Space Matters, Why?

Why does studying space matter? No pun intended. You're probably wondering why you chose this particular blog to read. That very thought is the essence of the meaning behind what sets human being's apart from any other living creature. We question existence. We wonder why. At some point or another, each one of us looks up at the billions of stars turning in deep space and we ask ourselves these questions. Space is the origin of all life. The moments that make up the entirety of humanity exist because of the universe and its past, present, and future.

The study of space matters because it has influenced generations and generations of our species to become inspired by its mysteries and wonder. It has inspired people of every tribe, nation, color, gender and age for the last 200,000 years to inquire questions of philosophy, religion, technology, education, and art. Within each one of these lies the seeds that have grown to become existentialism, intellectualism, faith, morals, exploration in science and mathematics, and predictions. It's lead to inspiring the future generation, our youth and their treasured ideas. Man landed on the moon because one night, a boy looked up at the sky and said to himself "I want to be right there looking up at where I am here" as he pointed to the glass sphere orbiting his planet. 

"To wonder and dream what lies beyond our home galaxy, past nebula, black holes, dark matter, other galaxies, and finally, the entire universe will always remain to be a beautiful element of simply being human. The desire to know the unknown will continue its legacy through each one of us every time we step out into the night and raise our eyes to search the stars that lie deep within the velvet oblivion." - Velvet Oblivion

What are we living for if we never strive to pursue our dreams day after day. Humanity obtains bits and pieces of truth that make up the grand design we call life every time we question our "beginning." Space research matters so incredibly much because it prompts us to ask the most basic questions about the beginning of time, the end of time, the reasons why we're here, and much more. As said before these questions can be answered through a number of ways, science, religion, philosophy, art, etc. But space has also taught us that no matter how far we look, how much we know, and how much we can hypothesize about what's really out there, we might never uncover the "unknown" and life's greatest mysteries. It's humbling to know that we're a mere thread woven into the web of existence. Even within that statement branches millions of questions. 

In short, if we don't question space, many answers to the meaning of life would be lost in a multitude of ways. Never limit your imagination to the boundaries of our atmosphere, never stop the wonder you have for unexplainable questions, never give up on something that requires you to have the strongest of faith -- because if you do, we will no longer be a thread woven into life's grand design, we will be just another galaxy hanging in the cold depths of space stretching away from all that is known to mankind. We would lose the very essence of our beings. 

Velvet Oblivion - Part 5

 Velvet Oblivion 

Part 5

In Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time, he begins his explanation of our universe's future with three simple graphs. Including original models done by Alexander Friedmann, a Russian physicist and mathematician. I began reading this book during fall term and I have never come across one hundred and ninety pages of more dense and mind blowing material in my life besides maybe the book of psalms.

"The universe is not infinite in space,

but neither does space have any boundary."

The three figures Stephen Hawking continues to explain are derived from Friedmann's research and predictions. Hawking's first graph demonstrates what I learned previously to be the "big crunch" in which galaxies continue to drift farther apart from one another since the big bang and beginning of time until they slowly begin to contract until they end up colliding and compressing into zero distance from one another, just as they had begun. His second graph addresses the possibility of the universe "continuing forever" where "the universe is expanding only just fast enough to avoid re-collapse." In his third graph, he explains the theory of the "big chill" where galaxies continue to move further from one another until they disappear from sight, left alone in space. It's known as the big chill because as time lapses and becomes father from the event of the big bang, the average temperature of the universe will drop until life in all galaxies would cease to exist. A lot like what Mark Shwartz analyzes in past predictions of what scientists thought the future of the universe would be.
 

 

From these three very different theories, Hawking makes a very interesting conclusion stating that "the universe is not infinite in space, but neither does space have any boundary." Now that he recognized the universe is not infinite there for potentially expanding, he directs his attention towards the facts to prove his statement. To obtain the answer "we need to know the present rate of expansion of the universe and its present average density." After calculating average density by adding up the mass of every star in our galaxy plus dark matter and the present rate of expansion, which he states to be between 5 and 10 percent every thousand million years, Hawking comes to the conclusion that the universe will probably be expanding forever. If it does contract, then it probably wont for another ten thousand years indicating that we are currently in the middle of our universe's life cycle.
  
I always find Stephen Hawking's explanations so satisfying to read because he's able to back up his thinking process with a number of provable calculations from an immense amount of history. What I learned from him was something so incredibly key to the meaning of my research. No matter how much I try and narrow these theories down to predict the existence of the entire universe, I must accept that humanity will never, ever know the truth. The unknown is inescapable, all we can measure, count, hypothesize, and relate to exists here on earth and is limited to the farthest galaxy we can see, which happens to be 13.3 billion light years away. I plan to continue space research throughout my lifetime and someday I might actually come up with a theory of my own to the question of what lies beyond the universe.

Velvet Oblivion - Part 4

 Velvet Oblivion

Part 4

Introduction to article: Mark Shwartz wrote an article called "Runaway Universe" published in September of 2002 addressing the collapse of the universe for Stanford Universities News Service. He includes information given by two Stanford professors of physics, Linde and Renata Kallosh. 

"Instead of expanding exponentially, our cosmos may be in danger of collapsing in a mere 10 to 20 billion years."

Theories Around the Future of the Universe

    Mark Shwartz first analysis previous predictions about the future state of the universe, mentioning that "our own Milky Way will become an isolated island adrift in a sea of totally black space 150 billion years from now." He then brings attention to more recent studies and how the future of our universe might not look so lonely after all. According to a number of Stanford University's cosmologists "instead of expanding exponentially, our cosmos may be in danger of collapsing in a "mere" 10 to 20 billion years." This is commonly known as the "big crunch" which continues to be a current theory of exploration and interest to scientists all over the world. (See photo below) The big crunch illustrates for us the end to our universe. It begins with the big bang and the so called "beginning of time" and then as galaxies grow further and further apart from one another they might not have the correct amount of mass (the majority being dark matter) to escape the gravitational pull of one another, and also due to dark energy. Eventually after billions of years like Linde and Renata Kallosh's model predicted, the entire universe might begin to contract and finally will collapse just as it had begun, into a single point of matter smaller than a proton. 

   

Shwartz then goes on to describe dark energies role in the collapse of the universe. As the universe gradually contracts, dark energy slowly becomes negative. He ties up the article with the new concept of cosmic bubbles. He includes a quote from Linde explaining that "The universe actually looks, not like a bubble, but like a bubble producing new bubbles… If our bubble collapses into a point, a new bubble is likely to inflate somewhere else -- possibly giving rise to an entirely new form of life…Our part of the universe may die, but the universe as a whole, in a sense, is immortal." This is a revolutionary theory in the realm of predictions that address the shape of the universe and the reasons behind it. But what I gathered to be most important about this answer was that the universe doesn't have an ending point, yet our existence certainly does if we don't perfect time travel within the next thousand years. 

The Big Crunch Theory Explained

 From this article bloomed many questions, which would probably require a much longer essay for me to answer. First off, I wanted to know as much as possible about dark energy because it still remains to be a concept that is incredibly hard to grasp. Its role in the existence and collapse of the entire universe seems to be quite significant and is mentioned to be a stronger force that gravity; this I will probably research more extensively on my own time. Now that the possibility of a "big crunch" was introduced, it opened many doors of possibilities that would answer my final question. 

    Now in the final evaluation of my last source, I'll come to understand the outcomes of three different theories about our universe's potential future. Is the universe expanding? What is it's final destination? To answer the following questions, I returned to one of my most personal favorite authors who sparked my initial interest in space, Stephen Hawking. 

"Our part of the universe may die, but the universe as a whole, in a sense, is immortal."

Reference: Shwartz, Mark. ""Runaway universe" may collapse in 10 billion years, new studies predict." Stanford News Service. (2002): n. page. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. <news.stanford.edu/pr/02/universe925.html>.

Velvet Oblivion - Part 3

SUMMARY: Hello Readers! If you're visiting my blog in the middle of chaos - not to worry! Click on my first post and it should describe that this blog is on space research, questions about the universe, and our existence. Velvet Oblivion is a research essay I wrote for my WR 121 class. I decided to share it in blog form with readers.

Velvet Oblivion 

Part 3

For my next research question instead of an article, I explored a discussion forum where anyone can submit questions or open a dialogue with an astronomer. The one I read addressing the death of our galaxy was written by Karen Masters who received her PhD from Cornell University and went on to Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to complete a post-doctrine. 

Galaxies Merging

Her response to the question "will the Milky Way Galaxy die?" started with how we can tell the age of the galaxy which is by calculating the age of the oldest known Globular Clusters in the milky way which happens to be around 15 billion years old. She then concludes by addressing the fate of the Milky Way "is not to be swallowed up by the central Black Hole, but to merge with Andromeda (which is moving towards us) to form a much larger elliptical galaxy." 

It's typical for galaxies to interact and to merge together once and awhile. Astronomers have actually photographed the process of two galaxies colliding, but since it takes millions of years for them to actually collide usually only one photograph is taken from one of the many stages during its collision. I also explored another answer to the question "what happens when galaxies collide?" since it seemed to be closely related to Karen Master's discussion. In this forum, on the same site, astronomer Amelie Saintonge stated that "if galaxies were made only of stars, and that two of them would go on a head on collision, they would pass one through another without being much affected."

From these two discussion forums I concluded the answer to if our galaxy would have a time of death, which I was happy to hear that we would simply collide with Andromeda before Sagittarius A-star swallows us. Of course this wouldn't happen in the life time of the human race, we'll all be long gone by then before the fate of our galaxy is decided. That is, if we aren't inhabiting another part of space. It was also amazing to me that if two galaxies merge then not one single star will collide! Now that I explored the death of our galaxy, would the death of our universe be possible? Does our universe have a beginning reaching to the start of time, will it have an end? My path of research was narrowing down to my final question of is the universe expanding. But first, I had to find out if the death of our universe is possible because that would relate to the three theories I know of that begin with the big bang and what the after effects are. The search to find the possibilities of the universe dying, or "contracting" lead me to my next research topic.  

Just for fun here's a picture of the Orion Nebula, one of the most beautiful out there. 

Velvet Oblivion - Part 2

Velvet Oblivion 

 Part 2

Sagittarius A-Star

From previous articles that I've read from earthsky I've already learned that in the center of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A-star. Astronomers have been observing "a mysterious gas cloud with three times Earth’s mass is spiraling toward the supermassive black hole at the core of our Milky Way galaxy." In a few months, the massive gas cloud known as G2 is expected to reach the center and be pulled into Sagittarius A-star by its gravitational force. Scientists are waiting to observe what exactly will happen when G2 is pulled into the black hole by analyzing photos of X-rays the gas cloud will give off when this occurs. A few predictions have been stated on the gas cloud phenomenon such as, "it’ll glow in the X-ray band for years to come as the black hole slowly swallows the cloud," or "G2 might also be surrounding an old star. If that’s the case, the display would be less spectacular as Sagittarius A* slurped from the cloud while the star slipped by, dense enough to escape its grasp." I'll probably be watching over spring term for G2's updated status! It'll be interesting to see if it turns out to contain a star. 

I learned quite a lot through Earthsky.org including more in depth facts about our galaxy. I've definitely been wondering about the event horizon for awhile, which I learned from another source earlier in my own independent research that it's the point in which light travels over a black hole and the moment just before it swallows the light is called the event horizon. It's known as "the point of no return." So it was interesting to me to read about the behavior of gas as it gets sucked into a black hole. I never new that the effect of that would cause a glow from the x-ray waves for years after the event. Usually with light it consumes it pretty damn quickly. 

G2 will eventually be sucked into the center of the galaxy forever, never to return to our dimension. This lead me to my next research question: Will earth eventually be sucked into Sagittarius A-star? Does our galaxy have a set amount of life left like humans do? What happens when a galaxy dies, if it can. 

Velvet Oblivion - Part 1

Essay for Writing 121

Velvet Oblivion

Introduction to Space Research: 

It's human nature to question the meaning of existence and existence itself. This is the essence of what makes us human beings. At some point in life, one must stare up at the night sky and contemplate what actually lies beyond the angelic and familiar vivid, silver spheres that have illuminated the night sky for billions of years. The desire to know the unknown is within us all, even if we have accepted that a conclusion might never be reached, it's still a part of humankind to attempt to understand the universe's greatest mysteries through science, philosophy, religion, or whatever form of explanation seems to bring a sense of peace and understanding to one's mind.  

We must learn to share inspiration through wonder. Space contains limitless questions which can be answered in even more limitless amount of ways. This is one of the many reasons behind my passion for space. My initial questions to conclude my research with will be is the universe expanding? and will it ever have an end? So without further ado, I began the journey through deep space research with home, our own solar system. From there my searches will expand just like the borders of our universe might. 

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope

Authors of starchild are Joyce Dejoie and Elizabeth Truelove. In the article, they addressed the quesion: does our solar system orbit something? 

This article describes our solar system's position in the Milky Way Galaxy. Truelove and Dejoie state that our solar system is moving at "an average velocity of 828,000 km/hr. But even at that high rate, it still takes us about 230 million years to make one compete orbit around the Milky Way." They also explain the position of where our solar system is by reference to star constellations such as Orion, Perseus, and Sagittarius. Our galaxy is what's known as a spiral galaxy due to its shape, but the Milky Way galaxy is a special type of galaxy. 

We have what's called a "barred spiral galaxy" which means that stars cluster together in a line across the center of the galaxy instead of just having a bulge of nuclear gas in the center. Yet we still orbit around the bar of stars on the arm of Orion 28,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy. 

Starchild was the beginning of my path to space research. After I learned that the whole solar system orbits around something, I had to find out what that exactly was. What made up the mysterious "Galactic Center" that we orbit after hundreds of millions of years? Next I searched for what lies at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy? 

Credit: Dejoie, Joyce , and Elizabeth Truelove. "StarChild Question of the Month." StarChild. NASA, n.d. Web. 18 Feb 2014. <http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/team.html>.

Stephen Hawking

 

Hello Readers! Hope your night is going well -

I'm currently reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. It's an incredible book that discusses theories on life, the universe, space, time, etc. I highly recommend it!

I've had many questions over the first two chapters so I e-mailed my chemistry professor about a few of them - let me know if you have any observations, answers, or questions!

First I've noted that the general theory of relativity is just a unified description of gravity (large scale things) and quantum mechanics is the mathematical interactions of energy and matter (incredibly small scale things.)

Stephen Hawking states that quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity cannot coexist. One theory always disproves the other.

My thought is this.. Earth orbits the sun because of the sun's gravity (due to the general theory of relativity). But subatomic particles don't have to follow the laws of gravity. Electrons are negatively charged and the nucleus is positively charged so that's how electrons can "orbit" a nucleus. A nucleus doesn't have to have some sort of gravity to keep its electrons, right? So why can't quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity coexist? Quantum mechanics doesn't really depend on what laws the theory of relativity have to offer. Do they?

The Rosette Nebula

Questions that I'll probably address in future posts... 

1. How fast do galaxies move through space? Is it anywhere close to the speed of light? 

2. Is there something at the center of the universe that everything orbits (galaxy clusters). 

3. Looking into Dark Matter and the God Particle. 

4. Do astronauts age faster than humans on Earth do? 

5. Upcoming: Stephen Hawking will describe his theory behind the end to the universe because there is a beginning point to it. 

Some facts that I thought were really interesting! -

1. The nucleus of an atom and its electrons that orbit it is proportionate to a football field and a grain of rice. So picture a grain of rice in the middle of the field, that's how much space (in relationship) to the nucleus of an atom has with its electrons! We're mostly made up of space.
2. If two galaxies collided not one single star would hit one another. They would pass through each other.

Thanks for reading guys!
Please leave comments or share this post if you'd like.
Happy star gazing!