David Brandt The Diary of a Lost Astronaut While serving as an astronaut on NASA’s latest exploration, all my colleagues have died, and I have lost contact with Earth. Rather than leaving myself to die, I have chosen to make discoveries, look for extraterrestrial life, and find out as much information I can about this universe. All of this, recorded, on a continuous digital document. If I ever get back to earth, I hope that my conclusions are appreciated. I should probably start you out on the day that I realized what happened.
David Brand’s Diary March 14 Day 1 This morning I woke up and left my bed. However, this was unlike any other sleepy morning. All my colleges have deceased. How they died? I’m unsure of. It’s just me and the stars now. Oh yeah, did I mention? I have no remaining communication with NASA. March 18 Day 5 After four days of hopeless reconstruction of my communication systems, I've given up all hope of reconnection with Earth. On the bright side of all this, I’m coming up with a theory of how the universe was created. I call it “The Big Bang.” The name I chose is a bit of a misnomer, what I think happened is more of an expansion. I believe that the Universe started out in an incredibly small, dense area. In a fraction of a second, it started to expand. It was ever expanding at the speed of light, and I think that it still is. Yes, the Universe is ever-expanding. At the speed of light perhaps! With the very powerful telescope I have aboard my ship, there is evidence to my theory. The first piece of evidence is something I call Red Shift. This proves that the Universe is expanding. Red Shift is the change in the wavelength of light due to an object moving away from the
observer. My second piece of evidence is Cosmic Background Radiation. Cosmic Background Radiation is the electromagnetic radiation that had no origin. I think that it is not radiation from stars, but from the Big Bang. If anyone ever finds this theory of mine, I hope it is well received. I’m going to keep working on my mission. April 9 Day 27 It really is amazing how advanced the technology is here in outer space. There are telescopes on my ship that can detect almost every type of electromagnetic radiation. We mostly use reflecting telescopes but to be a good astronaut you need to know about all types. There’s the reflecting, refracting, and radio telescope. A reflecting uses a concave mirror to relay your focus on to the highlighted object. A refracting telescope uses a lens to focus light on an object. A radio telescope is much different from the two, it uses radio waves to capture electromagnetic waves in outer space. Technology is a huge part of astronomy, we would be lost without the incredible technologies we have today.
April 13 Day 32 With recent notes I have been able to conclude an extremely accurate life cycle of a star. I’m aware that there have been pretty complete life cycles. But I believe that this is accurate and complete. A star is born from a nebula (a giant cloud of dust and gas). After a while, the hydrogen and helium in the nebula gets sucked in by gravity and starts to spin. When the gas spins faster, heat is created and the gas becomes a protostar. Soon enough, the temperature reaches 15,000,00 degrees and nuclear fusion occurs in the core. Nuclear fusion causes a protostar to become a main sequence star. A star will stay in its main sequence for billions of years. Our sun is currently in this stage. As the main sequence star glows, hydrogen in its core is turned into helium through nuclear fusion. Once the hydrogen supply becomes low, little nuclear fusion occurs. Without nuclear fusion the core becomes unstable and contracts. The outer shell begins to expand and cool. After this happens the star burns red, it is now called a red giant. From here on, the amount of mass a star has determines the rest of its life. After years of being a red giant, low mass and high mass stars take very different life paths. A low mass star’s core will collapse again. The outer layers form in to a planetary nebula. What’s left of
the core becomes a white dwarf. Then later cools and becomes a black dwarf. A high mass star will undergo a more dramatic later life. This massive star endures a supernova explosion. The remnants of the explosion can become a neutron star. The gravity in space prevents the neutrons and protons from combining and later becomes a black hole. April 31 Day 51 Recently, I have been studying the formation of our solar system. The formation and general structure of our solar system is easy enough to understand. A few main objects fill our solar system: Meteoroids, The Sun, Planets, Moons, Comets, and the Asteroid Belt. The Earth’s sun was created about 5 billion years ago when nuclear fusion was triggered and a main sequence soon lived. Soon after, planetesimal’s came. Some of the planetesimal’s formed together and made protoplanets. Now some of these protoplanets condensed and became planets and moons. Planets and moons are not as large as the protoplanets were. May 5 Day 56 In between Mars and Jupiter lies the Asteroid Belt. There are some huge differences between planets outside, and inside the Asteroid Belt. I kept thinking of differences so I began to make a bit
of a chart. Inner Planets
Outer Planets
• All solid • Generally close together • Much smaller than outer planets • Warmer surface temperatures than outer planets • None of them have rings • Made up of solid iron and nickel • Less gravity to hold gases • Lighter elements were blown away or boiled up by the sun.
• All gas • Very far away from eachother • Much larger than inner planets • Much colder than inner planets • Some of them do have rings • The outer planets have lighter elements such has hydrogen and helium • Shorter days than earth • Longer years than earth
May 15 Day 67 Many great astronomers over the years have argued on the subject Geocentric and Heliocentric Solar Systems. I though I would summarize some of the most popular ideas and astronomers. I’ll start from some of the earliest beliefs. In ancient Greece, they believed in a geocentric solar system. The geocentric belief theorized that the Earth was in the center of the universe. The Earth just sat there, motionless, while the Moon, Sun and know planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter orbited. Beyond this was a giant celestial sphere that orbited the Earth daily. The other most common belief came years later, it was called the
heliocentric solar system. A heliocentric belief involves a Suncentered solar system. There were many famous philosophers and astronomers that devoted their careers to solving this mystety. To name a few: Anaxorgras, Aristotle, Aristarchus, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Sir Isaac Newton. I would be wasting your times by giving a full biography of each figure, so i’ll make a little chart showing was a heliocentric thinker, and who was a geocentric thinker. Geocentric Minds Heliocentric Minds • • • • • •
Anaxorgras Aristotle Eratosthenes Hipparchus Ptolemy Tycho Brahe
• • • • •
Aristarchus Nicolaus Copernicus Johannes Kepler Galileo Galilei Sir Isaac Newton
May 24 Day 77 Looking back at great astronomers I think the most influential astronomer was Johannes Kepler. Johannes Kepler lived from 1571-1630 and was originally an apprentice to Tycho Brahe. Intellectually, he was sharp as a tack. He possessed all of Brahe’s data, and a strong faith for Brahe. But like any other great intellectual, he had to branch out from conservative ideas. Kepler believed in a Heliocentric system.
When learning about Johannes Kepler you must know about his laws of planetary motion. In a nutshell, he believed in the Copernican system and thought that all planet's ellipses were not circular, he also believed that the sun was not at the center of the ellipse. There is actually a Kepler's Law Calculator that can be used to calculate periods, separations, and masses for Keplers' laws. Also another fun fact is that Tucho Brahe didnt let Kepler see all of his notes and studies due to his fear that the young and talented Johannes Kepler would take his role as the premiere astronomer of the day.
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