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'15
billion years ago, the whole existing universe
emerged out of a point- the point with no
physical dimensions. And it all happened with a
Big Bang, which was the beginning of space of
time. Now, it is assumed that, there are more
than 50 billion galaxies in the universe each
comprising of billions of stars hundred and
thousands of light years apart. Scientists have
calculated the number of stars to be 1x1024
(1 and 24 zeros). Universe may be totally
infinite with no edge however is still
expanding.'
{Also
see Cosmology.
Scroll down for more}
All these stuffs about the creation of the Universe are
making us wonder day in & day out. Trying to
know about what life is & how the cosmos was
created is a very much mind-boggling game, which
human beings have been playing for a long time
since they got their intelligent brain. Perhaps
someday humans will fully understand the life
& the Cosmos.
The race for explaining the whole phenomena has never ended
in the human world. Some fifty centuries ago,
whatever Lord Krishna spoke to his friend and
his devotee Arjuna, the descendent
of Bharata, is written in a book with stupendous
philosophy- ‘The Bhagvat Gita’, which is
about life & the Universe. Here it explains
some of the greatest mysteries of life and the
cosmos saying that Krishna is the supreme power
and the ultimate creator of the cosmos.
Astonishingly here Krishna shows Arjuna his
Universal form very much similar to the
structure of the cosmos itself- with many
dimensions, dark spaces and dishes of lights,
star clusters and planets and from the beginning
of time to the future- all at once in
Kurukshetra of Mahabharata. However it is not a
concrete scientific proof for any physical mind.
Babylonians tried to explain the Universe four thousand
years ago by saying that all heavenly bodies-
the sun, the moon and the stars moved around the
earth and that Earth was the center of the
Universe. In 1543 Copernicus
established the
theory that the sun occupied the central
position and all the planets including the earth
revolved around the sun in a fixed path around
their own axes. Later Galileo invented telescope
and observed the moon, sunspots, the solar
planets their satellites and stars of the Milky
Way. In
the 17th century Newton gave the
theory of gravitation and the laws of motion
introducing the modern physics. Galileo had
observed planetary motion too, which was more
clearly explained by Johannes Kepler's laws.
And finally Einstein gave the theory of relativity, which
is in two parts: Special and General.
 The special theory of relativity, 1905, suggested
that energy and mass could be interconverted
which is based on his famous mass-energy
equation (E=mc2). The General theory
of relativity, 1915, suggested that the force of
gravitation is a property of space and time and
that space becomes curved by the presence of
mass. These two theories were based on his own
two postulates that the speed of light in vacuum
is constant and that the laws of physics remain
unchanged in all inertial frames. His theory has
been the base for all the cosmological
researches going on today.
For the formation of the Cosmos Georges Lemaitre gave the
most challenging theory. He first proposed the
Big Bang theory, which was furthermore supported
by Edwin Hubble by his presentation of evidence
of cosmic expansion. Hubble's law determined the
distance of galaxy from us and proved that the
galaxies are receding from us. This meant that
the Universe as a whole is expanding. His theory
made it clear that all galaxies are moving away
from a point. This point is thought to be the
dimensionless point from which the whole
Universe formed after the Big Bang. In less than
a second, the entire material enough to form the
whole cosmos emerged out of the point. It was
like forming everything out of void.
Big Bang theory become more acceptable since 1964 when Arno
Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the 'cosmic
radiation’, which is thought to be the dying
embers of the explosion. In 1998, new theory
emerged, describing the acceleration of the
universe. Something very powerful is making
galaxies move apart faster, which is thought to
have happened due to energy release from an
extra dimension. This hypothesis of extra
dimension talks about a big bang followed by an
expansion and then a big crunch. This is again
followed by another big bang due to the same
energy release from the extra dimension. This
theory proposes that this extra dimension at one
time absorbs energy from the Universe &
later releases.
{See
below to learn more on this extra dimension}
Now scientists have identified dark matter and dark energy
of unknown properties constituting over 95
percent of the Universe, which they say is
controlling the expansion and continuity of the
cosmos. Matter such as humans and planets known
as heavy elements account for only 0.03% while
stars account for 0.5% although existing in
nearly an infinite number. Rest 4% is hydrogen
and helium and 0.3% neutrinos, the cosmic
particles. These dark matter and dark energy
have the highest probability of being the main
cause of the big bang. Recently ‘science’
magazine announced that the proof of ‘dark
energy’ (that has been accelerating the
expansion of the universe) was the breakthrough
of the year 2003. Now scientists are trying to
find out its properties – about what it is
made of and are hopeful that it will tell us
more about the life of the universe.
In 2002 an Australian astrophysicist Paul Davies put
forward his thesis evidence that light's speed
may be slowing down based on the measurement of
light traveling billions of years from giant
stellar objects called Quasars. (Quasi-stellar
sources: radio sources). The theory raised the
possibility that light may've traveled nearly at
the infinite speed at the time of Big Bang and
gradually slowing down, which would
revolutionize science if, proved.
Prof. Stephen Hawking whom they call super mind with body
disorder gives lectures through a computer for
none of his body parts move, except his two
fingers. He is not totally convinced with any of
the theories and is searching for a unified
theory that could explain all the mysteries of
the physical Universe. He proposes that the
Unification of Einstein's General theory of
relativity and Quantum theory can explain every
law of physics. He is nowadays working to prove
the string theory, which proposes that all
matter is made of tiny loops of vibrating
strings or simply filaments of energy. His works
on the final fate of black
holes
have helped cosmology a lot to understand the
universe. He predicted that black holes are not
entirely black. Instead, if they have masses
equivalent to a mountain they radiate particles
of all kinds. Smaller ones would disappear by
giving off radiation – a signature that
astronomers have searched for but so far not
found.
Scientists have more to talk about – more things which
may seem impossible and insane to us. Yet it’s
all true. The superstring theory, hyperspace,
dark matter and stuffs made physicists realize
that the three dimensions were not enough to
describe the universe. They say there are
actually eleven dimensions, from which they have
concluded that our universe is just one of the
infinite number of membranous bubbles that exist
in our cosmos. This led them to understand that
there exist many parallel universes, which may
be one millimeter away from us. And are thought
to contain strange forms of space, time and
exotic matters. This has made scientists believe
that our universe may have formed due to a big
bang, which rather happened because two such
bubble universes touched. It may well explain
that time and space existed before big bang
because big bangs may happen all the time.
{See
below to know the names of researchers}
The Big Bang or whatever created the Universe brought
another cosmic phenomena called life, which
might exist all over the Universe (just like the
stars or hydrogen & helium existing all over
the Universe). As Copernican Principle gives the
idea of sameness of various parts of the
Universe, more intelligent life forms might be
living elsewhere in the Universe.
Mysteries of life and the Universe have remained unsolved and
questions unanswered as more questions arise as
we quest/search for the answers. The question '
What might have caused the Big Bang' is still
mysterious. Religion has tried long to explain
the whole mystery of life and the cosmos from
the very beginning of human civilization but now
there is a few centuries old science called
Cosmology trying to solve all the mysteries of
the cosmos and the life. Lets hope in a few
decades we will have answers to every mystery of
physical universe as great minds like Stephen
Hawking and Paul Davies are searching the truth
of the unified theory –‘the theory of
everything’.
Author-Pradipta
Shrestha
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