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Moment of Um

What is the universe made of?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.41.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2023

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The universe can be a very mysterious place. It’s so big! And so full of incredible things! But what’s it made of? We asked astronomy professor Chris Impey to help us find the answer.


Got a question that’s really out of this world? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll help the stars align to find an answer!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

From the brains behind, brains on, this is the moment of um. Moment of Am comes to you from A.M. Studios. I'm Zenon Chimnorp from the planet Kalorpas.

0:25.0

It's time for another episode of What's It it made of. We've got two fantastic guests here today. Care to

0:38.4

introduce yourselves folks. I'm Karina from Exoplanet Kepler 16b.

0:44.0

And I'm Patrick from the star known as Pollix.

0:47.0

Here's how it works.

0:49.0

We'll show you an intergalactic person, place, or thing, and the first one to guess what it's made of gets 10 points.

0:57.0

Let's get started. The Fermi bubbles are two giant orbs made up gas and cosmic rays.

1:17.0

That's right. 10 points to Karina. Next up we've got our marvelous, mysterious, magnificent, universe.

1:27.0

And here's the million dollar question. What's it made of?

1:36.0

Uh...

1:38.0

My human friend Billy actually had the same question.

1:43.6

What is the universe made out of?

1:48.0

Well, the simple answer is the universe is mostly made of nothing

1:52.1

because the universe is enormous and it doesn't have a lot of stuff in it.

1:57.0

My name is Chris Embi, I'm a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.

2:01.0

The average density of the universe if you just

2:04.0

smushed out all the stars and galaxies uniformly is very low. It's like one atom

2:10.3

and a cubic meter of space.

2:13.2

And to compare that, the air we're breathing

2:15.6

is a billion, billion times denser.

2:19.4

So the universe is mostly empty.

2:21.4

But then beyond that, what is it made of? It's mostly made of

...

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