1. What Is Life?
In 1572, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was witness to one of the most exciting cosmic phenomena known to exist -- a supernova, or gigantic stellar explosion. Little did he know that this same supernova - which now bears his name - would be so well-studied in later years that astronomers would know such intricate details as its chemical composition. Today the still-brilliant remnants of the Tycho supernova, which is located in the constellation Cassiopeia, has two major observers - the European XMM-Newton telescope and the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory. These telescopes have, in a matter of months, already uncovered a wealth of data about the exploded star. Most recently, the European telescope has detailed the composition of Tycho, identifying in the supernova remnant many of the same chemical building blocks used to make the planets and life on Earth. Supernovae are some of the most violent events in the universe. They occur at the end of a giant star's life, when the star has used up all of its nuclear fuel. When that happens, the stellar core collapses in on itself, releasing huge amounts of energy into the local interstellar space around it in a giant explosion.
Tycho Brahe was witness to one of the only three or four supernovae known to explode during human history. Though today the Tycho supernova is visible only through a telescope, at the time of its initial blast it was visible to the naked eye for about 18 months. In fact, the initial explosion probably appeared as one of the brightest stars in the sky. Today, astronomers are not studying visible light from the supernova, as Tycho would have seen it, but rather its X-ray light, which can be detected by both XMM-Newton and Chandra. .
Scientists are interested in supernovae because they are thought to be great cosmological chefs. Most of the chemicals in the universe are created as a direct result of supernova explosions.
(The Cosmic Perspective Second Edition) Astronomy is the scientific study of the chemical make up of planets, stars, moons, galaxies, and the entire make-up of our universe. It is the study of how these bodies move through space and is based on physics, mathematics, and chemistry. ...
According to the Big Bang Theory, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter in all directions. ... "Fritz" Schaefer is the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia. ...
He changed his major to chemistry during his sophomore year. ... In 1938, Asimov wrote a story titled 'Cosmic Corkscrew' about time travel, and wanted to take it to the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, John W. ... In addition, he assumed a responsibility for organizing and simplifying new knowledge in astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and ecology as it became confirmed and established, and for identifying the connections among these studies and their implications for the future of humanity" (Hutcheon). ...
...His mother said: -O, Stephen will apologise. Dante said: -O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes. This capsule of utterance, which comes at the climax of the short first passage (or first independent "poem" of the book, as Fisher might assert) that Jo...
After discussing DNA Chemistry, Jakosky takes up the environmental niches where life might once have existed, or persists, on Mars, Europa, Jupiter, and Titan" (Taylor 44). ... According to a cosmic census extrapolated from NASA's Kepler telescope, at least 50 billion planets reside in the Milky Way Galaxy. ...
As human thought has progressed through history, our thoughts in science have spanned many millennia and many subjects. People who have studied the sciences have ranged from Aristotle in Ancient Greece to Steven Hawking today. Men and women have studied subjects far and wide, from particle physics t...
