The Universe (2007–…): Season 1, Episode 9 - Alien Galaxies - full transcript

How the various structural types of galaxies form by merging with smaller galaxies is explained and simulated. The preliminary hints at the importance of dark matter in the process are mentioned.

In the beginning there
was the darkness and then

BANG!

Giving birth to endless expanding
existence of time, space and matter.

Now we see further
than we've ever imagined

beyond the limits
of our existence

in the place we call:
The Universe.

Our Sun is one of billions
of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

And our galaxy is one
of hundreds of billions,

maybe a trillion
in the known universe.

From the Hubble space telescope comes
a view of the universe that was,

a magnificent trip
through the mists of history.



And back, nearly all
the way to the Big Bang.

Each smudge, each clump,

each blob of light.

A billion stars here,

a trillion stars there.

If you want to know
our place in the Universe

take a look up

and far, far away.

to the realm of alien galaxies.

Ours is a universe of motion,

expansion,

light,

and blackness.

We think the Universe is
about 13.6 billion years old.



So just to put that
in context, the Earth

and Solar System is just
over 4 billion years old.

So the Universe is just over
3 times older than the Earth.

Across the vast reaches
of the interstellar void,

distant stars are held
together by the long reach

of the gravity's unyielding grip.

Over billions of years these
stars have come together

to form galaxies.

A galaxy is a collection of
a hundred billions or so stars.

And these stars are by no
means touching each other

or actually anywhere near each other.

Compared to their sizes they are very,
very far apart from one another.

The thing that blows my mind about
galaxies is what monsters they are.

They are incredibly huge.

If the Sun was the size
of a period on the page,

the dot of an i,

our galaxy would be the
size continental United States.

So, they are gigantic.

Astronomers have always known
there was something special

about the band of stars and dust

that seemed encircle
night sky above them.

It is our galaxy, a white
smudge they called:

The Milky Way.

That band of light
is the collective light

of hundreds of thousands of stars,

which you cannot see it
individually with your eye

and that was named by the Greeks.

They thought look like milky river so
they called the Milky Way.

There are a hundred
billion stars in our galaxy,

and are a hundred billion galaxies
in the observable Universe.

That's more stars in the Universe

than grains of sand
on the beaches of Earth.

If you imagine the galaxy itself
is the size of a hockey puck,

then the galaxies are spaced
from one to other

about a few diameters apart.

So there is a puck here,
a puck over there,

that's kind of the way the galaxies
are spaced in the universe.

Pictures from the Hubble space telescope

show the wide variety of alien galaxies.

The Sombrero galaxy,

also known as M104.

One of the most massive objects in
a gigantic cluster of galaxies,

the Sombrero galaxy contains
nearly 800 billion times

as much mass as our Sun.

Compared to the Milky Way,

Sombrero has much larger bulge
relative to its highly coiled disc.

This image of the Sombrero galaxy
is also a prime example

what's happens when three of the world's
top space telescopes join forces.

The Chandra
X-ray observatory,

taking an image of the
high power X-rays

emitted by the Sombrero galaxy.

The Hubble space telescope,

snapping an optical picture
capturing the visual light,

that's made multimillion light year
journey to Earth.

And the Spitzer space telescope,

capturing an infrared vision,

looking at Sombrero galaxy's
heat signature.

Melded together this 3 images provide
a stunning and unforgettable look

at a galaxy 28 million
light years away.

M51, the Whirlpool galaxy.

Its spiral arms twisting like
cotton candy being spun.

The center of the Whirlpool galaxy
is so densely pack with stars,

anyone living on planets there,

would be under a constant bright sky

day or night.

Centaurus A

a galaxy sending out massive
amounts of radio waves.

think it as a interstellar broadcaster

beaming its signal throughout
the Universe all day, every day.

It's the closest of the
so called active galaxies.

Galaxies that pour out tremendous
amounts of energy from their cores.

This is a Hubble ultra deep field image,

created using the Hubble
space telescope,

it shows us how truly vast and
distant the Universe really is.

And how those far-off spaces
are anything but empty.

When you look very
deeply in the Universe,

you're looking back in time.

So you're looking back at galaxies,

right back to when they
were very, very young,

when they're only few percent
of their current age.

So the Hubble ultra deep field
is really like the time tunnel

that gives us a glimpse
of galaxies as they were

before the Earth was in existence.

The Earth is 4 billion years old,

we're seeing galaxies as they
were 13 billion years old.

So the light left these objects

before there was any earth at all.

The nearest large galaxy to ours,
the Andromeda galaxy

it's about 2 million light years away.

So the light from the Andromeda galaxy,

takes 2 million years to get here.

so we're seeing it as it looked,
2 million years ago.

And that is one our nearby galaxies.

As we look farther and
farther out in space then

we we're looking farther
and farther back in time.

To get a better idea of the concept,

just visit one of the most
spectacular vistas on Earth,

the Majestic Grand Canyon.

As you look down the layers
you get older and older rocks

and we can tell what the different
environments were.

So we can actually look at the
geologic history of this area over time

and in essence look back

through the environment
that was located right here

back over hundreds of millions
of years of the Earth's history.

So, by looking at stars further and
further away from the Earth,

astronomers can get an idea
of the evolution of the Universe.

From the earliest days
of galactic astronomy

observers noticed galaxies
came in a variety of shapes and sizes.

The two main types of
galaxies are spiral galaxies,

like our Milky Way, which have
spiral arms in a thin disc.

And elliptical galaxies,

which are sort of more
spherically or elliptically shaped,

and they don't have spiral arms.

The spiral galaxies have a lot
of gas and dust in them

for which new stars
are forming right now.

Whereas the elliptical galaxies

seem to have formed
their stars long ago.

They don't have that much gas and dust
so they are not forming stars right now.

There are also some
irregular galaxies

which generally have a lot of gas and
dust but not in a nice spiral form.

Detecting these far off
accumulations of stars

is made easier when the astronomers

search the streaming blasting beacons

found near the center of many of them.

Violent and erratic hearts beat
at the center of many alien galaxies.

sending out so much energy

they can overwhelm the amount
of energy produced

by all of other stars within them.

These are the active galactic nuclei.

So we can look at some galaxies

and we find that they have at their
very centers, very powerful engines

that are producing a tremendous
amount of light.

We can tell they are far away,

and yet they are still very bright
when you look at them.

So they must tremendously powerful

dumping a lot of energy
out every second.

Among the most violent and powerful of
the active galactic nuclei,

the mysterious phenomenon
called quasares.

When we look at quasares,
quasar* stellar objects

and see how far away they are,
some of them tremendously bright.

The brightest one

is about a trillion of times
as bright as our sun.

Spectacular streams
of electromagnetic energy,

bright beacons lighting
up the sky for billions of miles.

These high energy sources
provide a stunning reminder

of the Universe's power to illuminate.

A quasar itself can be brighter
than an entire galaxy.

So, when we look
at a quasar like 3 C 273

the Hubble space telescope
took some images of this

and we found it has big jet of material
shooting out of the side of it,

almost the size of the galaxy itself.

These is really weird things,
these active galactic nuclei.

As active galactic nuclei show,

space is a violent place.

And as it turns out there is
a massive collision going on,

right in our own backyard.

The culprit,

a galaxy called
the Canis major dwarf galaxy.

As the name implies
dwarfed galaxies are small.

making them even more
difficult to detect.

Now, the Canis major dwarf galaxy
is taking aim at the Milky Way.

Two galaxies on a collision course
from which, thanks to gravity,

there is no escape.

When a small galaxy
comes too close to a large galaxy

the tidal effects cause it to be
stretched out and distorted.

So the gravitational attraction
of the larger galaxy

will actually pull and stretch
the stars in the smaller galaxy.

So a collection of galaxies

that has relative
spacing compared to their size

about like the way these pucks
are laid out on the ice,

all these galaxies would
be moving through space

with respect to one another.

Every once in a while, one of these
galaxies is gonna bonk into another one.

When that happens, the
shape of galaxy would actually

become distorted and stretched out.

Pucks are solid, but galaxies
are made individual stars,

each of which feels the
gravity of all the others,

and it becomes distorted
and torn into tidal tails.

A big swooping arc of stars
in either direction.

And that's how the once far off
stars from an alien galaxy

blazing through space for millions
upon billions of miles

can end up blending right in
with our own.

But what caused these stars
to clump together in galaxies?

Why has matter and mass
of the universe fused

into these spectacular structures?

To find the answer we have
to turn our clocks back

millions and billions of years ago.

Go back far enough

and you reach a point
where all the matter

and space and time
become compressed

and compacted into
an infinitely small point.

A gravitational singularity
of infinite dimension.

It is point that exploded
with a spectacular Big Bang.

A long time ago, the matter and energy

that would make up every alien galaxy

wasn't far away.

Everything that ever
became an alien galaxy

sprung forth from
a gravitational singularity

that has come to be known
as the Big Bang.

If you run a film of the universe
backwards in your mind

eventually you get to a point where the
density would become extremely high.

If you go far enough
all the mass and energy

that we have in the Universe
would be in a single location

and you would find infinite density.

We think that the
expansion of the Universe

is telling us something very profound.

That the Universe has
a beginning point in time.

In those moments after the Big Bang

the rules of our Universe
and stars took shape.

And one of the biggest rules
was the law of gravity.

After the Big Bang, the universe
of course was expanding

but there were some parts that
were denser than others.

Those denser parts started
gravitationally contracting

and they formed galaxies.

Pockets of gas within those
gravitationally contracting clouds

formed stars

because those pockets
gravitationally contracted

even more than
the general cloud of gas.

It would take hundreds
of millions of years

for the first galaxy
to coalesce into existence.

We don't know exactly
when this happened

but we can see pretty mature galaxies
about a billion years after the Big Bang.

And the earliest objects that I can see

are about 500 million years
after the Big Bang.

So it's within this period

that we think the very earliest
objects switched on.

But we haven't yet found a time when
there were no galaxies at all.

To learn more about alien galaxies

we need to solve the many mysteries

of our Milky Way's
own place in the universe.

When we want to look at
the structure of our galaxy

the difficulty we run into
is that we are inside of it.

We can only see what
we can see from inside.

Moreover there is dust and gas
blocking our lines of sight

so we can't see very far
from our position in our galaxy

in many different directions.

We think the Milky Way
is a barred spiral galaxy

reaching about 100 thousand
light years across

with a 3000 light year thick core.

Most galaxies in the
Universe are smaller.

The Milky Way, and many alien
galaxies, are like cities

with a central dense core
and less dense suburbs.

For spiral galaxies,
like our own Milky Way

that means a trip to visit the suburbs

is not unlike a trip on the freeways.

All the stars in our galaxy
are orbiting around the center.

We are about 30 thousand light years
away from the center

and it takes us about 250 million years

to make one orbit around the galaxy.

Now the stars are all in their orbits,
all moving around the galaxy

so, what causes the beautiful
spiral arms that we see?

Well, there's a sort of
a density wave

an area where the stars in the galaxy
are just a little bit denser,

more packed together than
the rest of the galaxy.

Different stars move into the density
wave, different stars move out.

But the density wave stays there
and that's the spiral arm.

It's a lot the same way the traffic jams
get started on the freeway.

Something happens makes maybe
one star slow down

some sort of gravitational interaction

and other stars slow down
in response to it.

And all of a sudden,
you've got a traffic jam.

So, galaxies seem to naturally form

these spiral density waves.

Two and half million light years away,

a menacing counterpart
to our galaxy sits and swirls

casting a wary eye
toward the Milky Way.

It's the dance partner for our galaxy,

our biggest neighbor
and our biggest nemesis.

It's called M31, better known
as the Andromeda galaxy.

The Andromeda galaxy is about
the same size as our Milky Way,

it's about
100 thousand light year across.

It's a spiral galaxy,

it has perhaps a little bit less active
star formation going on right now

than our Milky Way,
but otherwise it's quite similar.

Andromeda is probably also
the product of several

smaller galaxies that coalesced
or interacted over time.

One of those galaxies may be responsible

for Andromeda's double nucleus.

Two huge clumps of stars
found at its center.

On Earth, we've been keeping an eye

on our trillion star-neighbor
for centuries.

Persian texts from the
10th century

mention this small cloud in the skies,

but at the time

there was no way knowing that Andromeda
was an entirely separate galaxy

two and half million light years away.

That makes it the furthest
object in the universe

you can see with the naked eye.

While the Milky Way
may be able to absorb

the impact of a colliding dwarf galaxy,

a clash with the Andromeda
galaxy is not only inevitable,

but will forever change
the local galactic landscape.

Gravity, the Universe's
most prolific power

is the force that's pulling
Andromeda and the Milky Way

closer and closer.

And some day, in the far off future,

these two spiral titans will collide.

If you look at the Milky Way galaxy and
the Andromeda galaxy,

the nearest large galaxy to us,

they are actually approaching each other
at a fairly astounding rate,

several hundred Kilometers
every second.

They are very far apart right now, but in
the next few billion years, some time,

they will be right up
against each other.

And so collision is,
in a sense, imminent.

Probably no stars will physically
hit each other.

There's just so much space
between the stars.

But when Andromeda collides with us,

it'll have a huge impact
on the Milky Way.

Some things will get thrown
into the black hole in the middle,

some stars will get ripped off
and thrown away into space.

So it will be dramatic,
and the entire night sky will change.

The constant motion of alien galaxies

and the time frames involved

may be hard to comprehend.

Andromeda is close enough
to the Milky Way

that their gravitational attraction

brings them closer together.

But elsewhere, almost all
the alien galaxies we see

are moving away from us.

In our common experience,
like an exploding bomb,

everything explodes
away from a center.

Now, is there an empty
center to our Universe?

Are we on a shell of
galaxies flying away

from whatever
the original explosion was?

No. And that is the amazing thing.

In our Universe, space
itself is expanding.

Every little bit of space.

The space right here between my hands
has a pressure to expand.

It's this expansion first detected by
astronomer Edwin Hubble

that laid the foundation
for much of modern astronomy.

So the Universe expands with time

and space itself is actually expanding.

If you take a one-dimensional
example of the Universe here,

here is a hypothetical Universe

where I've got these ping pong balls,
which are the galaxies,

on this rubber hose.
I can expand that hose,

and all the galaxies
move away from the others.

See that? And in fact, if we focus
our attention on this one here

the ones that are farther away from that

move faster than the ones
that are closer in.

Because there is more space,
there is more tube

between this one here
and the distant ones

than between this one
and the nearby ones.

So that, in a sense, is a good model

for Hubble's observation

that at a given time,
the more distant galaxies

move faster than the nearby galaxies.

Notice also that no galaxy can claim

that is the unique
center of the Universe.

Sure!

From this one's prospective,
all the others are moving away.

But if I were to put myself
on this one here,

I would say that all the galaxies are
moving away from that one as well.

So no matter which galaxy you're on,

you see the others
moving away from you.

That's what happens in a uniformly
expanding Universe.

There is no galaxy that can say that
it's the unique center of the Universe.

If you think back to earlier times,

it was thought that the Earth
was the center of everything.

It was the center of the Universe,
and the planets and the sun

all orbited around the Earth.

And the stars every day made
one trip around the Earth.

Then we discovered that our
Sun was one of many stars

and our sun was cruising
around through the Universe

as we knew it.

But this discovery by Hubble

told us that not only was our planet
one of many planets

and our star, the sun,
one of many stars,

but our galaxy was
one of many galaxies

presumably like any other.

It really changed our world view and
our place in the Universe

to think that our galaxy
is an ordinary galaxy.

So, just what's in our
galactic neighbourhood?

Meet the local group of galaxies.

A group with ever increasing membership.

Our local group of galaxies
is a small group

or a cluster of about 3 dozen galaxies.

Our Milky Way and
the Andromeda galaxy, M31

are the two dominant galaxies.

Most of the galaxies in our local group

are small dwarf galaxies.

These galaxies each have collections of
small satellite galaxies

that are in their thrall,
that orbit around them.

And these big galaxies all feel the
influence of each other's mass

and orbit around each other.
So all of these galaxies,

the small galaxies are orbiting
the big galaxies,

and big galaxies are also
orbiting each other.

It's a group of about
30 or so galaxies

that are all orbiting around
a common center of mass.

The most well known dwarf
members of the local group,

two galaxies known as the Large
and Small Magellanic clouds.

Scientists now think
the clouds orbit the Milky Way

thanks to the tidal
influence of our galaxy.

Gravity of course is a two way street.

It's believed the gravitational pull
from these clouds

has also distorted parts
of our own galactic disc.

By measuring the energy
it emits from the stars

in the Small and Large
Magellanic clouds,

astronomers believe they are made of

different stuff than our galaxy.

The clouds are richer in hydrogen
and helium than the Milky Way

and with fewer metals.

Scientists think this means

the stars are younger in the clouds.

The gravitational dance between
the clouds and the Milky Way

has likely be going on
for billions years.

But all the while, a different
and much more mysterious battle

is going on back in
the center of the Milky Way.

Because when you head for
the center of our galaxy

once you get through all the dust,
gas and all the older stars,

you'll find something
so insanely frighting

that normal rules of time
and space do not apply.

For, lurking at the heart of Milky Way
and perhaps every alien galaxy,

is a massive beast with
a ravenous appetite.

A beast from which there is no escape.

There is a region at the core
of our galaxy, the Milky Way

where nothing escapes.

This is the point of no return,

a super massive black hole.

A black hole is an astrophysical object,

that has so much mass,
in such a small volume

that the gravitational force
is so strong

that even light doesn't have
enough energy to escape it.

Black holes can form

either when a massive star explodes
at the end of its life,

and the core of the star collapses
into a black hole,

or you can have super massive black holes
at the centers of galaxies.

How massive?

Try nearly 4 million times
the mass of our Sun.

Sometimes black holes
swallow entire stars

creating fierce explosions
called gamma ray bursts.

In order to emit a gamma ray,

an object has to be billions
of degrees in temperature

or even trillions, so we're seeing
something incredibly hot.

In some cases the galaxies were
as much as 10 billion light years away

and the gamma ray bursts
had been so bright

that if you had a pair of binoculars

and you were actually looking at right
part of the sky at the right time,

you would have been able to see a visible
light afterglow from the gamma rays.

That's using binoculars

to see something that's
on the other side of the Universe

10 billion light years away.

Can you imagine what sort
of explosion that was?

So if there is a super massive black hole
at the center of our galaxy,

might similar black holes
lurk at the center of all alien galaxies?

When we look at neighboring galaxies,

and this is a recent result,

we find that most galaxies

appear to have very massive
black holes in their center,

ranging from millions to
even billions of times

as massive as our Sun.

It appears to be a very common
and ordinary aspect of a galaxy.

Black holes swallow matter

but less than one half of
1% of our Universe

it's believed to be made up
of observable matter

such as the stars, planets,
gas and dust.

So what accounts for
the rest of the stuff

created in the aftermath
of the Big Bang?

What really fills up alien galaxies?

Scientists' best guess

is a mysterious substance
call dark matter.

Dark matter is fantastic stuff.

We know that it exists, we know that it
gravitationally pulls on things.

One of the best pieces of evidence
for the existence of dark matter

is that spiral galaxies are spinning

more quickly than they would be spinning

unless there were extra
unseen material

causing them to spin that fast.

Caltech professor Richard Ellis
has pioneered a new technique

to create a three-dimensional
map of the Universe

including the dark matter.

This was the first hint
from dynamical data

that there's a lot of dark matter
in the Universe.

We can also detect dark matter
by a really remarkable phenomenon

which was predicted by Einstein and is
now in great use in astronomy

which we call gravitational lensing.

Dark matter bends light
passing through it

much like a curved piece of glass.

So, light rays are bent by material

and where we can see the signature
of this bending of the light rays

we can infer that there's a lot
of dark matter present.

We don't have to see
the dark matter directly,

it doesn't shine,
it doesn't scatter light

but we can infer its presence
from the effect it has

on light rays that are coming through

clumps of dark matter.

So, we know the dark matter is there,

we can make maps
of how it is distributed,

even if we cannot see it directly.

So one further advantage
of gravitational lensing

is it's just like a magnifying glass.

So when you look through it,
things are bigger and brighter

than they would be
if you didn't have it.

So if you think about it, it's like
a natural telescope in space.

While dark matter plays a central role

in the birth and evolving life
of galaxies,

there is another dark force partly
responsible for their growth.

On a cosmic scale, the galaxies
are rushing away from us

due to the continuing expansion
of the Universe.

So, if the Universe is expanding,
what's driving it?

The only answer scientists
can come up with for now

a mysterious dark energy.

Dark energy is even stranger
in some ways than dark matter.

Dark energy

is causing the Universe
to expand right now

faster and faster with time.

This expansion set in motion
at the Universe's conception

has accelerated over the last
few billion years

because the dark energy that creates the
movement has increased over time.

By nature, the gravitational force
they binds galaxies together

decreases over time as the
space between them increases.

So, instead of having
a gravitational pull,

instead of slowing down
the expansion of the Universe

dark energy is speeding up
the expansion of the Universe,

and it has been doing that for
the past 4 or 5 billion years.

In perhaps a billion,
trillion more years

the fate of the Universe and
the impact its black holes,

dark matter

and dark energy have on mankind

will finally be known.

When a star get too close
to the black hole

at the heart of an alien galaxy,
chaos erupts.

That's one of the findings

from the GALaxy Evolution eXplorer
mission, or GALEX.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer
is an ultraviolet telescope

that observes the Universe
at ultraviolet wavelengths.

And at these wavelengths
you are very sensitive

to studying young stars

and stars formation in galaxies

back to half the age of the universe.

Billions of years ago.

However, we also look in ultraviolet
for these luminous flares

from when a star is swallowed
by a black hole.

The star can't hold itself
together anymore

and it is ripped apart,

and the gas from the star plunges
into the black hole.

Some of the gas will be ejected
from the system at high velocities

but some fraction of the gas will
plunge into the black hole

and in that process will heat up
to very high temperatures

and give off a luminous flare
of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation.

Thanks to GALEX, Suvi Gezari
and other researches

were able to watch it all happen

4 billion light years away.

Galex, Hubble and the Spitzer space
telescope will soon get a new neighbor

designed to help capture images
of alien galaxies.

The James Webb space telescope
is due to launch in 2013

designed to explore
the infrared spectrum

like never before.

Using the Webb telescope

scientists hope to be able to see
through the dust and the stars

that block our view of
the Milky Way center,

and provide more complete picture

of not just our galaxy

but of all alien galaxies.

The James Webb space telescope

differs from the Hubble
space telescope in two respects.

Firstly, it's more powerful,
it has a bigger mirror.

Secondly, it is actually working
at slightly longer

infrared wavelengths.

What Hubble and Webb have in common

is the power to see beyond
atmospheric turbulence

that prevents astronomers
from getting picture perfect images

from 99 % of the sky.

Earth's atmosphere is turbulent.

It blurs out images from stars.

So if the Earth had no atmosphere
we would see stars basically

really perfect dots of light.

But what happens is that because as
light passes through the atmosphere

it's distorted, it turns
into a fuzzy blob.

It turns out there are
two ways to fix this.

One way is to go into space,

the other way is to instead fix
the telescope on the ground

so that it removes
the effects of this turbulence

and that is a technology
known as Adaptive optics.

Adaptive optics measures
the image of a galaxy

by the way its light reflects off
another lighted object

like nearby bright star.

To do Adaptive optics sensing
you need a very bright star

because of course, you are making
measurements of the atmosphere

hundreds or thousands
of times per second.

So you need something bright look at.

Most stars are not bright
enough to do this.

At observatories like the Keck in Hawaii,

Adaptive optics uses a laser beam

to help create the light needed
for the snap shoots.

You can point it anywhere
you want on the sky

so instead of looking
at only 1% of the sky,

you can look at most of the sky

with a very very high resolution,
very sharp images.

In this way you can make images
10-20 times sharper from the ground

than you could without adaptive optics.

It's just another tool in the kit
of course

designed to bring the fantastic
reaches of alien galaxies

back down to Earth.

The Universe, of course

is home to many things larger
than our small planet Earth

larger than our Solar System

larger than our galaxy.

To think that our Milky Way

is just one of hundreds
of billions of galaxies

in the observable Universe

it really makes you feel like
you are part of something much larger

than our small planet Earth.

Like it or not, this is our
place in the Universe.

A speck on a speck on a speck.

Just one tiny blue green oasis of life,

swimming in a vast ocean
of alien galaxies.