Some staggering images of Auroras from the past two months. These stunning lights, as seen from the Northern and Southern hemispheres, have inspired and stunned photographers, poets and scientists for hundreds of years. The breathtaking showcase of lights seen are caused by clouds of charged particles from the sun that are funneled down to the poles along the earth’s magnetic field lines. They hit and collide with particles in our earth’s atmosphere, transfer their energy and make the air molecules glow like neon lights.
“Hello. My name is Stephen Hawking: physicist, cosmologist and something of a dreamer. Although I cannot move, and I have to speak through a computer, In my mind I am free.” -Stephen Hawking
Carl Sagan on science, religion and geocentrism. Inspiring and intelligent words by from an inspiring and intelligent man.
“Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on a threshold of a vast and awesome universe.”
A Black hole is not just region in the fabric of spacetime with infinite density and curvature. They are also one of the most mind-boggling phenomena in the universe and have captivated some of the greatest minds on earth.
The main reason for this is that the gravitational singularity that is found at the center of each and every black hole. This is the location in the black hole in which quantities that are used to measure gravity suddenly become infinite and as you can imagine this can be of a great nuisance to scientists mainly becomes physical theories can’t really work with infinite numbers. In other words, all the laws of physics break down and all the mathematical explanations we have of the universe suddenly don’t make any sense. Whenever any theory, especially general relativity, predicts infinite density and infinite space time curvature, it also predicts its own breakdown. It also means that we lose our ability to predict what happens beyond this point in a black hole - It could be anything beyond out imagination.
Now this puzzling and mind-blowing dilemma does not only apply to black holes. There is even another singularity that we know of, which our laws of physics don’t apply to and that is the very beginning of our universe. This singularity at the beginning of the big bang is beyond anything we call science today. But again, just because we don’t have an explanation today doesn’t mean that we never will in the future.
One of the main missions of some of the greatest physicists today (including Stephen Hawking) is to find a “Theory of everything”. In short, this is an elegant theory that would link together all of physical phenomena. In other words, It is a theory that would allow us to predict the outcome of any experiment. Even more, It would allow us to predict the outcomes of events in the universe and to truly fathom its nature.
Whether we find this “Theory of everything” or not what intrigues me. What baffles me is the very fact that we, a species on a random planet in a random solar system in a random galaxy in an unimaginably massive universe, are actually intelligent enough to look for it. Or in the words of Noble-prize winning physicist Murray Gell-man :
“It is the most persistent and greatest adventure in human history, this search to understand the universe, how it works and where it came from. It is difficult to imagine that a handful of residents of a small planet circling an insignificant star in a small galaxy have as their aim a complete understanding of the entire universe, a small speck of creation truly believing it is capable of comprehending the whole.”
Neil DeGrass Tyson on big think: Be yourself. ”The greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.” These are truly inspiring words of wisdom.
How big is our solar system? Well our brains aren’t capable of imagining such vast distances, but this mind-blowing page will help. But if you think that our solar system is breathtakingly vast, note that it’s almost nothing compared to the size of our observable universe.
We human beings are a remarkable species and capable of extraordinary things. If we let ourselves, we could, in fact, create infinite minds. We could become immortal beings living and loving forever. We could allow ourselves to travel across the cosmos unharmed. We could allow ourselves access to millions and millions of bytes of information within our very own heads. We could do all of these things- but only if we wanted to.
I think its important that everyone has a cosmic perspective and understand how much we’re worth. Our knowledge and technology are advancing rapidly - just look at how much we’ve grown as a species in the past several thousand years. Hence, my TEDx talk is all about making our time in the cosmos worthwhile. Its about time we became more ambitious.
“It’s the most spiritually empowering thing that I know, to look up at the night sky and see Orion rising as the autumn closes in at the last moment, and it’s got me through some very hard times. When I had a couple of serious bouts of depression in my life the stars were a big factor in pulling me out. People used to say ‘what’s your spirituality?’ and I’d say I don’t know, but I found out looking at the stars one night that that’s what it was.” - Dr Brian May
A truly inspiring video that serves as a message from the International Space Station to to the rest of humanity. Pieced together by Italian Filmmaker Giacomo Sardelli, It is one of those rare films that captures the wonderful potential of humanity.
Above is an marvelous example of a galaxy that is torn apart by gravitational forces from a more compact intruder galaxy crossing in front of it. Around 420 million light years away from us in the direction of the constellation Draco, tidal forces are violently drawing out the spiral galaxy’s stars and dust to create the stunning visible sight. The tail created as a result is a staggering 280,000 lights years long hence giving it the name Tadpole Galaxy.
This video gave me goosebumps! Everyone should watch this. In about two minutes and thirty seconds, Jason Silva sums up the life of our 13.7 billion year old universe.
Even though 13.7 billion years may sound like a lot of time, its, in fact, a mere instant in comparison to the relatively infinite amount of time that lies ahead of us. In other words, we have a seemingly infinite amount of space and time at our disposal in order to push our species forward beyond any human form of imagination. Yes, we are a few clumps of matter in a universe infinitely larger than us but in the words of Jason Silva himself, we are no ordinary clump of matter…
As if our own observable universe wasn’t mysterious enough, scientists are now trying to uncover the possibility of other universes existing beyond our own. As you can imagine, this can be somewhat problematic. Our own universe is so vast that most of it is hidden from our view. Considering that we can barely see “the edge” of our own universe, how on earth are we going to detect the existence of other universes out there?
Actually, its not impossible and its one of the many things that makes the scientific method so extraordinary. Just as we can draw solid and accurate conclusions about the beginning of our universe - The Big Bang - without actually traveling back into time, we can also detect signs of other universes even if we’re not directly observing them. That is what many astrophysicists, such as Matthew Kleban from NYU are doing ; aiming to find traces of an ancient cosmic collision. The try to look for the kind of patterns hidden within our very own observable universe that might expose the existence of universes other than our own. One of the main things that they look for are disturbances within the cosmic microwave background that could hint to an earlier cosmic collision.
In fact, one of the most popular theories to do with the notion of multiverses is the idea that the big bang that created our universe was not unique but a part of a countless stream of big bangs, each creating a universe with its own physical laws. In other words, our universe could be a drop in a ocean of universes.
What if I told you that you could, with a laptop connected to the internet, help uncover the mysteries of the universe? The truth is that you can now help astrophysicists look for planets around other stars in the Milky way - all from the comfort of your own home! All you have to do is go on to this amazing and interactive site and start immediately! There’s a very simple tutorial that will help you understand the methods and mechanisms involved. Plus, you don’t even have to sign up if you don’t want to.
How it works is that you look at light curves that convey the brightness of stars, similar to the one shown above. In moments that a planet crosses in front of a star (transit) is when the brightness takes a small dip and what you have to do is identify those dips.
Bill Borucki spent thirty years and six hundred million dollars to build the Kepler telescope which can now allow you to detect planet around other stars in less than five minutes. Without even having to get up from your chair, you can help look for other worlds out there, worlds that could possibly host intelligent species other than our own…
