• Question: How does the universe work?

    Asked by aries,yesselyn to Candace, Jenn, Matthew, Sahra, Sharon on 12 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Xueyuan Jiang

      Xueyuan Jiang answered on 12 Mar 2017:


      That’s a very tough question. As a biologist, I can only tell you how things work for living beings on earth. We usually get born and grow up. In order to survive, we try our best to get food. Food, which is the source of energy, are extremely important for everyone. That’s why you see lions hunt in Africa, birds migrate from Canada during winter, and human have to find a job and work hard. When the time comes, we reproduce, which means we have offsprings that carry our genetic materials. Eventually, we get old and perish.

    • Photo: Matthew Bainbridge

      Matthew Bainbridge answered on 13 Mar 2017:


      Very very exactly. Then very very randomly.

      At first we used to think if we knew where every atom was located, and exactly what direction it was going and how fast it was going we could predict the future (This is called determinism or Newtonian physics). Along came quantum mechanisms in the 20th century to tell us that some things just happen randomly. Albert Einstein famously said “god does not throw dice” — Turns out, he was wrong. On very small scales (i.e. electrons) things work by chance (called “stochastically”) which makes predicting the future impossible.

    • Photo: Jennifer Hintzsche

      Jennifer Hintzsche answered on 14 Mar 2017:


      Wow~ great question I can not answer! There was a big bang and the universe has been exploding every since then. We are on a rock that started gravitating and orbiting our sun. Life formed and evolved and here we are! There is lots to be learned about the still expanding universe outside our solar system!

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