The universe is full of mysteries. We can't even imagine where will we reach if we start digging deep into the mysteries of the universe. There are many mysteries which has been solved, but many are yet to be solved. Some facts or theories have been proved very surprising while some were a little predictable.
So, in short, we can say that universe is too huge to allow us to predict anything about it. Well, here are a few of the theories which will make you scratch your brain and force you to think harder.
1. The Universe is a Hologram
The idea that the universe is a hologram has been misinterpreted as the theoretical physics equivalent of Plato's Cave, an ancient allegory about mankind's inability to truly perceive reality as what it is, perhaps partially due to the popularity of films such as The Matrix.
This theory suggests that the universe we see is nothing more than a hologram generated by the universe itself. The idea is that when we look up at the night sky, the distant stars and galaxies we see are just like an image projected on a wall. This holographic principle can help us to know why the universe appears flimsy when broken down to the most basic of energy scales.
The theory was formerly called Holographic Duality. A holographic image is produced when you cover an object with the light from a laser and then a second laser jumps off the reflective surface of the first later. Another light source then illuminates the image to produce the holographic image.
It’s thought that if a variation in gravitational waves is caused by different patterns of light, then it would simulate this holographic image’s creation process. And if this theory is ever proven correct, it would mean we would need to alter a lot of our perceptions of what we think we know about the universe.
Surprisingly, in a new study, a physicist has proposed a technique to defy the law of physics which demands that we cannot see through a black hole’s event horizon and that it is fundamentally impenetrable and even light cannot escape it. This study published in the journal PRX Quantum, adds weight to the theory that the universe is a hologram.
2. The Panspermia Theory
The word ‘panspermia’ translates from Greek meaning ‘seeds everywhere
It’s known as an untested, unproven and rather wild theory regarding the interplanetary transfer of life. It theorizes that microscopic life-forms can be transported through space and land on another planet. Thus sparking life somewhere else, it could happen by accident—such as on spacecraft—via comets and asteroids in the Solar System.
But for “panspermia” to have any credence requires proof that bacteria could survive a long journey through the vacuum, temperature fluctuations, and intense UV radiation in outer space.
The recent discovery of various extremophiles (organisms that can survive in extreme environments we previously thought were incapable of supporting life) here on Earth has contributed a great deal to this theory, you can read more about it under the name of the “Tanpopo” project. It’s now known that life can survive in environments of extreme heat, extreme cold, intense radiation and lack of oxygen. The results of the “Tanpopo” project now suggest that life must exist much more often than we previously thought.
3. Observing Dark Energy is an Act of Murder
A theoretical physicist named Lawrence Krauss once stated that every time we look at dark energy, we’re killing the universe. According to astrophysicists, dark energy makes up an estimated amount of 70 per cent of all the energy in the entire universe and holds the secrets to many of the unexplainable peculiarities we see in deep space.
Lawrence Krauss suggests that the Big Bang was initiated when some unusual high energy with gravity-repellent properties decayed into zero-energy, and it was the process of going from a false vacuum to an ordinary one that resulted in the creation of our universe.
In quantum mechanics, there’s something called the quantum Zeno effect which states that if an unstable object is regularly observed, it will never ever decay. From this, Krauss’s argument follows that if dark energy is continuously observed, we are keeping it unstable and reducing the universe’s lifespan by forcing it back to that state when it was a false vacuum.
But with so many of the mysteries of our universe pointing to dark energy as the key to understanding them, you can bet that astronomers and physicists aren’t going to stop studying it anytime soon. We can just hope those effects are negligible.
4. The Fermi Paradox
Named after the physicist Enrico Fermi – the Fermi Paradox can be summed up in a simple question in this big universe, why haven’t we come across life anywhere but on Earth?
In an outline, the argument runs like this-
The Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars, and billions of them are like the sun. It is highly likely that some of these stars will have planets that are like Earth. If we assume according to the Copernican principle that Earth is not particularly special, then intelligent life should also exist on some fraction of these Earth-like planets.
Some of these intelligent life forms may develop technology and even interstellar travel. Interstellar travel would have to take a long time, but as there are many sun-like stars that are billions of years older, there has been plenty of time for such travel to have occurred. So with all this, why haven’t we met or seen any trace of aliens?
There are many proposed answers to the question. The first one being the most obvious is that we are alone and Earth is unique for having a life. On the other hand, large-scale interstellar travel may be impossible. Or perhaps intelligent life will inevitably destroy itself via nuclear weapons, or other reasons like runaway artificial intelligence, or global warming.
More ideas suggest that we might not be looking for ‘life’ in the right way, or they might be keeping us in the dark because we might not be ready enough yet. The possibilities of this are endless and doubts will continue forever.
Two related videos easily and deeply explaining the Fermi Paradox by “Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell”, would be-
Written by: Sofia Choudhary
Edited by: Nidhi Jha
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