Science Facts You Should Know About the Universe. A Brief History of the Concept of the Universe

The universe is so huge that, even knowing the approximate numbers, it is impossible to imagine its size. That is why the Universe never ceases to amaze us with its beauty and new riddles. Scientists are constantly conducting new research so that we can learn as much as possible about the universe, and here are 10 of the most amazing and incredible facts.

10. Our bodies are made of stars
Your and any other body in the Universe consists of stars, more precisely, dead stars. At the very beginning, only simple elementssuch as hydrogen and helium. Then these elements combined and formed the first stars, which in turn formed new elements such as iron and gold. Over time, the first stars died, and their explosions formed new elements. Our bodies are made up of almost all the elements that are in the universe - of course, most are elements like hydrogen and oxygen, but we also contain small amounts of elements like gold!

9. When you look at the sky, you are looking into the past.
The stars you see are not stars at all, but the light that they emitted many years ago. Due to the fact that the light takes a certain time to reach us, we see it as it was some time ago. One light year is the distance that light travels in a year. So if you look at a star that is 1000 light years away, you see it as it looked 1000 years ago.

8. Scientists are in search of extraterrestrial life
Scientists are so interested in alien life that they have come up with dozens of different interesting techniquesaimed at finding it. For example, the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project, to accelerate the detection of aliens, uses its methods to search for space debris, nearby stars, artificial objects, radio waves and radiation.

7. There are at least 10 billion trillion stars in the universe
Although scientists cannot agree on this issue, the most reliable figure at our disposal is 10 billion trillion. Each star is different in size and can be hundreds of times smaller or larger than our Sun. In addition, each star is surrounded by stellar bodies, such as planets, of which there can be from 4 to 12.

6. Scientists think that we ourselves can be aliens
Some scientists believe that simple microorganisms such as bacteria formed on Mars and, as a result of a meteorite, ended up on Earth at an early stage of its formation. From that moment we began to develop into more complex organisms and many years later evolved into human beingsthat we are today. It sounds crazy, but at that time the atmosphere on Mars could be much more livable. So there is a chance that we and many other species we know are aliens who colonized the Earth.

5. There may be more universes
Yes, our universe can only be one of many others, different from ours. The slightest change in the principles of science can transform other universes into something we never dreamed of. It all depends on the fact whether the big bang that started our universe could happen elsewhere. If so, then the existence of countless other worlds is indeed possible.

4. Black holes die too
Black holes are bodies of various sizes that we cannot see. They have an incredible force of attraction that even light cannot overcome, and they feed on the trapped light in order to survive. However, Stephen Hawking argues that if black holes "starve" for too long, they may die over time.

3. The universe is growing
Until the 1920s, people believed that the universe was standing still, but astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that it was expanding. For many years, people have been wrong about the assumption that gravity slows the universe down, but that would only be true if gravity was stronger. Moreover, in 1998, the Hubble telescope recorded that supernovae in the past expanded more slowly than they do now, which only confirms the Hubble theory.

2. The universe is full of invisible things
It is believed that we see and know only 4% of the Universe, since 96% may be composed of dark matter and dark energy, which we still cannot detect. These unknown entities are supposedly pushing away visible matter, which leads to the expansion of the universe and other possible effects that are not yet known to us.

1. Our ancestors knew more about the Universe than we know now
Our ancestors were much smarter than many people think. While they didn't build skyscrapers or build computers, they knew a lot about plants and herbs, geography and astronomy. Let's not forget about Stonehenge, the pyramids of Giza, the Nazca lines and hundreds of other famous sites that our ancestors supposedly used to observe the sky. They believed that changes in the sky played a big role in their lives, so they made accurate cosmological calculations. The information they received helped them determine when was the best time to grow food, travel to dangerous lands, forge alliances and make important decisions.

Have you met someone who would be completely sure that humanity has conquered space? If so, then you should know that this person is a rare optimist. Space has not revealed all its secrets to us. And even what we already know is sometimes more frightening than pleasing.

What is the only assumption about the existence of unknown planets that can suddenly crash into the Earth, leading to a new end of the world? NASA is seriously considering this possibility. But apart from the frightening and absolute darkness and obscurity, space is fraught with real miracles ... really, will we be able to observe them with our own eyes?

We present to you 11 interesting facts about our Universe that can surprise, amaze and even scare you.

Black holes

This phrase sounds pretty scary, and for good reason. Black holes, as you know, are formed as a result of the destruction of stars, forming a real "whirlpool" sucking in everything that comes his way. Moreover, the word "path" is extremely appropriate here. Black holes do indeed move through the Universe, and their trajectory cannot be predicted. Sometimes they crash into massive objects that they cannot absorb, causing black holes to change their direction of motion. All this is accompanied by the lowest sound that has been recorded so far. For distrustful musicians, let us explain: this sound is B flat, which is 57 octaves below the note to the first octave.

Planet with diamond icebergs floating in an ocean of carbon

No, this is not a line from a poem by some poet obsessed with space. This is how scientists imagine the surface of Neptune and Uranus. Due to special conditions, it can even rain brilliantly there.

Dark matter and dark energy

More than 90% of the entire Universe consists of this combination, and we can neither see nor explore it. Both energy and matter are absolutely invisible to humans and cannot be measured in any way. And at the same time, our entire world (including ourselves) is almost entirely composed of dark energy and matter. Not that we are claiming that there are some creatures from other dimensions that we also cannot notice ... ... we are simply not sure that they are not.

Hot planet

Another incredible planet could well surprise us with a rain of molten glass, because due to its close position in relation to its “sun”, the temperature on its surface reaches more than 4000 ° C. Yes, if we get there, we will die immediately. Apparently, everything that is beautiful in space is fatal to humans.

Sometimes the satellites of the planets are much more interesting than the planets themselves.

So, for example, on Titan, the moon of Saturn, the gravity is so low that we could fly there like birds, tying our wings. And we would hover over an amazingly beautiful green and yellow surface ... ... until the gasoline rain killed us. Sad, isn't it?

Phantom menace

In addition to giant asteroids, unknown planets and wandering black holes, our planet is also threatened by a huge cloud of gas. It weighs like one million stars and is slowly moving straight towards us. True, until it reaches our planet, millions of years will pass. But when this happens, it will definitely be the end of the world and the beginning of a new life cycle.

Stars have their own quirks

The stars are one of the few cosmic wonders that we can regularly observe with the naked eye. Everyone knows about their beauty, and how many have heard about their sound. Yes, stars can sing. True, unfortunately, we cannot hear their singing, because the height of this singing is about a trillion hertz. (18) However, these heavenly fireflies are not as cute as they seem at first glance. Among them are real vampires and zombies. So, technically, a dead star can pull matter away from its “living” neighbors. These stars are usually called supernovae, and they are a subspecies of white dwarfs. As a result, these cuties suck out all the energy of their neighbors, and what is left of these neighbors later floats across the universe in the form of space debris.

Earthly not from Earth

Have you ever assumed that many of the things we are used to in fact have an unearthly origin. For example, gold. All the gold on our planet got here as a result of numerous collisions with asteroids. What else? Yes, even life! Yes, you heard right: there is an assumption, the essence of which boils down to the fact that life in the form of microorganisms came to our planet from Mars. Why isn't she there now? Who knows ... you never know what terrible secret the death of all living things is hidden by the "red planet".

People as a phenomenon

That's right - we are one of the wonders of our universe. And not only our existence in itself (which, of course, is amazing), but also our behavior. Here's what really strikes: we do not get tired of polluting our planet and are ready to kill each other for a ghostly idea. We have some amazing craving for self-destruction by all possible ways... I don't know how other intelligent representatives of this Universe are there (if they, of course, exist), but I would not want to come into contact with us. Except to observe: so, for the sake of laughter.

Contact with extraterrestrial intelligence ... ... or not?

There are at least two cases recorded in history that describe possible contact with extraterrestrial life forms. So, in August 1977 the Big ear radio telescope (translated as "Big Ear"), located in the observatory state university Ohio State caught a radio signal that would later become known as “WOW!”. The fact is that the telescope showed exactly the frequency and periodicity of waves, which, as expected, would be characteristic of extraterrestrial sources. The scientist who recorded this and signed the printed data - “Wow!” - hence the name.

Space is the most discussed and, at the same time, the most mysterious topic on the entire planet Earth. On the one hand, humanity has learned a lot about it, on the other, we know a tiny percentage of what actually happens in the Universe.
Today we'll take a look at some of the most interesting facts about space.
1. It turns out that our satellite - the Moon - moves away from us every year by about 4 cm. This depends on a decrease in the rotation period of the planet by 2 miles of a second per day.
2. Forty new stars are born in our Galaxy alone every year. It is difficult even to imagine how many of them appear in the entire Universe.
3. The universe has no boundaries. It seems that everyone is familiar with this statement. In fact, no one knows if the cosmos is infinite or just gigantic.

4. Our solar system is terribly boring. If you think of our neighbors, they are all unremarkable gas balls and chunks of stone. We are separated from the nearest star by multiple light voids. In the meantime, other systems are full of amazing stuff.

a) There is a very amazing thing in the vastness of the Universe - a giant gas bubble. Its length is about 200 million light years, and it is located 12 billion of the same years from us! This interesting thing formed just two billion years after the Big Bang.

b) The Sun is about 110 times larger than the Earth. It is even larger than the giant of our system - Jupiter. However, if you compare it with other stars in the Universe, our star will take a place in the manger kindergarten, that's how small it is.
Now let's imagine a star that is 1500 times larger than our Sun. Even if we take the entire solar system, it will not take more than a pixel of this star. This giant has VY Big dog, the diameter of which is about 3 billion km. How and why this star was blown to such dimensions, no one knows.

c) Science fiction writers fantasized about five different types planets. It turns out that there are hundreds of times more of these species. Scientists have already discovered about 700 types of planets. One of them is the diamond planet, and in every sense of the word. As you know, carbon needs very little to turn into a diamond, in this case, the conditions coincided so that one of the planets solidified and turned into a jewel of a universal scale.

5. Black hole is the brightest object in the entire universe.
Inside a black hole, the force of gravity is so great that even light cannot escape from it. Logically, the hole should not be visible in the sky at all. However, during the rotation of the hole, in addition to cosmic bodies, gas clouds also absorb, which begin to glow, twisting in a spiral. Also, meteors, falling into black holes, light up from an incredibly sharp and fast movement.

6. The light of our Sun, which we see every day, is about 30 thousand years old. The energy we receive from this heavenly body was formed in the core of the Sun about 30 thousand years ago. This is exactly how much time and no less is needed for photons to break through from the center to the surface. But after "liberation" they need only 8 minutes to get to the surface of the Earth.

7. We fly in space at a speed of about 530 km per second. Inside the Galaxy, the planet moves at a speed of about 230 km per second, itself Milky Way flies in space at a speed of 300 km per second.
8. About 10 tons of cosmic dust "falls" on our heads every day.

9. There are over 100 billion galaxies in the entire Universe. There is a chance that we are not alone.
10. Interesting fact: every day about 200 thousand meteorites fall on our planet!
11. The average density of Saturn's substances is two times less than the density of water. This means that if you put this planet in a glass of water, then it will float on the surface. You can check this only, of course, if you find the appropriate glass.
12. The sun is "losing weight" by a billion kilograms per second. This is due to the solar wind - a stream of particles that move from the surface of this star in different directions.
13. If you wanted to get by car to the nearest star after the Sun - Proxima Centauri, then, at a speed of 96 km / h, it would take about 50 million years.

14. Even on the moon earthquakes occur, which are referred to as moonquakes. But, nevertheless, in comparison with earthly ones, they are insignificant weak. There are more than 3,000 such moonquakes every year, but this total energy would only be enough for a small fireworks display.

15. The strongest magnet in the entire universe is the neutron star. Its magnetic field is millions of billions of times greater than the field of our planet.

16. It turns out that in our Solar system there is a body that resembles our planet. He is called Titan, and he is a satellite of the planet Saturn. It also has rivers, seas, volcanoes, a dense atmosphere, just like our planet. Surprisingly, even the distance between Titan and Saturn is equal to the distance between us and the Sun, and even the ratio of the weight of these celestial bodies is equal to the ratio of the weight of the Earth and the Sun.
Still, intelligent life on Titan is not even worth looking for, because its reservoirs were let down: they consist mainly of propane and methane. But still, if the last discovery is confirmed, then it will be possible to assert that primitive life forms exist on Titan. There is an ocean under the surface of Titan, which is 90% water, the remaining 10% can be complex hydrocarbons. There is an assumption that it is these 10% that can give rise to the simplest bacteria.

17. If the Earth revolved around the Sun in the opposite direction, the year would be two days shorter.
18. Duration of full lunar eclipse is 104 minutes, while the duration of full solar is only something no more than 7.5 minutes.

19. Isaac Newton was the first to outline the physical laws that govern artificial satellites. They were first published in the work "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" in the summer of 1687.

20. Most funny fact! Americans have spent more than one million dollars to invent a pen that would write in space. The Russians used a pencil in zero gravity, without making any changes to it.

Space is the greatest mystery that humanity will always want to unravel. It pulls with its extraordinary properties and riddles. Today we have revealed nothing at all, but I hope that the Universe has become more accessible and interesting for you.

Let's discuss what we don't know about the universe. And by saying "we" I mean, of course, us, stuffed with scientific articles and discoveries.

When we try to imagine incredible short life man against the background of billions of years of life of the Universe before and after us, we feel ourselves as grains of sand on the tablecloth of space-time. Or if we try to imagine billions, trillions of other worlds, of which there seem to be an infinite number in the real and parallel universes, our existence seems to be nothing.

But shock, excitement, or the prospect of something we don't know is still a childish delight.

We don't know why the universe exists

This is completely unfair, especially since the cosmos knows exactly what it is doing. From a physics point of view, there are some very attractive, promising theories that start the answer to the question above, but we do not know and may not know which one is right.

Perhaps the universe was born out of an inherently unstable "nothing". You should know that emptiness is not really empty; matter and energy spontaneously arise and die in it, at least in the form of quantum fluctuations.

Perhaps our universe is not the only one of its kind, but one of an almost infinite number of multiverse. Perhaps all this is just a projection, play, virtuality.

Much of our ignorance boils down to the fact that we are still waiting for the next generation of cosmic dimensions, which will confirm or disprove the latest theories, and we also need more flexible and comprehensive theories, and not just mathematical elegance. In general, we do not know why all this exists and generally occurs.

Usually the "why" always exists.

We don't know what dark matter and dark energy are

Big problems talk about more big problems... The common matter that we are made of, planets, stars, and sausage sandwiches is about 4,9 % of all matter that fills the Universe.

26,8 % matter is "dark", and we know this, because on large scales, cosmic material moves faster than it should, and galaxies behave as if they are controlled by a huge mass of particles invisible to us. And we have no idea what these particles are.

This is bad, but even worse is the case with dark energy. Something is causing the universe to expand faster and faster.

It doesn't have to be that way. Before 5 or 6 billions of years ago, after the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe was stable, but something intervened, some invisible component, perhaps something like dense vacuum energy that fills space as it grows.

What is it? We do not know. We have many assumptions that, in principle, it is not bad to assume something about 68,3 % of the universe.

We don't know if there is life anywhere else

This question is incredibly interesting already because events can be assumed and located regardless of the answer. Here we are, creatures on a planet full of blooming life, carefully adapting to physical and chemical conditions last lives 5 billion years. We also know that there are terrifyingly many planets in the universe, and many of them could also shelter life.

However, we don't know for sure if we are alone. And no clues. This is problem.

This is a good problem, as I said, regardless of the answer, but few people move around trying to find the answer to this question. Although too much may depend on its resolution.

We probably don't quite understand the quantum world

Indeed, our current quantum physics in theory (and in practice) works wonders, describing atoms and molecules on a par with the bizarre nature of entanglement and qubits. But this does not mean that we are guru of quantum mech.

People keep coming up with formulations of how quantum mechanics defines us, or doesn't. The problem is compounded when quantum physics plunges into the realm of soft, warm and moist biology.

Not to mention black holes and quantum firewalls.

We don't understand our own biology

It is no exaggeration to say that we do not understand how every detail of ours works. If we understood (and we are moving in this direction), we would cope with illness, death, start growing limbs and restore memory.

We could master genetic engineering at the level of demigods and figure out how to make the brain work hundreds of times faster. If you need good example our ignorance, let there be microflora.

There is a joke that if aliens find us, they will not understand with whom to start a conversation: with the bacteria that inhabit us, or with us? Ten trillion human cells are supplemented, used, saturated with hundreds of trillions of microbes - we carry a kilogram of bacteria and archaea with us and cannot live without them. They are in our guts, lungs, noses, everywhere.

We're just cruise ships for germs.

We don't know how the Earth works

Let's dive deeper. Neither man, nor robot, no one has gone deeper into the Earth more than a few kilometers, all the rest are in charge of probes and physical analyzes, which are far from the essence of the matter.

It took us a ridiculously long time to figure out that our planet's skin is constantly moving: plate tectonics was not generally accepted until the middle. 20 century. We are still not sure how the inner dynamo works, how the rolls of convective magma generate the magnetic field of our planet.

Moreover, for 4,5 Over a billion years, so many events have happened in geophysics that some of our best sources of information about the origin of the planet arrive with meteorites and hide in craters on other worlds. We don't even know for sure where the moon came from.

Maybe there was a giant collision, maybe not. For supposedly intelligent creatures on a small rocky planet, this is a complete failure.

We cannot prove or solve many of our own mathematical hypotheses and problems.

If mathematicians think they can avoid this festival of ignorance, just remind ourselves that we have a long list of unproven, unsolved problems and unconfirmed hypotheses. With all this, they still have not decided exactly how accurately mathematics describes the world and whether mathematics is at the very core of the universe.

We don't know how to make artificial intelligence

Let us mention this because it is an eternal problem. Also because we often write about the development of artificial intelligence (or about its pathetic attempts to get on its feet). In the end, an attempt to create artificial Intelligence Is an attempt to understand ourselves.

Because in order to create something artificial, you need to know how the original works. While our machines have come a long way, it's still unclear if services like YouTube or another big name can work the same way as ideas pop into our heads.

Whether the machine will be able to think at all is the question. Conclusions?

There are tons of things we don't know (much more than the examples in this article). But it is not worth falling into despondency, and ignorance is not strength.

In the end, the desire to discover and the desire to think launched the flywheel of science, and the Universe - the most complex riddle in the history of mankind. Perhaps hundreds of years will pass, and we will not know anything.

The universe is amazing, no one knows where its boundaries end and begin. It is so great that one has only to guess what secrets it hides in itself. Cosmology provides some answers to questions that may interest the average person.

Surely you are wondering how the universe came about? How did it all start? Here, even scientists will not be able to give a detailed answer, many adhere to the Big Bang theory. But no one can say for sure what exactly happened in the explosion. It is only known that at birth the universe was very hot, it was heated to unimaginable temperatures, and now it is gradually cooling down. And the Universe is expanding rather quickly, the distance between galaxies is increasing.

Cosmologists use a light year to measure. As you understand, space is very large and the usual measures of length are very inconvenient to use. The fastest speed in the world is the speed of light in a vacuum. The distance that light travels in a whole year is called a light year. This is a very large value, light days alone are 26 billion kilometers. For you to understand the scale of such a measurement, the light from the Moon to the Earth reaches in just 1, 3 seconds. But scientists went further, they tried to measure our vast Universe. Of course, such calculations are only approximate. Firstly, we are talking about a very large-scale dimension. Second, the universe is constantly expanding. More than 150 billion light years is the approximate diameter of the universe.

We talked about the size, now it's worth mentioning a few words about age. Naturally, no one can say the exact age, there are only assumptions. Observations were carried out for old stars, many measurements were made, and some radioactive nuclei were also investigated. With their help, it was possible to calculate these numbers: 13, 7 billion years.

Surely you will be interested in the fact that the Universe is flat. Cosmologists are helped in research by relic radiation. She gives answers to many questions. It also contains galaxies, clusters and voids. The universe is not crowded superclusters, there are a lot of voids in it. And if we take into account the fact that it is constantly expanding, then the size of such voids only increases. But at the same time it cools down. Over time, it will cool so much that the period of the Great Freeze will begin.

The universe has no center because it is in constant motion. But it is moving, that is, not only the Universe is expanding, but also the galaxies that are inside it. There are planets and stars inside galaxies, they also move away from each other, while losing heat.