The observable universe is 92 billion light years in diameter and is constantly increasing due to the effects of dark energy. Matter alone accounts for approximately five percent of the known universe and the rest is dark matter and dark energy, both of which are invisible. This concept is intriguing because that means anything anyone experiences is only a minuscule fraction of a percent of reality. The universe naturally has many mysteries surrounding it and I would like to explore a lot of these mysteries in future articles. Mysteries such as the fermi paradox, black holes, and even ways the universe is predicted to die out billions upon trillions of years.
In this particular article I would like to present overviews on several of the topics I would like to talk about.
The big questions involved with the fermi paradox ask where extraterrestrial life is and why have humans been unsuccessful in finding any extraterrestrial life? It becomes a paradox when you take into account the expansive size of the universe and wonder why we have been unsuccessful despite the impressive size of the universe. A suggested answer to the fermi paradox is that perhaps we just haven’t been listening hard enough or for enough time. We have only developed our current communication technology within the past century.
Black holes are massive and very, very dense. Nuclear Fusion occurs at the center of a star which turns a large number of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. This energy is called radiation and pushes against gravity to maintain a delicate balance between them. In a star more massive than the sun, fusion occurs until they fuse into iron. All of these fusions generate energy except the fusion that generates iron. The mass of Iron inside the star gathers and becomes larger until it becomes a critical amount and breaks that delicate bond between radiation and gravity. Gravity increases along with the mass of the star and instantly implodes at approximately a quarter of the speed of light. When the star finally dies in a supernova explosion it either becomes one of two things: a neutron star, or if the star was more massive -- a black hole. Were you to actually look at a black hole you wouldn’t really see anything other than the event horizon. However, I shall go deeper into the topic in a future article.
The universe is expanding at an alarming rate due to the effects of dark energy. However no one actually knows any concrete information about what dark energy exactly is, but there are three theories which lead to three scenarios for when universe may eventually die out – Big Rip, Heat Death/Big Freeze, or the Big Crunch & Big Bounce. I shall explain these theories in future articles and go into further depth of what is known about dark energy later on in subsequent weeks.
Next week shall be an article discussing the life cycle of a black hole from birth to death and what would theoretically happen were you to encounter a black hole.
