Skip to main content

UNIVERSE- GOD'S MOST MONUMENTAL ARTWORK

Universe in simple words is a region which is composed of celestial objects like galaxies, stars, planets, asteroids, meteors, comets, black holes, white holes (sounds mysterious right? 🤔)...sorry if I have missed out anything...😅


''Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying''

                                                                  Arthur C. Clarke


The universe is so beautiful, extraordinary and mysterious that it is and remains a system which humans won't be able to understand completely, even if they could it, there could be something, something out there which still remains unnoticed and researched...

Human Beings have shown a fascinating interest in understanding the universe, it all started with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the then Soviet Union which in turn became the first artificial satellite in the history of the world. 



                                                               
Figure 1: Replica of Sputnik 1


The launch of the Apollo series of satellites paved a new way for human endeavor in the field of space research. Soon space research and astronomy became the cornerstone of development and many countries poured their existing resources for space research, countries started setting up their own space agencies, for example; Russia has the 'Roscosmos', U.S. has NASA, India has ISRO, Japan has JAXA. 


''Mathematics is the language with which God has written the Universe''

- Galileo Galilei


The evolution of the Universe has been conceived in different ways by people around the world. The most widely accepted notion is the 'Big Bang Theory'. The Big Bang Theory states that matter occupied a very compact space having infinite density and therefore the heat associated with this space is very high, such a condition is called a 'singularity'. This system began to expand and expand and finally resulted in what is called the 'Big Bang'. After this sudden expansion the universe cooled down resulting in the formation of sub-atomic particles like electrons and protons which later formed atoms. 


                                                           
Figure 2: Evolution of various Sciences

The above image clearly illustrates the development of science with the evolution of universe. Mathematics and Physics remains the most fundamental sciences of nature. Physics and mathematics deals with truth and therefore it has its own difficulty and challenges because there is no easy way understand truth. Chemistry and Biology evolved later on, and are among the sciences which are understood deeply by human beings.


Have you heard about black holes?



                                                         
Figure 3: A supermassive black hole 


Most of you might be familiar about this term from Professor Stephen Hawking's works. A black hole is region in the universe where there is a very large concentration of mass which in turn results in the formation of an intense, powerful gravitational field. The field is so strong that no one can escape from its influence, even light!

Another interesting phenomena associated with black hole is the influence it has on time. If you are alive, just look at your watch, it ticks slowly and slowly as you go deep into it. When you are very much inside it, one minute in your watch corresponds to more than 700 years, look at the numbers. How amazing it is, all these are theoretical concepts because when you reach the vicinity of a black hole you get sucked into it and you will never be able to celebrate your birthday back on Earth with your family...

Imagine if our schools are in the vicinity of a black hole then...time ticks slowly and a three hour exam on earth would be equal to 66,22,56,00,000 earth minutes inside a black hole!!!


GALAXY

Galaxies are large clusters of stars. Our Solar System is situated in Milky Way Galaxy, likewise we have the Andromeda Galaxy, Whirlpool Galaxy etc. 

                                                                   
Figure 4: Milky Way Galaxy


                                                                    
Figure 5: Andromeda Galaxy


                                                                  
Figure 6: Whirlpool Galaxy



If we take the Milky Way Galaxy, it has millions and millions of starts and our Sun is just one among them. Sirius A, Pistol Star, Dog Star, UY Scuti are some stars which are larger than our Sun. The Sun is the largest object in our Solar System, but there are many other Solar Systems in the Milky Way and we are just one among them, moreover our Sun is more than 100 times the size of Earth, and our Earth is about 4 million times larger than a normal human being...

We boast that we are the most powerful, look how tiny we are in the Universe...If we compare the our Universe and a normal human being, then I can say that the size of the universe is one trillion trillion trillion....n....times greater than a human being. Moreover if you ask a theoretical physicist then he can explain the existence of parallel universe that exist just the way ours exist. Black holes are considered as the 'key' to the next Universe.

The Universe is constantly expanding and according to physics it will eventually attain a maximum size followed by the phenomenon of 'Big Crunch', in which the existing Universe is destroyed leading to the formation of a new one...




The pale blue dot that you see inside the enclosed region is our Earth. Picture taken by Voyager 1, 6 billion kilometres away from the Sun. (Image Credit: NASA)


''Look again at that dot. That's here, That's home. That's us''

-Carl Sagan, in his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, after seeing the above image
















Image Credits:

1. Wikimedia Commons: Sputnik 1, Black Hole, Milky Way Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and Whirlpool Galaxy

2. Pale Blue Dot: NASA, from solarsystem.nasa.gov

3. Evolution of various Sciences: ktwop.com


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

HIPPASUS : AN UNFORTUNATE MATHEMATICIAN

This is my first blog on mathematics. Mathematics is essentially the 'science' of numbers. Mathematics is the house of numbers. I personally feel that all these numbers have their own expressions, they are living entities, they are constantly used in our daily commute .   ''Mathematics is the Queen of all Sciences and Arithmetic is the Queen of Mathematics'' -Carl Friedrich Gauss With the help of set theory, if the consider the universal set (U) as 'number' denoted for simplicity as N, i.e. U= N, then I can denote the elements in N in the form of a set as given below . N={0,1,⅔,5i, √2, - 3} Here inside the set we find different types of numbers. So for better understanding the numbers are classified into many groups. Now I will introduce the different types of numbers and give an example for each by taking a number from within the set N , Natural numbers- eg. 1 Whole numbers- eg. 0 and 1 Integers- eg. 0,1 and -3 Rational numbers- 0,1, ⅔, -3 Irrational nu

BLACK HOLE: A HUNGRY MONSTER

The most important headline in the news is the discovery of a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy... The idea behind black holes can be conceived both theologically and scientifically. The development of science and technology has helped us to know more about these gentle giants, wait, are they gentle??? Many people, especially the young consider black holes as monstrous systems which engulfs everything which comes near its field of influence, according to them black holes are horrific and terrible. The truth is not far away from this, but do you know that black holes are very essential in our Universe. Everything in our Universe has a positive and negative aspect associated with it. NASA's modern telescopes captured the image of this black hole situated in the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy...you can find the image below...                                              Figure 1:   Sagittarius A* '' In space no one can hear you scream; and in a black hole no one

RELATIVITY OF SIMULTANEITY

Time-we are well aware of this physical entity which according to many waits for none. Several theories were developed on the concept of 'time'. It was during the mid-sixteenth century that Sir Isaac Newton published his masterpiece, The Principia Mathematica,  in which he introduced the concept of 'absolute time' .  Figure 1: Unparalleled geniuses, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Though this Newtonian concept was famous and widely accepted in the beginning, it faced a lot of opposition during the early twentieth century from a patent clerk who was working on a new concept of space and time. This patent clerk would publish his famous papers on relativity, in a scientific masterpiece,  'Relativity- Special and the General Theory'. The patent clerk was none other than, Albert Einstein who believed in the concept of  'relativistic time'.  Poor Einstein had to face a lot of criticism when he published his findings solely because, it questioned the findings