More Mysteries About the Universe
There is one thing which really upsets scientists who study the universe and that is when they find something which goes against everything they believed. We have been taught if we travel out to the far reaches of the universe we will eventually get to the oldest galaxies and their contents. This is based on the fact there is a shift in the light which increases as we go out further and it is called the red shift. For quite a while now, scientists have believed if we got to the end of the perceived universe which is about 13,000,000,000 light years away, we would find ancient burned out galaxies and objects whose light is all shifted to the red spectrum. This idea has been readily accepted by science even though lately discoveries have poked holes in this theory. It could be true in most cases, but some galaxies have been found at the edge of the visible universe which are still in the blue spectrum and this cannot be explained. Blue indicates a fairly new galaxy which was formed, but how could that be that far away from us? It could turn out the entire theory could be wrong and maybe someday we will find out somehow all the galaxies were created around the same time even though some are incredibly far from where we are.
Scientists claim the older the galaxy the more destroyed it will be from other galaxies merging with it and yet when they found the Wolf Disk which was formed 1 ½ billion years after the Big Bang this was not true. The problem is the galaxy has a beautiful disk and if we believe it truly believe it is from the beginning, there should have been a lot more chaos visible as other galaxies should have crashed into it. Scientists believe all galaxies this old would have been subject to some collisions even though some of them may have had more than others. Finding the Wolf Disk has set them back because their thinking maybe the impossible has happened with the Wolf Disk galaxy. It may not have suffered any collisions big enough to alter its structure. There is another strange thing about this galaxy, astronomers are claiming the stars in it formed ten times faster than the stars in our own Milky Way. Sometimes when you read something it raises questions and what I have read about this galaxy has raised one particular question which I would like an answer to. The question is could this galaxy have formed much later and somehow went through a wormhole to get to the edge of the universe and that is why it hasn’t suffered the ravages of time?
I think most of us who are interested in the universe and the space around us know we have been finding a lot of fast burst radio signals taking place. I also believe most of us know physicists and astronomers claim 90% of the matter in the universe seems to be missing. Some scientists are claiming they have found where it is by tracing back radio bursts and are probing between stars to find this missing matter. If they are right on this, there has to be an incredible amount of this matter because we can see the 10% around us and that alone is incredible.
We know our universe is expanding, and there have been a lot of theories to explain this. Lately one which has gained in popularity is one which states dark energy is believed to make up 73% of our universe and is pulling everything apart at ever increasing speeds. It’ll be interesting when someday the expansion of the universe will be explained from facts which are discovered and not from theories. The answer may turn out to make what we believe today foolish and akin to what we look back on and sort of smile. One of the problems is we do not have all of the facts so we cannot have a perfect solution.
Even thinking we are seeing 10% of the universe is now being challenged as we are told it might only be 5%. Some researchers are saying that dark energy and dark matter compose 95% of the universe. What would this mean to us if they are correct? If we look into this a little deeper, we find its theory states the matter is composed of protons and electrons. Astrophysicists are not entirely unified on what they believe, but some believe the missing matter will be found between galaxies. Could this be the source for zero point energy? Zero point energy, is energy drawn from space and would make the ideal power source for earth, but since it would be free energy, it will probably be prevented from happening at least in the near future.
Many people today are still asking the same question which has been asked for hundreds of years if not longer and that is, is there intelligent life in the universe besides us? Some say it has already visited the earth and is continuing to do so, but the secret is being kept from us. Others say no aliens have ever come here and recite the chances of meeting one, which is just another theory. Has there been visitation to the earth and is the government hiding that fact, because of they are it would probably blow a hole in all the other theories about how we will first make contact with aliens?
I was talking about the Wolf Disk and how galaxies crash into each other and probably should’ve told you about what is going to happen with our galaxy. We are headed for a collision with a galaxy which is considered far bigger than ours known as the Andromeda galaxy. Our galaxy size is now in question and some scientists think it might even be 2 ½ times bigger than what we think it is. The Andromeda galaxy is said to be 220,000 light years across. Until recently it was believed our galaxy was 100,000 light years across. Now some scientists are saying the Milky Way could be as much as 250,000 light years across. This means when the merger comes between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy it should be almost even terms and one has to wonder what the result will look like?
There are just so many mysteries out there and it is frustrating to know we are basically stuck for the time being on our own planet. At the speeds we can travel, it isn’t practical yet to think about going to planets further distant than Mars, which is even a great chore to reach.