Universe Expansion and the Hubble Constant

Physics teacher Sean Fottrell describes universe expansion through the Hubble Constant, redshift, supernovae, and Standard Candles at the BCCP 2009 Cosmology Workshop at Lawrence Berkeley Lab:
http://bccp.lbl.gov/Academy/workshop3.html

Category:

Education

Tags:

• universe
• expansion
• Hubble
• Constant
• red
• shift
• galaxies
• velocity
• Doppler
• effect
• Standard
• Candle
• supernova
• Chandrasekhar
• limit
• Berkeley
• Center
• for
• Cosmological
• Physics
• yt:quality=high

[mynamelsfrank]

This guy is boss.

[TheSpiffer1]

@planetdarwin ,

If all the galaxies all expanded outward in a sphere, then we would see many more galaxies if we looked through the plane of the sphere, and significantly fewer if we looked perpendicular to the sphere (toward the center or outside). We should see a "stripe" of galaxies across our sky. We DO see a stripe of stars (the Milky Way) because we look through the plane of our flattened galaxy, but other galaxies appear to be distributed in roughly equal numbers in all directions.

[badtat2002]

This young man is brilliant

[namepending7410]

i have him as my high school physics teacher! the only way you wouldn't understand something in his class is if you can't hear or see...

[powerfulwords]

Excellent descriptions!

[JayCeeCalan]

mmmmmkay

[planetdarwin]

Questions:

1. Is it overly simplistic to envision all the galaxies originating from a single location in space, expanding outward in a sphere?

2. If so, would the nature of the "bang" mean that there isn't currently any "thing" in the geometric center of the expansion, since all the matter is moving outward like the surface of a baloon?

3. Do we have a general idea which direction in 3D space, relative to Earth, the geometric center of this expansion is?