The enigmatic universe: 95% of the universe is a total enigma
In many ways, we are still novices playing with game paradigms seeking to understand the stars.
Main takeaways:
1-From the ancient Greeks to Einstein, we have studied the stars to try and discover our place in the universe.
2-Our current understanding of the universe - 95% of it is hidden from us - as it is woefully incomplete.
3-It is in our nature as humans to search for meaning in the stars. But sometimes, the answers aren't what we were looking for.
From the cities of ancient Greece to the towering heads of the Egyptian pyramids, through the deserts and towering mountains of ancient China to the rolling plains of Central America, humans have sought to understand how the universe works. They developed mathematics to track the motions of the planets, estimated the Earth's circumference by walking from city to city, created star tables and timekeeping texts, and even recorded celestial events such as Halley's comet, supernovae, and eclipses.
Over time, we have improved our models of the universe. Using ellipses, Johannes Kepler reconstructed the celestial motions. Galileo revolutionized Copernicus' heliocentric model of the solar system by discovering that the sun, not the earth, is the body around which all the other elements in the solar system orbit. Isaac Newton developed the theory of gravity, which was later superseded by Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Discovery by discovery, we paint in the gaps the picture of our universe; Yet somehow, with each brushstroke, that image is transformed and evolved into something ever-changing, new, and unrecognizable. The universe understood by Kepler and Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler, Newton and Galileo, and even Einstein, is different from the universe we know today.
Understanding the universe is troubling today. Because it's not a neat little box with elegant lines and a perfect lid, being confusing and complex, it defies expectations.
For starters, our universe is not a static, closed entity. Our universe is expanding. Once from everywhere, the fabric of space-time stretches apart like an inflated balloon, carrying galaxies with it. Photons roaming the corridors of the universe expand along with space-time, their wavelengths getting larger and longer, or getting redder, thus the redshift occurs as space expands.
Our universe is not expanding into anything. As far as we know, there is no extra dimension around the universe. Instead, space itself is expanding, causing the voids between galaxy clusters - the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe - to get bigger and bigger over time.
This leads us to the next troubling conclusion: there is no center in our universe. Every place is the "center" because everything everywhere is moving away from everything else, all at once.
But the universe is not only expanding, but also accelerating!
With each passing moment, an unknown, persistent force called "dark energy" pulls at the fabric of the universe. Dark energy is a fundamental property of space itself; Invisible, smooth and static, yet we're not quite sure what it really is.
Then there's dark matter — the invisible, lumpy substance that holds galaxies together. In many ways, dark matter is the corollary of dark energy: as dark energy stretches space apart, dark matter binds matter together. Both are invisible - they do not interact with radiation or light - yet they are always present. Dark matter acts as cosmic glue to form structure on a large scale, and dark energy is a key component of the evolution of the universe.
The afterglow of the Big Bang, known as the cosmic microwave background, is imprinted on the fabric of space-time, a leftover radiation from when the universe was so hot, dense and polished. By mapping out bumps and irregularities, and comparing surveys of galaxies, scientists have found that 70 percent of the universe is made up of dark energy. Meanwhile, 25% of the universe is dark matter.
Only 5% of the universe is ordinary matter.
This is the ordinary matter of everyday life: your hair and clothes, your atoms and organs, the food you eat, the dogs that kiss you, the air, the sea, the sun and the moon. All we know - all we see - is only 5% of everything in the universe.
The rest of the universe is stuff we can't see, nor understand yet. A very large part of the universe is still unknown. Despite the technological advances of the past century, even with computers at our fingertips, the worldwide Internet, and space observatories mapping the distant dimensions of the universe, there is still much we don't understand.
We've made great strides since the days of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, even since Copernicus and Kepler. But in many ways, we are still novices playing with the paradigms of games that seek to understand the stars.
At the end of the day, we're on a lonely planet hanging out in space, orbiting our sun among millions of other stars in a tiny corner of a galaxy in an ever-expanding universe.
It is in our nature as humans to search for meaning in the stars. But sometimes, the answers aren't what we were looking for.
Source : websites