Author: jpt5426

Humanity will one day have to abandon the earth due to lack of resources, overpopulation, or an extreme disaster. Most likely, this day will not come anytime soon, however, if the fate of humanity depended on leaving our planet and colonizing new planets, it goes without saying that at this moment in history, humanity would become extinct.

Our way of space travel is extremely outdated. Yes, future missions to travel to and potentially colonize Mars has been confirmed by both NASA and Space X and can be speculated to take place within the next 10 years, however, our methods of space travel and how we plan to carry out these missions to Mars are unpractical.

In order to become an advanced space traveling society, there are two obstacles that must be crossed. These obstacles are earth’s gravitational prison and the speed at which we can travel through space. Let’s talk about our gravitational prison and theories on how we can potentially surpass this issue.

Everybody has seen a rocket before. Its main component is its massive thrusters which are used to launch an extremely small load of weight compared to the actual mass of the rocket. The majority of the rocket is made up of mostly fuel, a place to store this fuel, and large thrusters to propel the rocket out of earth’s gravitational pull. This is extremely costly and inefficient due to the fact that we are only able to take rather small loads of mass out of earth’s atmosphere in exchange for a rather large use of fuel and rockets.

Space X has already solved part of this issue by creating reusable rockets that return to their launching point after propelling the cargo in which it carries out into space. Unfortunately, a large amount of fuel is still used up in every launch. Some theories on how we can escape earth’s gravitational prison involve establishing a moon base in which a large amount of fuel would be saved when existing the moon’s gravitational field, however, this is only a temporary solution that does not solve the actual issue. Setting up a moon base would be costly, and once we do stat colonizing other planets, their gravitational pulls may be the same if not greater than earth’s.

One popular theory at the moment is the space elevator. The space elevator is made up of a space station which orbits the earth and is connected to the earth by an extremely large cable which will life future space ship out of earth’s atmosphere without requiring fuel, then launching the rockets from the space station. This theory would avoid a planet’s gravitational pull all together, but we unfortunately do not know of a durable material to construct the cable out of, and if the cable were to break off and wrap around the earth the destruction would be catastrophic.

Let’s take a break on earth’s gravitational prison and move on to the fun stuff… Space Travel! At the moment, with the fastest man-made object in space, (The Voyager 1), it would currently take around 60,000 years to reach the nearest star, (Alpha Centuri). There are multiple theories that can be discussed on how to travel faster through space, however, I would have to right a rather large book to go over all of them.

One rather popular theory on how vast distances of space can be traveled over a short amount of time sounds a little too much like science fiction, but so far has proven to be mathematically possible. This theory revolves around the creation of… The Warp Drive. The warp drive works by bending space time in font of the ship and making the space time denser behind the ship. This could create a potential “slope” the ship could ride on and potentially travel faster than light! Traveling to the fastest star system with this method would take a little less than 10 years.

At the moment, it’s impossible to tell the direction space travel will take, or the amount of time it will take humanity to get there. Perhaps in the near future we will start colonizing Mars, creating a moon base or a space elevator, or even launching our first mission to earth’s nearest star. The possibilities are endless.

Never Stop Questioning

Here, Here, and Here are some interesting videos and articles related to this blog that you may find interesting. There are also multiple other videos and articles related to this blog and previous blogs as well. Explore the internet for more answers to space and its multiple theories!

Now I know what you’re thinking. Yes, there has just been a blog on black holes, and yes in this blog we went over a quick rundown about the lifetime of a black hole… so what more do we need to know? The truth is, we barely scratched the surface relating to the mysteries and theories of black holes, so sit back, relax, and read about how black holes could potentially delete the entire universe as we know it.

As mentioned in my last blog, the lifetime of a black hole will span trillions upon trillions of years and will be the last known thing in the universe until it eventually loses its mass and explodes due to hawking radiation. The universe at this moment will be empty… This may already prove to be quit frightening, but a bigger issue would have taken place at some point during the black hole’s lifetime. The blackholes may have deleted fundamental information in our galaxy.

We now encounter the Information Paradox, which can be tricky to understand. I’ll try to do my best and start off by explaining information. So, what is information and how is it fundamental to our universe?

Let’s define information as an arrangement of particles. A specific arrangement of carbon atoms gives you coal, while arranging them in another way gives you diamond. Adding a few more atoms will give us a banana, while changing the arrangement can give us a squirrel. The building blocks of the universe are the same. Without information (the arrangement of atoms), everything in the universe would be the same. In theory, if there was a way to measure every single particle, atom, and wave of radiation in the universe, you could see the entire history of the universe right back to the big bang. (Yes that’s a lot to take in, and there’s more coming)!

This is where black holes make everything tricky. Information cannot be destroyed; however, black holes take information and makes everything the same. Black holes can potentially delete the fundamental information of the universe! At this point, the information paradox has three potential outcomes. The first is that information is completely and entirely lost.

With information being lost, the laws of physics that we know today would have to be abandoned and we would have to start entirely from scratch. This may seem both frightening and exciting, the only downside is humanity as we know it would also be deleted in a black hole, so we would never be able to truly witness this theory unfold.

The second is that information is stored. The information that is sucked into black holes may not be entirely lost, however, since it is impossible to cross over the event horizon of a black hole and return, we would never be able to regain this information. This would be like having a broken record of family photos. It’s nice knowing that the photos are safe, but it doesn’t do anyone much good.

The third and most desired outcome is that information is safe. This theory is extremely complicated, and was proposed after implementing the string theory, (may talk about that in a future blog), but I’ll start this theory off by describing one cool way that a black hole can be made. Imagine a laundry basket filled with to the max with socks. It’s impossible to stuff one more sock inside, but with an extremely large amount of force you manage to do so. This extremely dense object closes in on itself and in seconds is a black hole.

Yes, you would technically be killed instantly, however, the more socks or different materials that are sucked into the black hole will cause the black hole to expand ever so minutely. So in order to make room for the extra information, the black hole expanded!

Some scientists and physicists theorize that all information sucked into a black hole can be found to be two dimensional and on that black hole’s surface. Our universe at the moment may simply be 2D information found on the surface of a black hole in another universe. This theory is called the holographic theory, and is extremely complicated, but something that I would personally like to gain more knowledge about.

So yes, black hoes can be extremely complicated, and there is a massive amount of “information” that we simply do not know about them. The truly spectacular fact that we are alive in a time when research is being done to gain more knowledge on black holes. To me, that is amazing by itself.

Never stop Questioning.

Space… the final frontier that remains unexplored, unconquered, and for the most part unknown. One of the most captivating yet unknown objects throughout space is the black hole. Everyone has heard of the black hole before, everyone has seen black holes in movies, and if you don’t really know what a black hole does you can at least picture one in your mind, right? Unfortunately not, scientists have not even been able to take an actual picture of a black hole before. We can only assume we know what one looks like!

So what do we know about black holes? In this thrilling blog, we will be going over the birth, lifetime, and death of actual black holes. Hold onto your seats, you’re about to read about an entire lifetime that should span the length of the universe in a single blog!

Let’s begin our journey with an enormous star that begins to collapse upon itself under its own gravity. Within a fraction of a second, the star implodes and travels at a quarter of the speed of light until either a white dwarf (may be talking about white dwarfs in a future blog) or a black hole is born.

When looking at a black hole, one can only see the event horizon, or the light that has been trapped, warped, and eventually pulled into the black hole. Crossing the event horizon is often described as the point of no return, and the only way to escape the event horizon is to be traveling faster than light itself, (in other words it’s impossible). To simplify this concept, imagine swimming down a river while you’re slowly approaching a waterfall. You can easily swim away from the waterfall and out of the river when you’re a long distance away, however, there comes a time when you cross the point of no return. The water is too strong for any swimmer to escape, and you will eventually be going over the waterfall.

So what’s in the center of the black hole? The part of the black hole that is located past the event horizon is known as the singularity. We don’t exactly know what the singularity is. A singularity may be infinitely dense, with all of its mass converging at one point, or it could be something entirely different. We just don’t know. One good piece of advice that you should definitely take away from this blog is that if you ever find yourself amongst a black hole, the further away from the singularity you are, the longer you live.

One rather interesting fact about black holes is that black holes do not act as vacuums. In fact, if a black hole equally massive to our sun would be swapped out and placed in our solar system, earth would remain unaffected aside from the fact that we would freeze to death.

Now let’s go over a rather exciting theory. What would happen to you if you approached a black hole? From an outside perspective, it would look as if time was slowing down on your body until you would eventually stop and slowly disappear. From your own perspective, you would supposedly be able to watch the universe go by in fast forward almost like having the ability to see ahead into the future. We aren’t exactly sure what happens next, but can assume your body would be “spaghettified” as you recieve a rather quick death. The great news is that we truly don’t know. Some scientists speculate that one would be transported to an alternate galaxy that has been stored inside the center of a black hole.

Finally, let’s move onto the death of a black hole. Yes, black holes do eventually die, and I mentioned this briefly in my last blog referring to the death of a black hole being caused from Hawking Radiation. Hawking Radiation is basically a black whole extremely slow release of energy over a massive amount of time. The biggest black holes we now might take up to a google years to die in an explosion equivalent to billions of nuclear bombs. This time span is so long, that when the last black whole radiates away, nothing in the universe will be left to witness this spectacular event.

Never Stop Questioning

Side Note: In there center of every galaxy, there is a black hole which hold all the stars and planets together. Yes, thus means there is actually a massive black hole in the center of every galaxy. The first image of a black whole that we will receive will be of the one at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Scientists have already collected the data by spreading out massive satellites around the earth, pointing them towards this black hole, and are collecting the data as we speak. Here is an intriguing article about the progress we are making in capturing this first image of a black hole.

Nothing is immortal, all things come to an end… The universe does not escape this category. Within time, the universe will one day become nothing, and everything that has ever existed that we know about will cease to exist.

So why and how will the universe cease to exist? At the moment, there are three main ways that the universe is presumed to end. These include the big rip, heat death, and the big crunch. All of these speculated theories revolve around the fact that the universe is constantly expanding with increasing speed. Nobody knows exactly where the acceleration of the universe is coming from, however, we call it dark energy.

Let’s start out with the Big Rip theory. As mentioned in my last blog, the universe is constantly expanding at a rate stronger than gravity. Gravity manages to hold clusters of galaxies together while the distances between these galactic clusters are increasing, but with the acceleration of the universe, gravity may potentially lose its effect on every minuscule particle in the universe.

This would mean that at first, only large structures like galaxies are torn apart, black holes, stars, and planets will be the next to be torn apart due to gravity not being able to hold them together. In the end, as the universe expands faster than light, atoms would be affected and simply disband. The universe would be filled with particles not being able to come in contact with any other particles in the universe. (This would be loneliness on a whole other level.)

The next and most terrifying theory speculating the end of the universe is heat death. The difference between the big rip and heat death scenario is the theory that during a heat death scenario matter stays intact while over an unimaginably long amount of time it is converted in to radiation while the universe expands forever. Matter (including gas clouds necessary to create stars) will spread throughout the ever-increasing universe disabling future stars to be formed.

This is a large amount of information to wrap your head around, but unfortunately this means that the universe will turn dark… The remaining suns will die, and all that will be left is black holes drifting in space until they too die off due to hawking radiation (the deterioration of black holes over a large amount of time). The universe will truly become nothing. It will vanish entirely.

The final and most uplifting end of our universe is the big crunch. This theory states that the dark energy causing the universe to accelerate will eventually vanish. With the driving force of dark energy no longer in existence, gravity will be the dominating force in the universe and will begin to condense upon itself.

Super massive black holes will devour the entire universe as it condenses on itself to create a single massive black whole containing the entire mass of the universe and eventually destroying itself. Although all of humanity will be destroyed in the process, the big bounce theory states that this has happened an infinite amount of times and will continue happening through an endless cycle of expansion and contraction. (If anyone reading this blog has watched Harry Potter, it would be like a new universe is created through the ashes of the previous universe just like Dumbledore’s Phoenix.)

So which way will the universe end? Unfortunately, heat death appears to be the most likely scenario, however, its truly best to live in the moment and understand that to whomever is reading this blog, the existence of the universe will appear to be never ending.

Never stop Questioning

What makes up our universe, and where are we located within this universe? Although running through the multiple components of our immense universe may be rather hard to accomplish in a few sentences, I will certainly do my best.

Let’s start out with the section of our universe that we know the best, our solar system! Our solar system is one of 100-400 billion solar systems in the milky was galaxy. Along with the Andromeda Galaxy and more than 50 dwarf galaxies, we can be found in the local group, (the end of our postal mailbox). The local group spans about 10 million light-years in diameter and is part of hundreds of galaxy groups which make up the laniakea supercluster. This supercluster is one of billions in the observable universe. This may seem like a lot of information to take in all at once, but to get to the point, our universe is unimaginably massive.

Now what if I told you that the boundaries of human exploration are limited to the local group. We are confined to a small section of our universe that currently makes up 0.00000000001% of our observable universe.

How can this be true? Can’t we simply advance our technology far enough to travel and explore the distant reaches of our galaxy? Unfortunately not… The reason we are bound to such a microscopic fraction of our universe is because our universe is constantly expanding.

The reason for our universe’s constant expansion is derived from the beginning of our universe, or in other terms, the big bang. The best way I can explain the big bang is telling you to picture the entire universe inside a small marble approximately 13.8 billion years ago. Within fractions of a second, this marble started expanding to transform microscopic distances to galactic distances.

Gravity tried its best to hold the entire universe together within a compact area, but the big bang was far too powerful. The universe is now ever expanding since its initial creation while carrying the billions of galactic clusters with it. Gravity managed to hold together these billions of galactic clusters, however the distance between these galactic clusters is constantly increasing at an unimaginable rate while our universe continues to expand.

This bind-boggling information unfortunately tells us that as we remain isolated within the local group, the dark energy (nothingness) between the local group and other galaxy cluster continuously expands. We can attempt to travel through this dark nothingness of our universe in the far future, however, we will never reach another galactic cluster other than our own.

Another rather sad truth is that the galactic clusters that we can currently view in the night sky will one day disappear. The universe as we know it will recede from view. A being born in the far future will assume that our galactic cluster is the only place to explore in the universe. When this being looks far into the empty space, they will only see more emptiness and darkness.

This may seem like a dark and rather unappealing future, but thankfully there are billions of unexplored planets and solar systems within our local group that we still have not come close to exploring. For now, be grateful to have the incredible luck to be able to look into space and view our extraordinary past in the galactic clusters that currently fill our night sky.

Never stop Questioning.

Imagine if the world has finally discovered extraterrestrial life on Titan, an orbiting moon of Jupiter! This discovery consists of bacteria as well as fossils and remains of a past civilization. We should start celebrating right? We have finally answered the question that we are not alone in the universe! The cold truth is that if this discovery actually happened, the inevitable extinction of humanity shall soon be upon us…

Hold up, how in the world would discovering undeveloped life in our galaxy result in our extinction? Proclaiming that humanity’s extinction is looming in our near future is an extremely bold statement that would prove to be true during the discovery of extraterrestrials due to the theory of The Great Filter.

The Great Filter theory states that the reason our galaxy is not teeming with a constant flow of life is due to a filter or theoretical barrier that every advancing civilization shall inevitably encounter. This filter shall lead to the advancing civilization’s demise and will terminate all evidence that this civilization has ever existed. In short, The Great Filter theory claims that all lifeforms in our galaxy can only become so advanced until they die off.

Since humanity currently seems to be the only advanced civilization inhabiting our galaxy, one of two possibilities revolving around the Great Filter theory can be assumed.

The first possibility benefits the overall existence of humanity. This possibility claims that humans are the one unique civilization that has surpassed the Great Filter. We have successfully crossed the filter and shall remain the sole civilization to spread through and inhabit the galaxy! Although it is nearly impossible to interpret what the Great Filter was that humanity potentially surpassed, some possibilities include the beginning stages of life or the advanced development of brains over survival skills to form the creation of an intelligent species.

The second possibility that unfortunately has a greater chance of happening will soon lead to humanity’s downfall. This possibility proclaims that humanity is nearing the Great Filter throughout our society’s advancement. We assume that all lifeforms who have inhabited the Milky Way Galaxy prior to the existence of humanity have reached the Great Filter, and we are soon to be the next ones to go. Examples of a filter for this possibility can include annihilation by nuclear fallout or using the entirety of our planet’s resources before having the possibility to inhabit other planets.

Let’s go back to the statement that finding extraterrestrial life would ultimately lead to the extinction of humanity. This statement, due to the Great Filter theory, proves to be true. The more common advanced and complicated life is in the universe, the more likely the Great Filter is in front of us rather than behind.

The best situation humanity can surprisingly hope for is that our galaxy is sterile. The vast number of planets that could potentially inhabit life remain inactive waiting to be discovered and inhabited by us.

Never stop Questioning.

Here is a link that further explains the Great Filter Theory!

Take some time to think about the world around you. Think about the towering cities around the world all the way down to every single blade of grass on our entire planet… Now imagine the blue sky in its vastness, and imagine the limitless space surrounding our planet that encompasses our universe. The billions of galaxies that are spread throughout the universe and the quintillions of planets that compose each galaxy.

Huge huh? An unfathomable amount of detail is found throughout our universe… Now what if I told you that this was all part of a simulation. That we were only digitally created codes of memory that simply believe we exist, but in reality, we’re nothing more than a Sims video game character. Imagine that the entire human race and the vast universe we live in was all part of a virtual reality.

Seems almost like the plot to the next Matrix movie, right? Just continue reading, and I’ll explain to you why this theory just may prove to be more realistic than it seems.

To begin explaining how this theory is even feasible, lets travel 40 years back in time to the first video game created, Pong! Who didn’t love pong, a one-pixel dot bouncing back and forth against two boards with the end goal to score more points than your opponent. Now let’s travel to the present-day video game experience. With virtual reality games becoming more popular and the advancing graphics that are getting closer to looking unrecognizable from real life, if progress drops 1000 times slower with video games advancing, we will still reach realistic graphics in the relatively near future.

So how do video games relate to our universe living in a virtual reality? Their progress shows that with advancing technology, humans will eventually have the potential to copy the trillions of neurons in the human mind and upload them into a massive machine known as a quantum computer. This will essentially cause this person to consciously believe he is living within that computer’s digitally created universe. (One interesting fact is that we have recently uploaded a worm’s consciousness into a computer and caused it to believe it was simply living in a realistic environment. Click HERE to check the worm video out).

There is a common argument that our planet does not contain enough energy to process a quantum computer. If this is the case we will have to branch out in our galaxy to inhabit and utilize other planets or even suns for their energy, but we shall approach this issue when the time comes to build a quantum computer.

With our approaching ability to create our own virtual realities, the question arises, what if we are already in a virtual reality? Whose to say a higher being has not already created billions of virtual universes and we just happen to be one of them. Deciding whether we are living in a virtual reality based on these statements becomes more of a dart throwing game where we’re hoping to land on “actual reality” rather than the millions of virtual realities.

Supporting the case of virtual realities, Neil DeGrasse Tyson believes we have a 50/50 chance of living in a virtual reality, while Elon Musk claims we only have a one in one-billion shot at living in an actual reality over virtual. To further Elon Musk’s claims in virtual reality, he claims there are three courses that human existence can pursue. The first is if the human existence gains the potential to create a virtual reality but we decide this action is immoral and choose to refrain, the second is that human existence hits the “great filter” (I will discuss this in another blog) and becomes extinct, and the third is that we are living in a virtual reality. Musk believes the third course is without a doubt the most likely.

Although I can easily dive deeper into the theory that our universe is inside a virtual reality by incorporating how the arguments of a higher being come in to play and the fact that our universe has mathematical laws of physics similar to video games, my blog would seem as endless as the universe itself! So, on this note I leave you to ponder over the theory of living in a virtual reality. Perhaps the creator of this virtual reality is focusing on you right now, or perhaps we may one day possess our own virtual realities and achieve the status of gods? Never stop questioning.

Click HERE  for an interesting video on our universe living inside a virtual reality as well as further explaining subjects I mentioned in this blog.