PRESENTATION OUTLINE
What is the International Space Station?
The International Space Station is a large spacecraft that orbits Earth. Astronauts live up there and can use it as a science lab to do experiments. Many countries have worked together to build it and work together to use it. The station was launched in 1998, a Russian rocket launched that piece, after that more pieces were added and it was built on from other countries. The first crew arrived in October of 2000. NASA and its partners around the world worked together to finish the station in 2011.
Io is one of the four moons orbiting Jupiter that Galileo discovered. The animation has little things flying out of it because io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. It is subjected to tremendous tidal forces that cause its surface to bulge up and down, tidal bumping generates lots of heat, keeping most of its subsurface crust in liquid form trying to escape to a surface to relieve the pressure. So the surface of io is constantly renewing itself.
Which Galaxy will the Milky Way collide into?
Scientists predict there will be a galactic collision between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. Andromeda's sideways velocity is much smaller than the approaching velocity, there for they've predicted it to collide with the Milky Way directly in about 4 billion years. Based on calculations they predict a 50% chance that the Solar system will be swept out three times farther from the galactic core. Our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed, but the sun will most likely be flung into a new region on our new galaxy.
What Supercluster are we a part of?
The Milky Way is part of the Virgo supercluster. It also has the Andromeda and at least 100 other galaxy groups and clusters. But in 2014 a study showed that the Virgo supercluster is part of an even larger supercluster, Laniekea, meaning immeasurable heaven in Hawiian. It has 100,000 galaxies stretched over 520 million light years.
How big is our observable universe?
Astronomers have measured the age of the universe to be 13.8 billion years old, and because of the connection between distance and speed of light, they can look at a region of space that 13.8 billion light years away, which puts Earth in a sphere where we can see with a radius of 13.8 billion light years. We know that the universe is expanding, so if we see something 13.8 billion light years from the Earth during the Big Bang, that spot today is 46 billion light years away, making the Earths observable universe a sphere around 92 billion light years.
