Living in the 21st century with constant technological advances sometimes feels like there’s no mystery left. The cosmos however, remains the great mystery for the human race.
We’ve scratched the surface by sending satellites into space, taken detailed photographs of planets and thanks to advances in optics and engineering we are making increasingly more precise, and far-reaching telescopes.
Look at the beautiful images from the Spitzer Space Telescope:
It seems the more we discover the less we realize we know. New discoveries create new questions and renew our curiosity in the mysteries in the cosmos.
For example astronomers have discovered section of space which is completely empty, missing around 10,000 galaxies. The “supervoid” is estimated to be 1.8 billion light-years across, is the largest known structure ever discovered, but scientists are baffled as to why it is empty.
Another mystery which has captivated the mainstream and scientific community alike is dark energy, or dark matter. Dark matter is hypothesized to be a form of energy which according to contemporary models, should permeate all of space, accelerating the expansion of the universe.
Despite gravitational pull inward on space-time, the cosmos continues to expand outwards at an increasing speed. The force behind this gravitational pushing of space-time apart is theorized by astrophysicists to be dark energy, which is estimated to comprise 70% of total energy in the observable universe. The catch is that science still cannot directly observe dark matter.
Theoretical physicists speculate our universe may not be the only one of its kind. The theory goes our universe exists within a bubble, and multiple alternative universes are contained within their own distinct bubbles. Physical laws could be totally different in other universes. Now that’s something to ponder!
Aristotle said “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know”, a feeling echoed by arguably one of the most famous physicist of all time Albert Einstein, “As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it”. The enormity and mysteriousness of the cosmos has enticed the human spirit for eons, as Socrates said, “I know that I know nothing”.
