What Might We Know About The Universe 100 Years From Now? It is turning out water is a lot more plentiful in the universe than we first thought. Not only have we discovered it on some moons in our solar system, but it has just been found on a rocky planet which is forming. When we look at Mars, scientists claim they have found dried river beds and even a little ice. There has been a theory which has been around a while, stating Mars might have underground rivers and oceans. I am looking forward to finding out, and one of the reasons is there might be life in a Mars underground ocean. It has been a slow slog to get to where we are today with the amount of knowledge we have about the universe. Actually, some ancient cultures knew more than anyone thought they could with special instruments. One of the things which amazes me is the fact the Babylonians had astronomical records 4,000 years ago. They kept track of the planets visible to the naked eye and also the sun and moon. An ancient Greek scientist named Eratosthenes was able to measure the circumference of the earth. The Greeks figured out the earth was a sphere and so were the other bodies in the sky. An ancient Indian astronomer named Aryabhatiya figured out the earth revolved on its axis and that the reason we see the other planets was because of the light reflected from the sun. The Mayans developed their very accurate calendar from all the observations they made of the movements in the heavens of the sun, moon and planets. The ancient Egyptians used the positions of the stars and other bodies to guide the positioning of many of their temples and the pyramids. The Egyptians developed a calendar which had 30 days each month and 365 days in the year. They weren’t far off base. The ancient Chinese developed a star catalog which is probably the first. Incredibly, Shi Shen was able to see the moon Ganymede which he thought was a reddish star. Lastly, the Persians described the Andromeda Galaxy in a book named The Book of Fixed Stars. The work of the ancients in astronomy was incredible considering the lack of scientific instruments. It makes me wonder what things will be like a hundred years from now, what will we learn? Will we find out we have made a lot of mistakes in some of our evaluations of the universe and the objects in it? Maybe by then we will find out there is more than one universe and be able to prove it. I mentioned this before, but I would like to talk about it a little more. There was a breakthrough in telescope development, and it is now possible to build a refracting telescope at least 100 times more powerful than the Webb telescope. There is already talk on using this technology to build a new telescope. This is only the start of a new era for astronomy. Who knows what else we will discover to improve our stella observations? I have always wondered if there could be a way to even improve viewing other ways. We know there is such a thing as gravitational lensing. That is where gravity in sections of the universe allows us to have a magnified image of an object. If we could figure out a way to develop a device to create these conditions, we could see even further. Astronomers are talking about using the area near the sun to accomplish this because of the sun’s great mass bending space by it. I think it is just a matter of time before we will be able to see onto the surface of some exoplanets and who knows what more? We have not always been correct in some of the things we have assumed about space and the universe. I guess that was magnified by the movies these things were incorporated into. Recently we found out space is not silent there is a noise. I can’t blame movies for always showing space is silent, because even the scientists believed this. Another exaggeration in the space movies is sudden death due to decompression. Experts claim it takes 10 to 15 seconds to die from decompression. When you see someone let the air out from their spacesuit then explode instantly, that is not the case. One of the craziest things in science fiction movies is instant communication between planets and such by radio. Some day it may be possible by other means, but radio waves travel only at the speed of light. One of the things which is still theoretical is a wormhole. Recently those who watch the Secret of Skinwalker Ranch will have seen the last episode where the scientists there believe they have discovered one. If there is a wormhole there and it can be accessed, we might be able to travel to where it leads. While most believe wormholes are shortcuts to distant places in the universe, who is to say they don’t lead to another universe or time? We just do not know enough about them and what was found on Skinwalker ranch could be something entirely different. This ties in with an announcement I heard where scientists think they may have created a proto-wormhole. I heard someone say they were going to find out what we don’t know and this made me laugh. I have heard people say some strange things in my life, but saying we are going to find out what we don’t know makes no sense. If we said we were going to find out what knowledge is being kept from us that is another thing and does make sense. I think we are going to find out so much about space in the next hundred years some of the things we believe today will be shattered. One of the reasons is everything we see and look at is in the past. As we observe stars and planets, and even galaxies, we are looking at what they looked like when the light first left them. In extreme cases, that could be an incredible 13 billion years or more. We will probably find they are no longer there and either disappeared, or other newer objects have taken their places and that light has not reached us yet. This could also mean our solar system was formed after another disappeared in approximately the same area billions of years ago. Scientists are saying the universe may be twice as old as they thought, meaning about 27 billion years old. This date might even have to be updated in the future.
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