FOR thousands of years people have marveled at the starry heavens. On a clear night a person cannot help being impressed by the beauty and majesty of the stars that can be seen. Those who think about what they see often wonder: Just what is “out there”? How is it organized? Is there any end to it? Where did it come from?
Probing the Universe
TODAY more is known about the universe than ever before. In the last few decades all sorts of instruments have been invented to aid scientists in probing for answers to their questions.
Now there are more powerful optical telescopes to look at the stars and to photograph them. Newer, larger radio telescopes capture the radio signals coming from space. And advanced instruments that can analyze the light and heat from stars are now widely used.
In addition, scientists have radar and man-made satellites. These are useful for probing our nearby solar system, that is, our sun and its planets and moons.
From all these sources a flood of information, as well as resulting theories, has been flowing. And a number of things have become evident. One is that the universe has proved to be far, far more awesome than anyone had ever imagined, making the mind stagger when one considers the immensity and complexity of it all. National Geographic magazine observed that what man is now learning has “left him stunned.”
It has also made a shambles of many previous theories about the universe. Exciting new information now pouring forth in ceaseless torrents is shattering our ideas about the universe.
An example of this is: the "Black Hole" the scientists once thought was a space in the cosmos where nothing existed. Now, with the advent of the "Subaru" telescope they have found that there is not an empty hole after all. Telescope images reveal that there are billions of stars and gallaxies there, only these are just further away.
The Kepler Telescope, launched in March, 2010, discovered two new heavenly bodies, each circling its own star. Telescope chief scientist Bill Borucki of NASA said the objects are thousands of degrees hotter than the stars they circle. That means they probably aren’t planets. They are bigger and hotter than planets in our solar system, including dwarf planets.
“The universe keeps making strange things stranger than we can think of in our imagination,” said Jon Morse, head of astrophysics for NASA.
However, at times fresh bits of information are used as the basis of a new theory that may not really be any closer to the truth than the one it replaced. Dr. James Van Allen of the University of Iowa called to mind what someone once said: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Another thing that is being revealed is how little scientists really know about the universe. No matter how extensive their observations, photographs and recordings, they still admit that humans have only scratched the surface of knowledge about space.
For example, in recent decades astronomers have come to the realization that they do not know what makes up over 90 percent of the universe. What is more, the discoveries that led to that conclusion have caused scientists to question their understanding of the fundamentals of physics itself.
For instance, toward the end of the 19th century, physicists observed something odd about the speed of light. They found that relative to an observer, light always traveled at the same speed no matter how fast the observer was moving. But that seemed to defy common sense! The problem was addressed in 1905 in Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which showed that distance (length), time, and mass are not absolutes. Then, in 1907, after a flash of intuition that he termed “the happiest thought of my life,” Einstein began to develop his general theory of relativity, which he published in 1916. In this revolutionary work, Einstein wove gravity, space, and time together and refined the physics of Isaac Newton.
The Expanding Universe
BASED on the evidence of the day, Einstein believed that the universe is static - neither expanding nor contracting. However, American astronomer Edwin Hubble, in 1929, presented evidence indicating that the universe is expanding.
Hubble also cleared up a long-standing mystery about certain fuzzy, luminous patches in the night sky, which were named nebulae because they appeared to be clouds of gas. But were all these nebulae within our galaxy, or were they outside it, as British astronomer Sir William Herschel (1738-1822) suggested over a century earlier?
When Hubble first estimated the distance to one of these entities, the Great Nebula in the constellation Andromeda, he concluded that the nebula was actually a galaxy a million light years away. That put it well beyond the Milky Way, which has a diameter of a “mere” 100,000 light years. As Hubble charted the distances to other nebulae, he began to unveil the enormous scale of the cosmos and triggered a revolution in astronomy and cosmology.
It was soon thereafter that Hubble observed that the universe is expanding, for he saw that distant galaxies were receding from us. He also noticed that the farther away the galaxy, the faster the recession. Those observations imply that the universe of yesterday was smaller than that of today.
When Hubble published his groundbreaking work in 1929, he paved the way for the development of the big bang theory of the origin of the universe, which indicates that the universe originated in a cosmic explosion approximately 13 billion years ago. But the picture is still incomplete.
How Fast Is the Expansion?
SINCE the time of Hubble, astronomers have been trying to measure as accurately as possible the rate of expansion, referred to as the “Hubble constant.” Why is this measurement so important? If astronomers could calculate how fast the universe is expanding, they could use that calculation to estimate its age. Moreover, the rate of expansion might have serious implications for the future. How so? It is reasoned that if, for instance, the universe is expanding too slowly, gravity might ultimately win out and cause everything to collapse in a final “big crunch”! But if the expansion is too rapid, the universe might expand forever and dissipate entirely.
While more precise measurements have provided answers to some questions, other questions have been raised - questions that cast doubt on our present understanding of matter and the fundamental forces of nature.
Dark Energy and Dark Matter
IN 1998, researchers analyzing light from a special kind of supernova, or exploding star, found evidence that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating! At first, the scientists were skeptical, but evidence soon mounted. Naturally, they wanted to know what form of energy was causing the accelerating expansion. For one thing, it seemed to be working in opposition to gravity; and for another, it was not predicted by present theories. Appropriately, this mysterious form of energy has been named dark energy, and it may make up nearly 75 percent of the universe!
Dark energy, however, is not the only “dark” oddity discovered in recent times. Another was confirmed in the 1980’s when astronomers examined various galaxies. These galaxies, as well as our own, appeared to be spinning too fast to hold together. Evidently, then, some form of matter must be giving them the necessary gravitational cohesion. But what kind of matter? Because scientists have no idea, they have called the stuff dark matter, since it does not absorb, emit, or reflect detectable amounts of radiation. How much dark matter is out there? Calculations indicate that it could make up 22 percent or more of the mass of the universe.
Consider this: According to current estimates, normal matter accounts for about 4 percent of the mass of the universe. The two big unknowns—dark matter and dark energy—appear to make up the balance. So, about 95 percent of the universe remains a complete mystery!
To sum it all up, cosmology is far from settled (if we can hope that it ever will be). Observation, theory and argument bubble on.
What is wrong with nearly all the present theories is that they ignore the Creator and his purpose. Are we to think that the loving God would create such an awesome universe, meticulously prepare the earth for human habitation, then allow the universe to come together in a mass and thus destroy it all? That is not in any way consistent with His stated purpose. God’s Word declares that the “One who firmly established” the earth “did not create it simply for nothing,” but “formed it even to be inhabited.” Isa.
45:18.
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Contributor's Note
Photos are all from www.wikipedia.org
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