10 Amazing Facts about Our Universe ...

The Big Bang theory is the most widely accepted theory about the origin of our universe. According to this theory, the universe was a billion Kelvin when it was born and a second before it was born, the temperature is likely to have been 10 billion Kelvin.

Today’s universe is found to have an average temperature of only 2.725 Kelvin. Compared to the temperature at which it was born, it is decidedly cooling. Speculation is that the universe may well end in a Big Freeze.

Current estimates as with regards to the size of the universe pegs it at a width of 150 billion light years. Considering that it is expanding, it is expected to get even wider over the next billion years.

The universe is said to be 13.7 billion years old. However, this is pretty much a guess and comes with a 1% precision figure.

Considering that the earth is far from flat, this is certainly one of the most amazing facts about our universe. Based on Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, there are three possible shapes that the universe may take: open, closed, and flat. Measurements by WMAP on the CMBR have revealed a monumental confirmation – the universe is flat.

There are many structures to be found in the universe including- filaments, super clusters, and galaxy groups and clusters. The most common of all these are voids, or empty spaces.

There are many aspects of the universe that we simply cannot penetrate through. Although different wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum such as those of radio waves, infrared, x-rays, and visible light have aided our visibility, it is still severely limited.

To my mind, this is another of those amazing facts about our universe that is difficult to digest. One just imagines that there was a big bang and the position of the big bang would be the center of the universe, but that is not true.

The universe is expanding and all its members are moving away from each other. To bring matters closer home, even the moon is moving away from the Earth at the rate of 3cms per year.

Scientists have come to believe that to understand the mysteries of the universe we need to study in depth structures that are smaller than the atom.

I hope that these 10 amazing facts about our universe will give you a new found appreciation for the space we are living in and are a part of. The universe is larger than we can possibly imagine. And, there are many aspects of the universe that are likely to forever remain mysterious to us.

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