Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions!
This week unfortunately marks the final episode of Spherical Cow. Thank you so much for supporting our podcast - we hope you have enjoyed the episodes!
In this episode we are finishing off our discussion about the history of the universe. We will be talking about the Epoch of Reionization, how scientists actually learn about this era and saying goodbye!
Please see an amendment to our discussion below:
1:35 - Sorry I slipped up here! I meant to say that when high energy radiation was emitted by the first starts and, then later, by quasars, the neutral hydrogen was broken apart into positive nuclei and electrons not positive nuclei and ions (the positive nuclei are the ions)!
To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/
N.B. Parts of this episode were recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal.
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27:58
Cosmic Dawn
Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions!
This week we are continuing our journey through the history of the universe and discussing Cosmic Dawn. We will be talking about what Cosmic Dawn is, the properties and formation of the first stars and why they are so interesting!
Please see some additions/amendments to our discussion below:
04:45 - To explain this a little further, ATLAS is one of the four detectors located around the Large Hadron Collider ring at CERN. Two protons beams, travelling in opposite directions, collide inside the ATLAS detector. Before this collision, the momentum in a direction perpendicular to the proton beams is 0. Therefore, after the collision, the momentum in a direction perpendicular to the proton beams must also be 0 since momentum is always conserved in collisions. So, if ATLAS detects any particles travelling in a direction perpendicular to the original proton beams there must be other invisible particles (possibly dark matter) travelling in a different direction so that overall the momentum in a direction perpendicular to the original proton beams adds up to 0.
12:32 - Just to clarify, these Population II stars are not just found in the Milky Way but all over the universe! They are often found in 'globular clusters' (spherical groups of stars found within many galaxies). The age of these stars is similar to the age of the Milky Way so Population II stars were formed around 13.6 billion years ago.
To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/
N.B. This episode was recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal.
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30:03
And sound too!
Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions!
This week we are continuing our discussion about the history of the universe and once again talking about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. We will be discussing the formation of sound waves in the early universe and how studying the imprint of these acoustic oscillations of the Cosmic Microwave Background map can tell us lots of fascinating information about our universe!
Please see some additions/amendments to our discussion below:
13:42 - Sorry! I meant to say that you can do some calculations and see if they agree with your observations (i.e your measurements of the size of the ‘spots’ on the cosmic microwave background map).
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2013/03/Planck_Power_Spectrum - This is a link to the CMB Power Spectrum graph we discussed in our episode - the measurements were taken by the Planck Satellite
To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/
N.B. This episode was recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal and we are sorry about the noisy background in some places!
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16:30
Let there be light!
Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions!
This week we are discussing the surface of last scattering and cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).
We will be talking about what CMBR is, how it was discovered and how measurements of CMBR agree with observations of our universe.
To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/
N.B. This episode was recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal.
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22:34
A melting pot of matter
Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions!
This week we are continuing our journey through the history of the universe and discussing the beginnings of matter! We will be talking about the quark-gluon plasma era and big bang nucleosynthesis.
To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/
N.B. This episode was recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal.
UK