Our Universe Rings Like a Bell + Other Mesmerizing Space Facts

Bright Side

Did you know that our universe can "ring" like a bell? When massive events, like galaxy collisions or black hole mergers, happen, they send out ripples of gravitational waves, kind of like cosmic vibrations! These waves travel through space, making the universe hum in a way that’s completely mesmerizing. And that's just one cool space fact! For example, did you know a day on Venus is longer than its year? Or that there might be more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth? Space is full of amazing and mind-boggling wonders!

Transcript

00:00Does the universe ring like a crystal glass? Maybe.

00:04But it doesn't mean that it literally rings and we just don't hear it.

00:07It just vibrates.

00:11Many of you know that the universe started with the Big Bang around 13.8 billion years ago.

00:17I wasn't around then, but we can assume.

00:19The whole enchilada was born from a super-concentrated, hot, and dense tiny dot that contained everything.

00:26When it couldn't bear its pressure anymore, it made a huge blast and spewed around all the time, space, matter, and antimatter like a pokeball.

00:36After being born, the universe moved at a breakneck speed.

00:40Imagine standing in the middle of nowhere, you blink, and suddenly you're surrounded by the universe.

00:45That's what it would feel like.

00:47It started growing and growing, and eventually, its speed got slowed down a bit by gravity.

00:52Gravity started pulling all the matter together, slowly helping new things like stars and galaxies to form.

01:01Okay, makes sense so far.

01:03The Big Bang gave the universe a big push accelerating it.

01:06Logically, everything should eventually slow down and start moving at a constant speed, or even stop, right?

01:13Well, nope.

01:14In the late 90s, astronomers discovered something weird.

01:17They looked at some supernova around us, and for some reason, these supernovas were super far away, much farther than they were supposed to be.

01:26In other words, the expansion of the universe is not only continuing after all these years, but it's even accelerating.

01:33After years of study, they discovered the concept of dark energy, a mysterious force that makes up about 68% of the universe's total energy.

01:42This energy pushes it to expand even faster over time.

01:47And now, scientists have proposed a new discovery.

01:50Perhaps the universe's movements are a bit, well, wobbly.

01:57It seems like the universe's expansion hasn't been smooth and stable over the years.

02:02Instead, it has undergone periods of speeding up and slowing down multiple times.

02:07Astronomers counted about seven cycles of this acceleration and deceleration over the history of our universe.

02:15This can be compared to the oscillation of a crystal glass.

02:19When you strike a crystal glass, it vibrates, oscillating at its natural frequency.

02:24It goes through fluctuations in which the frequency rises and falls.

02:28Over time, it calms down and fades away.

02:31Well, something like this is happening to our universe.

02:34You can imagine its speed also fluctuating like that, rising and falling, first super rapidly and then more calmly.

02:43As if it's not just different waves traveling through it, but our entire world is like one huge ringing wave.

02:51The discovery was actually made by accident.

02:54Astronomers were working on dark matter modeling.

02:57They plotted a new graph called the Hubble diagram,

03:00which shows how big the universe got over the years, measured in supernovas.

03:05Supernovas are like some lighthouses of our world, helping us mark things on a map.

03:10That's when they found these oscillations.

03:13But we still need to check all the data to make sure that this discovery is indeed true.

03:18Dark energy and dark matter play this weird game with the universe,

03:22where one is constantly trying to pull everything together,

03:25while the other one wants everything to expand.

03:28So far, dark energy vastly outweighs dark matter,

03:32whose weight makes up only 27% of the universe.

03:35Now, both of them are invisible to us.

03:38And not just invisible to our eyes, like infrared.

03:41It's that we literally can't detect them in any way.

03:44We can only assume that they exist based on how they influence gravity,

03:48changing entire galaxies and all the large-scale structures of the universe.

03:52We basically made them up, because it was the only way to explain how our world works.

03:58Dark energy is uniformly distributed across space and time.

04:02And we're still not sure what exactly it is.

04:05Some theories say that it could be a property of space itself,

04:09quantum fluctuations, or even a new type of field or particle.

04:13But all we have for now is an invisible energy that pushes the universe to move very fast.

04:19If one day we learn more about it, this will help us predict the entire fate of our world.

04:25Depending on how exactly dark energy works,

04:28the universe may continue expanding and growing indefinitely.

04:32Or maybe one day, it will experience the big rip,

04:35where all matter will be completely torn apart.

04:38Okay, here's to hoping we're not all around for that.

04:42Meanwhile, dark matter, also invisible and yet to be proved,

04:46works the opposite way.

04:47It's not energy that accelerates things.

04:50Instead, it's more like a glue that tries to hold everything together.

04:54It's a type of matter we can't detect because it doesn't emit, absorb, or reflect light.

05:00We don't even know what particles make up this thing.

05:02We still can't catch them.

05:04At first, we thought it might be made up of regular heavy particles,

05:08like the one that makes up our world.

05:10But after years of research, they haven't found even a single one.

05:14So now they think, maybe it's actually made up of ultralight particles,

05:18millions of times lighter than anything we know.

05:21And because of that, we can't even notice them properly.

05:25So now, astronomers try to detect not the particles themselves,

05:29but waves that they could leave as they move through space.

05:32But we believe that it exists,

05:34because if it didn't, our galaxies wouldn't hold together.

05:38Dark matter helps them form, grow, and rotate.

05:42So, about 85% of our world is made of something unknown.

05:46All of this is incredibly mysterious and needs a lot of research.

05:51But that's what we know now.

05:53Maybe in the future, we'll discover something

05:55that will completely change our perception of the universe.

05:59That's what happened to Albert Einstein.

06:01In the early 20th century,

06:03most scientists, including Einstein,

06:04believed that the universe doesn't actually move.

06:08They thought it was static,

06:09neither expanding nor contracting.

06:11That's because, to us, it feels like it doesn't really move.

06:15Back then, scientists didn't have powerful computers or telescopes

06:19that could detect all the little changes

06:21in the positions of stars and supernovas.

06:24When Einstein developed his famous

06:26General Theory of Relativity in 1915,

06:29his equations actually suggested

06:31that the universe should either be expanding or contracting.

06:35This didn't really make sense to him.

06:37To fix this calculation flaw,

06:39he decided to introduce a new term,

06:42the cosmological constant.

06:44It was like a repulsive force

06:45that counteracted the attractive force of gravity.

06:49Essentially, it meant that,

06:50while gravity tries to push everything together,

06:53some force or energy helps to balance this out

06:56by pushing everything apart.

06:58Sounds familiar?

06:58Then, in the 1920s, astronomers Edwin Hubble and Georges Lemaître

07:04found out that the universe isn't static.

07:07It actually expands.

07:08They noticed a slight reddish tint from the distant galaxies.

07:12And this tiny hint meant that other galaxies were moving away from us.

07:16After that, Einstein scratched out the cosmological constant.

07:21Interesting how he was later ashamed of this assumption,

07:24calling it his greatest blunder.

07:25He didn't even know that he was 100 years ahead of his time,

07:29accidentally discovering dark energy.

07:32Now, the cosmological constant is back again,

07:35just in a new form.

07:37Something similar happened with dark matter.

07:40Scientists have already started noticing

07:42that something doesn't add up back in the early 20th century.

07:46They saw that galaxy clusters didn't have enough visible mass

07:49to hold them together,

07:51which means there must be some unseen mass

07:54that helps to make up for it.

07:56And that's when it got its name, the dark matter.

07:59This stayed unresolved and unproven for many years.

08:02And then, it was finally discovered by Vera Rubin

08:05when she was observing galaxies and their movement.

08:08She realized that outward parts of galaxies

08:11move almost as fast as their central parts.

08:14This doesn't really make sense.

08:16The outer part should be a bit slower.

08:18This became the first official proof of dark matter

08:21which boosted its research.

08:23There are still many things left to be discovered.

08:26But maybe one day,

08:28we'll understand what is this invisible part of our universe

08:31that makes it ring.

08:33That's it for today.

08:34So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,

08:36then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

08:39Or if you want more,

08:40just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.

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