Spherical Cow

Olivia and Naina

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PHYSICS

Spherical Cow

Two Sixth Form students who love discussing interesting physics topics!

09/24/2021

The End of the Beginning

Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions! This week unfortunately marks the final episode of Spherical Cow. Thank you so much for supporting our podcast - we hope you have enjoyed the episodes! In this episode we are finishing off our discussion about the history of the universe. We will be talking about the Epoch of Reionization, how scientists actually learn about this era and saying goodbye! Please see an amendment to our discussion below: 1:35 - Sorry I slipped up here! I meant to say that when high energy radiation was emitted by the first starts and, then later, by quasars, the neutral hydrogen was broken apart into positive nuclei and electrons not positive nuclei and ions (the positive nuclei are the ions)! To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/ N.B. Parts of this episode were recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal.

28 min
09/10/2021

Cosmic Dawn

Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions! This week we are continuing our journey through the history of the universe and discussing Cosmic Dawn. We will be talking about what Cosmic Dawn is, the properties and formation of the first stars and why they are so interesting! Please see some additions/amendments to our discussion below: 04:45 - To explain this a little further, ATLAS is one of the four detectors located around the Large Hadron Collider ring at CERN. Two protons beams, travelling in opposite directions, collide inside the ATLAS detector. Before this collision, the momentum in a direction perpendicular to the proton beams is 0. Therefore, after the collision, the momentum in a direction perpendicular to the proton beams must also be 0 since momentum is always conserved in collisions. So, if ATLAS detects any particles travelling in a direction perpendicular to the original proton beams there must be other invisible particles (possibly dark matter) travelling in a different direction so that overall the momentum in a direction perpendicular to the original proton beams adds up to 0. 12:32 - Just to clarify, these Population II stars are not just found in the Milky Way but all over the universe! They are often found in 'globular clusters' (spherical groups of stars found within many galaxies). The age of these stars is similar to the age of the Milky Way so Population II stars were formed around 13.6 billion years ago. To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/ N.B. This episode was recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal.

30 min
08/29/2021

And sound too!

Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions! This week we are continuing our discussion about the history of the universe and once again talking about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. We will be discussing the formation of sound waves in the early universe and how studying the imprint of these acoustic oscillations of the Cosmic Microwave Background map can tell us lots of fascinating information about our universe! Please see some additions/amendments to our discussion below: 13:42 - Sorry! I meant to say that you can do some calculations and see if they agree with your observations (i.e your measurements of the size of the ‘spots’ on the cosmic microwave background map). https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2013/03/Planck_Power_Spectrum - This is a link to the CMB Power Spectrum graph we discussed in our episode - the measurements were taken by the Planck Satellite To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/ N.B. This episode was recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal and we are sorry about the noisy background in some places!

17 min
08/14/2021

Let there be light!

Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions! This week we are discussing the surface of last scattering and cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). We will be talking about what CMBR is, how it was discovered and how measurements of CMBR agree with observations of our universe. To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/ N.B. This episode was recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal.

23 min
08/03/2021

A melting pot of matter

Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions! This week we are continuing our journey through the history of the universe and discussing the beginnings of matter! We will be talking about the quark-gluon plasma era and big bang nucleosynthesis. To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/ N.B. This episode was recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal.

21 min
07/16/2021

Then came the Big...

Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions! This week we are continuing our journey through the history of the universe and discussing inflation and reheating. We will be talking about what inflation is, what are the motivations behind inflationary theory and what happened to the universe immediately after inflation. Please see some additions/amendments to our discussion below: 3.30 - I misspoke here! The fluctuations are actually at a level of one part in 100,000 so they are even tinier than I suggested (but still very important which we will discuss next episode). 5.55 - I have found some contradictory values to how close the density of the universe was to the critical density in the early universe- some websites say it departed from the value by one part in 10^62 whilst others say the density right after the big bang must have been equal to the critical density to 50 decimal places! The main idea is that the initial density of the universe would have been incredibly fine-tuned to the critical density which is why physicists question how the density came so close to this 'special value'. Inflation suggests one solution to this 'fine-tuning' problem. 09.30 - According to inflation, because our whole observable universe was once a tiny part of the early universe, this tiny part was small enough for light to be able to propagate from one side to other, allowing the small section to reach the same temperature. You can say that this region is 'causally connected'. 11.45 - Once again I meant to say the the fluctuations are at a level of one part in 100,000 not 10,000! To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/

20 min
07/02/2021

It started with a bang!

Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions! This week we are venturing all the way back to the birth of the universe! We will be discussing the big bang, the Planck epoch and the GUT era. To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/ N.B We are sorry about the noisy background!

19 min
05/28/2021

A very dark matter...

Welcome back, Spherical Cow Moonions! This week, we are talking about Dark Matter! We will be discussing why the notion of dark matter was first introduced, what evidence there is for the existence of dark matter and what dark matter could be. Please see an addition to our discussion below: 21:58 - After looking into this more, we are still not sure if we were talking about the same neutrino! If you would like to learn more about neutrinos, please see our podpage for some links to resources. To view our sources please see our website - https://www.podpage.com/spherical-cow/ N.B. Parts of this episode were recorded virtually so the audio quality might be different to normal.

23 min

Two Sixth Form students who love discussing interesting physics topics!

Creator

Olivia and Naina
Years Active

2020 - 2021
Episodes

23
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Olivia and Naina
Show Website

Spherical Cow