© 2024
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Strange Universe With Bob Berman
Strange Universe

Edges of the Universe

By Bob Berman
Published October 3, 2023 at 4:52 PM EDT
1 of 1  — NASA.jpg
NASA \ Expedition 63, International Space Station (ISS)

This is the time of year when the Milky Way splits the sky from north to south, and passes straight overhead. If you can get to the country next week, when the bright Moon will be gone, you'll see it in all its glory.

Tags
Strange Universe NASAplanets
Bob Berman
See stories by Bob Berman
Related Content
  • Strange Universe With Bob Berman
    Autumn Begins
    Bob Berman
    The autumnal equinox is here. It means Earth is now angled sideways to the sun. Since neither pole is tipped toward the Sun, days and nights should be equal. The main equinox event, other than declaring it the start of fall, is that the sun rises exactly in the east and sets precisely in the west, not southeast or northwest or anything else. The Sun is now more accurate than any compass.
  • Gravity governs the movements of the cosmos. It draws flocks of galaxies together to form small groups and more massive galaxy clusters, and brings duos so close that they begin to tug at one another. This latter scenario can have extreme consequences, with members of interacting pairs of galaxies often being dramatically distorted, torn apart, or driven to smash into one another, abandoning their former identities and merging to form a single accumulation of gas, dust, and stars. The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, IC 1727, is currently interacting with its near neighbour, NGC 672 (which is just out of frame). The pair’s interactions have triggered peculiar and intriguing phenomena within both objects — most noticeably in IC 1727. The galaxy’s structure is visibly twisted and asymmetric, and its bright nucleus has been dragged off-centre. In interacting galaxies such as these, astronomers often see signs of intense star formation (in episodic flurries known as starbursts) and spot newly-formed star clusters. They are thought to be caused by gravity churning, redistributing, and compacting the gas and dust. In fact, astronomers have analysed the star formation within IC 1727 and NGC 672 and discovered something interesting — observations show that simultaneous bursts of star formation occurred in both galaxies some 20 to 30 and 450 to 750 million years ago. The most likely explanation for this is that the galaxies are indeed an interacting pair, approaching each other every so often and swirling up gas and dust as they pass close by.
    Strange Universe With Bob Berman
    The Milky Way
    Bob Berman
    This week our eyes face the most concentrated part of our Galaxy. If it's clear, and you’re away from city lights, September's crisp air allows the Milky Way to emerge in all its glory. That’s because our own galaxy’s disk is now perpendicular to the horizon so that it crosses the entire sky and passes straight overhead.
  • Strange Universe: Exploding Universe 5/14/23
    The universe’s four forces are identical everywhere. So, any physical truth that applies to our galaxy must be identical everywhere else and throughout all of time. In the 1930s, future Nobel-winner Paul Dirac wondered whether time has always passed the same way and whether light’s speed is truly a constant. But despite such doubts, the cosmos certainly appears to be the same always and everywhere. This week we’ll explore where the universe is heading.
Load More