Modeling Expanding Universe with Gemini at IAU!

For the second time in two weeks, hundreds of students will participate in free educational astronomy activities at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) conference in Honolulu. Local students will get to interact with scientists and engineers from around the world in hands on demonstrations.

Gemini North’s Christine Copes, Janice Harvey, and Alyssa Grace will be leading an activity in which students will get to model the expanding universe using balloons. Balloons are partially filled and marked with dots. Each dot will represent a Supercluster (thousands to millions of galaxies held together by gravity), and between two Superclusters, students will draw a sine wave to represent the path light travels in order to reach us. The distance between dots is measured twice, once before the balloon is full, and once after.

The bigger the balloon gets, the further the distance becomes, just like how Superclusters move farther away from each other over time!

Christine Copes helping students label their balloons with Superclusters during the first week of the IAU conference

Gemini outreach intern Alyssa Grace shares the concept of the expanding universe with a group of students at the International Astronomical Union meeting currently ongoing in Honolulu.