Week 4: "Age of Starlight", followed by darkness

I have never visited the planetarium at UCLA before. I briefly heard about it as a sophomore, but I never thought about visiting the place. Since I am a big fan of astronomy, I was really looking forward to this. My knowledge on the subject is definitely more casual, but I took an astronomy course at UCLA just because it interested me. I've also been to the Griffith Observatory and got tickets to the planetarium over there. The specific show I saw, since they host a variety of them, was the “Light of the Valkyries”. It was incredible, the room was massive and the narrator did an amazing job. He talked about the history of using stars for navigation, with an emphasis on Nordic gods and folklore. Because of this, my expectations were somewhat low for our planetarium. How could it compete? Well, although it is smaller, the show was still magic. The pitch darkness really made you feel like you were looking up at the stars. I had no idea that the technology behind the planetarium was rather obsolete; you could even hear the sounds of the mechanical device! If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Santiago (I believe that was his last name? I have a bad memory) was super cool. He said at the beginning that he wanted it to be more of a conversation and less like a lecture. I think he succeeded, especially as more students began to ask questions.

Most of the basic scientific information I have heard before, so I think I was more captivated by his personal experience and stories. For example, when he recounted the significance Orion’s belt had on him where he grew up in Mexico City, I found that really cool. The three kings meant good things were coming, like Christmas! I did not grow up directly in a city like LA or Mexico City, which allowed me to see more stars. My suburb skies weren't half bad. However, he is totally right in saying that a place like Joshua Tree is mind-blowing. I went there once for a rock climbing trip and I was getting emotional looking up at the night sky! There is something about it that is really humbling. Our existence is completely insignificant in almost every way, but we still move forward everyday with our own goals and ambitions. It can become very philosophical and those types of questions fascinate me.

Stargazing - Joshua Tree National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

What also fascinates me are black holes. Santiago mentioned them briefly, but I would love to spend some time talking about them in this blog post. A black hole is an object that has so much mass that the gravitational force can pull in almost everything, including light. These are usually formed when a massive star dies. Most stars die by going into a supernova, an event when the nuclear fusion at the core of the star can longer output enough energy to resist its own gravity, causing a huge explosion. Betelgeuse is a star that is likely to go supernova relatively soon. Santiago said there is a possibility that it will explode within a few hundred years or so, but it is more likely it will need a few more million. For the universe, that amount of time is nothing. The gravity compresses at the core, squeezing and squeezing like a runaway train. If there is enough mass, then it will get compressed into an extremely dense object that may not be that big, but has a tremendous amount of gravity. To put some perspective on the scale, a black hole can be the size of an atom, yet it would have the mass of an entire mountain. It is just insane to think about. 

3 major moments from the 'golden' decade of black holes | PBS NewsHour

Black holes can be absolutely huge, as well, so imagine what kind of power they hold. Supermassive black holes are said to be at the center of galaxies like ours. The milky way most likely gets its swirl because every star is revolving around the gravitational field of a black hole. Recently, NASA has observed with their Chandra X-ray Observatory intermediate-mass black holes eating thousands of stars in over two dozen galaxies. These things are the definition of destruction. A video that I absolutely love is the “Timelapse of the Universe” by MelodySheep. It gives stunning predictions using all of the scientific knowledge that we currently have at our disposal. I really recommend you watch it, it’s mind-boggling. The section that impacted me the most was when the age of starlight ends. Everything we think of about astronomy is really quite a small piece of the universe. Every star in the universe will die, leaving black holes as the only force left in the universe. There will be absolutely no light, nothing being created, just black holes absorbing other black holes. It is a haunting concept. Please watch the video, I will put it in my work citations. It really is worth your time (less than half an hour).

I did not have the time to talk about the meteorite gallery, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! Here are some of the photos I took.

Citations

Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA&t=1s&ab_channel=melodysheep

Cooper, K. (2022, April 22). Midsize black holes spotted forming in wreckage of stars. Space.com. Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://www.space.com/intermediate-black-holes-chandra-star-clusters 

Dunbar, B. (2015, May 21). What is a black hole? NASA. Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-a-black-hole-k4.html 

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Betelgeuse. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/place/Betelgeuse-star 

Isaacs-Thomas, I. (2019, December 27). 3 major moments from the 'golden' decade of black holes. PBS. Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/3-major-moments-from-the-golden-decade-of-black-holes 

Light of the Valkyries. Griffith Observatory. (2022, April 21). Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://griffithobservatory.org/planetarium/light-of-the-valkyries/ 

Thompson, A. (2022, February 26). What is a supernova? Space.com. Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://www.space.com/6638-supernova.html 

U.S. Department of the Interior. (n.d.). Stargazing. National Parks Service. Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://www.nps.gov/jotr/planyourvisit/stargazing.htm