[[At long last, after eight billion years of computation, the greatest computer ever developed, Deep Stupor, will reveal its answer to the great question of existence, the Cosmos, and What in the Sam Hill is going on?… And the answer is… What? No! Even in ASCII, an asterisk just a number! This makes no sense! Where are the units?]]
Hello everyone!
This week on The Cosmic Companion, we explore the greatest mysteries of the Universe, talking about the Big Bang, black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and the nature of time. Later in the show, we will be talking with famed cosmologist and author Lawrence Krauss.
It all started with a Big Bang [BANG]. Cosmologists debate what — if anything — may have existed before this explosive event. The laws of physics needed to model these conditions fall apart as infinities come into play when trying to describe the initial moment of the eruption 13.8 billion years ago.
But, we can get close. Very close. For the first ten-millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, all four known forces of nature were united as one, and the very fabric of spacetime itself was subject to the chaotic nature of quantum physics, a bizarre — if short-lived start to our Universe, known as the Planck Epoch.
A hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big kick off, the Universe seems to have experienced a strange period known as inflation. At this time, the Universe appears to have expanded at a rate much faster than the speed of light, growing from smaller than an atom to the size of a golf ball nearly instantly. Why that happened remains a mystery.
Next up: black holes. The best-known category of these are stellar-mass black holes, formed when a massive star dies and collapses in on itself.
Black holes have such an immense gravitational pull that nothing — not even light — can escape their grasp. The only exception to this appears to be Hawking radiation, a process which allows some thermal energy to escape the grips of these intergalactic vacuum cleaners.
Matter falling into these regions of space gets accelerated, pulled, stretched, and blasted with unimaginable amounts of radiation. However, some information about the interloping body should still remain within the black hole.
But what happens to this information, and what’s at the center of a black hole, remain the subjects of vigorous debates among some of the greatest minds in the world.
We have one of those minds in the studio today. Well, actually, he himself stayed at home as a stationary body in the past, while his image was here in the studio at a nearly simultaneous point in time, creating a 2D representation of his 3D state, for you to listen to in my future, which is now your present and… UGGGGHHHH!
Here’s Lawrence Krauss talking about what we discover when we dare to journey to The Edge of Knowledge…
If one were to take every star in every galaxy, every bit of interstellar dust, and each molecule of the intergalactic medium stretching across the Universe, we would still be holding just five percent of what seems to be out there.
The other 95 percent of everything is made up from a mixture of 27% dark matter and 68% dark energy. But what are they? And how do they affect the Universe? These are questions that scientists are currently struggling to answer.
Galaxies and groups of galaxies only hold together because of what appears to be gargantuan clumps of invisible gravitational centers. Stars and galaxies move EXACTLY like there is far more matter around them than everything we can see. But, where matter should be, there is apparently, nothing.
The nature of dark matter remains a mystery, although ideas as to its nature abound, including unseen particles (available in hot and cold varieties), or other exotic explanations.
Now, one would think that, in the eons since the Big Bang, the expansion rate of the Universe would slow down over time. It’s logical, makes sense, and is not what seems to be happening.
Roughly eight billion years ago, our Universe began expanding at an ever-increasing rate, and the nature of this dark energy is another of the great mysteries of the Universe.
The nature of time is a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey realm of temporal wonder. Is time an illusion? Lunch time doubly so?
One of the biggest mysteries surrounding time is whether it flows in one direction or if it might also run backward. Nearly every law of physics is perfectly fine running forward or backward in time.
Except one. The Second law of thermodynamics.
The principle of entropy might, very, very roughly, be thought of as a description of how much order there is in a system. Groups of highly-organized bodies are said to have a high entropy, and can do very little work — similar to the way a ball won’t roll on level ground. Low-entropy states are unorganized, and thus capable of making things happen. Think of our once-motionless ball being lifted away and set down on the hilly streets of San Francisco.
In any closed system like the Universe, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy can ONLY rise or stay the same. The Universe appears headed for a flat, boring, high-entropy state. And the Second law of Thermodynamics is the only known law of physics that can only move forward in time, suggesting a possible root cause for what appears to be the forward-moving nature of time.
Or that may not be the case after all. These mysteries are fun, aren’t they?
These are just a few of the greatest mysteries in the Universe. And while we may not have all the answers yet, one thing is for sure: exploring these questions are exciting and fascinating journeys into the very nature of… well, everything!
We’re taking the rest of July off for summer break, but will be back on 5 August.
Remember to head on over to TheCosmicCompanion.com, .net. or .TV, and subscribe, follow, and share the show with your family, friends, and random acquaintances.
Join us at the start of August, when we come back for the second half of season seven of the Cosmic Companion. This is going to be our most-exciting, most entertaining, and informative season yet. We look forward to having you join us as we explore every nook and cranny of space and time.
Clear skies!
James
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