Henchy Week 3 - A Brief History of Time

    This week, I finished reading Stephen Hawking's famous book A Brief History of Time. I would like to take this post to reflect on a few of the major questions that the book incites.

    One topic from the book is the continuous expansion of the universe. As scientists currently believe, our universe is continually expanding at an ever-increasing rate. Hawking explains how 'dark matter', a substance which scientists do not understand, fuels this phenomenon. Now, shortly, before I reflect on that point, I should also mention how physicists currently believe the universe is flat. Back to dark matter, if the universe is indeed flat, then it must be using astronomical amounts of energy to continually expand (which is inherently self-contradicting, but that is for another time). However, this conclusion is unsettling, because it is counter-intuitive and raises many questions such as "Where does this energy come from?" and "Where is the universe expanding into?"

    While Hawking was unable to provide solid scientific answers, as is the whole physics community, he gave an insight which many believe is crucial to resolving these contradictions. He mentions how the area beyond the universe may simply exist as a fourth spatial dimension which humans cannot perceive. This is, in fact, supported by the abstract mathematics of cosmological physics, where some formulas assume there are more than three spatial dimensions. Incredibly quickly, the principles of the cosmos seem to offer more questions than answers; this trend only continues.

    Consider other physical phenomenon which Hawking narrates on in his book. Take wormholes, for example. A wormhole is theorized to be passage where two points, incredibly far away, are connected through a 'portal'. However, if our universe is flat as mentioned, there is no mathematical way to connect two points with a distance shorter than a straight line between them. As one can see, not only is logic being violated by these contradictions, now the abstract mathematics that used to describe them is invalid also.

    One more example to think about is quantum entanglement. Commonly referred to as the most bizarre prediction of quantum and cosmological physics, quantum entanglement is a theory which claims atoms that have previously interacted are still affected by each other, despite any arbitrary distance and time between them, almost as if atoms have a 'DNA' which can be altered by simple interaction. This, I will leave to you to rationalize on your own.

    These phenomenon are incredibly complex, and I am only explaining the bare minimum, but it should still get the point across.

    Personally, the most ambiguous questions in physics, and by extension our universe, revolve around the existence of the un-observable. Our human architecture quickly fails us in the realm of physics, where we often need many more than three spatial dimensions. This begs the final, and most overwhelming, question, "How much will the universe allow us to know?"

    Finally, I would like to invite everyone who reads this to tell me what they think. I love hearing how others rationalize these extremely irrational topics, so please let me know what your explanations are in the comments below.

The Expanding Universe