Something a little less exam-oriented but interesting stuff nonetheless I hope. This video from Minute Physics discusses what we do and do not know about the origins of the Universe. We make observations and draw conclusions. Hopefully what we don’t do is look for areas of uncertainty and then make up an explanation. It’s OK not to know…
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The headline in the Telegraph yesterday was “The first signs of life on Mars”. Although the article itself was quite sensible and didn’t overplay the evidence, the headline did. NASA has detected some methane being emitted from the Martian landscape. The Telegraph referred to these as burps. I was disappointed that they didn’t call them Mars farts – or Marts as they should be known. On Earth most methane comes from the action of micro-organisms so it could be that the methane on Mars has a biological source. But it also might be the natural result of rocks decomposing chemically on the planet’s surface or from carbon compounds falling through the atmosphere from space. Nobody yet knows. It would be fantastic to find bacteria on Mars but we are not there yet.
Questions…
- Suggest a form of energy capable of travelling through the vacuum of space.
- Roughly how old is (a) the observable Universe (b) planet Earth?
- Name a gas, other than methane, you might find in flatus?
- What process produces the Sun’s heat?
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