Space: the last frontier
Made by: Giorgio Amantia - Damiano Garello - Filippo Raviolo
What's this site about?
It's a blog about Universe, since the birth of universe to the future of Space exploration.
- Space in general
- The Black Holes
- New Space Era
Our Universe
The birth
Everything started 15 billion years ago, with the event called Big Bang, a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded.
In fact subatomic particles(matter) and antimatter weren't in the same quantity and with the baryon asymmetry they created the first stars and galaxies.
According to the Big Bang models, the universe at the beginning was very hot and very compact, and since then it has been expanding and cooling down.
However, the theory has limits: density and temperature increase to infinity and the volume tends to zero, so that current physical theories are no longer applicable (singularity). This is why the theory is not adequate to describe the initial condition, but provides an excellent description of the evolution of the universe from a given moment on.
What is gravitational singularity?
A gravitational singularity or spacetime singularity is a condition where gravity is so intense that spacetime breaks itself down catastrophically, the initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, is also predicted by modern theories to have been a singularity.
A few minutes after the initial instant, when the temperature was about 109 celsius, neutrons combined with protons, forming the first nuclei of deuterium and helium in a process called primordial nucleosynthesis.
All cosmic evolution subsequent to the inflationary age can be described strictly by the ΛCDM model
What is dark energy?
Dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that is not directly detectable and spread in space, which could justify, through a great negative pressure, the accelerated expansion of the universe
It is estimated that it must represent a large part, about 68%, of the mass-energy of the universe
The Big Bang theory is based on two fundamental hypotheses: the universality of the laws of physics and the cosmological principle that on a large scale the universe is homogeneous and isotropic.
But what are inflation ages?
Inflation epoch is a theory that assumes that the universe, shortly after the Big Bang, went through a phase of extremely rapid expansion, due to negative pressure.
And ΛCDM model?
The ΛCDM model is a cosmological model that satisfactorily reproduces observations of Big Bang cosmology
Black holes
A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing has enough energy to escape its horizon.
Even the light, the electromagnetic waves or any type of matter can't get away from its radius.
Things that make black holes so interesting are their hidden mysteries and effects on the universe, for example the theory of "wormholes", spacetime tunnels that, theoretically, could connect two black holes or multiverses.
The concept of the black hole was theorized by a well-known physicist, named Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, only a year after the publication of the famous theory of general relativity by Albert Einstein.
So why is Stephen Hawking so famous? Is it enough to call him a mathematician, cosmologist, astrophysicist?
Black holes are Hawking's passion: He understands that the mass of a black hole determines the size of the space surrounding the singularity within which nothing can escape.
His studies of quantum mechanics and general relativity made him famous.
Thanks to him, his discoveries and his theories, in fact, black holes have stopped being just a fantasy.
Hawking said: "We are just an advanced race of monkeys on a planet less than a medium star, but we can understand the Universe, and that makes us something very special".
You don't have to think of a black hole as a vacuum that absorbs everything, the gravitational force of a black hole is the same as any cosmic object that has the same mass.
At the center of our galaxy is a supermassive black hole of several million solar masses and has been there for 13.5 billion years, and will remain there for many billions of years.Every once in a while, you'll suck an unlucky star that passes too close, but that's it.
The new Space era
The last space missions and discoveries.
On 25th December 2021 the James Webb telescope was launched from Kourou, in French Guiana. The telescope worked since the summer of 2022, the James Webb is designed to observe very weak and distant objects in the deep universe. He observed for example the farthest star known to us and the farthest galaxy known to us. However, one of its scientific goals is also the search for extrasolar planets and especially the determination of the chemical composition of their atmospheres - so as to identify clues to the presence of life on these worlds. The telescope is one of the most important objects launched in space and it could be very important for space exploration.
How can we use space discoveries in our everyday life?
During our life we use a lot of technology that, especially in the past, was used in space by astronauts. The most important examples are anti-scratch coating of the glasses that NASA have developed or also memory foam material of which many mattresses are made, another example of this technology are cordless device batteries. In fact this type of technology goes back to when in 1960. In my opinion the most important invention is "invisible" orthodontic appliances. The material TPA - translucent polycrystalline Alumina - was developed by NASA Industrial Application Center. Every year, from 1976, the list of the inventions that we use in our life is updated by Nasa
The program of N.A.S.A and E.S.A for the future.
In this period space exploration is going to a new step, in fact the human race is going to discover and explore Mars. In the future Nasa and Esa want to complete Mars exploration but there are a lot of programs that are going to be completed in the future like
JUICE for the study of Jupiter and the Galilean moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. The launch is scheduled for April 2023.
ATHENA , X-ray space telescope, successor to the XMM-Newton telescope. The launch is scheduled for 2035.
LISA, space observatory dedicated to the detection of gravitational waves. The launch is expected in 2037.
These are only some of the programs that Nasa and Esa want to develop in the future...
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