A broad look at the universe, the beginning, today and the future

Science, especially astronomy and physics, is one of my passions. That is why i have a whole Category for it. This post is the first of probably 4 subjects that i am currently planing on. The next 3 will probably be about gravity and quantum physics. It sounds like i am a scientist with a PhD or something but i am just a curious mind with appetite for these subjects since 2016. I will have my own model and explanation for universe and reality in another post one day. This is not meant to be a detailed explanation of all these studies and ideas. The main reason for this one is to give you starting points if you are somewhat interested in or never wondered about astronomy and physics. Every title here can be a research subject altogether. The second reason is to give summarized information about ideas about the universe. To make it all the more interesting, there are strange facts about the universe too. So let's get started by going allll the way back to the beginning.

The Beginning

This is the most mind boggling and philosophical part actually. How did all this universe come to being, is one of most profound questions of all. Because the underlying characteristics of todays universe must be consistent with the models that predict the mechanism for this universe to originate from somewhere or at sometime. In other words, there is an unknown and unexplained portion of the image below and it has to have a consistent explanation. I know this is too complicated. Let's make it simpler by looking at possible explanations for the begining of the universe.

Theories

One of the most popular ideas that defines the first moments of the universe is the Big Bang of course. As far as i know, this model suggests that the spacetime was incredibly small at the beginning and something ignited it to enlarge in a massive scale. The Bang is not an explosion. It is actually the universe getting bigger all of a sudden. But this idea has to be mathematically proven or supported. But when scientists work on the math, todays models can not exactly propose a consistent mathmetical framework for this event to happen. So the next possible solution comes into play by Alan Guth, Andrei Linde and Andreas Albrecht.

The Inflationary Theory suggests the universe (everything you can ever see) was itsy bitsy tiny small and got a little bit bigger like a ping-pong ball and the inflation inflated it like a balloon but really fast. The weird side of this hypothesis is that it suggests that if inflation happened once, it can and will happen again and again, resulting in an infinite number of unverises. :) Yep, it is weird. But the mathematics that explains the event does not forbid it to happen again. But there is also the fact that we may never be able to test it to see there are other universes out there.

There is another hypothesis called Brane - Membrane theory. I guess this one is sort of related or developed on top of string theroy. This one suggests that universe came into existance by two sheet-like structures (membranes) colliding. Take a look at the image, you will get what i mean. This model brings up cyclic universes that says big bang will be happening again and again and again and so on.

Holographic Universe is pioneered by Leonard Susskind and colleagues and it says universe is basically a 3D projection of 2D information that has always existed. The image below speaks for itself. :)

Universe or Multiverse

It basically boils down to this question. If this universe is the only one (uni means single) how did it start? If it started with one of the models above, it might not be uni. :) I think there are number or interpretations for multiverse. Some say they are just another frequency right in front of our noses. Some say it is very very far away but out there. Some say at the quantum level, new universes are always being created. The common ground of these ideas is that they may never be tested with ordinary physics, therefore these ideas kind of falls into philosophical research. Watch this panel from world science fetsival if you are interested. This one is one of my favorites.

But there is only 1 possible experiment to prove other universe exists. It is developed on top of the idea that gravity is a result of graviton particles. If you accept that and if you collide the subatomic particles fast enough, one of these gravitons may just travel to another dimension or universe. This is a bit more complicated than that of course but i want to cut it short. Before this post gets boring, let's jump into today.

Today

The first part was kind of uninteresting. So here is a snack for you. :)

Woow Really?

• There could be 10 to the power of 23 starts in the universe. It is 300000000000000000000000.
• There is a planet-sized diamond named after a Beatles song (Lucy).
• If you want to travel across the one of the biggest known stars, Canis Majoris, it would take 1100 years with a commercial plane at 900 km/h.
• Despite being the closest to the sun, mercury is not the hottest planet in our solar system. It is Venus, because of greenhouse effect.
• Uranus is tilted 90 degress os it is basically rolling on the side. Lazy planet. :)
• Our Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course. They will bump each other in around 4 billion years and it will take around 3 billion years to merge. And probably it will not cause any stars or planets to collide with each other.
• The sun will be expanded so much in aorund 7.5 billion years and will swallow the earth.
• You probably know this but a tea spoon of material from a neutron star is the same mass as mount everest.
• The obervable universe is 93 billion years from end to end. Here is a way too comprehend this. You can travel 7 times around the world in 1 second with light speed. Now make it 1 minute and 1 hour and 1 day and 1 month and 1 year. Now make it 1 hundred year and a thousand. And make it 100 thousand and million. And make it thousand million, a billion. And make it 93 times. I am sure you are lost somehwere around 1000 years. :) Still want more, watch this.
• 1 inch earthquake on a neutron star is as powerful as millions of atom bombs.
• There is a galaxy out there that contains ethyl alcohol 1000 times the volume of our solar system.
• The photons from the sun is around 100 thousand years old. Otherwise we would be dead by radiation.
• In the next 50 - 100 years, we might be able to see a supernova of the star called Betelgeuse.

Ok, we have covered the beginning and strange facts. Let's take a look at the current state of the universe that we know of and live in. There are fascinating amount of diversity and dynamics resulted from simple atomic interactions or physical laws in the universe. Here are some examples to give you the idea:

This is a Pulsar. These neutron stars are emmiting light in a certain direction with the help of magnetic field around them. Therefore they look like a beacon that goes blip blip blip in a very consistent base. Scientists were baffled to see a star coming and going and they thought it was aliens as usual.

This one is a Quasar, quazy stellar object. This one looks incredible. They are creating their own orbits around. These are not pulsating like pulsars but they are bascially throwing things out in huge jets. Most of these objects have a black hole at the center. They are sooo greedy and trying to eat everything but it is becoming messy.

There are lots of weird objects in the universe. And all of them are giving clues about the origin of the universe as well as the mechanisms involved. There are also weird stuff going on too. Some black holes are way bigger than they can eat in 13.7 billion years is strange. Or why the Boötes void is a huge strangely sparse part of the universe. Or the question of the missing planet from our solar system, based on the mass calculations. :) This is why science is cool. You are predicting future or discovering the past by observing today. Let's take a look at todays obervations of the universe.

Edwin Hubble

The guy who proved the universe is getting bigger. Later on scientist also discovered that this expansion is not slowing down. On the contrary, it is accelerating. This is again a bit of a simplification but it is like a balloon. Spacetime is getting bigger so we have more space everyday. This also brings up question about how the universe started at the beginning. And as i stated above, the proposed mathematical framework must be consistent with current state and the unknown phase of the universe too. This expansion is also the reason what made scientists come up with the big-bang idea.

There are theories that explaing this expansion. They say there is an unknown substance called Dark Energy and it is creating more and more spacetime constantly. At first the amount for this dark energy is thought to be like 10 to the 128 times or something of the current observed value. :) In other words the observational value is ridiculously offset by the mathematical prediction. That means there is very little dark energy with very strong properties. This is probably the second mystery of science today.

There is also a thing called Dark Matter and it explains why the stars in the galaxies are able to orbit around the center of the galaxy with their speed. Because the amount of gravity is not enough to keep them from flying away. This is also a mystry of science. Take a look at the images below. First one is a possible map of dark matter in the universe at superclusters level.

This one is the ratios of all the matter we know of (%4.9), dark matter (%26.8) and the dark energy (%68.3). So the most abundant matter in the universe is just a mystery.

Cosmic Microwave Background

This one is also fascinating. The first discovery of this is accidental. 2 researchers creates an antenna and picks up this signal from everywhere. They think the radar is broken but this signal does not go away. Again they think it is aliens but it is not. This microwave radiation is the first radiation that universe can produce. Because of too much matter and heat were together, the atoms were not able to stay cool. :) In other words, it was a hot dense soup. So it required to cool down for 380 thousand years to produce this:

The Future

So yeah, there are lots of ideas to explain the beginning of the universe. There are lots of variety and unknowns for the current state of the universe. So what about tomorrow? And by tomorrow, i mean universal time scale tomorrow like billions or trillions of years :D Let's take a look at some facts, this part is fun.

• There will not be enough matter to create new stars in galaxies.
• Due to the expansion of spacetime, the galaxies from far away will be invisible. Because they will be going away faster than speed of light. Nope this is not a contradiction. Spacetime is moving not the galaxies inside it.
• After some time, stars will burnout and even galaxies will start falling apart.
• Even black holes may be evaporated due to Hawking Radiation.

Therefre the future is literally dark. And there are 3 possible endings for the whole universe based on the estimates of the future expansion of the universe:

• Big Crunch says the universe will collapse in on itself again because of the gravitational attraction. This also suggests that it might also cause another big bang from scratch.
• Big Freeze is basically heat death and it says expansion will stop at some point and leave nothing but protons and electrons wondering around.
• Big Rip is my favorite and it says the expansion will get ever more faster and cause even the atoms fall apart. Is is basically tearing the universe apart. I would love to see how would it happen though. :)

As i mentioned before, all of these titles are areas to wonder or study. When it comes to understanding the universe, your model has to explain the first moments of it and the 4 fundamental fources that known today. So the next chapter of thie series would be about these forces and especially gravity. Because it is a pain in the neck. The next 3 posts will also explain why there are lots of candidate models for this universe. This was the summarization of them in advance. I wanted to raise the interest by this bombardment of information. See you at the next universe or post :)