This interpretation became known as the Fermi Paradox, and it provides no consolation to our lonely existence. The big question that has been haunting us ever since we developed the mental capacity to ponder our existence in this vast Universe is still unanswered: Are we alone in the Universe? Well, according to Enrico Fermi, a Nobel-Prize-winning Physicist, considering the young age of our Solar System compared to the much older age of the Universe and that interstellar travel should be easy to achieve given enough time, Earth should have been visited by intelligent aliens by now, if they did exist. To date, NASA has discovered more than 5,000 of them. In our galaxy, the Milky Way, every star has at least one planet orbiting it, meaning there are at least 100 billion exoplanets in our galaxy alone. It’s about ten times the number of cups of water in Earth’s oceans. Using this number as a standard, we can predict that there are roughly 200 billion trillion stars in the Universe. Our Milky Way Galaxy alone is home to 100 billion stars. 2 trillion clusters of dust swirling in a mostly invisible Universe harboring countless stars, planets, and even civilizations. Then they multiply that number by the images needed to photograph the entire sky.Īre you ready for the answer? There are approximately 2 trillion galaxies in the Universe. To do that, astronomers take very detailed pictures of small parts of the sky and count the galaxies in those pictures. But if we wanted to calculate the number of stars in the entire Universe, first, we’d have to count the galaxies. Next time you find yourself gazing at a sky full of stars, take a moment and try to count how many you can see. Even if we focused solely on the visible 5%, there’s still a lot to unpack. Wait, did I just describe repulsive gravity? As you can see, or can’t actually, there’s a lot of speculation when it comes to developing a blueprint for understanding the Universe and everything in it. And if the Universe is now growing at an increasing rate, then there must be a force countering gravity and causing this acceleration. It popped on our radars in 1998 when the Hubble telescope discovered that, in the past, the Universe expanded at a slower rate than it does today. Just like dark matter, dark energy is purely theoretical. Ok, probably not simple math, but you get the idea.Īs if this wasn’t confusing enough, the remaining 68% of the Universe is made up of dark energy. As early as the 1920s, astronomers hypothesized that the Universe must contain more matter than we can see because the Universe’s gravitational forces appear stronger than visible matter can account for. To be fair, we have strong reason to believe dark matter exists. We don’t even know what it’s really made of, and to be completely honest, we’re not even sure it exists… we can only assume. It’s as if the Universe doesn’t like being put under our microscope, or telescope, to be more precise.Īround 27% of our Universe is dark matter, which emits no light or energy and can’t be detected by conventional sensors and detectors. And we’ve only been able to see about half of all that with our telescopes. So that’s all the stuff that makes up our stars, planets, and galaxies. All ordinary matter, like the particles that form us and everything else we can see, only comprise about 5% of the Universe. But there’s more to it than meets the eye… literally. All of space, energy, time, and matter like you and me. NASA says the Universe is everything, but what they really mean is that it contains everything. Actually, I’m not even sure I can call it a place.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |