Written by: Riya Jha - 21134, Grade XII
Posted on: 11 August, 2020
Ever wondered to measure the winds of Mars or to know the mystery of violence of volcanoes erupting unexpectedly on Jupiter’s moon? Who knew that Moon was a ‘rock’ that never shined on its own. All it began millions of years ago when something mysterious happened which resulted in galaxies, solar systems, and a living planet. The “Big Bang” theory is just one of the several theories for the origin of the universe. From then the Universe is ‘expanding’. Expanding in a sense everything is moving away from each other. It happened when a huge explosion took place. An enormous substance exploded and the tiny particles moved away from each other as a result of energy. The explanation is the "dark energy" that permeates it throughout, pushing it to expand.
To be more clear, take a balloon and make some black dots on it with the help of a marker. Now, as you inflate the balloon, the dots move farther away from the home dot and each other. The results show that the farther away a dot is from the home dot, the faster its movement. This is an example by Hubble. One limiting thing is the surface of the balloon (where you drew the dots) is two-dimensional, while the universe is three-dimensional. The big question that arises here is if the balloon keeps expanding will it explode? And also if it discontinues its motion, will everything shrink? YES, it will!! But in the case of the Universe, there’s something that is holding the universe, managing its time of expanding. Our universe is expanding in a rapid motion, in its own time! Well, what do you think time is? “Time is a distinction between Past, Present, and Future, but a stubborn illusion”, Einstein says. But is time universal? Is there any audible tick-tock throughout the galaxy, maybe a master clock? But, neither the time is not absolute nor the expansion is not absolute. The Universe isn't just expanding, but the expansion is accelerating over time.
Half a millennium years ago, the universe was all sorted. Earth was the center of everything. The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars rose itself and circled the earth at no great distance. Those tiny stars were so-called ‘pure crystals’ things. Everything looked simple and the Universe seemed well known.
But, centuries passed and the scale of the solar system and of the universe expanded incredibly as a result of investigation and study. Copernican theory replaced the earth with the sun at the center of the solar system. The wandering lights(planets) became individual worlds. New discoveries in Physics and cosmology made it possible to analyze and even weigh distant stars. We have found a system of 100 billion stars and the galaxies in this universe. We discovered strange things and powerful energies that our eyes could never see. Robot spacecraft could fly past other worlds sending back the close pictures and videos that have brought distant planets closer to us.
There is a lot more to explore the unknown substances existing up there and down here. In 1957, the Space age started. We could pull back the gravity and cross the atmosphere of the earth. Astronauts and machines could stand on other planets, study them at close range, and bring back samples to analyze on Earth. This was such an interesting mode of living life in the unknown universe. We have sensed the turmoil in the huge, violent universe beyond incredible energies and fantastic objects such as quasars, pulsars, and black holes. Every time when I think of the Universe, I get lost in the mysteries that no one ever has solved here on the earth and end up thinking will everything end? And then my mind clicks some dialogues of some dramatic movies saying, ‘everything that started will come to an end’. Well, scientists have known only 4% of it and the rest will be a mystery.
In a short time, we have studied the universe with new discoveries, other planets have become individual familiar worlds that we can see and even touch. You will feel dumb when you start imagining stuff and theories made by some ancient scientists. Becoming an Astrophysicist is after all not an easy job to do. But once you devote your life to the universe, nothing will be impossible to achieve. You will be solving your mind mysteries on your own. So before hurting your brain cells thinking of the unsolved mysteries, make sure to gather some knowledge about the theories and applications of some subjects related to the study of the Universe and take a deep dive into the unknown UNIVERSE!
