Anti Pleasure

Carina Nebula - breathtaking I think! Nebulae are basically stars in their first stages. So you see the formation of dust clouds, plasma and hydrogen gas (which makes our stars!) so these are interstellar clouds. So pretty.

Sagittarius constellation - this is my wifey’s constellation and it this constellation has the most planetary host stars with 14 stars having planets. <3

Leo constellation - this is MY star sign but unfortunately I could not find a very good picture of my constellation. It does have the Wolf 359 which is one of the nearest stars to the Earth only 7.7 light years away I thought that was pretty neat.

M83 galaxy - this is a spiral galaxy and I always look at this picture because one of my favorite bands is called, M83, obviously named after this galaxy.  This galaxy is… 15 million light years away, YIKES! It is one of the oldest discovered galaxies, 1752 by Nicolas de Lacaille.

Orion nebula - this is one of my favoriteeeee nebulae! It’s like abstract art in the sky. You know, I love these pictures so much because it’s astonishing that all of these pictures… are in our universe, and they’re so beautiful. You can visibly see this nebula from a telescope, it’s one of the brightest in the sky and it’s located in the constellation of Orion’s belt.

I am going to be talking about black holes, a lot! Because it is one of the most intriguing and perplexed ideas out there. Most people are confused about the mini black holes that the Large Hadron Collider is going to make… but these black holes are so microscopic that they will not interfere with anything. Or as people like to put it, it’s NOT going to swallow our earth! 

I’m bringing up black holes today because I was just reading in the science section of Yahoo! and it was talking about the black hole in our galaxy, the milky way. We know black holes exist, even though they are invisible, because scientists can measure the volicity and depth and all of a sudden energy gets crushed or sucked into this mysterious thing we call black holes. In the constellation of Sagittarius A* a super massive black hole exists in it, about 4 million times the mass of the sun, yikes! The mass of a black hole can take any positive value. What is so intriguing about Sagittarius A* is that it is the closest black hole, which is in the Milky Way. 

It is believed that there are 300 million black holes existing in the night sky. But what is beyond these black holes, we will never know in our lifetime, I doubt.

“How do they know these objects exist? They can infer the presence of a black hole from its interaction with a companion star. Many stars form in pairs or close groups. If one star in a pair becomes a black hole, it does not threaten its companion unless the companion wanders too close. Then the strong gravitational pull of the black hole can tear off matter from its companion in large streams.”  http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/blackholes/lesson/whatisit/stellar.html

I’ll give brief details about two major black holes that are being observed in our universe:

The most known black hole is the Supermassive black holes. These contain possibly billions of solar masses and are thought to be in the center of all galaxies. 

Another type is the Stellar black hole. These ones are huge because they are the maximum mass of neutron stars. They are believed to be formed when a star collapses, and this is what happens when a star runs out of nuclear fuel.

I could go on for days with scientific lingo but I will save more talk about black holes for another day. They really are interesting and so peculiar.

You know I used to be petrified at the thought of technology advancing before our eyes, but now I think I am going to embrace it. After reading a lot about Michio Kaku and his views on technology, how behind we actually are… it amazes me that I am living in this lifetime with technology advancing so quickly. I’ve posted a video below about him talking about the three types of technologies, and how we are not even close to Type 1 technology, we are at zero.

Like he said, we are not even close to Type 1 because we would be able to control the storms, the volcanos, the weather etc. But we have come really far in the last hundred years. Heck, we’ve come far in the last twenty years with the Internet being created by CERN. The Internet was originally invented for scientists across the globe to swap information faster. Now, obviously it has blown out of proportion and now terrorists can swap information in mere seconds.

Michio Kaku does not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial beings, in other words as we like to call them, “aliens!” The possibility of other life forms on planets, does not seem impossible, does it? Millions of galaxies and planets that could exist that we cannot see. We do not have the type of technology to use the power of the stars, but who is to say that later on in life we won’t be able to? That is, if our planet can survive these next hundred years at the brink of technology progressing.

If you didn’t watch the video, fair enough, you probably don’t know what I am mentioning here really. Kaku talks about how there could be three types of technologies, when looking for other lifeforms on planets, or anywhere!

Type 1: like I mentioned, we would be able to control the planet and use all of its resources. We are slowly getting there but it will not happen likely within fifty to a hundred years.

Type 2: is a stellar type of civilization, where they would get their energy from their “mother star.” They would use the power of the sun to energize their technology.

Type 3: And the last one, would be considered galactic because they could harnass the powers from billions of stars from galaxies.

Who is to say that there isn’t life else where? I don’t find it very hard to believe. This massive universe is here, and we are the only sign of “intelligent” life form? I am not saying that I believe in the cliche alien type, but there is bound to be life forms somewhere in the universe. If there is no life out there (I am sure there is) than I find it strange that we were put on this planet, why us?

So, needless to say… I think it is great how technology is growing and I can’t wait to see what is invented next. Who knows what will be used in science later on for discoveries? I think it is exciting! There are too many gaps, and we know too little. I think we were meant to know more.

Hey folks, another science entry!

Today I’m going to talk about what makes up all of the universe. I’m sure you are saying, of course the trees and the mountains, the oceans, the stars, the planets, the sun etc. But in fact, in cosmology, a mysterious force called dark energy makes up 74% of the universe’s mass! This dark energy actually increases the rate of expansion of the universe.

This is so bizarre, something we cannot get our heads around is the fact that the universe is made up of nothing that we can see. Take a look at this chart below:

So as you can see, the other 22% is believed to be dark matter and only 4% of the visible matter that we know. The visible matter obviously would be what I mentioned, the stars, trees, oceans, planets and so on. Dark matter is “hypothetical matter” and what that means is that it does not interact with the electromagnetic force.

Basically the nature of this energy and matter is a myriad in cosmology and physics. It is some force that scientists cannot figure out the pieces of the major puzzle, and that is our universe. So, dark energy and dark matter, detectable only because of their effect on the visible matter around them, make up most of the universe.

This is so important because there have been three theories of the fate of our universe. We will never see it in our lifetime. I would worry more about global warming, us destroying OUR planet to be quite honest. But this perplexed puzzle of the universe, scientists question what will really happen to the universe in the end. Three theories have been:

The big crunch: to put these all bluntly, the universe would re collapse, and space would reverse into a black hole singularity.

The big freeze: this would be the “heat death” of the universe. “In which it has “run down” to a state of no thermodynamic free energy to sustain motion or life. In physical terms, it has reached maximum entropy.” Wikipedia

The big rip: This is the latest theory from studying supernovae (stars in their last stages.) In this theory it is believed that matter of the universe from the stars and galaxies would tear everything apart.

Interesting stuff, yes, no? I think it is. I doubt we will ever know in our life time. But it really makes me wonder the fate of our universe, if there was one before, if there is going to be one afterwards. All I worry about right now, as I mentioned, is the fate of our own planet! Excessive pollution and war, I don’t know what has made our species get to this point, it’s over my head. There are so many gaps in our knowledge, I just wish my our brains could be used more, to know more about where we come from, and why we exist.

In the mean time, think green folks. Do the best you can to prevent our planet from being destroyed. We have really made a terrible imprint on this planet.

One thing I am really interested in is cosmology. I am still trying to get through the book, “Parallel Worlds” by Michio Kaku. The book deals with theories of the “Big Bang”, the creation of the universe, age of the universe, black holes and paradoxes and of course parallel worlds. I read up on Michio Kaku all the time because he has some really interesting theories. Even if you are not a science whiz (me, I’m not mathematical at all so it is hard to understand things in physics) the book is still very informative and it has really shed some light for me. I have to put the book down here and there because it is quite intense.

Michio Kaku defends the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) that is being built by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) which is located in Switzerland. They are building this machine that is underground, which is about 27 KM underground in the suburbs of Switzerland. This machine has caused quite a ruckus, with people thinking it is going to “destroy the world”. In fact, they are going to launch this it at the speed of light so that it smashes into other particles to recreate the Big Bang theory. Most people are freaking out because they are going to be using black holes, but only tiny enough so that they will disappear in an instant. So not to worry folks, we won’t be swallowed by a black hole, so cool your jets!

What CERN are trying to look for is a missing particle in the Standard Model in particle physics called the Higgs Boson, which is also known as the “god particle” and this very particle could have started the universe. The Higgs Boson will determine what matter’s mass is, because it has never been observed before… that is, if it exists.
The LHC has already attempted to be launched but I believe a couple of the massive magnets broke so they are still working on it.

It will be a while now before it has been launched, so I’m going to keep up to date… the count down is on! http://lhccountdown.info

More on Michio Kaku and cosmology later.