SPOILER!!: sweetpinkpixie;11525945
Miss Edwards received a nod and a faint smile from the astronomer. He was a bit concerned that her silence was in relation to the egg incident. Did this mean that the usually very talkative Gryffindor was giving him the silent treatment?
He sort of wiggled his way past her and on to the next raised hand.
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"Alright, in our timeline of the universe's formation we have reached a period of exponential expansion and as it is expanding it is also cooling. During this time, light chemical elements were created. These were created within the first three minutes of the universe's formation. Despite these elements being present, it was too hot for light to shine and it would take about 380,000 years before matter cooled enough for electrons to combine with nuclei to form neutral atoms. We are skipping over several stages of the universe's evolution here, but this phase of neutral atoms forming is called recombination and is a term I would like you to remember. As these electrons were absorbed, the universe to become transparent and light was finally unleashed. This light is still detectable today."
Which was pretty neat, right? That even now we were still able to catch a glimpse of some of the first light in the universe.
"However, after the era of recombination came something I like to call the Cosmic Dark Ages, which is said to have lasted between 150 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang." He paused for a moment and wished he had some water with him. Awful lot to talk about and his throat suffering. "You may use your textbooks for this next question if you wish, but who can tell me in your own words, what the HUDF.YD3 is and why is it significant? Try to keep your response as concise as possible. Stick to the big picture if you can."
Sarah was listening intently... very interesting how all these factors came together to make the theory probable. She turned the page in her text book the professor had mentioned... all very interesting too.. Why did they have to study this now anyway? Couldn't they go back to stargazing? Or if the professor wanted something different they could make a trip to Mars and visit the people there, seeing how the muggles found a way to live on the planet over half a century before. But the big bang... science... This was not interactive enough.. except for the egg, which was a waste.
What was HUDF.YD3? Sarah began to page through her textbook, until she found it.. She read and read, taking it all in. Then it dawned on her what the big bang had to do with astronomy.. all these billions years meant something as to the distance from earth.... She raised her hand and waited her turn to be called on. By then, the others had already said what she wanted.. instead of not answering at all Sarah said, "
The others said basically what I wanted to say, however, one thing caught my eye and it will make it easier to remember some facts in the future. I think 'ten' plays part of this. It was given its name on the tenth month of the tenth year of this century and... its diamater is one tenth of our galaxy! Oh, and professor, I have a question. You see the light we see from this galaxy, as little as it is, was emitted 13 billion years ago- does that mean that we are not living in the present due to the speed of sound and light. I mean, what you are hearing now, I actually said a fraction of a second ago..."