A Brief History of the Universe

Everyday we live our lives, planning each activity out and forming a schedule for whit fun activities, work, or maybe simply some time to relax. We carry out this same routine every day. Most of us even have an end goal, saying to ourselves, “I am putting in the work now so in the future I will achieve my goals.” Eventually our lives come to an end, and the next generation of humanity will carry out the same routine.

One of the questions I ask myself constantly is what is the purpose of humanity? Sure, we carry out our day to day tasks, start a family, some of us even invent something new, or impact the world in a way that will put their name down in history, however, in the grand scheme of things, in the entirety of the universe, do we truly have a purpose, or are we just destined to live out our lives and eventually return to the universe that we inhabit?

Something I once watched in a documentary about the cosmos explained something rather mind-boggling. If the entire history of the universe was made into a calendar from January until December, all of human history would not even account for 1 second.

So, what is occurring in our Universe during this fraction of second? Believe it or not, if we add on one minute to this Universal Calendar, our universe will look extremely foreign. Humanity may have colonized a fraction of the Milky Way Galaxy, or we may have met our extinction entirely.

At the moment however, humanity is fortunate to be able to look out at the stars and simply gaze in wonder. We have sent the Voyager 1 space probe past the reaches of our Solar System. We have prepared for Colonization on Mars in 2025, (potentially 5 more years)! We have discovered potentially the next colonizable planet, Proxima Centauri b, which orbits our nearest star Proxima Centauri. We have successfully modeled a functional space elevator to take us to space without needing to break through earth’s gravitational pull. We have discovered that our Universe is constantly expanding at an increasing rate, and the string theory has even helped prove that the chance of there being a multiverse is not all that far-fetched.

HERE is a video that goes into the possibility of a future space elevator and HERE is a video discussing Proxima Centauri B, a potential planet to colonize.

I do apologize for throwing a bunch of out of this world concepts at you, however, these are the types of wonders, creations, and discoveries that has caused me to fall in love with space. No, I do not know the true purpose for why humanity has been placed in at the moment a lifeless universe, nor do I know if we will ever truly find one that matches the grandness of the universe. There is one thought that I do believe in, however. Perhaps humanity has not been placed within the Universe to have any real purpose at all, but maybe, humanity is the universe’s way of experiencing itself…

Never stop questioning

HERE is a great website that I have used multiple times to acquire information.

Last week we discussed the formation of our solar system, but where is the solar system located in our Universe? Do we even know where the center of the universe is located, or are we just living on earth day by day unaware of our location or even which direction we are traveling in the vast and possibly endless universe?

The answer to the second question is we do not know. We have no idea where the center of the universe is located, in fact, many scientists believe there is not even a technical center to the universe. To make matters worse, we do not even know which direction we are moving throughout the universe other than relative direction if we say something like, “we are moving towards Andromeda” or “the sun is traveling in the clockwise direction around the milky way and the solar system is actually tiled relative to the milky way galaxy”.

HERE is a website that goes over the speed at which we are traveling throughout the universe.

It’s almost funny how little we still know about our universe. One bit of information that puts us in a relative position throughout the universe is our galactic address. The purpose of a galactic address is simple, it is used to help us understand and one day potentially communicate, this would be rather difficult, where we are in the universe. It is basically a postal address for the earth!

To start off our galactic address, we are obviously located on the earth which is in the solar system. The solar system is located in the Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way is in the Virgo Cluster or a collection of other galaxies known as the local group. Some scientists choose to include the Virgo Super Cluster and the Laniakea Super Cluster which are simply bigger cluster filled with even more galactic clusters. Next in line is our observable universe, and finally we have the universe itself.

Earth,
The Moon-Earth System,
The Solar System,
The Milky Way Galaxy,
The Virgo Cluster (The Local Group),
The Virgo Super-cluster,
The Lanikai Super-cluster (Kind of a super-super-cluster),
The Observable Universe,
The Universe.

HERE is a website that goes into a more in-depth look at our universal address!

Maybe one day Earth will get some mail!
Before ending this blog, let’s go back to how little we know about the universe. The extent of our knowledge about the universe is unbelievably limited despite the multiple cool facts about space you can read on this blog. The exciting part about this, however, is that we are discovering new and extraordinary information every day! Some of it seeming to come from a sci fi movie. We do not have all the answers, but the path to discovering these answers is truly breathtaking and is the true reason why myself and so many others are in love with the exploration of space.

Never stop Questioning

HERE is an extremely thrilling yet mind-boggling video that I recently discovered not related to anything in the blog this week, but discusses the potential of a multi-verse.

Finally, let us move on from discussing the mind-boggling facts about galaxies, and continue our trip throughout the history of the universe. Instead of discussing the formation of galaxies, lets rescale our perspective and discuss the formation of something rather familiar to every human living on earth… Our Solar System! Here  is a video that does a simplified breakdown on the creation of our solar system.

Our solar system started to form roughly 4.6 billion years ago in a wispy cloud of gas and dust. Most likely, do to an explosion from a nearby supernova, this cloud of gas and dust began to collapse in on itself creating a flat spinning disk of dust and cloud. Nuclear fusion started to occur from hydrogen atoms fusing into helium. This created an immense amount of energy, and at the center of the gas and dust cloud, when enough materials had been collected, our sun was born and ate up 99.8% of all of the material throughout the gas and dust cloud.

Fortunately, the sun did not devour all of the material throughout the gas and dust cloud. The remaining material was launched away from the explosion from the creation of the sun and began clumping together in to bigger and bigger pieces which either began orbiting the sun or being pulled back towards the sun in the form of asteroids. You guessed it! These clumps became planets, such as the earth, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, and moons.

At this point in the creation of the solar system, mass chaos was occurring as asteroids were constantly bombarding the planets and the sun in our solar system. During this phase of the creation of our solar system, a massive asteroid collided with the earth breaking off a piece of the earth and forming the moon. It is even believed that water located on one of these asteroids could have contained the building blocks of life and collided with earth.

Finally, our solar system started taking shape and the rest is history! We can currently study the formation of our solar system by the preserved remnants of the early solar system which are asteroids located throughout the asteroid belt, as well as comets which inhabit the outreaches of our solar system. HERE is an article that goes over a more in-depth explanation relating to the creation of our solar system.

One extremely interesting fact that I have learned about our asteroid belt is the fact that traveling through the asteroid belt is truly not a major issue. Unlike many movies depicting a maze of asteroids that is extremely hard to navigate, the simple truth is that the extremely vast distances between asteroids located in the asteroid belt makes it extremely rare for two asteroids to even bump into each other. In fact, while traveling through the asteroid belt, the chances of a manmade craft hitting an asteroid is less than one in a billion! HERE is an article that discusses what would happen if we were to travel through the asteroid belt.

Never Stop Questioning

Last week we discussed some interesting facts about galaxies throughout the universe and took a break from the timeline of our universe. What can I say, I must really love galaxies because I have even more amazing facts about the trillions of galaxies permeated throughout our universe… so let’s begin!

I mentioned this in the last blog, but in the center of basically every galaxy there is a black hole located in the center holding the millions and even billions of stars and planets in each galaxy together. The black hole in the center of our galaxy is called Sagittarius A. This may seem intimidating at first, knowing that there is a super massive black hole in the center of the milky way, but don’t worry. Our solar system is located in one of the outer arms of the Milky Way galaxy meaning we have an extremely long amount of time until it is devoured by the black hole. Our sun will be long since burnt out before this event even takes place.

Let’s move back to discussing galaxies rather than discussing the black hole in the center of our galaxy, (I have a ton of information on black holes I can write about in future blogs). As I have previously mentioned, the Universe is ever expanding and with this expansion galaxies are constantly expanding with the universe and moving away from each other. One good method of imaging the universe’s expansion is picturing that it is similar to a balloon with multiple dots drawn on it. As the balloon is blown up and expanding the dots are moving further away from each other. In fact, dots that are already far away from each other expand away from each other at greater speeds than two galaxies close together! The dots on the balloon are similar to galaxies.

The sad truth about our universe’s constant expansion, however, is that if humanity chooses to leave its current cluster of galaxies held gravitationally together known as the local group, other galaxies or galaxy clusters will simply be traveling at such great speeds away from us due to the expansion of the universe we would be journeying pointlessly through empty space. We are confined to a small section of our universe and it only makes up 0.00000000001% of our observable universe.

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. HERE is a video that discusses the boundaries humanity can travel and HERE a cite that discusses potential ways to exit the local group.

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.

The main goal of this blog series is to discuss the history of the universe. How it was created, what is occurring in the universe today, and how the universe eventually dies. The last blog ended with the creation of the first galaxy, and although the next major event that would take place in the universe is the creation of the milky way and the birth of our galactic address, I feel that it is important to first discuss what a galaxy even is. So sit back, relax, and let’s take a quick break in the progression of our universe to explore the galaxies and other breath-taking facts about the universe.

To be brief with the basic facts relating to galaxies, we classify galaxies as millions or even billions of stars held together by a gravitational attraction. For nearly every galaxy, this gravitational attraction is a black whole. For the longest time, scientists speculated that the observable universe contained about 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies, (I was actually planning on just putting that number into this blog prior to doing any research), but know it is known that this number has increased by a multiple of 10 making the new number of galaxies in the observable universe 1 to 2 trillion. (That’s a lot of galaxies!)

There are also three mains types of galaxies. These types consist of spiral elliptical, and irregular galaxies. I would normally describe the characteristics of these three galaxies, but HERE is a link that does a pretty good job at doing just that. One cool fact that I find interesting and figured I’d share is that stars that are not a part of any specific galaxy are classified as a rogue star. Phew! Glad we went over most of the basic information of galaxies. Now for the fascinating facts!

Most people know that our solar system is located in the Milky Way galaxy, however, most people do not know that the solar system will not always be located in the Milky Way. When astronomers look into space, almost every single galaxy is speeding away from us. There is one exception, and this is Andromeda. A galaxy that is speeding towards the Milky Way at 120 km/sec. This event occurs because as the two galaxies are expanding in the universe, they are still drawn together by gravity. This event is even fairly common between galaxies throughout the universe!

The collision of these two galaxies will result in a new galaxy called Milkdromeda and will take place in roughly 4 billion years when the two black holes of each galaxy collide and form Milkdromeda Center Black Hole. At this time, our sun will be burnt out, and if humanity still exists, we will no longer be on earth. Thankfully, wherever we are located during the collision, we will not have to worry about colliding with any stars or planets of Andromeda since the distances between these objects are so great. We could simply sit back, relax, and watch an extremely wonderous night sky get filled with stars and shifted before your very eyes. HERE is an interesting cite related to the creation of Milkdromeda.

Never Stop Questioning

HERE is an intriguing video related to the expansion of our universe and some amazing facts that I have not mentioned.

Roughly 390,000 years after the big bang, the universe had finally witnessed its first glimpse of light. This, as stated in the last post, was known as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. Unfortunately for the universe, the light emitted from the CMB was short lived, and the universe was once again dark, empty, and a truly mysterious and unknown place.

The universe would not witness its next glimpse of light until 200 million years after the big bang when elements of pure hydrogen and helium came together to form monster stars known as population 3 stars or the first stars. One interesting fact is that we do not have telescopes powerful enough to see these stars or more accurately speaking the light that was once emitted from these stars when they once inhabited in the universe. HERE is a site that goes into an in depth analysis of the first stars of the universe. Artistic representation of the first stars of our universe.

Representation of how far humans can see with the Hubble telescope.

After a large amount of time passed throughout the universe, the first stars exploded as supernovas and more massive stars formed. Eventually these massive stars detonated as well. During this time of the universe’s lifetime, stars exploded like fireworks and the universe was truly a beautiful sight to behold. This era of the universe was known as reionization. During reionization, heavy elements were not yet found throughout the universe. Only from the result of several generations of supernovas exploding did elements such as oxygen and even good old H2O start to form.

Side note, since on earth we find life in water, it’s possible that life could have existed 10 million years after the universe was created since water was rather common at this point! Just something fascinating to think about.

Finally, let’s discuss the birth of the first galaxy, or what I classify as the beginning of the modern universe. The truth when it comes to galaxies, however, is that astronomers are not 100% certain on how they were formed. Two theories are constantly debated, but both seem to logistically make sense. The first theory is that after generations of supernova’s exploding, gas clouds permeated throughout the galaxy. These gas clouds began to condense and eventually form into galaxies.

The second theory that is currently more widely supported discusses that galaxies were formed by stars coming together and forming small clusters throughout the universe. This theory explains how spiral and elliptical galaxies were created based on the fact that the small star clusters formed could collide with other small star clusters over time. HERE is an intriguing video which discusses how galaxies are born.

One interesting fact about galaxies is that at the center of every galaxy there is a black hole which to my understanding holds every galaxy together. One rather recent scientific discovery is that black holes were actually created before galaxies since every galaxy requires a black hole to exist. Also, yes, there is a black hole in the center of the Milky Way! HERE is a website that discusses why black holes appeared before galaxies.

Our universe as we know it was finally taking shape, stars were going through their life cycles, galaxies were being formed, and light was to remain throughout the universe. It seems like our ever expanding universe what at a point in it’s life cycle when it had finally taken its first steps.

Never stop questioning.

HERE is one cool site discussing how there was no light emitted during the big bang. (Something cool I recently found).

The last blog concluded only one second after the big bang or the birth of our universe. At this moment, the universe is unrecognizable. No light has yet permeated the darkness, the fundamental concepts of physics are yet to be created, and the universe is extremely hot, dense, and expanding at an incredibly fast rate. HERE is an extremely fascinating cite that I find going into a more depth view relating to the expansion of the universe. I will cover this expansion more in future blogs.

Now let’s jump ahead roughly three minutes after the big bang during what is known as the big bang nucleosynthesis. At this point during the birth of the universe, the temperature has cooled down to 1 billion Kelvin, (still extremely hot if you ask me), and the density has decreased to around the same density as air. The fundamental laws of physics such as gravitational pull was adopted by the universe as well, causing deuterium (a stable isotope of hydrogen) and the first helium atoms to form.

At this point, the universe will stay in the state created from the big bang nucleosynthesis for roughly 379,000 years, (a lot longer than one second). Now something breathtaking takes place. The universe cools down to a little over 3000 Kelvin when the combination of protons and elections form hydrogen atoms and release radiation that separates from matter to create Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) otherwise known as the first light in the universe.

One interesting fact is that for humanity, the CMB can be seen at approximately 13.8 billion light years in every direction. This is the extent of our observable universe, the key word is observable, as well as the age of our universe. The CMB however is estimated to be about 46 billion light years away from the center of the observable universe.

At our current point in our journey of looking into the history at our universe, we are still in the middle of the birth of our universe. At this time the universe was still forming as light began to spread throughout the darkness and both hydrogen and helium atoms were forming. It seems nearly impossible to imagine our galaxy containing galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets, black holes, and even the beautiful miracle of life emerging from such a foreign land.

Never stop questioning.

Here is both a VIDEO and a WEBSITE that dives into a more in-depth analysis about the birth of our universe!

If you were also confused about why humanity can actually see the arrival of CMB at 13.8 billion light years away while CMB is estimated to be about 42 light years away from the center of the observable universe you can read more here! Continue reading “Light Enters the Universe”

Let’s travel back in time around 14 billion years ago to the beginning of everything. The time that predates human knowledge. The time that precedes the universe as we know it… Let’s travel back to the big bang. HERE is a link that goes into an in-depth analysis of the big bang.

Moments before the big bang and the creation of the universe, everything that there ever has been or will be was found in something drastically smaller than a microscopic particle. This incredibly small bubble that was thousands of times smaller than a pinhead contained everything in the universe, and when the big bang took place, began to rapidly expand in on itself while increasing in size. Since the big bang, the universe has been continually expanding, and is actually accelerating during this process.

Let’s pause for a moment. There’s probably a lot of questions running through your head at the moment. What was surrounding this incredibly small particle known as our universe prior to the big bang, what caused the big bang to take place, and why is the expansion of the universe accelerating instead of slowing down or stopping entirely?

The beautiful answer to these three questions is that humanity simply does not know. Every day, scientists attempt to fully understand the creation of the universe, however, all we have so far are theories backed up by mathematics and physics to permit educated guesses.

For example, we classify the universe as all existing matter and space considered as a whole, therefore, how can there be any space surrounding the microscopic particle that we classify as the universe before the big bang? That microscopic particle technically contains everything!

Some scientists believe Stephan Hawking’s theory that the big bang took place due to the creation of a black hole, but once again this is only a theory that could one day be proved false.

To answer the constant expansion of our universe, scientists know that the universe continues to expand due to a substance called dark matter, unfortunately they don’t quit understand what dark matter is since everything we currently view at the moment is, well… regular matter.

So, what happened immediately after the big bang? Humanity has a more solid grasp on the events that took place immediately after the big bang. As previously stated, the universe started expanding. While the universe began to expand, for the tiniest glimpse of time you could find yourself in the quark era. A hot dense environment where energy manifested itself inside pairs of quarks. At this point, the universe was so hot that matter and energy were practically the same.

Some point near the end of the quark era matter began to dominate over antimatter while quarks began forming hadrons, similar to protons and neutrons. At this point, only one second has passed since the beginning of everything, and the universe had already expanded the size of twenty light years. HERE is a video that goes over the quark era and the history of the universe just one second after the big bang.

Yes, all of that information was a lot to take in and we only covered one second of the history of the known universe. Throughout this blog, we will be touching upon specific topics and events that took place, are currently taking place, or will take place throughout the history of the universe. Sit back, relax, and read about the wonders and mysteries of our universe!

Never stop Questioning

HERE is a link that briefly sums up the creation of our universe and contains some additional info on topics this blog will cover in future posts!