in the celebration of the Halloween season and a continuing tradition of
this channel going back to the early days here are 10 spooky things that the
universe does or may do that are currently invisible to us and we have no
control over number 10 dark matter while studying galaxies it
became evident to scientists that the visible material contained within them
couldn't account for the observed gravitational effects this led to a
conundrum either something was fundamentally wrong with our
understanding of gravity and physics in general with gravity already being in
murky territory or there were some unseen invisible almost entirely
nonreactive material in the universe that not only reacted only through
gravity but apparently constitutes the bulk of matter in the universe as much
as 85% while the existence of dark matter is fairly widely accepted within
physics it's not universally so and a small contingent of scientists believe
that instead there may simply be a problem with our physics on huge scales
this would not be unheard of Einstein's relativity came out of small
discrepancies found within classical Newtonian physics but if dark matter
does exist it's thought that it may be made up of nonbaryonic subatomic
particles that have yet to be discovered and they would be very difficult to
discover indeed if they only interact with everything else through gravity
gravity on the subatomic level is unbelievably weak but it's interesting
to think about the idea that you yourself right now are surrounded by an
invisible halo of non interactive material that we know almost nothing
about and there's a chance that we never will number nine dark energy just a few
decades ago it was assumed that the expansion of the universe would
eventually slow and stop due to gravity subsequent observations by the hubble
space telescope blew that out of the water and indicated that in the early
universe the expansion was actually slower than it is today the predominant
explanation for this is dark energy that drives the expansion of the universe to
faster rates and based on observation it can be estimated how much energy is
involved as it turns out a lot it's estimated that about 68 percent of the
universe is dark energy Dark Matter is about 27% and only about
5% is normal matter which actually means that normal matter is actually the
abnormal part of the universe but that's about all that is known what this energy
is and what it might imply are still mysteries possibilities are that it is
energy inherent to space itself space while it may seem like the ultimate
nothing is actually more of a something and may be able to have its own energy
which would be spread evenly across it since space is expanding or in other
words being created more of this energy should come into existence as the
universe ages and expands what all this means and even if we'll ever even know
what dark energy is remains to be seen number 8 the Great Attractor our galaxy
is unfortunately very difficult to see through when you look straight at it
through its plain step outside some night and look at the Milky Way it
stretches across the sky and we see it as a member of that galaxy sitting out
in a suburban location near spiral arm what's difficult is seeing through the
galaxies from our perspective as much dust gas and stars lay in the way behind
that mess however is something that we cannot directly see but we certainly see
the effects of it is the gravitational anomaly known as the Great Attractor the
Milky Way is located in a super cluster of galaxies the center of this super
cluster is obscured by the Milky Way but shows evidence of something with a mass
thousands of times the Milky Way lurking there astronomers see the effect of this
anomaly in the motions and redshifts of galaxies and clusters of galaxies over a
massive region of hundreds of millions of light years they are being attracted
towards the anomaly and seem to be being affected by a second phenomenon called
dark flow a non-random acceleration towards the attractor above what gravity
might be doing alone more recent work suggests that the attractor is a huge
cluster of galaxies at the center of the greater cluster not an unexpected state
of affairs but ideas like dark flow seem like an open door for further future
mysteries regarding the movements of galaxies number seven aliens and the
unobservable universe depending on who you ask intelligent life in the universe
is either very very rare or not on the one hand there's no reason
that earth should be special and there's no reason that we should be unique quite
the opposite it's our there are were or will be other civilizations in the
universe given the sheer number of chances for it to happen after all
they're an estimated 1 billion trillion stars in the observable universe alone
and that's just the observable universe we can only see part of it and we don't
know how big it actually is and it could even be infinite in which case there
aren't only aliens but copies of you or someday will be almost exactly the same
located an infinite amount of times across an infinite universe same goes
for any alien civilizations that might be out there point is it doesn't seem
likely that we would be alone whether the universe is infinite or not but
wherever we look we have yet to see a single shred of irrefutable evidence of
an alien civilization yet the fact that we exist shows that such things are
possible this inevitably leads us to the Fermi paradox the question of where is
everyone solutions to this range from the odds
being such that civilizations within a single galaxy rarely exists at the same
time or that advanced alien civilizations don't look like what we
envision them to or simply that the aliens are hiding their presence from us
along with tens of other plausible solutions to the paradox but say they're
simply hiding do they just wish to not interact with us or are they waiting out
there for us to venture into space if so what are their intentions number six the
invisible death from outer space about 440 million years ago a mass extinction
event occurred on planet Earth that seems to have been very different from
the other major mass extinction events that have happened here while there are
a number of hypotheses that might fit the cause of this extension one of the
worst earth has ever seen one idea that's consistent with the beginning of
the extinction cascade is that a high-energy gamma-ray burster
originating from far outside the solar system almost instantaneously burned off
half of Earth's ozone layer exposing surface or near surface dwelling
organisms to very high levels of ultraviolet light causing their
extinction one possible explanation for this is the occurrence of a hypernova
about 6,000 light-years from Earth while there is no solid evidence for the
occurence it merely fits the bill future gamma-ray bursts within the Milky Way do
pose a threat to life on Earth there are actually several different identified
types of gamma-ray bursts and depending on circumstances there are two ways that
can kill earth life one is the aforementioned rapid depletion of the
ozone layer but have coupled with a release of cosmic rays they could
irradiate the surface directly essentially killing a large portion of
the surface life of the planet through radiation sickness
this brings up a star known as WR 104 which may pose a threat this system
which is about seventy four hundred light years away
is set to produce at least one gamma-ray burst within the next 300,000 years if
the relativistic jet from this burst is pointed at earth which there is some
indication that it might be then it could pose a threat to earth and
eventually cause a mass extinction and we may never see it coming
number five pence per McMichaels the microbial world is notoriously
difficult to see at least without the right equipment but it's very evident in
such things as food spoilage and infections but we also know that some of
the microbes represent the epitome of resilience of planet Earth with species
that have been identified that can withstand very high amounts of radiation
orders of magnitude more than a human and even species that can completely dry
out and remain dormant for very long periods of time because of this
resiliency it has been suggested that microbes might be able to survive
traversing space inside rocks at least two other bodies in the solar system and
conceivably further while no evidence of this has yet been seen it's not that far
of a stretch to suggest that life might have appeared on bodies like Venus or
Mars just as easily as Earth in their past history or for that matter bodies
like Europa or even Titan this opens up the possibility that microbes from
another world might end up deposited on earth unseen or it's also possible that
life on Earth originated from somewhere else and was transported here who knows
where we are originally from number four outside the simulation one somewhat
vexing possibility with the universe is that it may not be real in the sense of
an actual universe but it's is a simulation on the one hand it
doesn't intuitively seem like one and if it were a simulation it seems rather
expensive and wasteful on the other hand if it's some kind of ancestor simulation
an argument put forth by Nick Bostrom that one of three things must be true
either the number of civilizations that can create such a simulation is nearly
zero or the number of civilizations that choose to do something like that is
nearly zero and if not those then it becomes likely that you do live in a
simulation so given that line of thinking if it is a simulation then
what's outside it who created it if any one given that we're in here and all of
that is out there it's unlikely that we'll ever know number three
vacuum decay the universe is permeated with quantum fields that essentially
hold reality together while most of these fields appear to be stable there's
one that might not be it's the Higgs field and its associated
particle and they're what land masked the universe what's uncertain about the
Higgs field is if it's actually stable think of it like this you were on a
mountaintop holding a bowling ball you roll the ball down the hill but it
becomes stuck say in a small valley or ditch there's plenty more mountain to go
down the ball just can't get there without something agitating and getting
it rolling again that may be the case with a Higgs field and it may be
analogous to a false vacuum it may appear stable but it has more energy
than it would like to have this opens up the possibility of it eventually
collapsing to a lower energy state one way for this to happen likely requires
an enormous amount of energy but another is via quantum tunneling could the Higgs
field tunnel spontaneously to a lower energy state possibly and if it did it
would be the end of the universe as we know it as the change in state
propagated through the universe at the speed of light it would leave in its
wake a universe with fundamentally changed laws of physics this might mean
that matter as we know it can't exist at all
or chemistry may be dramatically altered and any number of uncertainties might
create an entirely new reality but one thing is for certain life almost
certainly will not survive it number two the multiverse and many
worlds one of the most vexing questions within
physics today is if there is more than one universe much of the reasons for
this lies in interpretations of quantum mechanics but another part of the reason
for this thinking is that this universe given the hundreds of variables and
values that allow it to exist as it does looks a bit strange if a few things were
off then matter couldn't exist at all or the laws of physics and chemistry might
be radically different even the idea of time itself happening to move forward is
an open question as to why and all this happens to come together in just such a
way to not only allow the universe to coherent ly exist but for intelligent
life they exist within it that problem goes away in the concept of a multiverse
in that event there could be many or even an infinite amount of universes
some might turn out like ours the vast majority probably not some
could even just be black expanses where nothing much happens a fate that's
thought to lie for our universe in the very far future these hypothetical
alternative universes take several forms such as the aforementioned take on the
multiverse but also ideas such as the interior of black holes being gateways
to other spin-off universes but there may be more than that
there is also the many-worlds interpretation of the universe where
other realities are constantly splitting off from the universe leading to
different paths determined even by the most minor deviations there could be
many versions of you that eight different breakfast this morning or it
shows a different pair of shoes to wear while contentious these interpretations
end up more plausible in some ways than the idea of a single perfectly tuned
universe any way you cut it the universe is just weird number one in the future
no one will see much of anything we exist at a lucky time in the universe
one where we can look out and see stars and galaxies at least part of the
universe anyway and it's probably a good thing that we're here to photograph and
study it because in the far future it will be next to impossible to see much
of anything out there as the universe ages bright star formation will slow and
come to an end only the very longest lived stars the
red dwarfs will continue on but they are dimmed by nature and as they become the
sole functioning stars in the ever expanding universe the galaxies will
disappear from the skies as well themselves any civilizations present
during this era may not even know there's a universe out there at all they
would only see blackness and their ability to do cosmology will be severely
hampered they may not even be able to find out how the universe began the
state of the future universe has an interesting implication if one
hypothesis is correct we're actually very early in the game as far as
civilizations go thus providing a solution to the Fermi paradox the
question of where is everyone this could imply that over time the amount of
civilizations will rise and if old ones such as ourselves
don't go extinct there could be an explosion of intelligence in the
universe more or less right about the time that the stars start blinking out
to these civilizations the universe might mostly be a mystery then they
might never know how it all began thanks for listening I am science fiction
author and futurist John Michael Cody a currently wishing everyone a happy
Halloween I really just used the holiday as an
excuse to keep absurd amounts of candy around here at the science lair but I
always seem to find an excuse to do that anyway my teeth are screaming and fright
and so is my dentist and be sure to check out my books at your favorite
online book retailer and subscribe to my channels for regular in depth
explorations into the interesting weird and unknown aspects of this amazing
universe in which we live