{"id":705,"date":"2019-05-13T20:02:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T20:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/?p=705"},"modified":"2019-05-13T20:02:38","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T20:02:38","slug":"space-study-an-entirely-different-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/2019\/05\/13\/space-study-an-entirely-different-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Space Study: An Entirely Different World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor McGrath\u2019s lecture on the depths of space was completely fascinating and entirely captivating. She immediately jumped into the exciting world of space on her first slide; the background photo included tens of thousands of galaxies in just one picture. The entire image was lit up with vibrant colors and uniquely shaped designs. At first glance, I thought everything in the picture was a distant star or far off planet. However, Professor McGrath explained that it was a composite image of various telescopes that encapsulated thousands of far away galaxies; she told us that it took decades to put together and I was completely amazed. She went on to talk about all the different types of galaxies, explaining how scientists classify them based on certain properties like shape, age, etc. Professor McGrath furthered explained how galaxy evolution occurs on a timescale of up to one billion years! My ears immediately perked when I heard this fact; I thought to myself how on Earth can anyone study these evolutions? Thankfully, my confusion was short-lived as Professor McGrath revealed her profession\u2019s secret: time travel! At this point, I am completely enthralled in everything Professor McGrath had to had and could barely find the time to look at my computer to take notes. However, I did manage to capturing some information that I found staggering. I learned that light travels at a finite speed of 300,000 kilometers per second; and henceforth, the time it takes for light from the moon to reach the Earth is one second. The time it takes for the Sun\u2019s light to reach the Earth is eight minutes, and the equivalent statistic to the center of our galaxy is 27,000 years! All of this information was just meant to emphasize the fact that Professor McGrath and her coworkers work with materials and information that occurs in the past. Every piece of data recorded is reaching us for the first time and could be dated back centuries. Things seemed to get even more complicated when Professor McGrath mentioned the implications and effects of dark matter, unseen particles with gravitational influence. Yet, despite the obvious confusions in the field of space study, Professor McGrath mentioned several easy indications and hints for space study. For example, if looking into a telescope, you can conclude that the massive, blue stars live short lives and are relatively young while the low-mass, red stars live much longer with a greatly extend life cycle. Professor McGrath futher explained how the difference in color, design, structure, and content infers that there must be forms of evolution going on with these galaxies. Professor McGrath illustrated how her interest lies in the transition period, or the very beginning of the red star sequence. For people in her field, they must ask themselves what is the process that is moving the galaxies from blue cloud into red sphere? She disclosed leadings theories like black hole feedback, halo quenching, morphological quenching, all of which were ideas well beyond my pay grade. She explained how they know the cosmology (ingredients) of these galaxies, though the theory (recipe) needs more observational constraints as there is no single path to becoming a massive, quiescent galaxy. I asked if Professor McGrath ever gets frustrated with studying materials and information that is millions of miles away, \u201cout of sight and out of mind\u201d, quite literally. She responded, however, by saying that it was the reason she got into the field in the first place. She is fascinated by the neverending study and constant flow of information, which now, I must admit is what makes studying space and the world beyond Earth so special. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor McGrath\u2019s lecture on the depths of space was completely fascinating and entirely captivating. She immediately jumped into the exciting world of space on her first slide; the background photo included tens of thousands of galaxies in just one picture. The entire image was lit up with vibrant colors and uniquely shaped designs. At first … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Space Study: An Entirely Different World”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8898,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[443375],"tags":[443445,443443],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8898"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}