Lab Write up Bryan Baum The expansion of the Universe Abstract: In this lab we determined the rate of expansion and the age of the universe. To do this we used the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which allowed us to determine the relationship between the redshifts of different galaxies and the rate of expansion of the universe. We measured the Doppler shifted spectrum lines of fifteen different galaxies to determine their recessional velocities. We then used each galaxies r magnitude or it’s observed brightness to determine the distance to each galaxy. We used the data to create a best-fit line. The slope of the best-fit line was our hubble constant, which was 71.46+-12.8km/sec/Mpc. To find the age of the universe we converted our hubble constant to years which gave us an approximate age of the universe of 13.6+-5.25 billion years. Our data was consistent to the accepted laboratory values. 2. The more galaxies that you add to the sample the more data you will have which will
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