T8 Assessment 3: Summarise a podcast

Assignment 3 Summarise a podcast Pod cast from: Triple J Featuring: Sandy with Dr Alastair Reynolds & Dr Karl Kruszelnicki Topics: Space/ Space elevators/ Black Holes and Time travel Pod Link: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/science/podcast/scienceontriplej/scienceontriplej20100909.mp3 Pod cast on Space elevator/Nanotubes: (Nanotubes have been constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1) Dr Karl and Dr Al start of talking about Space opera. Which are grand vistas of space from galaxy to galaxy, covering time cloning, modifying people into different shapes and cultures. Machine people and conjoining people through there brain. Also weapons and toys. Today the first question is: Space elevators. A space elevator is sending a satellite into geo stationery orbit, then attach a piece of string to the satellite, then sending the string to earth, then bolt it to the ground. Then you can go into space up the string for the cost of electricity. You need a piece of string that can support itself for 36,000 kilometres long! Steel can only support itself for 5 kilometres long. Carbon Nanotubes can do the job on paper; the trick is to spool out a Nanotube 36,000 kilometres long with no floors in it. At present this can’t be done. Only small scale whisker lengths have been made so far. But we are closer now than ten years ago. Podcast. cont... Second question is on: Distance from one side of the universe to the other. A light year, is the measurement used for such vast distances, In say that a light year is the distance, light travels in a year. The light from the sun takes 8 minutes to get to the earth, 4 hours to Pluto. It would take humans years, to reach such vast distances. The universe started as a spec of infinite density about 12 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. One calculation is 40 billion years. In a period called super inflation and the guy who did that was Guth. The radius of the universe is 40 billion years but it is believed to be smaller 13.7 billion years, as the fabric of space time expanded faster than the speed of light.