Idaho Skies Transcript for February 26th and 27th

RACHEL
Welcome to Idaho Skies for February 26th and 27th. We’re your hosts, Rachel...

PAUL
...and Paul.

RACHEL
On the 27th, we celebrate the 71st birthday of Alan Guth.

PAUL
Guth became famous in 1981 after he published a paper about the explosive growth in size that the early universe experienced at its birth.

RACHEL
He called this inflation and the concept helped settle a complex problem about the shape of the universe.

PAUL
The problem is that as best as astronomer’s can tell, the universe is exactly flat.

RACHEL
However, solutions to Einstein’s equations indicate that the universe is more likely to be curved, either spherically or saddle-shaped.

PAUL
So why was the universe so flat when there are an infinitely greater number of ways for it to be curved?

RACHEL
Well, Guth proposed that at its birth, the universe ballooned out explosively.

PAUL
And as a result, the initial curvature in the universe was smoothed out by its rapid expansion.

RACHEL
How explosive is this expansion that we’re talking about?

PAUL
Guth proposed a 10 quadrillion increase in its size in less than one octillionth of a second.

RACHEL
Yep, any curvature would definitely be smoothed out by that.

PAUL
On the evening of the 27th, be sure to aim your binoculars at the moon.

RACHEL
Because the Beehive star cluster will appear one binocular field of view above and slightly right of the moon.

PAUL
So to see it, place the moon at the bottom of your view.

RACHEL
Then you’ll see this cluster of about two dozen stars at the one o’clock edge.

PAUL
That’s Idaho Skies for the 26th and 27th of February.

RACHEL
Be sure to follow us on Twitter @IdahoSkies for this week’s event reminders and sky maps.

For Idaho Skies this is Rachel...

PAUL
...and Paul.

RACHEL
Dark skies and bright stars.