2nd Q-Q-C

Quote: “Supernovae occur when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time brighter than all the stars in its galaxy. “It’s like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once," says Evans. If a supernova explosion happened within five hundred light years of us, we would be goners, according to Evans- it would wreck the show," as he cheerfully puts it. But the universe is vast and supernovae are normally much too far away to harm us. In fact most are so unimaginably distant that their light reaches us as no more than the faintest twinkle.”

Question: My question about this excerpt is won’t our sun blow up as well? They say far into the future, when our sun is older, it will go through the supernova stage as well. However, this passage says for stars much BIGGER than our own. Another question I had is when did they learn about how these supernovas affect the galaxy? Seeing how we couldn’t be close to one to actually feel/see the impact.

Comment: I really enjoyed this excerpt because space and all of its wonders are amazing. I personally feel like this earth is huge, and we have so much to just discover on our planet. Now imagine this massive universe that we have only began to study. There is so much out there that we can learn about, and supernovas are just one of the many interesting phenomenon out there.

1st Q-Q-C

Quote: “Our solar system may be the liveliest thing for trillions of miles, but all the visible stuffin it-the Sun, the planets and their moons, the billion or so tumbling rocks of the aster­oid belt comets, and other miscellaneous drifting detritus-fills less than a trilJjonth of the available space. You also quickly realize that none of the maps you have ever seen of the solar system were remotely drawn to scale.”

Question: My question is how do we know there is no life for trillions of miles? I’ve seen quite a few space/solar system documentaries, and they’re always saying how life could exist on our neighboring planets years ago. So how can we confirm that 100% that there is absolutely NO life besides on earth. There could be tiny cells on the planets that can survive extreme conditions, like the prokaryotic cells during the beginning stages of earth.

Comment: What really struck me about this passage is the truth of the matter. Like we’re not living in Star Wars galaxy, were we can just fly onto another planet full of other life forms. We’re actually kind of alone in this massive solar system, with nobody to share our intelligence and culture with. Of course there are pros to this, such as not getting taking over by aliens. However, in the end, we are still alone. So maybe in the future we would be able to advance our technology and travel farther and faster through space.