--1947 - Puzzles that astronomers find challenging. There are some really, really big problems for astronomers. The Universe is so mysterious. 2 learn: http://jdetrick.blogspot.com # 1947 , or request an e-mail copy.
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--------- #1947 - Puzzles in Astronomy
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- Astronomers have a challenging job. So many problems to solve. And, these are BIG problems. We know the Universe is BIG. It has been expanding for 13.7 billion years. That is how old the Universe is. But, the visible Universe that we can see is constrained by the speed of light. During the 13.7 billion years from the beginning the light we see has traveled nearly that many light years. What we can see is in the past and over that time it takes the light to get to us the Universe has expanded even further. Calculating the rate of expansion which is accelerating the visible Universe has moved beyond to a radius of 42 billion lightyears radius.
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- I know, it is hard to wrap your mind around this.
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- It is likely that there is an even greater Universe beyond this “ visible Universe”. The “invisible” Universe is not visible yet because all the light has not had enough time to reach us yet. This part of the Universe is 84 billion lightyears in diameter. To explain the homogeneity and the geometric flatness of the Universe astronomers believe that soon after the Big Bang the Universe experienced Cosmic Inflation that expanded the Universe faster than the speed of light. It was space expanding rather than the matter in the Universe moving. The light in this part of the Universe will never reach us. It is too far away and accelerating too fast. But, that still means there is much more of the Universe out there.
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- Now, to make the Universe even more challenging, within the Universe that we can see there exists 95% of matter and energy that we can’t see. It is called Dark Matter and Dark Energy. This mass-energy effects gravity but it does not interact with electromagnetic energy. It can not be detected with light or any other electromagnetic radiation. We know it is there because of the gravity effects on matter that we “can” see.
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- Spinning galaxies could not remain intact if there were not unseen matter providing 10 times more gravity needed to hold things together. 10 times more mass than we can see and detect with any other means.
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- Light passing past a large Dark Matter mass is bent with gravitational lensing. We can see these effects on images that are in the background of the Dark Matter mass. Again calculations tell us that there is 10 times more matter causing this than we can detect, other than by gravity.
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- The Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. There must be some form of Dark Energy in the vacuum of space that opposes gravity and causes the expansion to accelerate. Astronomers can use E = mc^2 to calculate the amount of mass and energy in the Universe. Their calculations are that 72.1% is Dark Energy and 23.3% is Dark Matter. The remainder 4.6% is “everything” we can see and detect. 95% is “ Dark” and called dark because it is a puzzle that has yet to be solved.
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- Another puzzle is the Big Bang itself. Supposedly, it really came out of “ nothing”. If it was truly created out of nothing than there must have been equal amounts of matter and anti-matter that put back together would equal nothing. There must have been equal amounts of positive and negative charges, protons and electrons. There must have been an equal number of north and south magnetic poles to cancel out all magnetic energy. It all must add up to “nothing“. Was there nothing there before the Big Bang exploded with space and time expanding from the beginning? Are there other Universes out there experiencing the same thing?
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- Somehow the Universe we know exists with matter outnumbering anti-matter. For every billion anti-matter particles there would have to have been 1 billion plus one matter particle. That is the only way we can explain how we got here.
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- We also must assume that all the laws of nature are the same everywhere in the Universe. Not only the same but without the slightest change from what we experience or life could not exist, as we know it.. Not only must the laws of nature be friendly to life these laws must exist for billions of years, the time it takes for life to evolve.
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- We have evidence that the first galaxies formed less than 500 million years after the Big Bang. Galaxies formed from small density fluctuations in the hot primordial gas that formed out of the plasma as it expanded and cooled. Slightly higher densities provided the gravity needed to make denser regions that eventually coalesced into stars and galaxies. Dark Matter had to be present as part of the calculations that predict the Universe we see today.
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- After the puzzle as to how it all began there is the puzzle as to how it will all end. The Universe is expanding at an ever faster rate. The distances between galaxies is becoming greater and greater. Eventually the distances will be so great their light will never have time to reach us. We will only see the stars that are gravitationally connected to us. And, those stars will be running out of fuel and will extinguish. The rarefied vacuum of space will contain only Blackholes and dead stars.
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- Blackholes have an Event Horizon that separates the hole from the surrounding Universe. Anything inside the Event Horizon disappears from the Universe for good. Blackholes themselves are a dark universe. In the end they will exist in a totally dark Universe expanding into infinity.
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- Enjoy life while you have it. The far distant future does not look so bright.
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- An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned
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