A few years ago, astronomers believed that they fully understood the universe.Earth's physical laws seemed sufficient to explain distant phenomena. But today they are not so confident. We talk more and more about "new physics laws". Why?Incredible new secrets have emerged. The challenge of solving these problems is not entirely due to lack of information. In fact, a lot of astronomical facts have accumulated. However, there is uncertainty about its significance. Given the enormous size of the universe, it should still not come as a surprise.
The sun, the central part of our solar system, is more than 90 million kilometers from the earth. However, this solar system is only a small part of the Milky Way, whose diameter is about 100,000 light-years.
(A light year is equivalent to almost six trillion kilometers!) The entire galaxy may contain another 100 billion suns. The entire universe can have many galaxies. Yes, the "edge" of the universe may be twelve billion light-years away!
Astronomers discover that the entire universe is facing dilemmas for them. Think, for example, of our little corner of this universe, our solar system.
Mysteries in our solar system
The solar system of which our earth is a part has always presented mysteries. Although the ancients had some knowledge of the movements of celestial bodies, many theories have changed.
It wasn't until 1781, with the discovery of Uranus, that it was known that there were more than six planets in our solar system. Neptune was not found until 1846. And Pluto was only seen in 1930. But today, do humans really understand our solar system? Are they free from the mystery now?
Some officials say there may be another 10th planet in our solar system. An astronomer predicts its existence based on Halley's comet. He believes that an unknown planet attracts the comet and causes it to have an increasing orbit around the sun and explains a delay of "days" in its appearance every seventy-six years.
Then there are the asteroids. There are hundreds of tiny bodies, smaller planets floating between Mars and Jupiter. Where are they? Nobody is sure. Current theory says that these are things on a planet that never formed. Asteroids are called another "mystery of the sky".
So even now the knowledge of our solar system is uncertain.Most of our knowledge of the solar system has been acquired so recently that a book on the subject written just ten years ago would have been read in Latin or Greek.
But there are even greater mysteries that shake some old theories.
Quasars, Pulsars and "Black Holes"
According to Worlds Beyond Bear, "Of all the objects in the sky, none have been as confusing and irritating as the mysterious sources of energy called quasars." What are quasars?
"Quasar" is an abbreviated name for nearby star radio sources. (Quasi stella, derived from Latin, means “like a star.”) When quasars were first observed in 1960, they were nicknamed because they were considered distant stars. But it soon became clear that they were something else. Today, they are often thought of as small galaxies. Many books simply call them "objects". But what makes them exceptional?
The huge amount of energy quasars that are produced due to their relatively small size. Some emit about 100 trillion times more light and energy than our sun. It would be like a shining torch like a big city!
Then there is the speed of quasars. It is believed that all galaxies are separating at fantastic speeds. However, it is believed that some quasars move at even higher speeds. It's widely considered to be the farthest physical thing on earth, possibly up to 12 billion light years away. How are these estimates made?
Based on what is called "redshift". The light seems to travel in a wavy pattern. When passing through a prism, the longer waves produce a dark red color; the shorter ones are bluish. The process of "turning red" can be illustrated with a train whistle. As a train approaches you (causing sound waves to decrease), the pitch of the whistle seems to increase. However, after passing (and as the sound waves lengthen), the pitch decreases. Light waves behave in the same way. According to the "redshift" rule, objects leaving Earth have a longer wavelength and therefore produce a greater amount of redshift. On this basis, quasars are considered to be the most distant objects in the universe. But there is still more to the mystery of the quasar.
For some experts, they imply contradictions with Einstein's theory, on which most views of the universe are based. His theory says that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light. However, some scientists claim to have discovered that parts of a quasar move away from each other at ten times the speed of light.
Instead of saying Einstein is wrong, many now argue that the redshift rule is wrong. One argument is that quasars are indeed closer than they appear and that their redshift is the result of "ghostly stuff". Another claims that the weight of the quasar's material has changed over millions of years, giving a deceptive redshift impression. However, some astronomers are willing to accept the possibility that Einstein's theory, if not false, is incomplete.
The debate continues. What are the mysterious quasars? A solid response was not obtained. The mystery intensifies. But other celestial phenomena also confuse scientific brains.
There are pulsars, for example. They are generally thought of as neutron stars that periodically emit bursts of radio “noise”. Its discovery in 1968 was so unexpected that even experienced and well-educated astronomers initially speculated that the signals emitted by pulsars could come from men living in another world trying to contact ours.
In addition, there are questions about mysterious X-ray sources and so-called "lost matter" in space. According to current speculation, clouds of material in space can be absorbed by "black holes". What does it mean?
It is believed, and remembered, that this is largely speculated, that when a very large star "burns", its inner atoms collapse under enormous weight, resulting in a dense object. In theory, however, it maintains a strong gravitational field; no light can escape. The matter from the accompanying star is believed to be absorbed by this "black hole". So this argument goes "somewhere else" to an antimatter system, the researchers ask. The question also seems to be a mystery. And men have no answer.
Are the "new laws of physics" really necessary to answer the questions that have been asked in recent years? Some say so. But Oxford D. W. Swarm says that a new discovery usually does not require a "new law," but "generally shows that we have not solved some of the consequences of already known laws." The unexpected discovery of radio galaxies and quasi-star objects. . . are likely examples of such errors. As such, they are a dramatic reminder of the great gaps in our understanding of the behavior of large matter [such as stars, galaxies, and other similar celestial objects].