Enroll Physics XI Sindh Board Course
The size of the universe is one of the most basic questions astrophysics asks. It might be impossible to answer, but that doesn’t stop scientists from trying.
The observable universe is a sphere that’s roughly 28 billion light years across. This means it’s about a 1026 m diameter.
The Big Bang
Scientists believe that our universe was created by a very large explosion called the Big Bang. This explosion flung energy at the speed of light, creating all the matter and energy that exists in our cosmos today.
Astrophysicists believe that the energy in our universe began at a singularity, an infinite concentration of energy. This density is so extreme that it can’t be described by physical laws, but astronomers know that this is the point from which our universe emerged.
The Big Bang happened around 13.8 billion years ago, and this explosion created everything in our universe. Stars, planets, galaxies, and even the Earth grew from this initial explosion.
Since then, scientists have discovered a wealth of evidence to support the theory of the Big Bang. Among the most compelling is the fact that our galaxy and other distant galaxies are expanding at an incredibly fast rate.
The Milky Way
The Milky Way is a massive galaxy that contains many billions of stars. These stars are grouped into clusters that vary in size and number of members.
The clusters are subdivided into three main categories: globular clusters, open clusters, and stellar associations. Globular clusters contain tens to thousands of stars and are among the brightest objects in the sky.
In contrast, open clusters are loose collections of young stars that are not tightly grouped together in a gravitational field. They are very luminous, but not as luminous as globular clusters.
These are important because they can provide a means to study the solar motions of the individual stars in the clusters. The dispersions of the velocities of the stars in a cluster can be used to estimate its population and kinematic history.
Another useful technique is the detection of dust in the clusters and galaxy by infrared observations. The cool, ionized dust reflects radiation at long wavelengths that can be detected by infrared telescopes.
Galaxies
Throughout the universe, billions of galaxies form from vast accumulations of stars, gas and dust. They’re bound together by gravity, and dark matter holds them in place.
Galaxies can be a variety of sizes and shapes, from small dwarfs to giant supergiants with hundreds of trillions of stars. They can also be shaped by gravitational interactions with other galaxies, including colliding ones.
Astronomers study how galaxies form and evolve using data from telescopes. This allows them to compare the different types of galaxies over the course of the universe’s 13.8 billion-year history, and find out how they have changed.
Galaxies are a complex system of stars, dust, gas and dark matter that’s constantly interacting with each other to shape them. As a result, galaxies can be categorized as irregular, spiral and elliptical.
Black Holes
Black holes are a type of structure in space that have a strong pull on matter. This makes them very dangerous to be around.
A black hole is a region of space in which the gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape. This is why they are so dark and can only be seen with telescopes.
Originally predicted by Albert Einstein, scientists know that black holes are created when giant stars collapse. But they also might have formed from other processes that are still unknown.
Most of the black holes that we know about are what are called ‘stellar’ (around the mass of a single star) or ‘supermassive’ (billions, if not billions, of times the mass of the sun). These colossal black holes are located at the centers of massive galaxies, such as the one at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.