The Universe The size and age of the universe, as well as how fast it is expanding, has been confirmed

with a new, precise method that uses galaxies as lenses to look at other galaxies. The new measurement confirmed the age of the universe as 13.75 billion years old, to within 170 million years, and also confirmed the strength of dark energy, which is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. When looking out at the cosmos, it can be difficult for scientists to distinguish between a very bright light far away and a dimmer source much closer to Earth. To circumvent this problem, a team of researchers used a technique called gravitational lensing to measure the distances light traveled from a bright, active galaxy to the Earth along different paths, along with data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Researchers can use the observations to infer not just how far away the galaxy lies but also the overall scale of the universe and some details of its expansion. Size and age The size of the universe is often expressed by astrophysicists in terms of a quantity called Hubble's constant, which describes the rate at which galaxies in the universe are flying away from each other. "We've known for a long time that lensing is capable of making a physical measurement of Hubble's constant," said team member Phil Marshall of the researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC). But gravitational lensing had never before been used in such a precise way. Atoms Most of the Universe consists of matter and energy. Energy is the capacity to do work. Matter has mass and occupies space. All matter is composed of basic elements that cannot be broken down to substances with different chemical or physical properties. Elements are substances consisting of one type of atom, for example Carbon atoms make up diamond, and also graphite. Pure (24K) gold is composed of only one type of atom, gold atoms. Atoms are the smallest particle into which an element can be divided. The ancient Greek philosophers developed the concept of the atom, although they considered it the fundamental particle that could not be broken down. Since the work of Enrico Fermi and his colleagues, we now know that the atom is divisible, often releasing tremendous energies as in nuclear explosions or (in a controlled fashion in) thermonuclear power plants. Subatomic particles were discovered during the 1800s. For our purposes we will concentrate only on three of them, summarized in Table 1. The proton is located in the center (or nucleus) of an atom, each atom has at least one proton. Protons have a charge of +1, and a mass of approximately 1 atomic mass unit (amu). Elements differ from each other in the number of protons they have, e.g. Hydrogen has 1 proton; Helium has 2. The neutron also is located in the atomic nucleus (except in Hydrogen). The neutron has no charge, and a mass of slightly over 1 amu. Some scientists propose the neutron is made up of a proton and electron-like particle.

History of England

The history of England concerns the study of the human past in one of Europe's oldest and most influential national territories. What is now England, a country within the United Kingdom, was inhabited by early humans 800,000 years ago as the discovery of flint tools at Happisburgh in Norfolk have revealed. The earliest evidence for modern humans in North West Europe is a jawbone discovered in Devon at Kents Cavern in 1927, which was re-dated in 2011 to between 41,000 and 44,000 years old.] Continuous human habitation dates to around 12,000 years ago, at the end of thelast glacial period. The region has numerous remains from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age, such as Stonehenge and Avebury. In the Iron Age, England, like all of Britain south of the Firth of Forth, was inhabited by the Celtic people known as the Britons, but also by some Belgae tribes (e.g. the Atrebates, the Catuvellauni, the Trinovantes, etc.) in the south east. In AD 43 the Roman conquest of Britain began; the Romans maintained control of their province of Britannia through to the 5th century. The end of Roman rule in Britain enabled the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, which is often regarded as the origin of England and the English people. The Anglo-Saxons, a collection of various Germanic peoples, established several kingdoms that became the primary powers in what is ] now England and parts of southern Scotland. They introduced the Old English language, which displaced the previous British language. The Anglo-Saxons warred with British successor states in Wales, Cornwall, and the Hen Ogledd (Old North; the Brythonic-speaking parts of northern England and southern Scotland), as well as with each other. Raids by the Vikings were frequent after about AD 800, and the Norsemen took control of large parts of what is now England. During this period several rulers attempted to unite the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, an effort that led to the emergence of the Kingdom of England by the 10th century.