Galaxies come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.
Some galaxies consists of large discs with impressive spiral arms and dust lanes, just like our own Milky Way.
Others look more plain: elliptical shapes without any visible structure. And then there are also small irregular galaxies, like the Magellan Clouds.
But how did we end up with a Universe with so many different kinds of galaxies? How did these galaxies change over time? And how did they form in the first place?
In this lecture, we look for answers to these questions, on a tour along the galaxies in our Universe.
Galaxies come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.
Some galaxies consists of large discs with impressive spiral arms and dust lanes, just like our own Milky Way.
Others look more plain: elliptical shapes without any visible structure. And then there are also small irregular galaxies, like the Magellan Clouds.
But how did we end up with a Universe with so many different kinds of galaxies? How did these galaxies change over time? And how did they form in the first place?
In this lecture, we look for answers to these questions, on a tour along the galaxies in our Universe.
An international team of astronomers has discovered two gigantic black holes with masses about 10 billion times the mass of our sun. These black holes have a mass more than 50 per cent greater than any other previously measured.
“They may be the dormant remains of quasars that were extremely luminous billions of years ago,” says Professor James Graham, director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, and founding member of the team behind the discovery.
“Black holes inhabit the centres of nearly all galaxies − the centre of our very own Milky Way galaxy harbours a black hole four million times the mass of the sun − relatively speaking, a baby! But only a few dozens of these black holes have been ‘weighed’ carefully,” says Graham.
“But these newly-measured black hole masses are a surprise,” says Graham. “They are significantly more massive than predicted using the previously known correlations. Something that we had not anticipated for the most…
Ever wondered what it takes to become an astronaut?
Dr. Drew Feustel worked as a car mechanic, got a PhD in geophysics and worked for oil companies before enrolling in the astronaut program.
In this talk, he share his memories from his two trips aboard the space shuttle:
- Three spacewalks to work on the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2009.
- Three spacewalks to install the AMS cosmic ray detector onto the International Space Station in May 2011.
Humans often don't realize that they can sense more than visible light. They feel infrared radiation as heat, which is also another form of light.
Over the past few decades, there has been an explosion of technological innovation in the detection of infrared light.
This has opened up huge discovery spaces in astronomy. It has enabled us to peer into the centre of our Milky Way and see the effects of the supermassive black hole.
We are now able to take pictures of planets in nearby solar systems. Stardust in galaxies also lights up in the infrared, allowing us to track the evolution of galaxies from very early times.
The technology required to detect infrared light is quite unique and presents difficult engineering challenges. I will present an overview of the great new discoveries in infrared astronomy and the associated technological breakthroughs that have ushered in this new and exciting era of astronomy.
Best-selling non-fiction author and science writer Dava Sobel takes us on her trip to Poland to discover for ourselves where Copernicus worked, how the people around him lived and interacted with him --oh, and also how everybody's understanding of how the solar system works was changed forever.
Just think about it… What if you were trapped under something heavy and the mouse was out of your reach? Scary, right? That's exactly why we have these keyboard shortcuts so you can still use Vimeo until the help arrives.
