Space...

Tonight I had a very interesting conversation with my housemate, who is an astronomy student, about space and the unanswerable (or unanswered, as of right now) questions of space and astrophysics.


Things that are known:

1. The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

2. There was a beginning to the universe.

3. The Sun will die.


Questions I have that cannot (yet) be answered or proven:

1. Why is the universe expanding? I thought the universe was everything. What could it be expanding into, if it is already everything? Why at an accelerating rate? Will it ever stop expanding? Will it ever implode?

2. If the universe had a beginning, that seems to imply that it will have an end. Will the universe end? What will happen? Will there be new universes? Are there other universes?

3. The Sun is slated to "die" in millions of years. By that time, will humans still exist? If they do, will they have devised ways to artificially manufacture the effects of the Sun? What will the world be like then?


An interesting conversation:

Me: Talking about this kind of stuff makes me feel so small and insignificant. It kind of depresses me.

Jessica: I feel just the opposite! It's the daily things, the routines - walking to work, doing my laundry - that make me feel insignificant. Thinking about things like space and the universe make me feel like it all means something, like I'm a part of something bigger. The fact that there's something bigger out there and that I'm a part of it gives it all meaning, I think.

Me: Yeah, but when you die, the universe will just go on, like it went on for billions of years before humans, and like space will go on for billions of years after them. I mean, humans are a tiny part of time - only like six thousand years, right? And I'm only twenty years old so... I'm such a tiny part of that. And I feel like, after I'm gone, that part will be even smaller.

Jessica: But when you die, your body, or the elements of your body will decompose and become part of the Earth. And someday the Earth will implode, or something will happen, and all its tiny particles will be released into space, and then they'll become part of something else in the universe - join with other particles, even become new planets, maybe even new forms of life. So we started from stardust and also return to stardust. It's very hopeful, if you think about it.

Me: Hmm. I guess you're right.