Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Astronomers could recently identify one the most distant tightly and gravitationally bound clusters of millions of stars with the help of James Webb Telescope (JWST). These may oddly be relics consisting of the first and consequently oldest stars of our universe, although it’s difficult to measure their ages.

“JWST was built to find the first stars and the first galaxies and to help us understand the origins of complexity in the universe, such as the chemical elements and the building blocks of life. This discovery in Webb’s First Deep Field is already providing a detailed look at the earliest phase of star formation, confirming the incredible power of JWST”, explains a researcher.

Human minds have always been sensitive to the origin of their only planet.

To add to their queries, the Universe has never been the same since its origin, with many subtle changes occurring every second.

An expanding Universe gets literally different in every matter, be it the distance of one cosmic entity to another, the relative flow of radiation, matter, neutrinos, existence of dark energy or simply temperature; all of this changes significantly.

What is the Universe?

The universe encompasses four main components: space, time, matter and energy, as they were all created during the Big Bang from a single point of unimaginably high temperatures and density i.e., singularity, at least 13-14 billion years ago.

Most astounding feature rests in the fact that the energy held in all of these components leads to a change in volume and density.

It can be understood as follows: The Universe was comparatively hotter in its past and will be cooler in its future, would have been smaller or compact in the past and will be relatively huge in the future, it had been more uniform pertaining to its gravity and is rather heavier and discrete at present.

Most of the Universe is what the naked eye cannot see, spread across a probable 90 billion light years.

However, with the help of certain laws of physics plus advancements to those theories, measurements and simulations, we can now draw our much-unknown past and where we are heading.

Yes, the Big Bang that has enjoyed the limelight quite often and the ultimate fate that awaits us.

Are there stages in evolution of Universe too?

There is a chronology for Universe too, that suggests the proposed past and future of this cosmic marvel based on the mysterious ways it behaves:

Inflationary era: this timeline preceded the Big Bang and is claimed to add to its causation. At this time, the Universe underwent a rapid expansion, doubling its size for at least 80 times in every fraction of a second.

Fueled by a puzzling form of energy that invaded empty space, grabbed any particle present therein and expanded taking temperatures of very early Universe to almost absolute zero.

“Cosmic inflation is a big eraser. Any trace of the initial conditions of how it got started get diluted because of this exponentially large expansion. Any trace of the circumstances that led to inflation are erased by inflation itself: No matter where it starts, it ends up in the same places”, explains a Researcher.

Primordial Soup era: All of this energy soon metamorphosed into particles, antiparticles etc., because of possible collision, ending the inflationary era and leading to the infamous Big Bang.

As it cools, this creation of particle-antiparticle becomes difficult but annihilations continued. Therefore, barely 2-3 seconds after the Big Bang, all antimatter vanished leaving behind only matter.

Further radioactive decays and other nuclear reactions could pave the way for hot (but towards cooling) and ionized plasma full of photons, atomic nuclei, neutrinos and electrons.

This era begins with the hot Big Bang and constitutes particle interactions and reactions.

Plasma era: This third phase starts with the Universe cooling down from billions of degrees to just thousands so that a stable form of neutral matter can sustain. From the dominance of Universe with radiation to just normal and dark matter, this phase arrived around 380,000 years post the Big Bang.

Dark Ages era: This newly formed neutral matter particularly as the cosmic dust, is fully capable to block visible light and hence the name Dark Ages.

From around 200 years after the Big Bang to 550 million years post it, the re-ionization of inter-galactic medium happened with an increasing rate of star-formation and galaxy clusters.

Stellar era: This is the first time our Universe became transparent and receptive to starlight.

With loaded energy, by normal as well as dark matter, new galaxies continue to be created while the existing ones continue to widen, merge, grow all alongside attracting more matter into them.

It is to note that dark matter is a little understood entity that is bizarre enough to not absorb, emit, or even reflect electromagnetic radiation.

But the available free gas inside respective galaxies drop only to decelerate this star-formation, only the dark energy density dominates in the Universe now.

Dark Energy era: As soon as the dark energy takes over in this final stage of our Universe, any new formation stops and the cosmic objects can no longer command gravitational bound except the pre-existing gravitational relations, of course.

Weirdly, these objects find themselves speeding and irreversibly drifting away from one another, culminating into lonely existences in the era of nothingness.

Possible ending scenarios of current Universe

What era are we currently in?

The point is that the Universe entered this final phase 6 billion years ago, even without us noticing when the Sun and its solar system was born.

Alas, most of the events capable of defining our Universe’s troubled past have already passed.

Is there a supposed ultimate fate of the Universe? Can it be evaded?

In fact, there are many plausible fates chalked out by astronomists and astrophysicists.

Following the phases mentioned above, the individual distant structures like galaxies or galactic clusters will further merge to form a giant elliptical galaxy.

The present stars may die while new stellar formation may slow down, leaving the planets spiraling around their parents or its remnants walking towards decay because of gravitational radiation.

Even the inescapable black holes may eventually decay because of Hawking radiation.

Towards the disputed end, only black dwarf stars with their scarce masses may remain, disconnected from each and unable to start a nuclear reaction to sustain.

In essence, our beautiful, colorful universe that appears so rich and accessible with recent technological success may eventually turn into a void.

However, our Cosmos has taught us in the past to be ever creative.

With our basic understanding of its functioning being far from complete, many profound cosmologists believe that we may be missing something major in reading the Universe.

Perhaps the eventual end would lead to another Big Bang, rebirthing a new Universe like a phoenix.

In another scenario, the universe may just end with neither rebirth nor death, the universe where the physical laws allow something so rare.

Maybes is all we have; with many imaginations one can envision but not derive onto.

By Alaina Ali Beg

I am a lover of all arts and therefore can dream myself in all places where the World takes me. I am an avid animal lover and firmly believes that Nature is the true sorcerer.

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