in space high on mountain tops and deep below the Earth is gearing up to change our understanding once again what's are actually at the Forefront of changing the way we think of universe because it's the only way to see the universe movies big giant new telescope there try dressed some fundamental questions what's the nature of the universe that we live in what is the stuff that makes up the universe could there be life elsewhere in the universe the most sensitive scientific instruments today are not just looking at detectable light  they're searching for the invisible and they will Mysteries of the cosmos beyond our wildest dreams since the time when telescopes were first raised towards the heavens we have been hunting the edges of the universe Revolutions in technology and the race to build bigger higher and even in space have given us discoveries that have been will the Tory and profound we now know how little we are compared to the extraordinary size our universe we are even on the brink of discovering planets with the building blocks for life what are the exciting things about these big telescopes are very likely to give us the answers to these questions 5 each stage we have Push good boundaries of our universe further beyond our planets beyond our galaxy beyond the hundred billion other galaxies virtually back to the Big Bang at the beginning of time  telescopes are changing everything we thought what are tiny planet and it's true planks within the cosmos  who knows what they will reveal in we going to look back in another hundred years I think the whole world and I love you it will because home yet again major funding for Nova is provided by David H Koch and am I  Howard Hughes Medical Institute for Corporation for Public Broadcasting and viewers like you national funding for hunting the edge of space is provided by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation to enhance public understanding of Science and Technology in the modern world and by Mount Cuba astronomical and  innovis hunting the edge of space website see the next generation of giant telescopes and learn Cosmos filled with black holes Dark Matter extrasolar planets and other Mysteries fight at pbs.org this Nova program is available on DVD at Sean pbs.org or call 1-800 play PBS

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