Unfathomably Insignificant

Posted on January 19, 2020 by echen00
Our Cosmic Address
History of the Universe
Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, our twin galaxy

It never fails to boggle my mind whenever I think about how vast and endless our universe truly is. Our cosmic address in the universe, beginning on Earth, to within our solar system, within the Milky Way Galaxy, within our Local Galactic Group, within the Virgo Supercluster, and within our Local Superclusters, is unbelievably microscopic in comparison to the entire observable universe that we know of today.

When the Big Bang marked the birth of the universe about 14 billion years ago, not the birth of space and time, the entire universe has been nonstop expanding at the speed of light (sometimes even faster that astronomers predict to be the result of a force of “dark energy”), and the farther away we look into the distance, the further back we look in time. However, because light takes that long to reach us, we are only seeing what has happened in the past, and not anything that has happened since.

For example, the Andromeda Galaxy (third pic), Milky Way’s largest galaxy neighbor, is at 2.5 million light-years away. This means that the light that we see today from the Andromeda Galaxy has traveled 2.5 million years to reach us, and that we are looking into the past.

I find this reality rather humbling, and even saddening, as we humans have lived our whole lives considering ourselves of utmost significance and importance. We are so inconceivably minuscule in the grand scale of the endless space that surrounds us and by the time any light reaches Earth to inform us of any changes within the universe, we very well likely may not even be around to witness it.

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The Speed of Light: Can We Go Faster?

Posted on January 19, 2020 by alexsolarsystem

The speed of light in a vacuum is around 300,000,000 meters per second (for those more accustomed to freedom units, that’s 186,282 miles per second). Thanks to Albert Einstein and many other prominent scientists, we believe that only massless particles like photons are able to achieve this speed. This implies that it’s theoretically impossible for anything with mass to travel at the speed of light as we currently understand it. However, this natural “speed limit” doesn’t stop sci-fi writers from taking creative liberties in their work. Things like warp drives, wormholes, and time travel all revolve around speculations on the true nature of light-speed and how humans can engineer machinery to mimic its behavior. With today’s technology these ideas are obviously impossible, but does that mean humans will never achieve the seemingly impossible? With the current rate of technological innovation, inter-galactic space travel might not be as far off as we think. In only the past 100 years, humans have created marvels like the rocket ship, internet, and computer chip. Who’s to say where civilization will be in a couple hundred years from now? You and I probably won’t be around to see the first human reach a different solar system, but in a few centuries reaching the speed of light might not be seen as such an unattainable feat.

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The Cosmic Calendar

Posted on January 19, 2020 by emily
WordPress

What is the Cosmic Calendar?

Carl Sagan, a famous astronomer, promoted this idea of the cosmic calendar, that essentially is a tool used to help people visualize and understand how far apart events in the Universe are. Sagan has chronologically arranged the hallmark events of the Universe’s 13.8 billion year life span into just a single year. In this demonstration, the Big Bang took place on January 1st at midnight, while the present moment is noon on December 31st. To condense all of time into 365 days, the rate of time has to accelerate quite a bit. To be exact, there are 438 years per second, 1.58 million years per hour, and 37.8 million years per day.

Important Events

Daily Express

On January 1, 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe was created as a result of what we call the Big Bang.

January 22, 12.85 billion years ago, the first galaxies in the universe were formed. Essentially, a mixture of different gases collided together to form stars, which in turn began to group together as a result of their own attraction to each other.

On March 16, 11 billion years ago, the Milky Way galaxy was born after the continued process of stars coalescing and living together.

Huffington Post UK

August 28, 4.57 billion years ago, the Solar System was formed when the Sun was born.

On September 6, 4.54 billion years ago, Earth came into existence.

September 7, 4.53 billion years ago, the Moon began it’s orbit around Earth.

On September 30, 3.8 billion years ago, single-celled primitive bacteria was the first sight of life on Earth.

December 5, 0.8 billion years ago marks the first multi-cellular organisms on Earth.

Science

On December 25, 0.23 billion years ago, dinosaurs were roaming the Earth.

December 30, 0.065 billion years ago, a meteorite hit Earth and killed almost every every life form allowing mammals to now take over.

The Canadian

December 31, 40 million years ago begins the history of mankind on Earth. This shows how insignificant we are in regards to the history of the universe. Everything that has happened with humans has occurred on the final day of the year.

  • At 14:24 hours: primitive humans were born.
  • At 22:24: stone tools and fire were domesticated and used by humans to survive.
  • At 23:59 hours and 28 seconds: the Pyramids were built by the Egyptians.
  • At 23:59 hours and 54 seconds: Buddha was born and the Roman Empire was formed.
  • At 23:59 hours and 55 seconds: Christ was born, marking the beginning of the Roman calendar.
  • At 23:59 hours and 58 seconds: Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean and discovered America.
  • At 23:59 hours and 59 seconds: the world as we know it today.

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Is there such a thing as the present?

Posted on January 19, 2020 by andyyangdk
The Sombrero Galaxy, 25 million light years away. So this is what it looked like 25 million years ago… If we could teleport to this galaxy, we would see this same galaxy aged 25 million years.

Did you know that the speed of light is around 3.00 × 108 m/s? For now, it is believed that there is nothing faster than the speed of light, which is why large astronomical distances are often denoted by light-years, the distance that light can travel in a year.

If we were to see a galaxy that is 100 million light-years away, we would actually be seeing how the galaxy was a 100 million years ago. The light from the galaxy would be light that traveled from that galaxy 100 million years ago and just reached our eyes. So technically, we would be looking at the past. Right now, in this very moment, the galaxy that we see would actually be 100 million years older than how we see it.

So if this is true, then isn’t everything we see in the past? Even objects that are much closer than 100 million light-years away still have some distance from our eyes. The infinitesimal distance that the light has to travel from these objects to our eyes is still greater than 0, meaning that everything we see has already happened.

It’s quite depressing to think of how insignificant human lives are. We will learn nothing about changes in the universe because by the time the updated light reaches our planet, humanity will most likely have already gone extinct. All we can do is peer out into the vast universe and simply oooh and ahhh at the marvelous sight.

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And We’re Off, To the Past

Posted on January 19, 2020 by Jonah
Looking into the past with light-years

Growing up, I fantasized time travel and if it would ever be possible. I watched cartoons and movies that made time travel seem so real. Of course, I got a little older and realized physical time travel would be a thing of the distant future, if it ever comes to fruition. I let the fantasy go and focused on “real life” as all the adults said. It wasn’t until I learned of the concept of a light-year that I realized a form of time traveling is already upon us.

One light-year is the distance that light can travel in one year. If an object is ten light-years away, then the light from that object will take ten years to reach me. If this distant object emitted light on January 1, 2010, I wouldn’t see the light until January 1, 2020. In a sense, since the light I’m seeing is ten years old, I am looking ten years into the past. Now, this is just a theoretical object. In reality, astronomers have observed plenty of objects (stars, galaxies, etc…) that are at extreme distances.

For example, our closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, is around 2.5 million light-years away. The light we observe today from Andromeda was emitted 2.5 million years ago so we’re 2.5 million years into the past! For me, the most interesting concept of light-years is the age of the universe which is estimated to be about 14 billion years old. If we can see to the “edges” of the universe, then we are looking back 14 billion years. Everything between our planet and the edges is known as the observable universe and all of the light we see from the objects is the light of the past. How’s that for time travel?

I may be stuck in the present for now but by looking up at the sky on a clear night to see the multitude of stars and other objects above, I can look back into the past to satisfy my childhood fantasy of time travel.

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At the Edge of Knowledge

Posted on January 19, 2020 by 2xchampions
Forbes

Light is definitely the single most important measure for scientists to study our universe. Since universe first became transparent 380,000 years after the Big Bang, thanks to its incredible properties, light has enabled humans to learn a great deal about universe as far as 45 billion light-year away from earth. Therefore, it is crazy to think about that even light has its own limitations, and our knowledge may not ever overcome these limitations. On the one hand, most of our universe is made up by mysterious dark matter that is only detectable through gravity. People were optimistic that implementation of LHC can decipher some secrets of dark matter. It has been 10 years since LHC’s installation, and there is no such discovery. We know it is there, but because it does not interact with light, we do not know any more about them. Can we ever get know dark matter? On the other hand, dark evergy is “bubbling” out of the empty space and accelerating space. There are parts of universe that are so far apart from us and moving ever faster away from us that there lights are never going to reach us. Thus, we will never be able to know these parts. Light has its limitations, and it seems that human’ knowledge stops at these limitations.

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KING MIDAS

Posted on January 16, 2020 by coreyxcas

IMG_0847KING MIDAS AT LAURAL PARK AKA MIDAS PARK IN HIS HOMETOWN OF CYPRESS CALIFORNIA

MIDAS’ FAVORITE SONG CAN BE FOUND HERE: https://soundcloud.com/felicianocastellanos/oouuoo

PICTURE TAKEN BY ME

 

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Welcome bloggers!

Posted on January 16, 2020 by phildowd
My dog and I by me

Hey guys, so here’s something that really means a lot to me. Hope you can check it out here! https://www.universetoday.com/139956/new-reasons-why-pluto-should-be-considered-a-planet-after-all/

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Feeling Dizzy Yet? 💫

Posted on January 16, 2020 by vsli

This isn’t your everyday Milky Way time lapse video.

Video Captured by Eric Brummel

This video, captured by Eric Brummel, is sky-stabilized with the Earth in view to show our planet’s daily rotations.

It’s amazing, isn’t it?

We don’t think about it often during our daily lives, but every single second, we’re moving vast distances across space. Your glass on the edge of the counter or the monitor you’re reading this blog on might seem motionless, but in reality, we’re spinning around at a speed of about 460 m/s (approximately 1,000 mph), and that’s only counting Earth’s rotation!

If we were to factor in our actual orbit around the Sun, we’re moving at about 30,400 m/s, and if we were to factor in the solar system’s orbit in the Milky Way galaxy, about 220,000 m/s!

How come we can’t feel this motion though? To me, I’m only sitting back, enjoying the peace and quiet. That’s because everything on Earth is rotating at the same speed as us, including the atmosphere, the buildings, and the glass on your counter. Everything has been spinning ever since the Solar System was formed out of a collapsing dust cloud, and it’s never stopped since. We’d only feel it if Earth suddenly stopped, like if a car suddenly stopped. Just thank inertia for keeping your drink on the table.

When we look up at the sky and see the Sun rise, then later on, set, or the stars travel overhead, it can be easy to forget that we aren’t stationary and that our own planet’s rotation and orbit around the Sun cause these objects to move relative to us. To an outside observer’s perspective, we may as well be flying through space at incredible speeds on a wobbling top, which sounds more fun anyways.

Enjoy the rest of your orbit around the Sun! 😊

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Starry Night Sights 2020-01-15 00:14:55

Posted on January 15, 2020 by swarnasakshi
IMG_1355
Photo of the Grand Canyon by Swarna Sakshi (me) Taken: Dec. 23, 2019

Hi! My name is Swarna. I am from Memphis, TN. I chose a picture taken by me at my recent vacation to the Grand Canyon. The snow was a complete surprise, as we assumed it did not snow in the desert. According to this article, other areas of Arizona also experienced some snow. This was a learning experience for me, and, from now on, I will always be sure to check the weather before planning a trip!

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