The Big Bang Theory Vocab
Across
- 2. The lightest, simplest, and most abundant chemical element in the universe.
- 4. The scientific study of everything beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
- 5. An American astronomer who proved that the universe is expanding and that galaxies exist outside our own Milky Way, fundamentally changing how we understand the cosmos.
- 10. An American astronomer who won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the "echo" of the Big Bang, which proved how the universe began.
- 13. The faint, leftover light and heat from the Big Bang, filling all space uniformly.
- 16. A massive, gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, stellar remnants, gas, dust, and dark matter.
- 17. A chemical element (symbol He, atomic number 2) that is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and non-flammable noble gas.
- 18. A German-born theoretical physicist (1879–1955) who revolutionized the way we understand the universe.
Down
- 1. An American radio astronomer who, along with Robert Wilson, accidentally discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in 1964.
- 3. All elements heavier than helium are created inside stars, a process known as nucleosynthesis.
- 6. The entire range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, which travel in waves and transport energy.
- 7. The sum total of all existing matter, energy, space, and time.
- 8. The narrow range of electromagnetic radiation (light energy) that the human eye can detect, typically spanning wavelengths from about 380 to 750 nanometers.
- 9. The prevailing scientific model explaining that the universe began approximately 13.8 billion years ago from an extremely hot, dense point (singularity) and has been expanding and cooling ever since.
- 11. An instrument that splits light (or other electromagnetic radiation) into its component colors, or wavelengths, and records this pattern, called a spectrum.
- 12. The capacity or ability to do work, cause change, or move matter.
- 14. The stretching of light waves from an object (like a star or galaxy) moving away from an observer, causing the light to appear redder.
- 15. The decrease in wavelength (and increase in frequency) of light emitted by an object moving toward an observer.