The Last Frontier
A surreal odyssey to the truth… or maybe…the limit of what we hope to be…
Space. This one word is enough to invoke feelings of awe and emptiness in most people. Over the countless aeons humanity has been walking over the face of this earth, we have always revered what we have not understood.
Earthquakes were the wrath of Poseidon. Constellations were the grace of Artemis. The sun rising was Ra guiding his raft through the underworld…pretty fantastic explanations in my opinion. But, as we progressed, we learnt to analyze and justify. Science debunked our beliefs left right and center. No longer was the earth flat. Why? Because we could literally see it to be so.
However, despite its ever shining glory, science has not given answers to all our questions. Thinking about it intuitively, science cannot have limits. But a generation can. Maybe we have to wait a few more decades to get our answers…or maybe a few more millennia. Who knows…
But until that fateful day finally rears its head, all we can do is wonder about what is known… What it can be… What it was… And the biggest area of wonder? Our universe itself.
The Mysteries
46 billion light years. Think about it for a minute. In kilometers, that’s 4.3 followed by 23 zeroes. As it happens, it is also the distance between the earth the edge of the observable universe. Emphasis on observable. We have absolutely zero idea of how big our universe actually is. So if our earth by itself can be home to more mysteries than we could ever care for, imagine how many our universe must hide.
From dark energy and antimatter, concepts we are roughly familiar with courtesy modern age infotainment, to stuff like black holes and the fermi paradox, books we haven’t even dusted, let alone scratch the cover of…Astrophysics deals with topics which could answer some of life’s most fundamental questions.
Who we are………………….?
Where we are……………….?
Why we are where we are…..?
The Efforts
To be very frank, despite the limitations of modern day technology, its not like humanity hasn’t made any progress. For instance, take the The Large Hadron Collider, the biggest machine on earth (under it to be more precise) worth a whopping 7.5 billion Euro. It has the potential to detect the very presence of dark matter. Many theories say the dark matter particles would be light enough to be produced at the LHC. If they were created at the LHC, they would escape through the detectors unnoticed. However, they would carry away energy and momentum, so physicists could infer their existence from the amount of energy and momentum “missing” after a collision.
Similarly, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or simply LIGO and its European counterpart Virgo observe black holes through gravitational waves. Recently, the collaboration announced that it had spotted its largest black hole collision ever, forming a black hole 142 times the mass of the sun.
In addition to setting unprecedented records, the finding was the first in the so-called “forbidden” zone of middleweight black holes. Though astronomers had seen small black holes roughly the size of our sun and know that colossal ones with millions of times the mass of the sun exist in the centers of galaxies, no one had previously found evidence for black holes in this mid range. Exactly how they formed remains a mystery that scientists are now working to unravel.
The Answers
Simply put, we don’t have any. Not complete ones at least. But that also doesn’t mean we are completely clueless. We have come a long way from where we are. The fact that we still have an immense distance to go should be just filling us with the excitement and romance attached to the exploration of uncharted territories…the possibility that just round the corner is a discovery so massive that it changes the very way we live and breathe.
Without a doubt, astrophysics has to one of the branches of science with the widest of scope. That it will answer the questions buried deep inside our souls shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Its just a matter of waiting, a touch of introspection…and a bit more of the waiting…
If you want to find out some more stuff on dark energy, dark matter and other juicy topics, pray consider giving these blogs a try:
- What’s the matter with Dark Matter? | by Tarosh kuchroo | SIGMA XI VIT | Apr, 2021 | Medium
- CAN WE ESCAPE FROM A BLACK HOLE?. Black holes might not be so black after… | by Ananya Pantvaidya | SIGMA XI VIT | Apr, 2021 | Medium
Adieu then…until the questions are finally resolved…
