We have discussed a lot about our universe now, mostly philosophically. It’s time we should also know about the scientific point of view. Cheer up!! No more philosophical lectures, it’s science time. Let’s start from the very basics of space knowledge we have. I will take you on a ride to space, aboard my ship “Nautilus”. Yes “Nautilus”, though Nautilus was a submarine in Jules Verne’s Novel 20000 Leagues under the sea, this is our Nautilus, the purpose is same, the ship that reaches the farthest depth of the seas and oceans to explore the wonders beyond our imagination. For us the sky is like a sea which is connected to a bigger ocean, the universe, and I am your captain, Nemo. The launch is ready in T-10...9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1..0. Lift off and God speed.
It’s been some time we are rising high up in the sky almost breached Earth’s atmosphere. It suddenly gets dark outside, the motion of Nautilus seems somewhat slow. We are now no more powered by the booster rockets as we have escaped the Earth’s gravitational field. The Nautilus is now driven by the small thrusts created by its engine to propel it towards our desired direction. The vacuum and darkness of this void space makes us feel lonely as we have left all our Earthly lives back. The Planet looks so beautiful from high up with all its blue water bodies, green landmasses and covered by white clouds above at some places. It looks so alive from here, can you imagine this is the same place where we have fought so many wars, exploded so many bombs, polluted these blue water bodies, cut down so many trees and many more ways to end life on Earth.
Now let’s look forward we see our Moon, with so many craters, pale white in color, a mere reflection of our Sun’s light, makes it look so lifeless. We are traveling farther so let’s not stop at the Moon rather let’s move on. The sun looks different from here, it’s so bright, a blazing ball of fire. Let’s escape faster now, as our objective is not to tour our own solar system. We cross Mars, and then the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. Yes the ride’s going to be little shaky, and bumpy roads ahead of us, we are traveling through the asteroid belts of Saturn. Nautilus is built in with a shield technology, that will deflect any asteroid or other space particles much like when two magnets of the same poles are brought close and then the lighter one gets deflected. It is also no more working on Earthly fuel, but our solar energy and as we go further in our journey we will come across stars to refill our fuel for Nautilus. Now that we have picked up speed and are blasting our way through the asteroid belts in the outer solar system beyond Saturn. It’s quite the bumpy ride till we cross Pluto, the disheartened planet, oh no.. just a piece of rock.
We have crossed Pluto and are now on our own, it’s dark ahead, clusters of stars are visible quite far. It’s so lifeless, no motion, no light we are traveling blind. Nothing on Earth can compare to this void. Tiny dots of light far away from us, who knows what awaits us there. A sudden beep of emergency on our alert system. Collision Alert!! In the void empty space, what are we colliding with? It seems quite large to be an asteroid or comet, doesn’t seem to be in motion too, cannot be deflected by our shields. What is it?? I bank Nautilus on the left and try to pull it up but it’s too hard. It’s like some force is pulling us down. I have no choice but to use our booster rockets in reserve, it’s a gravitational field that’s pulling us down just like in Earth, only 10 times more powerful than Earth’s. It’s a huge body bigger than our Jupiter. It’s red in color, huge giant planet, A Rogue planet. We saved Nautilus from crashing but have used up quite a lot of our solar fuel. I guess we will need to go past Alpha Centauri to refuel, the closest star to our solar system. But what was that? A rogue planet, so vast probably revolving our solar system. With such a huge path I believe this planet probably goes around orbiting two stars, our sun being one. Yes there are planets with so large orbits that they end up revolving around two stars, A binary system. It probably could take around 3600 years to complete its revolution.
Probably some of the ancient civilizations back on earth were correct in predicting 10 planets (including Pluto) in our solar systems, the last one being a rogue planet, probably this one. It’s said NASA also has the whereabouts of this rogue planet, they call it HD106906b an exoplanet, some call it the Planet X or Nibiru. The star which it orbits is known as HD106906 and probably has only one planet, the one we just escaped. What if this planet enters our solar system?? With it’s enormous gravitational force it will disrupt the path of every planet in its way. It could break through the asteroid belt of Saturn and shower Earth with meteors and asteroids. Not only Earth but Mars, Venus, Mercury all could be in harm's way. Well that’s one danger but what if this planet comes too close to Earth. It will not only collide with Earth but almost consume Earth because of its enormous size and gravitational field. Not to worry, as of now it won’t collide with Earth but it might bring little change in the paths of some asteroids and also affect the path of some planets including the Earth, with its gravitational field. Probably it could disrupt the weather or cause some Earthly disasters like Earthquakes. It is the huge Gravitational pull that could affect Earth and its surroundings, but it’s far away in the future, needless to worry now. Let’s continue with our ride to Alpha Centauri and then soon we will escape our Galaxy.
As we move closer to Alpha Centauri the bright star gets slowly divided into three. At a distance from Earth it seemed there was only one star but no, it’s a star system comprising of three stars. 4.37 light years away from Earth this star system comprises of Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B and a red dwarf Alpha Centauri C or the Proxima Centauri commonly known as Proxima only. The stars are probably bound together in a gravitational field. Alpha Centauri A is 110 percent the mass of our sun and 150 percent the luminosity of Sun. Red Dwarfs such as the Proxima is unlike our sun much more dimmer and smaller in size, orbiting around Alpha Centauri A B, a binary system. There are some planets orbiting the binary system but probably one of the most amazing planet could be Proxima Centauri b. It orbits around the Proxima star in quite habitable location like Earth. Although it seems for now at a distance this planet is tidally locked to its star Proxima therefore only one side of the planet faces the star, much like our moon. This could result in extreme temperatures on both sides of the planet, which is why probably it doesn’t harbor life. We were so close to finding another habitable planet but it seems Earth is like one in a million with everything so perfect to harbor life, another reason not to destroy our Earth.
By now our solar cells are fully charged and it’s time for us to take a big leap into the space and escape our galaxy. We should hurry or we might miss the fireworks. Yes fireworks it is !!! Our universe has it way of entertaining itself with fireworks and cosmic dances. For us now the participants of such a cosmic dance is Abell 3411 and Abell 3412. First time in the history of mankind, we will be witnessing a collision between two galaxies about 2 billion light years away or in other words we will be witnessing an event from the past, 2 billion years back. Not only the Abell galaxies but our galaxy Milky Way is entitled to a similar fate sometime in the future. It will also collide one day with our neighboring galaxy Andromeda. Yes we are on for a collision course with each day we move one step closer to colliding, again needless to worry because it’s predicted to happen in about 4 billion years, long time for us, although not much for the universe. If we scale down the events of the universe starting from the big bang, in a year, it’s like 31st December now. Considering the big bang had happened on January 1st, the huge emission of gas and energy, slowly solidifying to masses. Stars forms up with planets, the gas released in this explosion has everything that is needed to create the universe including us. The solidification slowly results in planets, it’s been 1st Feb, the universe is expanding. Our solar system forms up, Milky way is already into existence since February. Time flies by and it’s September our solar system has taken its final shape. The Earth by now is composed of rocks and minerals. It’s been 10 billion years by now on the original scale, but in our year scale it is just October. Mars has died out, stripped of its atmosphere and here, Earth breathes in its first life. November it is, first single celled organisms appear. Slowly much more complex living organisms appear and life starts stepping out of water here on Earth. The Dinosaurs appear then on December 17th. Sadly by 30th December the mass extinction of Dinosaurs happens. It’s 31st now life has once more taken up its pace here on Earth and the first Homo sapiens walk on 31st December 11:53 pm. By 11:59 pm first man walks on moon. How amazing, it’s been five minutes our race got created and is into the existence with this universe. We are new, so immature like a child is. We have a long way to go and as for the collision of our Milky way Galaxy with Andromeda, it will probably take place soon, as per the galactic calendar probably next year during May and June. As for us it’s 4 billion years later. You can imagine by this vast difference between our calendar and the galactic calendar how small and negligible we are. Four billion years its like 5 months on the galactic calendar.
Anyways by now we have reached the outer space of our galaxy. Of course you want to see how it looks from here, our galaxy from the outer space.
The one you see up front, that’s our home, Milky way. The one on the right side top is the Andromeda. Much bigger than Milky way, one day Andromeda will consume our galaxy. The universe will witness a much awaited cosmic dance.
Why does the galaxies look spiral? Any ideas? All the spiral lines are ending up in the center of the galaxies. Do you know what’s in the center of galaxies? A black hole. Yes, much like in your kitchen sink when you cover up the base hole of your sink and leave the tap open. It fills up the sink like a bowl full of water. Now you close the tap and remove the cover or lid at the base of your sink. The water starts to flow through your waste pipe of the sink. It forms a spiral motion. Throw some small pieces of paper in it, you will find them going spirally into the center, much like in hurricanes. Once a piece of paper flows to the center of this hurricane or whirlpool, there is no way back. The force pulling it inwards is too much to overcome. Everything goes down through that whirlpool into the pipes. Same happens with the black hole in the galaxies. Anything near the black hole gets pulled inwards. The gravitational force is so much that no matter what it is a star, a planet, a comet, it all gets pulled down and stretched. Dismantling the very atoms stretching them and pulling it down towards the hole. If our space ship Nautilus got caught in there it would have stretched it double or even more than its original length, disfigured, like a ribbon strip. No one knows what is beyond that hole. Some say it’s gateway to another universe or may be another dimension. Unless we pass something through it we won’t know what’s beyond the black hole.. As for now no human can get in a black hole and live to tell the tale. Although some researchers believe if we can find a bigger black hole and we can pass through its very center or at least pass a probe through it probably we can get inside alive. As the gravitational pull of whirlpools are much more on the side walls than in the center, but then we need to not only get inside but come back alive. A trip to a black hole is a one way ticket, nothing escapes the gravitational pull of black holes not even light.
Some black holes are so powerful that they emit energy and make it luminous from distance. They are known as Quasars, the super massive black holes. It’s easy to identify them because they are luminous, while smaller black holes are dark and not visible. They are denoted by the movements of the surrounding objects as the gravitational pull of these black holes disrupts the normal movements of anything surrounding it. There is another type of super massive black hole, it’s energy emission is so much that it releases a plasma beam from the center, thus they are known as Blazars. Some of the most extreme things of the universe is the blazars. Huge galaxies have blazers in their center. Releasing plasma beam perpendicular to the galaxy's center. Blazar beams can be extremely large in length, destroying everything that comes in the path of this beam, a real badass of the universe.
Super massive black holes are created when two large galaxies collide. Their black holes combines and forms into a binary black hole emitting luminous energy and become Quasar or emits plasma jet and become Blazars. With the collision of Abell 3411 and 3412 it has also created a super massive black hole. It is a real life naturally occurring particle accelerator much like the miniature we have in CERN, Switzerland. Huge emissions of x-rays, gamma rays and radio waves, probably a formation of a Blazar. We are presently witnessing three black holes. All of this will be combined into one extremely powerful black hole at some point of time. The black holes of both of the galaxies combined with the one that was caused to due the collision of particles. This swirl formed by the black holes are closing down on each other. The bigger and powerful one will consume the weaker. The gravitational pull of the black holes might even slingshot the third weaker black hole into empty space, only time will show the fate of this two galaxies and their three black holes. The problem is, time here is according to the galactic calendar and so it will be a long wait for us. As of now feast your eyes on the NASA's image of this particular cosmic dance, A collision course.
