Our Universe

What’s The Most Interesting Thing We Know is Out There?

Our knowledge of the Universe is expanding rapidly. We have increasingly powerful telescopes, robot explorers & many other technological advances we use for space exploration. Yet syllabuses the world over confine students to simply knowing the order of the planets of our Solar System. This task ‘steps it up’ a little 🙂 

Your Task:

– What is the most interesting object/concept in the Universe? Present your findings in a way that captures our attention.

– You are free to explore whatever you think will interest our class but the language you use to describe your topic must be understandable to your whole audience. i.e. don’t just copy and paste a swathe of information from a webpage and read it 😉 (Not that any student would ever do this hehehe)

The Software:

I like to demonstrate The WorldWide Telescope when introducing this task. I encourage the students to explore it with their parents as well. —> WorldWide Telescope

Here are just a few things that I find interesting: dark matter, pulsars, quasars, binary stars, globular clusters, nebulae, solar flares, extrasolar planets, white dwarfs, red giants, black holes & just how BIG the whole thing is.

What else can you find that is ‘out there’?

Present Your Findings:

You will need only one image to support a brief chat about your findings. 2 minutes maximum.