Did you know that the universe might actually be a hologram?
Or a supercomputer?
Here are 8 theories about the universe that will blow your mind!
8.
White Holes
White holes can’t be studied because they don’t necessarily exist.
They are just a hypothetical region of space-time, but if you think about it, if there are black
holes, why not white holes too??
Theoretically they would be the opposite of black holes and constitute a major portion
of the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the universe.
(Or not, because maybe even dark matter doesn’t exist!).
Just like black holes are believed to consume matter, white holes could be spewing matter.
Black holes have such a strong gravitational force that not even light can escape.
Once matter passes the point of no return what happens to it?
Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes evaporate mass by emitting radiation until
they ultimately disappear.
But, more recent research suggests that white holes could be connected to black holes.
A physicist from Aix-Marseille University in France, Carlo Rovelli proposed that shrinking
black holes can’t just disappear, so it makes more sense to have a theory that explains
what happens to them using quantum mechanics.
When a black hole evaporates to the point it can’t shrink any further, because space-time
can’t be squeezed into anything smaller then the black hole would become a white hole.
So when black holes die, they become white holes.
Or in a way, maybe white holes are the “other side” of a black hole.
All the matter that the black hole is consuming could be coming out of the white hole in another
dimension or in another universe.
Even microscopic white holes could be extremely massive and could finally explain where dark
matter comes from.
Dark matter, is just that, it is invisible and doesn’t emit, reflect or block light.
The only reason scientists think it’s there is because of gravitational effects on other
things such as stars and galaxies.
White holes wouldn’t emit any radiation and would be invisible.
No white holes have ever been detected so for now, it is just an idea.
7.
Ekpyrotic Universe
Also known as the “cyclic universe” this theory was proposed by Professors Justin Khoury,
Burt A Ovrut and several others in 2001.
They propose that the universe was created by a hot big bang, produced by the collision
of a brane, again b-r-a-n-e in space with another plane.
Our universe is one of a pair of universes that collided, unlike the Big Bang theory
which believes the universe began from a singularity.
The effect of the collision resets the universe.
From there, it expands for billions of light years (the same way as the Big Bang) until
it contracts back to the Big Crunch.
The speed and energy of that reduction creates another massive collision and the universe
is reborn again, and again, for infinity, hence the name of the cyclic universe.
Ekpyrotic Universe comes from the Greek meaning “born out of fire”, and it is strongly
based on String Theory.
Physicists proposing this theory believe that there have been many Big Bangs and Big Crunches
and the energy from the death of one, creates a new one.
It can also account for where the dark energy comes from.
Before our universe, the universe was cold and dark with branes moving around in a 5th
dimension.
When the brane waves collided with each other, the energy from the “slam” of the universe
created the heat and particles and “hot universe” we have today.
Our twin universe might still be out there, just in another dimension.
6.
The Universe is a Giant Supercomputer
The German scientist, Konrad Zuse, is credited with building the first programmable computer
and to everyone’s surprise, in 1967 he proposed that the entire universe is a computer!!
So did Ed Fredkin!
They thought the universe could be a cellular automaton that uses black and white grids.
They argued that the universe has a set of rules and precision such as planetary movements
and natural cycles that make it seem like our universe is a programmed system.
Every aspect of the universe can be described by mathematics.
A living cell is like a biochip and even our brain is a computer with a memory.
However, regular computers can’t quite compete with explaining the universe.
They store information in bits, made up of series of 0s and 1s.
A quantum computer doesn’t use bits, but qubits, meaning that it is more flexible.
Quantum computers can better simulate the universe than classical computers because
they can have mixed signals.
Oxford professor of quantum informatics, Vlatko Vedral believes that the main building blocks
of everything aren’t particles of matter, but bits!
The same as for computers.
He says that even subatomic particles are made up of trillions of 0s and 1s.
When matter interacts it is the same as happens when bits transmit logical combinations between
each other.
Professor Seth Lloyd, a pioneer in quantum physics from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology says that “quantum computing allows us to understand the universe in its
own language.
He is credited with inventing the world’s first quantum computer, which relies on atoms
and electrons instead of microchips.
He says the universe is a giant quantum computer, operating on the principles of quantum mechanics.
Just like a quantum computer, physical processes involve the exchange and processing of information.
The universe is so efficient, we might already be living in “The Matrix” and we don’t
even know it.
5.
Bullet-Time Theory
The Bullet Time effect is also known as the “frozen moment” and makes it seem like
time has been suspended.
Made super famous in the movie The Matrix, it is an expensive slow motion effect!!
You can see complex karate kicks and flying bullets, shattering glass, all kinds of things
so that the scene moves at a normal pace while other things are slowed.
Ever since the Matrix, it has become a popular expression.
So what does this have to do with the universe?
Some scientists are proposing that something similar may just be happening to us.
We believe the universe to be expanding at an ever-accelerating rate, but it needs a
force to cause it.
Physicists blame the mysterious force of “dark energy” but where did this come from?
The speed at which the universe is expanding, is supposedly still increasing, but that might
not be true.
Physicists from several universities in Spain, lead by Professor Jose Senovilla, believe
that time itself is changing and slowing down, not the rate of expansion of the universe.
Professor Senovilla says that dark energy might not exist at all.
The fact that the universe is expanding might just be an illusion and it is time that is
changing.
In their paper published in Physical Review D, they say that our universe is resting on
a 4-dimensional brane- that’s b-r-a-n-e, that floats through a higher dimension of
space.
Time is the 4th dimension that is degrading into a spatial dimension.
This means that time is slowing down until the point where our universe will be frozen
in time.
This theory can explain why galaxies are moving away from each other at a faster and faster
speed.
The light has traveled for so long that we are not observing their present state, but
something that happened a long time ago.
The expanding universe is just the effect of time slowing down, solving the mystery
of dark matter or dark energy because it never existed at all!!
If the Spanish scientists are correct, this means that to an outside observer, eventually
our time will have stopped, frozen like the bullets and the shattered glass that we see
in the movies.
4.
Biological SETI
SETI stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and is a project that is doing
just that, using technology like radio telescopes and signal detectors to search for alien life.
There have been many SETI projects over the years but perhaps the most famous is the Wow!
SIgnal.
When Jerry Ehman, a project volunteer witnessed a strange signal by the telescope he circled
the printout and and scribbled Wow!
In red pen.
For many it is proof of extraterrestrial life, but the signal has never been detected again.
It is all to answer one of humanity’s biggest questions.
Are we alone??
For some scientists from the National University of Kazakhstan, there is no need to search
for alien life in the sky because it is already written into our own DNA.
Vladimir Shcherbak and Maxim Makukov argue that DNA is one of the most durable constructs
in the universe.
If intelligent life were sending a message, it would be more effective to code it in our
DNA, rather than send something like radio transmissions.
A signal in our genetic code would be a message that could not be accounted for by Darwnian
Evolution.
Hence the term “biological SETI”.
They also point out how amazingly logical the human genome is.
They believe that something as straightforward and logical, probably came from an advanced
being, and appears that it was invented outside the solar system several billion years ago.
Instead of life developing as a result of random processes, extraterrestrials had a
hand in it.
So there could be other life in the universe, and they could be the reason we exist.
The question remains, if ET’s designed life, who designed them??
3.
Simulation Theory
Also called the simulation hypothesis, this theory proposes that our reality is actually
an artificial simulation run by an advanced supercomputer.
Many scientists, and pioneers in technology such as Elon Musk, argue that what we experience
as reality is actually a giant computer simulation created by a more sophisticated intelligence.
In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrum from Oxford University said that advanced civilizations
with supercomputers might want to run simulations of their ancestors, which would be us, and
we wouldn’t even know it since technology is so advanced.
His paper “Are You Living In a Simulation?” is published online and you can read it if
you’re interested.
In 2016, scientist Neil DeGrasse Tyson said the odds of our universe as a simulated reality
are about 50-50.
But Elons Musk said in 2016 that “there’s a billion to one chance that we’re living
in base reality”.
If it sounds a lot like The Matrix, that’s because it is!
The reason this makes sense to some is because of current trends in technology regarding
virtual reality, computing, and artificial intelligence.
There are Tech billionaires in silicon valley hiring scientists to help us break out of
the simulation.
The goal is to develop computers with consciousness and also to detect glitches in the Matrix.
As the program continues to run, problems will emerge.
Philosophers argue that strange and bizarre events could be a simulation and someone,
somewhere is running multiple instances to see which scenario works out best in other
universes.
While this would be helpful to explain strange things that are going on, research in quantum
physics and quantum mechanics makes it seem like the universe is just too complex for
a simulation.
What do you think?
Let me know in the comments below!
2.
The Universe is a Hologram
An international study has provided some evidence that our universe could actually be a very
large hologram!
Physicists studying the aftereffects of the bing bang trying to explain certain irregularities,
determined that they could explain it as a hologram where all information that makes
up our 3D reality (plus time) is contained on a 2D surface.
It’s like watching a 3D film on a 2D screen.
We can see height, width, and depth even though the back of things is no longer there.
Put another way, a hologram is a representation of a system using fewer dimensions, but can
still have all the information from the original system.
Maybe our universe is just one big holographic picture show projected onto a 2D surface.
String theorists believe that everything we perceive as reality, is the vibration of these
2D strings.
Scientists presenting the theory of a holographic universe take that one step further.
Our entire existence could be a 3D projection on a 2D plane of information, but we can’t
perceive that 2D surface because of its scale.
This hologram theory could also explain the “black hole information paradox”, which
is, where does information go when it is consumed by a black hole?
Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University and host of Space Radio explains
that researchers have found that when a single bit of information enters a black hole, its
surface area increases by a very specific amount: the square of the Planck length (1.6
X 10^-35 meters on a side).
The strange thing here is that the surface area of the black hole grows in direct proportion
to the the object, not the volume which is very different from other known objects in
the universe.
It’s like the matter gets stuck to the surface instead of absorbed into the inside.
So do we live in a hologram?
We might not be able to tell the difference anyway!
1.
We Are Living in a Black Hole
In theory, time began when the Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago.
But before that?
Usually you say there was nothing, but for some scientists there wasn’t nothing.
There was an enormously dense speck or seed, trillions of times smaller than any we are
able to observe.
This particle most likely came from a black hole.
Like I mentioned before there may be more than one universe, creating black holes.
According to Einstein's theories, at the center (or the bottom) of a black hole there is a
spot that is infinitely dense and small, hypothetically called a singularity.
The problem is that in nature, things are usually finite leading scientists to believe
that matter in a black hole does reach a point where it compresses to this tiny speck.
(Not infinity).
Dr. Nikodem Poplawski from the University of Indiana, argues that this tiny speck starts
spinning and compressing, causing it to explode with a bang, or what he calls, the Big Bounce.
The black hole can be a one-way door between 2 universes.
If you were to fall into a black hole, particles that were once you, could get spewed out into
another universe!
So the universe that we know may have been forged inside a black hole that went through
a big bounce, and we’re are still hidden behind the black hole’s event horizon.
Ta da!!
Thanks for watching!!
What wild theory was your favorite?
Any other ones you would like to share?
Let me know in the comments below!
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Byeeee