When listening to Dean Larson’s interesting lecture on all things in our universe, I was intrigued to wonder how much we actually know about it all. Obviously, most know at least the names of the planets within range of our sun, but that only contributes the equivalent of a pore on human skin or a brick on a 20 story building. Our universe is immense in size and it is almost impossible to wrap our minds around just how large it truly is. Just because we can identify far away galaxies and starts does not mean we know what makes up our entire universe. According to an article I found, we do not know what 96% of the universe is made up of. Both dark matter and dark energy make up huge portions of it all and nobody truly knows what either of these components are (Moskowitz, Clara). This is amazing to think about considering people have been studying that stars for over 2000 years. After all of that time, we as human still only understand 4% of our universe. If dark matter makes up a majority of the universe then why don’t we know more about it? We need to find ways to understand what it is so that we can advance as a society and understand how our planet and others came about to a further extent.
I believe understanding our universe is very important because it is where we all originated from. The only information that we know about dark matter now is through curious observations of how stars should orbit other object and the reality of how they actually do. Due to lack of consistency, scientist have chosen to conclude that there is matter out there other than the gasses that we can see that is not able to be seen. Study on this matter could unlock even more about our universe. If there is such matter that cannot even be seen, we can never know how large our Universe is or even where everything is located. We need to study dark matter more so that we can understand these factors.
Another idea that I believe astronomers tend to overlook is whether we are alone in our universe. It is very difficult to believe that in such a massive place our planet was the only one lucky enough to inhabit life. There are billions of galaxies with billions of stars so the chances that we are the only living beings in our universe I feel are slim. Even considering the fact the humans alone are miracles, why couldn’t the same such miracle occur somewhere else? Even if there is a place out there that has organisms not as developed as we are it is still important to find them. This will allow us to understand the environments they live in and maybe adjust to future issues we will have in civilization. For more on specific information we do not know about our universe feel free to read more.
Our universe is a vast place that needs to continue to be explored. It seems as if we know a lot about it but truthfully we barely know anything at all.
What did you think about Dean Larson’s lecture?