1. Scientific Theories and Laws
2. The First Decade (1936-1946)
4. The Second Decade (1946-1956)
6. The Third Decade (1956-1966)
8. The Fourth Decade (1966-1976)
10. The Fifth Decade (1976-1986)
12. The Sixth Decade (1986-1996)
14. The Seventh Decade (1996-2006)
15. The Theory of More than Everything
16. The Eighth Decade (2006-2016)
18. The Ninth Decade (2016-2026)
Appendix A Paintings
Appendix B TTOMTE and a Steady State Universe
Appendix C Musical Compositions
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In the same way, we can measure what percentage of radium is left compared to the amount of radon. Then we know how many half-lives the material must have gone through to have that much change and can calculate the age of the Earth. Voila!
We're wondering what kind of matter makes up the whole universe. Here on Earth, studying matter is quite simple: We pick up a sample, taste it, weigh it, see how it acts with other samples, and give it a name. But what about the stuff out there we can't reach? We can only look at it, so we need some kind of instrument to help us study it.
If you've ever hung a prism in a window, you've seen a small rainbow on the wall or floor. The colors spread out from violet to blue, green, yellow, orange, and red with all the other colors in between because the white light of the sun actually contains all those colors. The prism splits the light into its various frequencies creating the same colors you see in an actual rainbow with raindrops acting as prisms. We say a rainbow has a full spectrum of colors with the light from the sun all split up. Red, having a longer wave, doesn't get bent as much as the shorter, violet wave which is why the sky turns reddish in the evening; the red frequency comes at us more directly through the dust in the air.
A spectroscope is an instrument built to study the spectrum in more exact detail and uses several prisms and other tricky parts. It can actually tell us what material is in the sun and tell us if other stars contain the same stuff. Below is a very simplified version.
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