PASSPORT TO THE UNIVERSE
Program 1: "LIVE FROM THE EDGE OF SPACE AND TIME"
Premiere feed: Tuesday April 3, 2001, 13:00-13:59 Eastern
In the Chandra Operations Control Center, we have 2 live locations: the CONTROL ROOM, from which contact with Chandra is managed, and the Technical Support Team area, where most of the participating researchers will be encountered, and all hands-on demos will be staged. Program host is Kurt Williams.
1. VTR / UNDERWRITER ANNOUNCE
LIVE FROM THE EDGE OF SPACE AND TIME IS MADE POSSIBLE, IN PART, BY NASA, THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMININSTRATION.
1A. VTR / TEASE / KURT VO
LAST TIME, WE EXPLORED SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES...AND THE MATHEMATICS WHICH PROVES THERE ARE SMALLER BLACK HOLES, JUST A FEW TIMES THE MASS OF OUR SUN.
AND WE MET THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO BUILD AND OPERATE THE POWERFUL INSTRUMENTS WHICH BRING US AMAZING NEW IMAGES OF OUR UNIVERSE.
IN THIS PROGRAM, WE’LL LOOK WAY OUT...TO THE VERY EDGE OF SPACE AND TIME.
WE’LL FIND BLACK HOLES AS FAR AS WE CAN SEE.
BEYOND THAT, WE’LL EXPLORE THE WORLD OF PARTICLE PHYSICS...
...AND GIANT ACCELERATORS WHICH MAY HOLD CLUES TO HOW EVERYTHING BEGAN.
MANY MYSTERIES REMAIN, BUT WE’LL SEE THERE ARE SIMPLE SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES WHICH GUIDE OUR JOURNEY.
NO MATTER HOW EXTREME AND STRANGE THE UNIVERSE, IT’S OUR HOME AND WE >CAN< UNDERSTAND IT.
2. LIVE CONTROL ROOM / KURT TO CAMERA
Welcome to the program and introduction to the Chandra Operations Control Center and the people who work here.
3. LIVE TST (TECHNICAL SUPPORT TEAM area) (NO SYNC)
We meet NCSSM student Chris Clearfield, and more of the researcher guests from Chandra.
4. VTR: TITLES (00:40) [02:54]
5. KURT VO "TRACKING CHANDRA" CHAPTER HEAD #1
"TRACKING CHANDRA"... THAT’S WHAT THEY DO HERE IN THE "OPERATIONS CONTROL CENTER", HOME BASE FOR OUR LIVE AND INTERACTIVE PROGRAM.
Kurt and OCC Manager Roger Brissenden show us where Chandra is in its orbit and what it’s looking at… right now!
6. LIVE CONTROL ROOM AND TST
Kurt intros some of the Chandra observers, who introduce some of the large ideas of the program.
Stephen Murray, Kathy Flanagan, Andrea Prestwich and Harvey Tananbaum.
7. KURT VO "UNIVERSE ONLINE"
THEY CALL IT THE "WORLD WIDE WEB" BUT THE >WHOLE UNIVERSE< IS ONLINE.
HERE’S CHANDRA WEBMASTER, KIMBERLY KOWAL, WITH SOME TIPS ABOUT WHAT’S REALLY OUT THERE...
Kim Kowal shows how viewers can use "J-track" and other software to track Chandra, Hubble and other satellites.
9. LIVE CONTROL ROOM WALKING TO TST / KURT INVITES E-MAIL QUESTIONS
Kurt invites students to submit e-mail questions by going to http://passporttoknowledge.com/universe and clicking through INTERACT to the ON-AIR section where they will find a drop-down menu from which to select topics which interest them.
10. LIVE TST / SIZE AND SCALE DEMO
CXO astronomer Kathy Flanagan and Chris Clearfield use simple, everyday objects to show the relative size and scale of the Earth and the Moon; Sun, Earth, Pluto and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, and lastly, using a piece of paper, edge-on, as the distance of the Earth from the Sun, and thence to the edge of the Universe.
11. KURT OCC / LIVE LEAD TO TAPE
12. VCR / "UNIVERSE TEEMING WITH BLACK HOLES"
LOOK UP ON A CLEAR NIGHT, FAR FROM CITY LIGHTS, AND THE SKY SEEMS FULL OF STARS.
BUT, IN FACT, THE HUMAN EYE CAN ONLY SEE A FEW THOUSAND OF THE MORE THAN 100 BILLION STARS IN OUR MILKY WAY GALAXY.
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU LOOK, JUST ABOVE THE BIG DIPPER, AND STUDY A SPARSELY POPULATED PATCH OF THE NORTHERN SKY?
THAT’S JUST WHAT OUR MOST POWERFUL EYE ON THE VISIBLE UNIVERSETHE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPEDID FROM HIGH ABOVE EARTH’S OBSCURING ATMOSPHERE.
WHEN RESEARCHERS ASSEMBLED A COMPOSITE PICTURE FROM FAINT LIGHT SEEN THROUGH COLOR FILTERS, THE RESULTS WERE AMAZING.
EMPTY SPACE, STERILE DARKNESS, WAS FULL OF GALAXIES.
AND SINCE LOOKING OUT IN SPACE IS LOOKING BACK IN TIME, THE "HUBBLE DEEP FIELD" SHOWED US HOW GALAXIES WERE FORMING, BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO.
Comment from cosmologist Alan Dressler on why looking out in space is looking back in time.
We do have this amazing advantage in astronomy that when we talk about things that happen long ago, which is sort of "history," we can actually look back in time and see if that's really what happened, This is because the Universe is very large and it takes light a certain amount of time to cross it. So the further out we look out in space, the farther back in time we look. If we can build big enough telescopes, powerful enough telescope to see things very, very far away, we can look back to that early time when the very first of these massive black holes were forming.
SAFELY UP IN ORBIT, NASA’S CHANDRA X-RAY TELESCOPE WAS PROGRAMMED TO CAPTURE SIMILAR "DEEP FIELD" IMAGES.
IT TOO WILL SPEND 1 MILLION SECONDS, ABOUT 10 DAYS, QUIETLY STARING INTO THE DARK.
AND, JUST AS HAPPENED FOR VISIBLE LIGHT, THE X-RAY SKY... LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY... WAS ALSO FULL OF SURPRISES.
IN MARCH 2001, A PRESS CONFERENCE WAS HELD AT NASA HEADQUARTERS TO REPORT CHANDRA’S STARTLING RESULTS.
Alan Bunner, Science Director, "Structure and Evolution of the Universe", NASA HQ
It’s like sitting down at the world’s biggest and most sensitive telescope and for the fir5st time being able to see the deep sky wonders that are out there.
AT FIRST THIS CHANDRA IMAGE MIGHT LOOK JUST LIKE REGULAR STARS. BUT EVERY ONE OF THESE POINTS OF LIGHT ARE >X-RAYS SOURCES< DATING FROM 12 BILLION YEARS AGO.
Bruce Margon, Associate Director, Space Telescope Science Institute
If you had to name the three most important components they would be, black holes, black holes and black holes.
Black holes of all different masses, supermassive black holes, in some cases 100 billion timesthe most extreme casesthe mass of our own Sun down to black holes the mass of our own Sun.
ANN HORNSCHEMEIER AND COLLEAGUES LOOKED WITH CHANDRA AT THE VERY SAME PATCH OF SKY AS THE "HUBBLE DEEP FIELD NORTH."
THIS IS HUBBLE...
AND THIS IS CHANDRA.
THEN HER TEAM USED HAWAII’S MIGHTY KECK TELESCOPE TO GET DISTANCE DATA AND DETERMINE THE PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF WHAT THEY WERE SEEING.
EVERY ONE OF THOSE GREEN CIRCLES INDICATES A SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE AT THE CENTER OF A GALAXY.
Ann Hornschemeier, Physics and Astronomy, Penn State University
We can use Chandra to detect things that are hiding. We can also use Chandra to detect smaller black holes that are whispering in the X-ray background. There’s a very loud signal coming from these supermassive black holes. There’s a very faint signal coming from normal galaxies like the Milky Way.
Bruce Margon
It’s fun to now realize how different the visible light sky and the X-ray sky is, now that Chandra has characterized the typical faint X-ray source for us. In the visible light sky, if you look up with your naked eye or for that matter, if you look up with a large telescope, the typical source of optical light is a plain ordinary star like our Sun or a plain ordinary galaxy of a 100 billion stars that’s living a plain, quiet, ordinary life.
On the other hand, if you look up with X-rays the typical X-ray source is anything but. It is a black hole, or an agglomeration of black holes undergoing a very violent life.
13. LIVE TST / MARTIN WEISSKOPF ON MONITOR
Kurt interviews Chandra Project Scientist Martin Weisskopf, who is linking in from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Hunstville, AL.
14. LIVE TST / WHERE DO BLACK HOLES COME FROM? DEMO
Chandra researcher Pat Slane, assisted by Chris Clearfield, uses balloons of different colors to illustrate the life cycle of the stars. Using a simple soda can, Pat simulates the core collapse that results from a supernova, and may lead to a neutron star or a black hole.
15. VTR / ON-AIR INTERACTIONS
NOW IT’S TIME FOR YOUR QUESTIONS, SUBMITTED OVER THE INTERNET OR ON VIDEO...
16. VTR & LIVE / ON-AIR #1
The first question comes from Muncie, IN
Chandra researcher responds.
Chris Clearfield reads a question, "just in" from the WWW.
Chandra researcher responds.
17. KURT LIVE THROW TO TAPE
18. VTR / "MONSTER BLACK HOLE IN OUR GALAXY"
WHEN ASTRONOMERS LOOK OUT INTO SPACE, THEY’RE CONVINCED THAT SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES LIVE AT THE CENTER OF MANY GALAXIES.
PEER DEEP INTO CENTAURUS A WITH THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, AND YOU SEE EVIDENCE OF SOMETHING VERY MASSIVE AND VERY SMALL... WITH CLOUDS OF GAS ORBITING RAPIDLY AROUND IT.
SMALL, MASSIVE, HIGH SPEED ORBITS... THAT’S THE SIGNATURE OF A BLACK HOLE AT THE CENTER OF AN "ACTIVE GALAXY."
BUT WHAT ABOUT OUR OWN MILKY WAY? ARE MAJESTIC SPIRAL GALAXIES LIKE OUR NEIGHBOR, ANDROMEDA... OR M-100... ALSO HOME TO SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE?
THAT’S THE QUESTION U.C.L.A. ASTRONOMER ANDREA GHEZ HAS BEEN WORKING ON.
SHE AND HER COLLEAGUES NOW THINK THEY HAVE AN ANSWER.
FOR MANY YEARS WE’VE KNOWN THAT THERE’S AN ENERGETIC RADIO SOURCE CLOSE TO THE HEART OF OUR GALAXY...
BUT OBSCURING CLOUDS OF GAS AND DUST MAKE IT HARD TO GET A CLOSE-UP VIEW.
CHANDRA SHOWS US DETAILED IMAGES OF AN ENERGETIC X-RAY SOURCE, BUT NO CLEAR EVIDENCE OF A BLACK HOLE.
HAWAII’S NEW GEMINI TELESCOPE SHOWS US STARS CLOSE TO THE GALACTIC CENTER... BUT, COURSE, NO EVIDENCE OF AN INVISIBLE BLACK HOLE.
GHEZ AND COLLEAGUES USED THE NEARBY KECK TELESCOPE... AND SOPHISTICATED NEW OPTICAL TECHNIQUES... TO RUN AN EXPERIMENT THAT MAY HAVE SOLVED THE MYSTERY.
WHY KECK? HIGH UP ON THE FORTY TWO HUNDRED METER PEAK OF MAUNA KEA, YOU’RE ABOVE THE CLOUDS. THE SKY IS CLEAR AND DRY.
HERE KECK’S HUGE 10 METER MIRROR HAS A CLEAR VIEW OF THE SKIES.
NIGHT FALLS... THE TELESCOPE OPERATORS GO TO WORK.
DOWN THE MOUNTAIN, ASTRONOMERS COLLECT DATA, AND SEND IT ROUND THE WORLD ON THE WEB.
BACK HOME IN LOS ANGELES, GHEZ ANALYZES THE RESULTS.
Andrea Ghez, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA
So what we're trying to do is to figure out whether or not there is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. And the key to doing this experiment is to watch the motion of stars as close as you can get to where you think the black hole is. And if there is a black hole there, stars should move much more rapidly as you go closer in, and if there's no black hole, you won't see any fast moving stars.
So we need to be able to take very clean pictures of the center of our galaxy to look for stars. Now the main problem with this is that we live on the Earth, and there's the Earth's atmosphere, and the Earth's atmosphere distorts our images of astronomical sources, so we need to figure out how to beat the Earth's atmosphere.
Just to show you how... what the problem is here, this is a picture towards the center of our galaxy, in fact, towards where we think a black hole might exist, and each star looks very blobby, not a very clean view of the center of the galaxy. In fact, if I show you a movie, you'll see that the atmosphere is continually changing the way this image looks, so it's very difficult to see the individual stars. So we have to figure out how to make a clean picture, and the way we do this is by using a number of techniques.
The newest technique is called adaptive optics, and adaptive optics takes these very short exposures and figures out what the atmosphere is doing and uses a mirror to compensate, so to do exactly in reverse what the atmosphere is doing to your light, and restores a very clean picture.
So here we have in the background, the direct image, basically the summation of all those short exposures we just looked at. And we see those bright stars that look kind of round and blobby. And if we looked where we think the black hole is, which is inside this box, which is blown up, we actually don't see any stars at all. But if we turn on the adaptive optics system, all the sudden, the stars become much cleaner, and you can in fact see stars very close to the center of our galaxy.
So in fact, it's these stars that we want to ask: are these stars moving faster than the stars at larger distances? Okay, so let's remember this box here, so we're going to play a movie now, of how stars in that box have moved over the past few years.
So we'll turn on the movie and we'll see what different images taken different years look like. So each new image is going to be an image taken a year later, and you see large motions.
One might ask: how fast are they moving? They're moving at more than 1,000 kilometers per second, so more than 3,000,000 miles per hour. Or you could say, in every year, these stars are moving 4 times the size our solar system, so these stars are moving exceedingly fast. And much faster than the stars at larger radii, and thus we've demonstrated that there is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
19. LIVE TST / KURT THROWS TO MIKE GARCIA
20. LIVE TST / MIKE GARCIA DEMO OF A STAR ORBITING A BLACK HOLE
Chandra researcher Mike Garcia works with Chris Clearfield and Kim Kowal to demonstrate the distinctive orbital motions of a visible companion to an invisible but massive central object.
21. UNIVERSE ONLINE #2
Kim Kowal displays the wealth of information on astronomical objects to be found on the CXO website.
22. LIVE OCC / KURT LEAD TO...
23. LIVE OCC / KURT AND DAN INTERACTION (01:00) [30:30]
Kurt and Dan Shropshire use a sophisticated computer display to show how they keep Chandra supplied with solar power while orbiting the Earth and sometimes moving into and out of eclipse.
24. LIVE TST / GRAVITY AND SPACETIME / FRAME-DRAGGING DEMO
Andrea Prestwich describes how Einstein’s ideas of gravity as "mass warping spacetime" advanced beyond the classical ideas of Isaac Newton. She uses honey on a glass plate to demonstrate frame-dragging.
25. LIVE OCC / KURT LEAD TO CHRIS CLEARFIELD WITH QUESTIONS
26. LIVE TST / ON-AIR #2
Chris Clearfield reads another student e-mail question.
CXO researcher responds
If time, Chris Clearfield reads another student e-mail question.
If time, CXO researcher responds
27. LIVE OCC / KURT LEAD TO TAPE
28. VTR / "CR EARLY MORNING"
Documentary sequence shot in the Chandra Control Room during a real-time pass uplinking commands and downlinking data.
Darrel Wicker:
We are coming up on contact at 1200 Zulu. The main purpose is to dump the recorder onboard the spacecraft, retrieve the data over the last 8 hours.
The one thing that you always try to keep in mind is that you never know what's going to happen when you come up on a pass. As long as you're aware of what's happening, you're fine. It's when you have the unknown situations such as: you can't turn the spacecraft on for some reason, it becomes a real serious problem.
The station we're supporting with is 2-4, which is at Goldstone. We support with 3 different networks, within the Deep Space Network, Goldstone is one of them, Madrid, and Canberra, Australia.
We do have two recorders onboard the spacecraft, each recorder's got the capability of recording 18.5 hours of data.
Edward Arsenault:
One of the things that we're concerned about within the space environment surrounding the Earth due to solar activity. We can check another spacecraft, ACE, we can tell when there has been a solar storm, a solar flare, depending on what happens radio may have to "saFe" the science instruments on board the spacecraft, take them out of the focal plane so that they're not affected by the protons hitting them!
Darrel:
If something happens we'll see a lot of red show up on the displays.
Edward:
The procedures... I can show you a book right here and if something doesn't check in we follow procedure to see what happens next.
Darrel:
Fortunately for the most part space craft are very reliable. I think we're prepared for pretty much anything that does occur.
Edward:
What they say is a boring "pass" is a very good pass. I'll take those any day!
29. LIVE CR / KURT LEAD TO TAPE
30. VTR / BIG BANG SET-UP
THE "BIG BANG"... THAT’S WHAT ASTRONOMERS CALL TODAY’S MOST ACCEPTED THEORY FOR THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
FIRST, THAT EVERY-THING IN THE UNIVERSE BEGAN IN AN INTENSELY HOT AND INCREDIBLY TINY ERUPTION OF ENERGY, BLOSSOMING OUT OF NOTHINGNESS.
FROM A POINT SMALLER THAN A PROTON, THAT ENERGY HAS BEEN EXPANDING... AND COOLING... AND CONDENSING INTO MATTERSTARS AND GALAXIES, PLANETS AND PLANTS, YOU AND MEEVER SINCE.
WHY SHOULD ANYONE BELIEVE SUCH AN AMAZING STORY?
FIRST, ALBERT EINSTEIN’S THEORIES PREDICTED THAT OUR UNIVERSE MUST BE DYNAMICIT COULD BE EXPANDING OR CONTRACTING, BUT NOT STATIC.
THEN, IN THE 1920’S, ASTRONOMER EDWIN HUBBLE USED THE 100 INCH TELESCOPE HIGH UP ON MOUNT WILSON, CALIFORNIATHEN THE MOST POWERFUL TELESCOPE IN THE WORLDTO STUDY GALAXIES.
BY ANALYZING THEIR LIGHT HE FOUND TO HIS AND EVERYONE’S AMAZEMENT THAT ALL GALAXIES APPEARED TO BE FLYING AWAY FROM EACH OTHER, THE FARTHER AWAY, THE FASTER… AS IF FROM SOME ANCIENT EXPLOSION.
THEN, IN THE 1960’S, RADIO ASTRONOMERS DETECTED A FAINT SIGNAL, COMING FROM EVERY DIRECTION IN SPACE, WHICH COULD BEST BE EXPLAINED AS THE FAINT RELIC OF JUST SUCH AN EVENT.
EDWIN HUBBLE USED SOMETHING CALLED THE "DOPPLER SHIFT" TO MAP THE MOVEMENT OF GALAXIES AND THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE.
HERE’S A SIMPLE HANDS-ON DEMONSTRATION TO SHOW YOU WHAT THAT MEANS.
LEADING COSMOLOGIST ALAN DRESSLER BRINGS THE DOPPLER SHIFT DOWN TO EARTH...
Alan Dressler demonstrates the Doppler Shift using an inexpensive buzzer whirled round his head.
One of the most important kinds of measurements we make in astronomy is the speed of stars or galaxies as they come towards us or go away from us. And we can do that in a pretty simple way, it's one of the easier things to measure, because of something called the Doppler Shift.
When you have a source of light or sound, and it has a certain pitch to it, or a certain color, in the case of light, when the source is moving away from you, the waves get stretched out, and the pitch gets lower, or the light gets redder as we would say. And if it's coming toward you, the waves get bunched together, and the pitch gets higher, in sound, or the light gets bluer. So by measuring how much the shift is in the light or the sound, we can tell which speed the object is either coming or going away from us.
So as an example, I'd like to show you what happens if I take a little tone generator, that makes a certain note, and I'm going to sling it around and make it go higher in pitch and lower in pitch as it goes towards the camera and away from the camera. And this is very much how we measure the speeds of the stars going around the center of the galaxy and determine if there is a black hole there because the stars move faster, the more mass there is in the center of the galaxy. So I'll turn it on now... there is the tone, it's all one constant pitch.
(Tone of buzzer rises and falls as the buzzer comes towards and moves away from the camera.)
So this simple measurement, simply the change in pitch, for sound, or the change in color, for light, enables us to find out fundamental things about the Universe. How it's expanding, and how far away things are, and the presence of black holes in galaxies, and the motions of stars in a galaxy. All those things are done with the simple principle of the Doppler Shift, the shift in color, for light, as the source comes towards you, or goes away.
31. LIVE TST / STEVE, BIG BANG AND EXPANDING UNIVERSE DEMO (01:30) [40:28]
Live description from Stephen Murray of Hubble’s Law, with a hands-on demo using elastic fabric and sequins!
32. LIVE OCC / KURT LEADS TO TAPE
34. LIVE OCC / KURT LEAD TO DARK MATTER SET-UP AND DEMO
35. VTR "DARK MATTER"
THEY CALL IT "DARK MATTER"... SOUNDS FANTASTIC BUT WE KNOW IT’S THERE.
AS WE LOOK AT GIANT SPIRAL GALAXIES LIKE ANDROMEDA AND OTHERS, WE CAN ONLY EXPLAIN THE ROTATION RATES OF THEIR MAJESTIC ARMS BY THE FACT THAT THERE’S SOMETHING VERY MASSIVE OUT THERE, PULLING AND SHAPING THEM WITH ITS GRAVITY, EVEN THOUGH WE CAN’T SEE IT.
THE STARS WE DO SEE... ALL THE GALAXIES SHOWN US BY HUBBLE AND CHANDRA... ALL THAT GLOWING STUFF MAY BE AS LITTLE AS A FEW PER CENT OF WHAT REALLY EXISTS.
Mike Turner
We have the ordinary matter that you and I are made of and that accounts for only about four percent of the total amount of stuff that's out there. We have this dark matter that we think is a different kind of particle than we're made of and that accounts for about thirty percent of the stuff that's out there.
Alan Dressler
But that may be most of the mass in the universe is in this sea of particles that we don't see by any light but only by their effective gravity.
SOME RESEARCHERS PUT IT THIS WAY...
IT’S AS IF VISIBLE STARS AND GALAXIES ARE THE LIGHTS ON A CHRISTMAS TREEPRETTY, BUT NOT WHAT HOLDS THE TREE UP.
DARK MATTER MAKES UP THE TRUNK AND BRANCHES, AND GIVES STRUCTURE TO EVERYTHING WE DO SEE.
IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE, WE THINK IT’S "DARK MATTER" THAT SEEDED THE EARLIEST STRUCTURES.
THEN GRAVITY COMPLETED THE TASK OF ASSEMBLING THE UNIVERSE WE SEE TODAY.
DARK MATTER... WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO SEE IT, BUT JUST LIKE BLACK HOLES, WE CAN SOMETIMES OBSERVE ITS HANDIWORK AND KNOW IT’S JUST AS REAL AS WHAT WE DO SEE.
36. LIVE CR / KURT BRIDGE TO MARTIN
37. GRAVITATIONAL LENSING DEMO / MARTIN ELVIS
Using computer software to conjure up a gravitational lens, and a broken wineglass to show it even more clearly, Martin Elvis describes how we can see otherwise “dark” matter, and use it to study the Universe.
38. LIVE CR / KURT LEAD TO TAPE
39. VTR / "FROM QUARKS TO THE COSMOS"
IF WE COULD ZOOM DOWN INTO THIS CHAIR, WE’D SEE IT’S MOSTLY EMPTY SPACE.
IT’S ELECTROMAGNETIC BONDS BETWEEN THE TINY ATOMS OF THE CHAIR THAT KEEPS IT ALL TOGETHER... AND HOLDS ME UP!
STILL SMALLER THAN ATOMS ARE THE PROTONS AND NEUTRONS IN THE NUCLEUS OF EVERY ATOM.
AND EVERY PROTON AND NEUTRON IS, IN TURN, MADE UP OF STILL SMALLER PARTICLES CALLED "QUARKS"
UNDERSTANDING THESE PARTICLES AND THEIR INTERACTIONS MAY HELP US FIGURE OUT HOW THE UNIVERSE BEGAN.
Michael Turner
As we've studied the Big Bang we realized that in order to really understand how the Universe began and the laws that govern it, we need both telescopes and accelerators. We need accelerators to understand how the Universe began because in the beginning the Universe was just a soup of elementary particles and in accelerators like we have here at Fermilab one can slam together protons and antiprotons and make the kind of quark soup that existed when the Universe was a fraction of a second old. So, metaphorically, we can use accelerators to look into outer space and telescopes to look into inner space, and I think that makes the science much more exciting and interesting.
Maria Spiropulu takes us on a tour of the Fermilab accelerators, starting in the Cockcroft-Walton pre-accelerator:
We are at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the highest energy laboratory in the world today, and this is the area where all the acceleration begins. The area is called Cockroft and Walton, the pre-accelerator.
(Walks into "the Dome")
So this is where it all begins with a bottle of hydrogen. And this is in gaseous form, high purity hydrogen. Now hydrogen is a very simple element. Water is made of two parts of hydrogen and a part of oxygen. If you take one hydrogen atom and you stick an electron on it, it becomes negatively ionized and therefore you can accelerate it. And this is where the acceleration of all this laboratory, of all the protons and anti-protons starts. And then 4,000 people work with this bottle of hydrogen as an initial starting point to discover the origins of matter, and therefore the origins of the universe. Pretty Cool.
(Rides equipment platform down to the floor)
As we go down now what we're seeing is the structure that brings the voltage to 750,000 volts. This is done in stages, as you see there.
If this was in operation now, we would be zapped, fried really.
(Walks towards it)
Let's take a closer look at this voltage multiplier. This is the staging of the voltage multiplier that will give us the 750,00 volts and when that happens the walls and the ceiling of this room are the actual electrodes, they're sitting at 750,000 volts. It's like we're in a huge battery. The other electron would be the dome where we saw before the bottle with the hydrogen.
So now, we're going to use this very high voltage to accelerate the hydrogen you saw in the bottle back in the dome.
(Maria walks along a corridor of equipment above the LINAC)
The particles going out of the Cockroft and Walton and they're being sort of riding a wave, being pushed and kicked at higher and higher energies all across through the linear accelerator structure.
(Riding a golf cart through the tunnel)
We are now down at the tunnel and we're travelling like protons along the direction of protons. As we saw the beam came from the Linac pre-accelerated, and here at this tunnel is where the beam is actually getting at its final energy. after going around and around for millions of kilometers, they're going almost with the speed of light. 40,000 times per second the particles are going around on a 4 mile ring. What we're seeing next here are magnets. The magnets are used to bend the proton beam such that it keeps in a circular path. We're expecting pretty cool results after the protons and the anti protons collide at the collider detector and other locations.
(Walks onto balcony overlooking the CDF)
So here we are now at one of the locations around the (Tevatron) where we bring the protons and antiprotons into the very high energy collisions. This is the Collider Detector at Fermilab, an enormous detector. Pretty Cool. What we're trying to do is we're trying to detect the very high energy particles as the debris of the collision. And different particles interact in different ways with the different materials that the detector is made of. What we need is we need to reconstruct the particles either from their decays or to measure the velocity and the momentum of the particles so that we can reconstruct their identity, we can find their identity. This is all happening in the layers of layers of cylinders of the detector.
(Walks down stairs and dons a hard hat)
We are now in a controlled area before we enter the pit. We have to have a key to enter the collision hall and we have to have hard hat on because there is heavy equipment in there. Let's go.
(Down beside the detector)
So here we are now at the pit, about three stories below the Earth. You can see the central part of the detector covered by plastic for the moment. And in here you can see all the different electronic cards that are collecting the data. Now if we looked over there the actual detector moves in, walls in and it takes a day, it's not very easy to move thousands of tons of the detector in there.
(Walks towards the collision hall)
This is where the actual collisions take place, in the middle, in the very middle of the detector. We are going to bring the CDF detector in and we're going to be at the very end stage of where this hydrogen bottle we saw at the Cockroft and Walton started.
(Points to where the tunnel enters the collision hall)
So, we're going to have the protons coming that way, and the antiprotons coming the other way, the CDF detector in the middle, and we're going to detect the debris of the collision when the protons collide with the antiprotons. And there is a big "baddaboom", debris we taken with the CDF detector, and then another big journey begins analyzing the data in order to extract all the all the physics we need to understand matter, and to understand the Universe eventually.
It is mind boggling and really fantabulous, the thought that the protons and antiprotons collide in the middle of this detector and here is the beginning of answering fundamental questions about elementary particles and their interactions, fundamental questions about how the Universe began, how the Universe evolves, and what is matter.
40. LIVE CONTROL ROOM / KURT LEAD
41. TRACKING CHANDRA #3
Kurt and Sabena interact about how Chandra’s raw data is translated into the amazing images we’ve seen in both programs.
42. LIVE CONTROL ROOM / KURT LEAD
43. ON-AIR #3
Chris reads final question arriving from a student viewer via e-mail.
Scientist TBD responds
44. LIVE OCC / KURT LEAD
45. ONLINE #3
Kim Kowal describes how the Internet allows students to preview and track future missions.
46. LIVE OCC / KURT INTROS WRAP-UP
Farewell to all participants!
47. LIVE CONTROL ROOM AND TST / END CREDITS OVER LIVE SHOTS FROM ALL 3 CAMERAS.
48. VTR / UNDERWRITER ANNOUNCE
LIVE FROM THE EDGE OF SPACE AND TIME IS MADE POSSIBLE, IN PART, BY NASA, THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMININSTRATION.
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