MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

(MINISTERUL EDUCATIEI SI CERCETARII STIINTIFICE)

A SSIGNMENT FOR OBTAINING THE PROFICIENCY

CERTIFICATE FOR ALUMNI CLASSES WITH
INTENSIVE STUDY OF

ENGLISH

(Lucrare pentru obtinerea atestatului de competent lingvistic pentru

absolventii claselor cu studiu intensiv al limbii engleze)

Coordinating teacher: Prof. TONE MONICA

Student: SIMION SORIN GABRIEL, XII-B

BUCHAREST,
2016

HOW DOES THE UNIVERSE WORK?

BUCHAREST,
2016

Table of Contents
ARGUMENT........................................................................................................................................................ 1
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................ 2
SPACE , SOLAR SYSTEM and BEYOND ......................................................................................................... 3
Space ............................................................................................................................................................. 3
Our Solar System ,Planets, Moons and Dwarf Planets ..................................................................................... 3
Kuiper Belt .................................................................................................................................................... 6
Exoplanets -Planets around other Stars ........................................................................................................... 6
Galaxies......................................................................................................................................................... 6
Pretty strange stuff in space ............................................................................................................................ 7
Nebulae - The Dust of Stars............................................................................................................................ 7
Beyond Our Solar System .............................................................................................................................. 8
Beyond Our Galaxy ....................................................................................................................................... 8
UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF SPACE .............................................................................................................. 9
What are the Mysterious Noises from Space? And What is Dark Energy? ...................................................... 9
Are we alone in the Universe? ........................................................................................................................ 9
Where are the White Holes? ......................................................................................................................... 10
Why does Titan Have an Atmosphere? ......................................................................................................... 10
What are the Fermi Bubbles?........................................................................................................................ 10
Where Are the Missing Baryons? ................................................................................................................. 10
Where do High-energy Cosmic Rays come from? ......................................................................................... 10
Where Did Saturn's Rings Come From? and Where did galaxies come from? ................................................ 10
NEW DISCOVERIES and NEW TELESCOPE TECHNOLOGY ................................................................ 11
How did we get here?................................................................................................................................... 11
God Particle' Higgs Boson............................................................................................................................ 11
Latest Secrets of Mars ................................................................................................................................. 11
NASAs Space Telescopes .......................................................................................................................... 12
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS ............................................................................................................................. 13
BIBLIOGRAPHY & RESOURCES .................................................................................................................. 14

ARGUMENT
Far from the Earth's surface, beyond from what it seems a huge dome dotted with stars,
spanning the infinite universe, reality which seems sprung from the most fantastic and disturbing
dreams. Hidden by the barriers of time and space, the universe was most of the time unknown,
unexplored, remaining beyond the possibilities of human knowledge.
Since ancient times man has contemplated the night sky, wondering: What is the sky? What
laws govern the motion? But the only thing he could do was to observe the approximately 6,000
stars visible to the naked eye and write down their positions in so-called constellations.
I feel like explorers who are at the edge of a new frontier. I want to know more. I want to
know why the universe is expanding faster and faster, why galaxies stay together rather than
apart, why less than 5 percent of the universe is ordinary matter made of quarks, electrons and
neutrinos, the rest being dark matters (23 percent) and dark energy (72 percent).
The idea of a universe that does not end, because nobody knows for sure if the universe is
finite or infinite, disturbs me and makes me dizzy, especially in our little world, where we are
used that everything has margins and endings .Therefore, the most troubling questions that I ask
myself about the world, are:"How was the universe created?","How does the universe work?
These are some of the most obsessive questions about the birth of the universe and the
appearance of life.
After millennia of looking at the sky, millennia of religious debate and centuries of scientific
research, the universe still has so many mysteries that human endeavor to discover, it seems like
counting the grains of sand in a desert or sea water droplets.
These are some of the many reasons I chose these subjects as my project. I can find the time
to think about the questions of existence and the functioning of the universe despite my school
activities.
I do not have a clear answer about the subject, but it helps me think therefore I have been
interested in the structure of and the way the universe works for a couple of years.
This paper aims to scan our knowledge about the universe and the enigmas still to be solved.

INTRODUCTION
I sometimes ask myself difficult questions.
What does the universe mean? How big can space be? What does limits mean? Where did
time start and where will it end? Nobody has ever been able to give responses to these questions.
However, I have to admit that many misteries have been solved and we have better explanations.
People did not imagine until recently that the space is huge and the matter consists of much
more than the Earth. The advances in telescope construction and technology have enabled a
much closer study of the universe. What is the Universe? It is everything that exists.This seems
to be a clear explanation. And more and more things seem to exist.
Starting with the dimension, there are 2 theories: both planets and stars have been formed
independently or they have expanded from a smaller common volume. It has been proven that
the universe is expanding. The speed of this expansion is considerably larger than it had been
thought.The system is expanding quickly. Older theories claimed that there were only a few
galaxies. However, the advances have proven the opposite: their number is huge in the universe
and we can find more and more. Even the theory about the solar system has spectacularly
changed. Planets such as Pluto have been classified as dwarf planets and there seems to be plenty
of them in our system.The definition of the planet has changed and even stars seem to orbit a bit
around planets.There have been spotted a series of strange phenomena such as the unexplained
noise from distant parts of the univers and white holes, energy of a nature opposite to that of
black holes.The theories are continually developing.
However, from Earth we cannot observe everything in the Universe. Some things are dark
(brown dwarf stars, planets, and Dark Matter) and we cannot see them. Additionally, there are
parts of the universe whose light has not yet reached us in this part of the Universe. And because
light travels at a set speed we actually look back in time when we look into the cosmos.
There are many questions associated with the creation and evolution of the major constituents
of the universe. A basic question astronomers must address is, how did the universe create its
first stars and galaxies? How did they influence subsequent galaxy, star and planet formation?
This is an important question, because these later objects are made of elements that can only
have been created by the first generation of stars.
It is still unknown whether the universe created black holes with the first generation of stars
or whether these wierd objects were created by the first generation of stars. As black holes
represent the most extreme physical conditions of space-time and generate some of the most
energetic phenomena following the Big Bang, they are good material for testing the theories of
the universe.
Our universe is old and large, and expanding outwards every day. This universe, the dark
energy that seems to be behind it, and other questions like the exact nature of the Big Bang and
the early evolution of the universe are among the questions of cosmology.
The universe is filled with stars, galaxies, planets and more, and there are some mysteries
like dark matter to be solved by astronomers and scientists have signaled some of the major
discoveries of our universe.
Let us talk more about about the subject.

SPACE , SOLAR SYSTEM and BEYOND

Space
Have you ever seen the stars in the sky without watching the Moon? Probably from the
beginning of our existence we have wondered what the lights in the sky mean. Thousands of
years ago, the earliest civilizations observed the universe. Man noticed what happens in the sky
because the Sun, Moon and stars gave indication of coming seasons to farmers and hunters. The
sky helped in navigation especially for nomads and sailors. And many ancient civilizations
thought the sky gave signs of life, war, earthquakes, the fate of kingdoms...and more. Since the
invention of the telescope, we have been able to "see" further away and study stars and galaxies,
as well as many of the more mysterious objects in our Universe.
Space is a rocky place. The biggest space rocks are asteroids. Asteroids are made up of rock
and iron like the four planets closest to our sun, but they are much smaller. All the asteroids put
together would be smaller than our moon. Asteroids are different from comets, which are mostly
rock and ice. Comets have tails.
Asteroids are more like planets and moons. Scientists often call asteroids minor planets.Some
asteroids even have moons. When the Galileo spacecraft flew past asteroid Ida in 1993, scientists
were surprised to find it had a little buddy. They named the tiny moon Dactyl.Most asteroids
orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter. This area is called the asteroid belt. There are millions of
asteroids -- and one dwarf planet, Ceres.
Our Solar System , Planets, Moons and Dwarf Planets 1

Our solar system is made up of a star - the Sun - eight planets, 146 moons, plenty of comets,
asteroids and space rocks, ice and several dwarf planets, such as Pluto.
The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

MERCURY

VENUS

EARTH

MARS

JUPITER

SATURN

URANUS

NEPTUN

PLUTO

The sun is the closest star to Earth, a hot ball of shining gases in the center of our solar
system. Its influence goes far beyond the orbits of distant Neptune and Pluto. Without the sun's
intense energy and heat, there would be no life on Earth. The connection and interactions
between the Sun and Earth determines the seasons, ocean currents, weather and climate. It is the
center of our solar system and though it is special to us, there are billions of stars like our sun
spread across the Milky Way galaxy.

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/solarsystem

Mercury is closest to the Sun. Neptune is the farthest. Remember the order of the planets like
this: My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Neptune.
Planets, asteroids and comets orbit our Sun. They travel around our Sun in a flattened circle
called an ellipse. It takes the Earth one year to go around the Sun. Mercury goes around the Sun
in only 88 days. It takes Pluto, the most famous dwarf planet, 248 years to make one trip around
the Sun.

Moons -- also called satellites are generally solid bodies, and few have atmospheres. Most
of the planetary moons probably formed from the discs of gas and dust circulating around planets
in the early solar system.Moons orbit planets.
4

Earth has one and Mars has its two small moons. In the outer solar system, the gas
giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune have numerous moons. As these
planets grew in the early solar system, they were able to capture objects with their large
gravitational fields. Mercury and Venus don't have any.
Most moons in our solar system are named for mythological characters from a wide variety of
cultures. Right now, Jupiter has the most named moons - 50.
Uranus is the exception. Uranus' moons are named for characters in William Shakespeare's plays
and from Alexander Pope's poem "Rape of the Lock."

There may be dozens of dwarf planets in our solar system. Pluto is the most famous dwarf
planet. Discovered in 1930, it was long classified as our solar system's ninth planet. Pluto and its
busy system of moons orbits the sun in the Kuiper belt, a region of icy objects beyond Neptune.
According to the International Astronomical Union (I.A.U), which sets definitions for
planetary science, a dwarf planet is a body that:
Orbits the sun.
Has enough mass to have a nearly round shape.
Has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.
Is not a moon.
The main distinction between a dwarf planet and a planet is that planets have cleared the path
around the sun while dwarf planets tend to orbit in zones of similar objects that can cross their
path around the sun, such as the asteroid and Kuiper belts. Dwarf planets also are generally
smaller than the planet Mercury.
The first five recognized dwarf planets are Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea.
Scientists believe there may be dozens or even more than 100 dwarf planets waiting to be
discovered.
The I.A.U recognized Pluto's special place in our solar system by designating dwarf planets
that orbit the sun beyond Neptune as plutoids. Eris, which orbits far beyond Neptune, is a plutoid
while Ceres, which orbits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is a dwarf planet.

Kuiper Belt
The Kuiper Belt is made up of millions of icy and rocky objects that orbit our Sun beyond the
orbits of Neptune and Pluto. Astronomers think some comets come from the Kuiper Belt.
Astronomers think the frozen objects in the Kuiper Belt may indicate the origin of our solar
system - sort of like how fossils tell the story of dinosaurs on Earth. Scientists think the gravity
of big planets like Jupiter and Saturn attracted all these icy objects to the edge of our solar
system.
It's hard to say exactly what's going on in the Kuiper Belt. Even the biggest of the Kuipet
Belt Objects is smaller than the United States and it is billions of miles away where the Sun's
light is weak. They are very hard to see even with the most powerful telescopes. Kuiper Belt
Objects are so hard to find that it took more than 40 years to find one after a scientist worked out
where they were.
Exoplanets - Planets around other Stars
Until the 1990s, scientists only knew of planets in our own Solar System and at that point
accepted there were nine planets. As telescope technology improved, however, two things
happened. Scientists discovered exoplanets, or planets that are outside of our solar system. This
began with finding massive planets many times larger than Jupiter, and then eventually finding
planets that are rocky even a few that are close to Earths size itself.
The other change was finding worlds similar to Pluto, then thought about the Solar Systems
furthest planet, very far in our own Solar System. At first astronomers began treating these new
worlds like planets, but as more information came in, the International Astronomical Union held
a meeting to better figure out the definition.The result was redefining Pluto and worlds like it as
a dwarf planet.
Did you know that about 200 planets have been discovered around distant stars? The first
planet found to be orbiting a star like our Sun was announced in 1995. Since then astronomers
have continued to find new planets outside of our solar system, at a rate of more than one new
planet every month!
The star and its planet orbit around each other. The planet moves in a wide orbit, while the
star just appears to oscilate slightly. By measuring the Doppler shift of the light coming from the
star, scientists can detect the tiny motion caused by the planet. Most of the distant planets were
discovered this way.If we are lucky, some of the planets can pass in front of their star. This
blocks out some of the light that we usually see from the star, making it more difficult to see. It's
like a solar eclipse, but the planet only covers a small part of the star. Only a few planets outside
our solar system pass in front of their stars.All of the distant planets are too far away to see
directly. We can only see their effect on the star that they orbit.
Galaxies
During the early 1900's, which is not very long ago, astronomers did not know that there
were other galaxies outside our own Milky Way Galaxy. When they saw a small point in the sky
through their telescopes, they called it a nebula. When examined closely, some of the nebulae
had a spiral shape. So astronomers at first called these "spiral nebulae". These nebulae were all
believed to be part of our Galaxy, our community of stars.
Edwin Hubble studied the "spiral nebulae" and found that they were composed of stars.
These nebulae were not nebulae at all, but other groups of billions of stars held together by
gravity - galaxies! Suddenly, our universe was much bigger. We realized that our Galaxy was
just one of many billions of galaxies in the universe.Hubble studied galaxies for a very long time,
and after seeing many, many galaxies, he realized that he could put them into groups based on

their shape: spirals, ellipticals, or irregulars. His work helped us to understand that the
appearance of galaxies depends on our point of view, and on what's happening in the galaxies.

Pretty strange stuff in space

There are some things that not even the strangest science fiction stories have dreamed. Some
things are just so weird that even astrophysicists don't know what they are.
When stars die they go out in many different ways. When normal stars, like our sun, die they go
by throwing off their outer parts and leaving behind a White Dwarf. When really massive stars
die they often blow up in a huge explosion called a Supernova. Depending on how massive a star
was that went supernova, a Neutron Star or a Black Hole may be left behind as something left
beyond the star's life.
But there are still stranger things in space. Not very long ago astronomers did not find an
answer to the mystery of Quasars. These objects look like stars but are much farther away than
stars in our galaxy and they are much brighter.
There is also a phenomenon that has caused much excitement and wonder among
astronomers called Gravitational Lensing. This is where really massive things, like galaxies and
crowds of galaxies, actually change the lights path.
But one of the strangest things in space is the mystery of Gamma Ray Bursts. These are what
seem to be random bursts of gamma rays, you know the radiation that made the Incredible Hulk.
They come from every direction in the sky, they never repeat, and they are very energetic
Nebulae - The Dust of Stars
Why would we call nebulae stardust? Because the gas in nebulae is used to make new stars,
and dying stars create nebulae from their gas. While stars are made of very hot, dense gas, the
gas in nebulae is cool and spread out. Water is at least 1,000,000,000,000,000 times as dense as
the gas found in nebulae.
Nebulae come in a variety of shapes. But their appearance is usually due to the type of
energy source which is lighting them up. There is a lot of gas that we can't see in the Galaxy.
Something must happen for the nebulae to be seen.
So, what happens to make nebulae glow? It depends on the type of nebulae. Some are
involved in the formation of new stars. These large groups of new stars are called HII
regions. The young stars found in HII regions are extremely hot and give a lot of energy for
lighting up nebulae. Some nebulae are created by dying stars: supernova rests and the planetary
nebulae surrounding white dwarfs.

Beyond Our Solar System

Our sun is one of at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, a spiral galaxy about 100,000
light years across. The stars are arranged like a pinwheel with four major arms, and we live about
two-thirds of the way up one of them. Many if not most of the stars host their own families of
planets. More than a thousand of these extrasolar (or exoplanets) have been discovered and
thousands more are awaiting confirmation.
All of the stars in the Milky Way orbit a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center, which is
estimated to be some 4 million times as massive as our sun. Fortunately, it is a safe distance of
around 28,000 light years away Earth. The Milky Way covers a galactic orbit at an average speed
of about 514,000 miles per hour (828,000 km/hr). It takes about 230 million years for our solar
system to make one revolution around the galactic center.
Beyond Our Galaxy
The Milky Way is part of the Local Group, a neighborhood about 10 million light years
across, consisting of more than 30 galaxies that are gravitationally connected to each other.
Aside from our galaxy, the most massive one in this group is Andromeda, which appears to be
on course to collide with the Milky Way in about 4 billion years.
Scientists studying galaxies observed that the stars in the outer parts are orbiting the galactic
centers just as quickly as the stars further in, a violation of Newton's well-established laws of
gravitation. They deduced that something other than the stars and clouds of gas and dust known
to comprise galaxies was providing extra gravity lots of it. They calculated that there must be
five times as much of this mysterious dark matter, detectable only by its gravitational pull, as
there is of the matter we already knew about.
The Local Group is only one of many, many groups of galaxies, and they are all moving
away from each other as more and more space appears between them. This means the universe,
itself, is expanding. That discovery is what led to the theory of the Big Bang origin of the
universe.
Scientists expected that the gravitational attraction of everything in the universe would limit
the rate of expansion, and eventually the expansion would stop or even reverse. But in the 1990s,
scientists discovered that the expansion is actually getting faster. The force responsible for this
surprising acceleration was named dark energy. No one is sure what it is, but one possibility is
that it is energy contained within the vacuum of space.
Since matter and energy are equivalent (as expressed in Einstein's famous equation, E=MC 2)
scientists have been able to calculate that whatever dark energy is, it comprises about 68 percent
of everything in the universe. Dark matter accounts for another 27 percent, leaving only five
percent for protons, neutrons, electrons and photons in other words, everything we see and
understand.
Scientists calculate that there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, each
having a lot of stars. On a very large scale, they form a complex structure, in which vast number
of galaxies surround huge gaps.

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF SPACE

For thousands of years scientists have tried to understand the mysteries of the night sky.
Strange noises from the depth of space, unexplained gas bubbles circling the earth, and
mysterious moons are just three of the unexplained space mysteries scientists are trying to solve.
So far, world wide universe still contains many mysteries that modern science has not yet fully
explored. But with what we know about the universe, there are many facts that we have to feel
surprised. Here are the things like that.
What are the Mysterious Noises from Space?
In 1977 a radio signal from space was detected. Lasting at least 72 seconds, the Wow! Signal
came from near the Sagittarius constellation. However the brief burst of radio waves has yet to
be repeated on record.In 2014 NASA sent a balloon covered in microphones into space. When it
returned it had recorded long noises and intrerrupted ones. While these could simply be gravity
waves or vibrations from the balloon itself, it's not surprising that many have taken the noises to
be alien.
What is Dark Energy?
Dark Energy is responsible for a huge part of the universe's composition. Yet we know very
little about it. In the late 90s scientists hoping to examine the slowing rate of universal expansion
found the opposite was actually true- expansion was accelerating, seemingly thanks to
undetectable Dark Energy.One theory to explain this is Quintessence, which hypothesises that
there is a negative energy field made of Dark Matter which overpowers gravity, causing matter
to repel away from each other. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes most of the
universe's mass
Are we alone in the Universe?
This question is as old as humankind itself. Today we know of over 1700 planets around
other stars and thousands of boddies that could be palanets. Do any of these planets have
conditions that would support life? What conditions favor the formation of terrestrial-class
planets in developing planetary systems? Before we can determine if there are other planetary
systems capable of supporting life, we must first find them. 2
In 1996 US President Bill Clinton publicly announced that fossilised microbes had been
found in a fallen Martian meteorite. Scientists did not agree and they said there were fossils that
could be the result of nonbiological processes.In spite of this NASA claimed in 2015 that we are
likely to have proof within 30 years.In 1961 the astronomer Frank Drake created an equation to
estimate the number of civilizations in our galaxy. Following this there could be anywhere
between 2 and 50,000 civilisations.

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics

Where are the White Holes?

Einstein's equations suggest space should be home to white, as well as black holes which
throw out matter.Though mathematical logic supports this, we are still looking for evidence of
their existence.One suggestion claims they have the same radiation levels as Black Holes,
meaning we may have mistakenly recorded them as a black, rather than White Holes.
Why does Titan Have an Atmosphere?
Though Titan may not be the biggest moon in our Solar system, it is the only one to have an
atmosphere.Extending 600 kilometres above the moon, the atmosphere is composed primarily of
nitrogen, making it similar to Earth's. As such it is seen as a key place to search for signs of
life.Some believe the atmosphere could have formed due to the planet's distance from the
sun.This follows that during formation volatile gases became trapped in ice on the cold
moon,and later created an atmosphere.
What are the Fermi Bubbles?
Two huge bubbles of gamma ray emissions were discovered above and below the Milky Way
in 2010.Stretching over 50-000 light-years the bubbles, the incredibly bright bubbles spread over
half the visible sky, however their cause is unknown.Previously hidden by a fog of gamma-rays,
one theory states that the bubbles could be expanding jets of matter sprayed from Black Holes
Where Are the Missing Baryons?
While 95% of the universe is composed of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, the remaining 5%
is made up of Baryonic Matter- the term for particles such as proton and neutrons. However
scientists have only ever been able to record half of this matter, meaning 2.5% of the universe is
seemingly missing.In 2012 scientists discovered a gas cloud surrounding the Milky Way. With a
temperature equivalent to 400 times the surface of the sun, they suggested the missing particles
could be hiding similar dense clouds across the universe.
Where do High-energy Cosmic Rays come from?
High-energy cosmic rays end life by colliding with Earth's atmosphere. Each carrying tens of
millions the amount of energy created by the Hadron Collider, if understood they could provide
us with an entirely new branch of physics.Yet we don't know where they come from.In 2007
scientists believed these rays, like their low-energy correspondents, were made from protons,
which were accelerated by super-massive black holes. Alternatively, they may have began life in
the Milky-Way as atomic nuclei expelled by ancient starbursts.
Where Did Saturn's Rings Come From?
Stretching over 73,000 kilometres the rings around Saturn have been the source of
disagreement for decades.One theory states the matter circling the planet is the rests of a moon
which could have collided with an object or been split by the planet's tidal stresses. However
others believe that the rings are constantly being refilled. This is supported by the discovery that
one of the rings, known as the E-Ring is frequently refreshed by material thrown out by
cryovolcanoes on a nearby moon.
Where did galaxies come from?
There are two theories as to how the galaxies began.One suggests that stars and planets
formed individually, before gravitating into groups to form galaxies.And the other states that
huge areas of gas and dust condensed into galaxies, before fragmenting into smaller groups
which eventually became separate galaxies, including our Milky Way.Though telescopes show
10

us the early days of the universe, in order to answer this mystery we would need an instrument
able to capture the universe just 1 hundred million years old.

NEW DISCOVERIES and NEW TELESCOPE TECHNOLOGY

How did we get here?3
In order to understand how the universe has changed from its initial simple state following
the Big Bang into the magnificent universe we see as we look at the night sky, we must
understand how stars, galaxies and planets are formed.
We now know that our universe has a light structure. The galaxies and groups of galaxies
that make up the visible universe are concentrated in a complex structure that surrounds a
network of enormous cosmic voids. However, in addition to the "normal" matter that makes up
the visible parts of the universe, scientists have discovered that there are vast amounts of unseen
matter. This matter makes up aproximately 27% of the matter-energy content of the universe,
while the visible pieces represents only about 5% of the total. Clearly, if we hope to understand
the structure of the universe and the processes by which it formed and evolves, we must first
understand the distribution of this important but unseen dark matter and the ways in which it
interacts with and influences normal matter.
Though astronomers have been studying stars for thousands of years, they have been able
only for the last 35 years to employ instruments that detect light across the entire
electromagnetic spectrumfrom radio waves to gamma raysto peer into the dusty clouds where
stars are born in our own Galaxy. If we want to understant how the universe makes starsand
planets that orbit them todaywe must continue these studies with ever more powerful
telescopes.
God Particle' Higgs Boson
In 2012, scientists confirmed the detection of the long-sought Higgs boson, also known by
its nickname the "God particle," at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle
accelerator on the planet.
The recently discovered Higgs boson, which helps give particles their mass, could have
destroyed the cosmos shortly after it was born, causing the universe to collapse just after the Big
Bang. But gravity, the force that keeps planets and stars together, might have kept this from
happening, scientists say.
Latest Secrets of Mars
These days, in their search for life in the universe NASA confirms evidence that liquid water
flows on todays Mars.New findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide
the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.Using an
imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes
where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These things seem to grow and then get
smaller. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade
in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus
10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics

11

Our quest on Mars has been to follow the water, in our search for life in the universe, and
now we have convincing science that validates what weve long suspected, said John Grunsfeld,
astronaut and associate administrator of NASAs Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water is flowing today on the
surface of Mars4
NASAs Space Telescopes
The Hubble Space Telescope is a large telescope in space NASA launched Hubble in 1990.
Hubble is as long as a large school bus. It weighs as much as two adult elephants. Hubble travels
around Earth at about 5 miles per second. That is as fast as driving a car from the East Coast of
the United States to the West Coast in 10 minutes.
Hubble faces toward space. It takes pictures of planets, stars and galaxies. Hubble has seen
stars being born. Hubble has seen stars die. It has seen galaxies that are trillions of miles away.
Hubble also has seen comet pieces crash into the gases above Jupiter.
Scientists have learned a lot about space from Hubble pictures. The pictures are beautiful to
look at too.Hubble has helped scientists learn about our solar system. The telescope observes
comets and planets. Hubble even discovered moons around Pluto that had not been seen before.
The telescope has helped scientists understand how planets and galaxies form. Galaxies contain
billions of stars. A picture called "Hubble Ultra Deep Field" shows some of the farthest galaxies
ever seen. Pictures from Hubble help scientists learn more about the whole universe. Because of
Hubble pictures, scientists think the universe is almost 14 billion years old.
Hubble has spotted black holes. Black holes suck in everything around them. They even suck
in light. And Hubble has helped scientists learn more about explosions that happen when huge
stars burn out.
In 2009, astronauts flew to Hubble on the space shuttle. This was the fifth time astronauts
went to Hubble. They went to fix parts. They also put new parts and cameras in the telescope. So
it is working very well. Hubble will not be fixed again.. In 2015, Hubble turned 25 years old.It
still takes beautiful pictures of objects in space
Today NASA is building another space telescope. It is called the James Webb Space
Telescope. It will be bigger than Hubble. Webb will not orbit Earth as Hubble does. Webb will
orbit the sun in a spot on the other side of the moon. The Webb telescope will be able to see a
different kind of light than the light Hubble sees. Webb will help NASA see even more of the
universe.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release

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FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
From what I have studied I came up with to the following conclusions:
Our ideas about the nature of space and time have changed and they are sometimes similar to
the science fiction ones.
It is difficult to answer the question of how the universe works. There are a lot of effective
things in astronomy and we have new explanations concerning the evolution of the universe and
we now know the nature of matters content. However, some questions still do not have an
answer. We have to be creative and think whether rules of a different nature could govern empty
space, black holes as opposed to those that apply to the dense matter from which the Big Bang
started.
Scientists are constantly trying to find evidence and explanations using modern technology
which helps them to find better answers.
The mans evolution is slow. We used to have simplistic theories such as the fixed position of
the Earth, which was thought as the center of the universe. Four-five hundred years ago the
theory of the Earth revolution round the sun was accepted.
During the last century, we have discovered amazing facts about our universe. Processing the
facts the new technology has given to us we have built clearer explanations and new concepts
such as the invisible dark matter which threatens to gather all the galaxies in a huge catastrophic
collision, a kind of a Big Bang the other way round. The ideas of matter, time and space fails in
front of the recently discovered phenomena. There is a major challenge and we are forced to find
reverse if not entirely re-built theories. Our task is to think about both opposite and new
directions. Can we think about time and spaces distruction? Will these unavoidably lead to our
distruction? Things seem to depend on the speed of the transition.
Is the end of the Universe near? There are three alternatives:
The Big Crunch. Everything is governed by gravity and the Universe ends up in a point, all
the matter being gathered there.
The Big Rip. The opposite is true. The Universe expands surprisingly quickly, repelling
forces govern everything.The gravitational attraction disappears.
The Big Freeze. It is a mixture of the above mentioned theories.The system neither condenses
nor expands at a high speed, it expands slowly and it goes on and on and any activity disappears
due to freezing. It seems to be the most feasible theory.
The development of technology, going beyond human limits and time as we understand it
now or as it will go further, will show things more clearly.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY & RESOURCES

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Randolph
Greene (Publisher:Random House LLC, New York: Vintage Books, 2004);

The Elegant Universe:Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate
Theory by Brian Randolph Greene (Publisher:W.W.Norton & Company,February
1999);

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen Hawking
(Publisher:Bantam Dell Publishing Group,1998);

A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (initially published on January

10, 2012 by Free Press);

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum;

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/;

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/solarsystem

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release

http://www.bbc.com

https://www.ted.com/speakers/brian_greene;

http://www.astronomia.go.ro/stiri.html;

http://www.scientia.ro;

http://www.descopera.org/;

http://teostie.ro/stiinta/7-mistere-neelucidate-de-stiinta;

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