One Country, One Boundary, Its the Earth
Before We Begin ...
Have you ever wondered how difficult it was to learn new non-native language? Of course it was difficult. Large amount of vocabulary, alphabets very hard to recognize, grammars, and so on. Gradually, you have practiced, learnt, trained yourself and then later this new language became simpler and more understandable and easier to grab. Astronomy might be difficult in first stance to understand like non-native language. Once you are familiar with it, you will be delighted to travel with us in this journey of astronomical adventures.
Astronomy itself is vast area to cover. From tiny pale blue dot to entire universe. Recently, even multiverse or beyond observable universe. Here, we are not talking only about scientific exploration but integrating humanity also. We will be discussing about how people around the world from ancient time had contributed to build the foundation pillars till modern days. How we are reaching milestones with our modern technologies as well as possible future frontiers for upcoming generations.
No matter what your personal beliefs, religious or spiritual beliefs are, we will be riding this journey on the basis of scientific evidence along with we observers as a single humanity. Astronomy determines our position in the universe and how we think about it. Exploring the unknown is our human perception from the beginning of mankind i.e. stone age.
Universe can include everyone. Biologists, nuclear physicists, geologists, astronauts and so on. So, astronomy cannot be defined only by observation of celestial bodies into the sky. Instead, we can summarize so that everyone, everything are included.
“ Astronomy is a study of all matter and energy in the universe that humanity had, has and will be continued exploring and finding beyond imagination with precise scientific data and evidences until it will have first contact, not denying it is not alone and tries to understand the universe in different way than that is limited to it by itself.”
Mathematical Expression:
Results or solution is not completed without units in mathematical problems. We will be using worldwide accepted unit i.e. metric system mostly. Metric System is the unit adopted in the Systeme International (International System) that has been used by scientists universally. For mass, kilogram (Kg), for length, Kilometer (Km) and for time (hours) are being used.
Another expression we will be using is expressing the numbers. Since astronomical quantities are not like ordinary quantities such as 10 meters or 10 kilometers and so on. Therefore, we will be using power of ten as system of expressing numbers. Example, distance between the Earth and the Sun is 150,000,000 km. Instead, it can be written as 1.5 X 108 km. in which 1.5 is multiplied by eight times of 10 i.e. 10X10X10X10X10X10X10X10. Please refer figure 3.
Scientific Method:
From the figure 4, we can understand that in order to create theory, the hypothesis should follow certain protocol known as scientific method.
Let’s make it clearer more. Suppose, you are observing falling down of an apple from a tree. And then you ask yourself a question “Why did an apple fall from a tree?” You will be starting to assume about the nature which is called hypothesis. Your hypothesis or assumption would be that something is pulling the apple down or may be something is pushing it from up.
Now, you will figure it out with mathematical expressions. One expression for pulling down and another expression for pushing from up.
“Pulling down is done by force.
Pushing from up is done by force.”
-Your hypothesis or prediction
You tried to test with other test or experiment. Everything were fallen down but you have noticed there were nothing external source which can push anything (here, apple) from above. It is because it’s empty. So, your prediction is not verified with experiment. Therefore, either you have to revise hypothesis or completely abandoned previous one and create new one.
On the other hand, you already had another hypothesis that predicted a force which pulled down the apple from tree. You had noticed, the apple hit a surface of ground. Ground is the surface of the Earth. Thus, you could conclude the Earth has a force to pull everything towards its surface. This also satisfies your mathematical expression. Bingo!!! You had created a theory. Possibly, Sir Isaac Newton did same thing what you did just now after observing the fallen apple and found Newton’s Second Law i.e.
Force = Mass X acceleration due to gravity
In a conclusion, a good science can be considered as follows:
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Science requires concrete explanation for observed phenomena that depends solely on natural causes.
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Science develops by creating and testing models of nature that explain the observations as simply or as efficiently as possible.
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A scientific model must make testable prediction that may compel us to revise or abandon the model completely and create new one.
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A scientific model must be capable of being experimented by others too instead of you only.
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“THEORY”: a standard model which satisfies and survives repeated testing.