Our Universe Literature Review
Our Universe is essentially, everything that we can touch, sense, feel, detect, or measure. Under this ‘umbrella’ are living things (humans, plants, animals, etc.), stars, planets, galaxies, even time and light. Prior to the birth of the Universe, space, time, and matter were nonexistent. It is entirely possible that somewhere out there, a near-parallel Earth could exist where a practically identically version of you is reading this exact article on a piece of paper with a candle light.
Our Universe Explained
Our Universe is unbelievably massive. It would take over a million years to reach the sun, and even longer to cross our Milky Way galaxy. The exact size of our Universe is unknown, simply due to the fact that we are unable to see the edge, assuming that an edge even exists. Due to that, and the fact that our Universe is still continuously expanding, scientists can only take an educated guess at how large it truly is. Scientists believe that our expansion began directly after the Big Bang took place, which was approximately fourteen billion years ago (ESA). Since that time, the Universe has been constantly expanding outwards, and at a rapid speed as well. Our Universe is known to contain billions of different galaxies. Each of these different galaxies has millions and millions of stars. Even places far from our known planets and stars contain scattered particles of dust and hydrogen atoms. Scientists also know that space contains magnetic fields, high energy particles (e.g. cosmic rays), and radiation (ESA).
Our universe has constantly under gone change since its birth. Cosmology deals with the theory of the early universe--which is how it all began about 14 billion years ago (Wolf)...
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... for our apparently very improbable Universe to actually exist (Ellis).
Works Cited
Deutsch, David. "Chapter 1: What Are Parallel Universes." The Fabric of Reality. S.l.: Allen Lane, 1997. N. pag. Print.
Ellis, G. F. R., U. Kirchner, and W. R. Stoeger. "Multiverses and Physical Cosmology." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 347.3 (2004): 921-36. 2 Oct. 2004. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
"ESA - Space for Kids - Our Universe - What Is Space?" ESA - Our Universe - What Is Space? European Space Agency, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
Jones, Andrew Zimmerman., and Daniel Robbins. String Theory for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010. Print.
Halpurn, Paul. "A Guide to Different Kinds of Parallel Universes." PBS. PBS, 27 Nov. 2012. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Wolf, Fred Alan. Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. Print.
In Alan Lightman’s, “Our Place in the Universe,” he describes his experiences in the Greek Isles explaining how meek it made him feel to be surrounded by the vast ocean with no land in sight except a small strip of brown in the distance. Great thinkers throughout history, have been exploring the visible variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, though the greatest of these are size, from the smallest atom to gargantuan stars. These massive differences in size change the way we view ourselves in the universe. (470) Garth Illingworth, from the University of California, has studied galaxies more than 13 billion light years away from us.
The book that will be reviewed is Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury. The author used the effect of parallelism extremely well by showing the similarities of both then and now. In the following paragraphs we're going to encounter these parallelisms, we will compare the book to the time period in which it was written, and our own time period post September 11. Before we can do this we must first get to know the author and the era in which it was based off of just a bit.
In the last hundred years we have made enormous progress in studying not our galaxy but ones billions of light-years away. Only a few hundred years ago our world seemed so big that there were areas of the world that had never been charted and people believed that the Earth was flat (and yes for some reason a few people still believe that today). If we continue to make progress at thus rate the universe will actually begin to seem smaller because of how much more we might know.
Sire, James W. The universe next door: a basic worldview catalog. 3rd ed. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1997.
"The Parallel Lives." A sub-site off of the University of Chicago. Ed. Bill Thayer. University of Chicago, 25 June 2009. Web. 8 Mar. 2012. .
Le Poidevin, Robin. Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.
Part I: The Edge of Knowledge Chapter 1: Tied Up with Strings This is the introductory section, where the author, Brian Greene, examines the fundamentals of what is currently proven to be true by experimentation in the realm of modern physics. Green goes on to talk more about "The Basic Idea" of string theory. He describes how physicists are aspiring to reach the Theory of Everything, or T.O.E. Some suspect when string theory is completely understood that it might turn out to become the T.O.E.Part II: The Dilemma of Space, Time, and Quanta Chapter 2: Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder In the chapter, Greene describes how Albert Einstein solved the paradox about light. In the mid-1800's James Maxwell succeeded in showing that light was actually an electromagnetic wave.
An underlying theme present throughout the series is the possibility that our existence is not the only one. According to current theories in physics, it is entirely possible that our universe is just one of many universes f...
A parallel universe is said to be identical to ours. In 1954, a young Princeton University doctoral applicant named Hugh Everett III concocted a radical thought: That there exist parallel universes, precisely like our universe. That theory today is a connection to the conspiracy called the Mandela effect. The Mandela effect is a compelling, staggering, and mind-blowing psychological phenomenon that leads to the theory of a parallel universe. The Mandela effect is ironically named after Nelson Mandela, whose death was widely misremembered. Although many facts have surfaced to support the parallel theory and that the Mandela effect is a direct link to a multi-universe, there are also facts that falsify this
Willett, Edward. Orson Scott Card: Architect of Alternate Worlds. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2006. Print.
This suggests that in the past, galaxies were much closer to us than they are now: simply extrapolate the motion into the past. As it turns out, if this is performed, it indicates that all galaxies in the observable universe would have been at the same 'location' about 11 billion years ago: that is, all the matter in the universe originated from a single location. This is the (simplified) Big Bang theory. Actually, it's a little more complicated than that: according to general relativity, it's not really that distant galaxies are flying away from us, it's that space itself is expanding, increasing the distance. You can think of the universe as the surface of a balloon, with the balloon constantly expanding.
A galaxy, also called a nebula, consists of billions of stars, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter which are all bound to form a massive cloud in which we live in. Although it cannot be very well explained, dark matter makes up at least 90% of a galaxy’s mass. Galaxies also contain billions upon billions of stars and their diameter can range from 1,500 to 300,000 light years. That’s huge! The Milky Way, the galaxy in which we live in, is one of about 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Our Sun is one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, and our eight planets revolve around this star in only a tiny part of our galaxy. “The Earth’s solar system is believed to exist very close to the Galaxy’s galactic plane, due to the fact that the Milky Way essentially divides the night sky into two virtually equal hemispheres” ("All About the Milky"). It definitely makes people second guess the fact of there being life on other planets.
Jenkins, Alejandro, and Gilad Perez. "Looking for Life in the Multiverse." Scientific American Jan. 2010: 42-49. Print.
The Universe is a collection of millions of galaxies and extends beyond human imagination. After the big bang, the universe was found to be composed of radiation and subatomic particles. Information following big bang is arguable on how galaxies formed, that is whether small particles merged to form clusters and eventually galaxies or whether the universe systematized as immense clumps of matter that later fragmented into galaxies (Nasa World book, 2013). A galaxy is a massive area of empty space full of dust, gases (mainly 75% Hydrogen and 25%Helium), atoms, about 100-200 billion stars, interstellar clouds and planets, attracted to the center by gravitational force of attraction. Based on recent research, 170 billion galaxies have been estimated to exist, with only tens of thousands been discovered (Deutsch, 2011).
The big bang theory is an attempt to explain how the world began. The big bang theory begins with what is called a “singularity.” This term is used to describe an area in space which defies all the known laws of physics. Singularities are thought to exist at the core of black holes. Black holes are areas of intense gravitational pressure. The pressure is thought to be so intense that matter is pressed together into an infinite amount of pressure. The dense hot mass of the singularity slowly expanded. This process is called inflation. As the singularity expanded the universe went from dense and hot to cool and expansive. Inflation is still continuing on today which means that the universe is continually expanding.