The Entire History of Space, I guess
[Music] Earth and civilization as we know it has come a long way in the past 200,000 years and has experienced a multitude of changes. In that time, the human species has only existed for a mere 0.0015% of the immense 13.7 billion year age of the universe.
However, humanity has conquered some of the most daunting tasks in that time period. We have come from hunting and gathering in the fields of Africa to colonizing the entire planet in a time period that is relatively a blink of an eye on the cosmic level. Some of the greatest minds that ever existed have helped push modern civilization forward and achieve goals that were once thought to be impossible.
In just the past 150 years, we have gone from being stuck to the Earth's soil to landing on our closest cosmic neighbor, the Moon. Humanity's success is nothing short of spectacular. But on the universal scale, we may be rather insignificant. What would happen if we met an advanced alien species with technology more advanced than we could ever imagine?
A Type 3 civilization sounds amazing, but it's quite sad that none of us here right now could ever be alive to watch humans become a Type 3 civilization. But there is a way that you can experience what a Type 3 civilization could look and feel like right now from the comfort of your own home. If you're interested, I highly recommend you check out the game Star Trek Fleet Command.
Star Trek Fleet Command is a 4X MMO game set in the ever-expanding Star Trek universe. You can recruit legendary characters to crew iconic ships from over 50 years of Star Trek stories and send them on missions of exploration to expand your territory. I actually really enjoyed the open-world feel of this game, traveling across the incredible vast space landscape from Alpha to Omega Quadrant and just seeing the beauty of our universe through the game's stunning graphics was truly mesmerizing.
With a huge player base in a thriving community, you can make alliances and battle with people from all over the world. The game's latest update introduced wave defense, where groups of players defend a central point from waves of increasingly powerful enemies. This is an amazing way to socially interact in a way that transcends alliances. This new update also added the storyline of the aftermath of the temporal Cold War plotline from season 3 of Star Trek Enterprise, with new extras like 10x core Star Trek Enterprise themed missions and 10x side missions, as well as new Enterprise officers including Trip Tucker and T'Pol.
They've also added an immersive story set in the Kelvin timeline and are offering every new player 10 epic shards of Captain James Kirk for free using the promo code WARP SPEED, only available for new players to get started completely free. Traveling across the Star Trek universe, click the link in the description down below or scan this QR code to install the game on desktop or mobile and become a leader of a mighty alliance today.
In 1964, a Soviet astronomer by the name of Nikolai Kardashev introduced a hypothetical scale that could be used to measure a potential civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy this civilization can produce. It is known today as the Kardashev scale. The scale has three traditional types, but many extensions and modifications to the scale have been proposed since its creation.
The scale is logarithmic, meaning as we go on, the amounts of power the civilization has gets much, much more substantial. In 1964, Kardashev defined the three base levels of civilization based on the power available to them. Type one, the smallest of the original types, is also called a planetary civilization. This is most similar to our good old friend Earth.
Type one civilizations are capable of storing and using all of the energy which reaches this planet from its host star, which in our case is the Sun. This amount of energy would amount to an enormous 7 * 10^17 Watts. Notice how I said most similar, though, as our modern civilization here on Earth does not quite exactly fit into the Type One civilization category.
Yes, I know, we pathetic humans can't even fit into the lowest level of advanced civilizations. Rather than fitting into a Type One civilization, we humans lie on one of the extended types of civilizations: Type Zero. You see, when this scale was proposed, famous astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan produced a formula to define a certain hypothetical civilization's Kardashev rating.
This is that formula: "K" represents a hypothetical civilization's Kardashev rating, while "P" represents the amount of power the civilization uses and wants. A proposed Type Zero civilization will control approximately 1 megawatt or 1 million watts of power, which is minuscule compared to the amount of power we use on a daily basis. In 2015 alone, the total world energy consumption, 17.35%, would be approximately a Type 0.72.
Even as a civilization with 7 billion humans on our planet, 12 of which ventured to the Moon with spacecraft sent billions of miles into the abyss of interstellar space and plans to colonize Mars in the near future, we still only score a measly 0.72 on the Kardashev scale. According to Carl Sagan, humanity is going through a phase of technical adolescence, typical of a civilization about to integrate into the Type One Kardashev scale.
Michio Kaku, another brilliant theoretical physicist, suggests that humans may attain Type One status in the next 100 to 200 years, Type Two status in perhaps the next few thousand years, and Type Three status in 100,000 to 1 million years. This really goes to show the truly immense timescales it would take to advance to the next type of civilization. However, we are heading towards becoming a Type One civilization in the next couple of hundred years or so, and this is a huge step for humanity.
As a Type One civilization, we would have complete control over our own planet. Perhaps we could influence the weather, change the geological makeup of our own planet, and much, much more. However, even this amount of power is tiny compared to the next type of civilization: Type Two.
A Type Two civilization, also referred to as a stellar civilization, can control the total energy of its host star and transfer the energy throughout the entire solar system. One popular hypothesized device used to harness the entire energy output of a Type Two civilization's host star is called Dyson structures. You may have seen these before, as they are rather popular in science fiction. The name was coined by Freeman Dyson and is essentially a system of orbiting solar power satellites.
Basically, it's an insanely massive hollow sphere built around a civilization's host star to milk all of the energy from it. Zephyrus made a great video on this idea, and you should definitely check it out. I'll be sure to leave a link to it in the description, but back on the topic. Another rather exotic idea to harness energy for a Type Two civilization would be to funnel a star into a nearby black hole and collect the photons emitted by the accretion disk. Now, how a civilization could somehow deposit a star into a black hole is beyond me, but it is a means of energy nonetheless.
A Type Two civilization would not only build these supermassive structures but would control and live within them. They would control every single planet in their solar system, mine all the asteroids at their leisure, and essentially do whatever they want inside the solar neighborhood. The amount of power the civilization would have is remarkable.
What is nothing when compared to a Type Three civilization? A Type Three civilization, also referred to as a galactic civilization, can control the total energy of its entire host galaxy. The amount of power this civilization would have is truly frightening and is sort of in the realm of science fiction, but I'll cover it anyway.
You see, this civilization would function extremely similar to the way a Type Two civilization would work. It would harness the power of stars, mine planets and asteroids, and so on, but not only for one star, but for billions of stars. A civilization such as this would use planets and solar systems like Legos, building and deconstructing planets to build up their empire elsewhere in the galaxy.
The galaxy would seemingly become their playground, and everything they do and use is merely a toy. Harnessing the energy of quasars would be like hitting the lottery for them. The supermassive black hole at the center of their galaxy could be used as an energy source for a Type Three civilization.
Galactic real estate would become a reality, with planets, stars, or even complete solar systems being auctioned off by some supreme leader. Interestingly enough, this hypothetical galaxy may not even be noticeable if such a civilization did exist. All of the energy from the stars would be held and used for whatever the civilization may need.
This means all the starlight, gas, and elements in an entire galaxy would become like your kitchen pantry. If all of the matter in their entire galaxy was exploded for energy, an outside observer would view the galaxy to be completely invisible. It would appear as if there were a hole in the galaxy, or if they have colonized the entire galaxy, perhaps nothing at all.
There is a place in space known as the Great Void. At nearly 330 million light-years in diameter, the Great Void is one of the largest known voids in the entire universe and is commonly referred to as a supervoid. This region of space is seemingly devoid of life and galaxies as we know it. A region of space with such a massive size as the Great Void contains scientists' estimates that there should be at least 2,000 galaxies in the same space, but to date, there have only been 60 galaxies that have been discovered in the Great Void.
This is a mere 3% of the amount of galaxies that should occupy an area this large. So, where are they? Could it be Type Three civilizations completely dominating an entire region of space, milking a 330 million light-year wide region for resources? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and I'll be sure to respond to them as quickly as I can.
Thanks for watching! The universe is a mind-boggling place. Actually, I'm not even sure I can call it a place. NASA says the universe is everything, but what they really mean is that it contains everything: all of space, energy, time, and matter like you and me. But there's more to it than meets the eye, literally. All ordinary matter, like the particles that form us and everything else we can see, only comprise about 5% of the universe.
So far, that's all the stuff that makes up our stars, planets, and galaxies, and we've only been able to see about half of all of that with our telescopes. The rest is entirely invisible. It's as if the universe doesn't like being put under our microscope or telescope, to be more precise. Around 27% of our universe is dark matter, which emits no light or energy and can't be detected by conventional sensors and detectors. We don't even know what it's really made of, and to be completely honest, we're not even sure it exists.
We can only assume. To be fair, we have strong reason to believe dark matter exists. As early as the 1920s, astronomers hypothesized that the universe must contain more matter than we can see because the universe's gravitational forces appear stronger than the visible matter can account for. It's a simple matter of math.
Okay, probably not simple math, but you get the idea. As if this wasn't confusing enough, the remaining 68% of the universe is made up of dark energy. Just like dark matter, dark energy is purely theoretical. It popped on our radars in 1998 when the Hubble Space Telescope discovered that in the past, the universe expanded at a slower rate than it does today.
And if the universe is now growing at an accelerating rate, then there must be a force countering gravity and causing this acceleration. Wait, did I just describe repulsive gravity? As you can see, there's a lot of speculation when it comes to developing a blueprint for understanding the universe and everything in it. Even if we focus solely on the visible 5%, there's still a lot to unpack.
Back to the universe: it's a very confusing place, but subjects like math and physics make it easy for us to understand and appreciate the beauty in its chaos. Next time you find yourself gazing at a sky full of stars, take a moment and try to count how many you can see. Let me help you. On a clear night, there's about 6,000. But if we wanted to calculate the number of stars in the entire universe, first we'd have to count the galaxies.
Astronomers take very detailed pictures of small parts of the sky and count the galaxies in those pictures. They then multiply that number by the images needed to photograph the entire sky. Are you ready for the answer? There's approximately 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. Two trillion clusters of dust swirling in a mostly invisible universe harboring countless stars, planets, and even civilizations.
Our Milky Way galaxy alone is home to 100 billion stars. Using this number as a standard, we can predict that there are roughly 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. A staggering number, I know. It's about 10 times the number of cups of water in Earth's oceans.
In our galaxy, the Milky Way, every star has at least one planet orbiting it, meaning there are at least 100 billion exoplanets in our galaxy alone. Today, NASA has discovered more than 5,000 of them. The big question that has been haunting us ever since we developed the mental capacity to ponder our existence in this vast universe is still unanswered: are we alone in the universe?
Well, according to Enrico Fermi, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, considering the young age of our solar system compared to the much older age of the universe, interstellar travel should be easy to achieve. Given enough time, Earth should have been visited by intelligent aliens by now, if they did exist. This interpretation became known as the Fermi Paradox, and it provides no consolation to our lonely existence.
But what if life isn't as unique as we think it is? What if the universe is teeming with countless species far more intelligent than we are? Species that know of our existence and even visit us only to deem us fit or too primitive for interaction? Think about an ant colony that you happen to come across during your walk in the park. Would you try to communicate with them? It would be pointless, wouldn't it?
If you're having a bad day, you might even go out of your way to step on them. Maybe our entire existence is equivalent to an ant colony placed in this region of the universe by some sort of higher intelligence: an isolated experiment with no particular purpose. All right, I'll admit that's a bit dark. Let's bring some light back into the equation.
Light is the fastest thing in the universe, and in a vacuum, it can travel at speeds close to 300,000 km/s. To put that in perspective, light can circulate the Earth 7 and 1/2 times in just 1 second. Even at these insane speeds, it would take light 92 billion years to travel across the observable universe. Yes, that's where the measurement light-year comes from.
Light is strange. It's an electromagnetic wave of massless particles called photons that travel outwards in straight lines. But how can it travel around the Earth if it moves in straight lines? Maybe Earth is flat after all. I won't get into that right now, but I made an entire video about it.
You should check it out. Spoiler though: it isn't. While light does travel in straight lines, it can also be bent by gravity. Contrary to what we were taught in school, gravity isn't a force; it doesn't pull anything downward. Instead, it just curves the fabric of the universe.
If you're confused, don't feel bad; gravity has confounded the best of us. Winston Churchill famously said that gravity is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But we've put our best scientists on it, and while Newton gave us a good understanding of gravity, it was Einstein who cracked the code. To do so, Einstein first had to reimagine three-dimensional space by adding time to the equation.
The outcome is a four-dimensional construct called spacetime. A mass like the Sun warps this fabric by creating a valley, and then planets like Earth circle around the valley like a ball around a roulette wheel. This is what we call the force of gravity. Einstein had quite the imagination.
Before he was recognized as a genius, he worked as a patent clerk and had a lot of time to think about, well, time. In his Special Relativity theory, Einstein proved that time is relative to the observer, meaning that when an object is moving really fast, it experiences time more slowly.
For example, in 2015, astronaut Scott Kelly spent nearly a year on board the International Space Station, which meant that he was moving much faster than his twin brother Mark, who was on the Earth's surface. Based on Einstein's Special Relativity theory, Mark aged 5 milliseconds more than his brother did in space during this time. This is called time dilation, and while 5 milliseconds doesn't seem like much, at speeds approaching that of light, time dilation can have much more dramatic effects.
If a 15-year-old leaves Earth traveling at 99.55% the speed of light for 5 years, upon returning to Earth, they will find that they've aged only 5 years, while everyone else has aged 50. Mind-blowing, I know. But time dilation isn't exclusive to speed; gravity can also slow time.
The bigger the mass of an object, the bigger the warping of spacetime and the slower time moves. It's believed that time freezes entirely at the edge of black holes, at the event horizon. Who knows, maybe time even moves backward inside black holes?
Speaking of black holes, in the 1990s, the Hubble Space Telescope discovered that black holes aren't as rare as we thought they were. Almost every galaxy we know of, including our Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole at its center. We still don't know what they're doing there, but they must have played a significant part since they're at the heart of every galaxy.
Maybe galaxies gave birth to black holes or black holes to galaxies. You know, your typical chicken-and-egg situation, but on a cosmic scale. Observations from Hubble tell us that galaxies were born around 1 billion years after the Big Bang, and we know that the Big Bang was created out of a singularity: an infinitely small, hot, and dense point, which is the exact definition of black holes.
Could our universe have been born out of a black hole? It very well could have. Have you ever wondered what was there before the Big Bang? Was there a time before time itself? As creatures of time, it's hard to imagine a time without time.
Okay, this time I'm done talking about time. I'll leave this topic for another video. Here's one to make you gasp for breath: every atom of oxygen in your lungs, carbon in your muscles, calcium in your bones, and iron in your blood was created inside a star before Earth was born. Apart from hydrogen, every other ingredient in our body is made from elements forged by stars.
Stars are basically giant element furnaces. Their intense heat can cause atoms to collide, creating new elements like iron and carbon. Now, aren't you glad there are 200 billion trillion stars in the universe? If you're feeling overwhelmed by the true immensity of it all, you can take a step back and focus your energy inward.
There are around seven octillion atoms in a 70 kg (or 150 lb) body. That's 7 billion billion billion. And these atoms are made up of even smaller fundamental particles like electrons. The study of matter and energy at the smallest fundamental level is called quantum physics and, believe it or not, we still don't know much about it.
An electron, for example, can exist in two places at one time; it's called superposition. If we're made of electrons and other quantum particles, why can't we be in two places at once? Is there something I'm missing here? As I said, quantum physics is a mind-boggling field. But unlike dark matter and dark energy, at least we can observe quantum particles, right?
Well, we can, but it's a bit more complicated than you might think. One of the most bizarre premises of quantum theory is that the sheer act of observation can alter the observed reality. One of the most famous experiments in physics, the double-slit experiment, demonstrated that particles like electrons could have wave-like properties and suggested that simply observing the electron can dramatically affect its behavior.
Like most of the universe, it seems that electrons don't like being observed. They've been proven to be rather intimate with each other. Maybe that's why once interacting, subatomic particles can form unbreakable bonds, even if they're billions of light-years apart. It's called quantum entanglement and is still one of the many mysteries of quantum physics. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance," which sounds like an incredible name for a band, I'll admit.
Maybe diving into the world of subatomic wasn't such a good idea, but it was necessary. Finding a link between the small and the large will be the key to understanding everything the universe offers. And despite everything we know, we haven't even begun to scratch the surface.
At the end of the day, our existence in this cold and silent universe is as confusing as it is mesmerizing. But there's a certain kind of wisdom in not knowing. Maybe if we did, we'd have no reason to push the boundaries of our knowledge anymore. Or worse, we'd have no reason to look up at the stars and just wonder.
On a clear night, a piece of sky can be lit by as many as 6,000 stars. So, whenever you can, look above and enjoy the cosmic view. You never know what you might discover. Have you ever looked up at the night sky and pondered about your very own existence?
Maybe you were camping out with some friends or all alone, marveling at the big canvas of darkness plastered with countless glowing stars. Well, you're not alone. Looking above and contemplating the sheer immensity of the universe is something humans have been doing since the dawn of time. It's quite magical that recognizing you're part of something inexplicably huge and impersonal can elicit feelings that are so deep, reflective, and personal.
Whenever you find yourself lost in these pensive moments, know that the universe, this ancient organism that we were somehow born into, is calling you on a spiritual journey that is, in one way or another, meant to guide you through your deep and existential emotions and help you find your place in its cold yet comforting grasp.
The ancient Stoics understood precisely how immense our human problems could feel. They knew how a bad day at work could develop into a week of aggravation. They knew how a string of bad luck could become a gateway to depression. But they also knew how insignificant our problems really are in the grand scheme of things, and that once we fully understood this cosmic scale, we would truly become free.
So, if you're having a bad day or you just feel a bit out of sorts, find a quiet place and prepare yourself to witness the view from above for the first time. You're about to embark on a journey outside of your own body, a celestial adventure meant to help you understand the sheer size of our ever-expanding universe and, in the process, your place in it.
Because only when you look above will you be able to understand what's within. So take a deep breath and close your eyes. Your journey across the universe is about to begin. Wherever you are right now, imagine yourself slowly lifting out of your body and floating in the vicinity of the room you're in.
Observe your surroundings. You're no longer confined to the borders of your own body. Can you see yourself sitting there with your eyes closed, taking deep breaths? Looks weird, right? If you think about it, no one really knows you like you know yourself. People's perceptions of you are based on their own interactions with you. They have their own biases and judgments, and while some of them come close to knowing who you really are, none of them ever fully do.
Floating around in your room, you can finally experience your true self. You can observe your body without being inside of it. The room you're in and all its familiarity could very well feel alien to you right now. You may have grown up in this room, spent years developing your sense of self, and yet as you float around, none of it feels genuinely yours.
As the abstract feeling of detachment swirls through your mind, you suddenly zoom out to observe the countless houses in your neighborhood or the endless apartments stacked in towering skyscrapers. People just like you wake up every morning and carry on living in the same houses, growing up in the same streets, and leading similar lives.
It's funny how we could be so physically close to each other and yet know nothing of one another. How many people live in your town or city? How many of them do you really know? What are their dreams and ambitions, their fears and insecurities? Do you think they're that different from yours?
We tend to think that our human experience is so unique that no one—not a single person out of the nearly 8 billion of us on this planet—can begin to understand what we're going through. But the truth is, we're a lot more similar than we believe, and that should give us solace in the face of adversity.
Look at the houses in your neighborhood or the buildings stacked elegantly next to each other. They are all the same. As you witness this view from above, your heart will begin to fill with an unexpected warmth as you feel connected to every one of the humans inside those houses. It's like a piece of you lives in every single one of them.
A lot of the towns in the U.S. have populations of a thousand, and yet we still call them small. But aren't a thousand people a lot? Try to imagine that number on a football field or a basketball court.
Are these towns still considered small in your eyes? The United States is actually considered a nation of small towns. Out of a population of around 330 million people, data from the past decade shows that three-fourths live in cities and towns with fewer than 5,000 people.
So why, I ask again, is a thousand small? Continue to zoom out and you see the towns and cities that make up states, bound by imaginary borders. Or are they really imaginary?
There are around 40 million people living in California, basking in the golden sun of the Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, there are only about 732,000 people living an entirely different life in the cold of Alaska. The life of a Californian is very different from that of an Alaskan.
Even if both are just humans trying to make the most out of their puzzling existence, our history has also drawn some real blood-stained boundaries, separating us and forcing us to focus on our differences rather than our similarities. Wars have claimed millions of lives, mostly in the names of ideologies of separation and alienation.
As you slowly travel the globe from the American continent, you see how life can develop completely differently despite proximity. Throughout history, many countries fought internal civil battles and subsequently declared their own independence. South Sudan declared independence in 2011. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and Montenegro became its own state after separating from Serbia in 2006. Many more have separated and declared their independence, which makes you wonder how defined we are by the countries we’re born into.
Are you still breathing? Your journey through planet Earth is almost over. You've lifted from your body, away from your hometown, out of your home country, and now you're floating in the atmosphere of our tiny blue planet, perhaps aboard the International Space Station. In 24 hours, this tiny space station orbits our planet 16 times—16 sunrises and 16 sunsets.
Imagine looking at the Earth as you orbit its 40,075 km (or around 25,000 mi) circumference. Except for the Moon landing, everything that has ever happened in the history of humanity has happened on this planet. Everything we've ever experienced—every joy, every disappointment, every love, every broken heart—our entire human existence is presently confined to this rotating globe floating in the vastness of space.
And as it rotates at 1,675 km/h, time passes and washes away all that ever was and makes room for whatever there is to come. Our planet has existed for 4.5 billion years, but us modern humans have only been here for around 200,000 years, and civilization as we know it is only around 6,000 years old.
You and me, if we're lucky enough, we'll only get to experience around 80 more of those years. Everything that has happened before and everything that will happen after we can only imagine. The burden of our existence is nothing but a speck of dust in the cosmic hourglass.
Looking at Earth from above could be daunting. Astronauts that live on the ISS almost always come back to Earth with a fundamental understanding of what it truly means to be alive and what matters most in life. Take another long and deep breath; let your lungs fill with the magnitude of what you've already experienced and what you're about to experience.
We're going to journey further into space, deep into our solar system, and then into uncharted territory where no human has ever traversed. Leave all your human preconceptions behind and open your heart to the expanding universe as you finally break free from the Earth's atmosphere. Imagine yourself floating further to the edge of interstellar space, looking at our solar system as a whole—eight planets circling around a glowing star.
Each one of these planets has its own unique story, from Saturn's ringed beauty to the massive bulk of Jupiter and its Great Red Spot, big enough to engulf the entirety of Earth. But even Jupiter's incredible mass holds no candle to the centerpiece of our glorious solar system: the Sun. The star that holds our collection of planets together, our Sun is 109 times wider than Earth and makes up 99.8% of our solar system's entire mass.
Put everything you've experienced in perspective and then compare it to the sheer magnitude of our glowing star and let it sink in for a second. Let's take a step further and slowly leave the safety of our solar system. Observe as the Sun itself becomes a small particle, barely visible from our astronomical vantage point.
You look around you and notice the countless other stars—billions of glowing specks everywhere you turn. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth—more than 10,000 stars for each grain, in fact. Most of these stars have planets orbiting around them, just like our solar system.
If the primordial soup that spawned life on Earth managed to replicate on one of these countless planets, would it be similar to life as we know it on Earth? Would they wonder about their existence the same way we do? Would they understand how small and insignificant their problems are in the grand scheme of things?
Imagine alien civilizations fighting through their own existence, just like you and I. Imagine the struggle to exist in the universe every day—planets that harbor life, orbiting stars that make up galaxies, floating around alone in space. You are now leaving the Milky Way and venturing further out into the still and silent darkness of the universe.
Everywhere you look, there's a galaxy waiting to be explored—a galaxy that could harbor a star that might have a planet that somehow managed to produce life against all odds. One more deep breath, and you're now looking at the entire observable universe: one big organism that is at least 92 billion light-years wide.
Now that you've been able to observe the universe as a whole, it's time to slowly bring it all back in. Let's find the Milky Way among the hundreds of billions of galaxies out there. Let's find our Sun among the 100,000 million stars in our home galaxy.
We're finally back in the solar system, passing from Neptune to Saturn to Mars, and finally Earth. You jump from the ISS and burst through the atmosphere, then cross the imaginary borders that are meant to separate us. Find your country, your state, your street, and then your home.
Finally, look at yourself breathing, taking all that experience in. Take one last deep breath and open your eyes. Next time you're feeling down or the world seems to be taking too much of a toll on you, contemplate your existence and remember this moment, this feeling, this experience.
Let it remind you that whatever is weighing you down is only temporary—a minor setback in the grand cosmic scale. In the year 1609, Galileo pointed one of the first telescopes ever created up at the heavens, and what he observed sparked a revolution of curiosity that has been central to every single human generation since.
Galileo saw mountains and craters on the surface of the Moon, the arm of our Milky Way galaxy arching across the sky, and an endless universe riddled with countless stars. The mysteries of outer space were boundless, and the journey towards discovering them had only just begun.
Over 400 years later, and our obsession with the enigma that is space has only managed to intensify, fueling many great technological advancements that have made our ever-expanding universe seem smaller and its boundaries closer than ever. On the 25th of December 2021, NASA launched humanity's most powerful telescope yet. More than 30 years in the making, $10 billion spent, a successful launch, 50 intricate outer space deployments, and a distance of over 1.5 million km traveled from Earth.
The James Webb Space Telescope has finally delivered its first full-size images of our universe, marking the beginning of an era of space discovery that promises unique and unprecedented views from across our own solar system to the very heart of the universe. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST for short) has been designed to look more than 13.5 billion years into the past, to study the farthest and oldest regions of space, peering back into the early days of the universe.
Its aim is to look at the first galaxies that started forming and emitting light right after the Big Bang. It's no wonder that scientists often refer to telescopes as time machines. In them lies the power to see what our universe once was and perhaps answer one of humanity's most perplexing existential questions: how did we get here?
And right now, Webb is our best chance at finding an answer to that question. However, to fully understand what makes Webb so special, we have to travel back in time to the year 1990, when the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. The Hubble Space Telescope embarked on a mission similar to Webb's. Its purpose, just like Webb's, was to study the universe like it's never been studied before and to bring us closer to understanding our existence and our place among the stars.
Over the past 30 years, Hubble has brought us images of galaxies we never knew existed, star clusters and nebulae like we’ve never seen before. These images helped illustrate how, in the early days of our universe, just millions of years after the Big Bang, cold clouds of gas and dust evolved into swirling coalescent galaxies teeming with stars.
Sadly, that was just how far Hubble could see. In order to observe how these first galaxies were born, we needed a bigger telescope—one that wasn't just more powerful but that could also operate in the infrared. So just a few years after Hubble was launched into space, scientists began working on the next big telescope.
Today, Webb is 100 times more powerful than Hubble, and its ability to observe infrared light opens up a new universe of possibilities—literally. Ever since Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding, we've known that galaxies have been receding at faster and faster speeds. Light from these galaxies is stretched to longer wavelengths as it travels through space, which is why they're only visible through infrared.
Hubble, the telescope, is only able to see light on the visible spectrum, which means it's limited in the amount of information that it can fetch us about these earliest galaxies. But with Webb, we finally have the ability to observe them. To protect these infrared waves, Webb traveled more than 1.5 million km away from Earth's warm atmosphere to a very cold region in space that is protected from our planet's infrared radiation.
Built into this telescope are huge sun shields as big as a tennis court that protect it from the rays of the sun and help keep its temperature at -233° C so it can be cool enough to detect infrared radiation from the early days of the universe. This is the first time in the history of our species that we've been able to look at our universe with such depth and detail.
The first images NASA released on July 12th are proof that we've entered a new space frontier that is bound to bring us closer to understanding our place in this ever-expanding universe. Let's begin our journey back in time with the closest image Webb has taken. This is called the Southern Ring Nebula. It’s a planetary nebula in our own Milky Way galaxy, 2,000 light-years away.
Despite its name, a planetary nebula doesn't have any planets; the name is simply inspired by its round structure. A nebula is clouds of dust that are thrown out by the explosion of a dying star. You can see enormous clouds of gas thrown out by this red giant in the center of the image. This image utilizes Webb's near-infrared camera (NIRCam), which looks at the shortest infrared wavelengths.
When we switch to its mid-infrared instrument, we can actually see that it gives us an unprecedented look into the heart of this nebula. Right here, you can actually see two stars at the center of the system, with the dimmer one being a white dwarf at the tail end of its life and the brighter one a red giant at an earlier stage of its dying process. The pair of stars are locked in each other's orbit in a cosmic embrace, which leads the dimmer star to spray ejective material like a sprinkler resulting in these jagged rings.
Stars are critical to life as we know it. With Webb's powerful mirrors and its ability to peer behind the thickness of gas and dust, we'll be able to study the depths of stars like we've never done before. This could give us a greater understanding of the chemicals and the elements that are discharged from stars as they evolve through time and whether these components are the building blocks that are needed to spawn life as we know it back on Earth.
But the birth of stars is just as important as their death. This image of the cosmic cliffs in the Carina Nebula, 7,500 light-years away, offers a breathtaking view of the clouds of gas and dust actively coming together to form new stars. This is one of the most active star-forming regions in our galaxy—a star nursery that could give us tremendous information on this creation process.
When we switch to the mid-infrared once again, you can see the infant stars behind this ethereal cloud of dust. Being able to see what is behind their cosmic clouds is incredibly important when we look at galaxies as a whole; it can enable us to estimate the total mass of stars in a galaxy with more accuracy. Speaking of galaxies, 300 million light-years away lies the tightest galaxy grouping we've ever discovered.
These five galaxies are called Stephan's Quintet, and they are all bound to crash into each other and eventually merge. Actually, two of them are already in the process of doing exactly that. This image of Stephan's Quintet is the largest of Webb's initial images. It might not look like it at first glance, but what you're seeing here is actually a composite of over 1,000 images made up of over 150 million pixels.
When combined together, zooming in on any part of this picture will show you hundreds, if not thousands, of galaxies waiting to be discovered. What's even more fascinating is that when we switch to the mid-infrared instrument, we can spot never-before-seen details of Stephan's Quintet. That very bright structure in the uppermost galaxy is actually a supermassive black hole, 24 million times the size of the Sun, and actively increasing in density while emitting more energy than 40 billion Suns put together.
Just pause and think about that for a moment. These new images provide us with valuable insights into galactic interactions that may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe. The early universe and Webb's primary mission.
This is what is called a Deep Field image. Deep Field is a long-lasting observation into a particular region of space intended to collect light from the faintest furthest objects, peering 4.6 billion years into the past. This image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 at its center alongside shimmering stars, warped light trails, and thousands of extremely distant jewel-like galaxies.
It's the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early universe we've had so far. But despite its magnificence, what's most interesting about this Deep Field is the warped light trails around the galaxy cluster's edges. This galaxy cluster is so massive that it warps spacetime and ultimately the light of stars and galaxies located billions of light-years behind it.
This is called gravitational lensing and acts like a cosmic magnifying glass, bringing the light of galaxies almost 13.5 billion light-years away, potentially making them some of the oldest galaxies we've ever observed. Without a doubt, these early images are breathtaking and already showcase the huge capabilities of Webb.
But taking pretty pictures isn't the telescope's only superpower. It can also study the atmosphere of planets. For a while now, we've been searching for exoplanets—planets outside our solar system orbiting around a star similar to our Sun. We've discovered about 5,000 of them so far, with our main goal being able to find one that's hospitable to life and ultimately finding some of that life.
When analyzing the atmospheres of exoplanets, we look for elements such as methane, oxygen, or nitrogen—ingredients present in our own atmosphere that could signify the presence of life on these planets. So far, the universe hasn't offered us any signs of life. However, this graph captured by Webb of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96b could be our first step towards locating some extraterrestrials.
The observation reveals the presence of a very specific gas molecule: water vapor. While Hubble analyzed numerous exoplanets' atmospheres over the decades and detected water in 2013, Webb offers a more detailed observation and a giant leap forward in tracking down habitable planets beyond Earth. This image is only a glimpse of Webb's massive ability to capture precise atmospheric elements hundreds of light-years away.
We've always wondered whether life exists beyond Earth, and Webb could be the tool to help us answer this question and change the meaning of our existence forever. The James Webb Space Telescope has only begun its journey, and the road ahead is still long and daunting.
Analyzing the universe's origins, understanding the birth and death of stars, discovering distant galaxies, and finding exoplanets are only just the beginning. The truth is, looking more than 13 billion years into the past is bound to raise more questions than we could ever imagine, but it also has the potential to answer questions as well—some of which we've been asking since the days of Galileo and even new ones we never knew we had.
When Galileo raised his telescope to the sky and looked at the craters on the Moon, he acted on an almost instinctual human curiosity that has been with us ever since the dawn of time. What, then, 400 years later, the same curiosity is bringing us even closer to our cosmic background. Earth is only a small stage in the cosmic arena, and with the beginning of a new era in space discovery, we now know more than we ever did before.
There is no doubt that in the upcoming years, Webb will bring the universe even closer to us and help us know more about the reality of our cosmic existence. So, whenever you find yourself looking up at the night sky and its beautiful stars, remember, somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
What if the term we typically use to define the confines of our varying existence is just wrong? What is the true nature of the universe? Wait, am I even asking the right question? We're taught that the universe is all there ever was, all there is, and all there ever will be. I mean, that's the very definition of it, isn't it?
But maybe we're not as confined as we think. And this idea isn't really a new one. The earliest recorded examples of the idea of infinite worlds can be found in the philosophy of ancient Greek atomism, which proposed that infinite parallel worlds were created from the collision of atoms.
In the 3rd century, philosophers also proposed that the world eternally expired and regenerated, suggesting the existence of multiple universes across time. There's this prevailing idea throughout history of a group of multiple parallel universes that comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them, and we're living in it. This is the Multiverse.
In 1954, this idea grew a bit more when Hugh Everett gave the many-worlds interpretation of the Multiverse—the idea that quantum effects cause the universe to constantly split. He wrote it for his Ph.D. thesis but ended up having to publish a watered-down version when physicists at the time proposed the idea that every decision we make creates new universes to account for every single possible outcome. Presumably, each of those new universes also has the potential to do the same.
It's enough to break my brain, or at the very least, give me a pretty bad headache. But seriously, it's a cool thought. But is it just that? Does Everett's interpretation go beyond mere speculative reasoning? Is there any proof separating science from fiction when it comes to the existence of the Multiverse?
It can be really hard, especially when it's essentially all theoretical. It's important to remember here that the Multiverse is not a theory in physics per se; rather, it's an inevitable result of a series of existing theories in physics. Recent progress in cosmology, string theory, and quantum mechanics has brought about a revolution in thinking of sorts, with some even considering the Multiverse as non-optional.
You can't just opt out of the idea because you don't like it; it's there either way. You can apply this to a lot of things nowadays, actually. The existence of a Multiverse is one thing that continues to divide physicists because, let's face it, we're looking for evidence of something that exists outside of our visible universe and leaves no trace within it.
But wait! There are all sorts of things that we can observe that we know must be true. Decades before gravitational waves—disturbances and the curvature of spacetime—were directly detected, it was largely accepted that they must exist because we had already observed their effects. The revolutionary periods of binary pulsars—spinning neutron stars orbiting one another—shortened, and something was carrying the energy away, and that thing was consistent with the predictions of gravitational waves.
So that means there could also be indirect evidence for the existence of the Multiverse too, right? Well, that really depends on which Multiverse you think you're in. Yeah, there's a few options, so I'll circle back to the question of evidence.
Let's take a look at some different types. One way of distinguishing between multiverse models is by looking at how connected universes proposed by each model are—that is, the extent to which they are part of a single system that is governed by the same physical and mathematical principles and how much they potentially interact with each other.
It sounds confusing, but just let me explain. Level One parallel universes are maybe the simplest and the most connected. It is suggested that space is so big—possibly infinite—that the rules of probability surely must allow for the fact that somewhere out there, there are other planets exactly like ours.
In fact, if our universe is infinite, as some suggest, then it would have infinitely many planets, and on some of them, the events that play out would be pretty much identical to those on our own Earth with physical laws exactly the same as ours. It's like taking a deck of cards and shuffling them. There's a finite number of orderings that can occur, so if you shuffle the cards enough times, the orders will eventually repeat.
In the same way, with an infinite universe and only a finite number of combinations of matter due to the laws of physics, the way that matter arranges itself surely has to repeat eventually. If only they weren't so far away from us. We're causally disconnected.
This is why it's a parallel universe and not part of our own. We don't see these other universes, and you can blame the speed of light for that. Let me explain a bit more. Light started traveling at the moment of the Big Bang, around 14 billion years ago, and so it's impossible to see any further than about 14 billion light-years.
It's probably a bit further since space is always expanding, but let's just try and forget that for now. This volume of space we're in is called the Hubble volume and represents our observable and contactable universe. So we pretty much definitely can't travel or contact other universes if this scenario is true.
But it's not entirely impossible if you think of Level One parallel universes as valid. You're making two important assumptions: One, the universe is infinite, and two, with an infinite universe, every single possible configuration of particles in a Hubble volume would take place multiple times.
Probably the most supported by sound theoretical physics are actually Level Two parallel universes. In these, it's assumed that regions of space are going through an inflation phase. Inflation is a hypothetical process of the early universe, and I know—more hypotheses, I'm sorry.
It suggests that spacetime would have expanded exponentially at a much faster rate than it is doing right now—faster than the speed of light. This would probably have been driven by energy in the vacuum that would generate a repulsive force.
This kind of exponential expansion would necessarily create a region of spacetime unimaginably larger than our own universe. The result? A highly connected multiverse. It would probably be a relatively boring multiverse though compared to what I'm about to move on to, because similar to Level One parallel universes, all of them would inhabit the same spacetime, be subject to the same principles and physical laws, and would be composed of regions very similar to our own observable universe.
Remember that deck of cards? Well, a Level Two multiverse would be like having multiple decks of cards that control different kinds of physical properties. What this does mean, though, is that interactions between neighboring universes might, in principle, produce observable effects. A good way to try and imagine a Level Two parallel universe is to picture expanding bubbles in a shared background.
If and when the bubbles collide, the result could be a bruise appearing as a circular disturbance on the cosmic microwave background radiation. And here it is finally—a hint of evidence! Well, maybe the Huge Supervoid, a cold spot in our universe could hold some answers.
Long story short, our knowledge of how the universe works would simply not allow for such a massive void. We know that as the universe expands, voids are created, but not enough time has passed since the Big Bang for such a large void to grow. Simply the odds of a void this size existing are extremely unlikely, and it shouldn't be as cold as it is!
In 2010, scientists analyzed some data and thought they found evidence to support the idea that the cold spot was in fact a bruise where our universe collided with another. Disappointingly, there's not that much evidence, but that doesn't mean that the hypothesis should be discounted—especially since all other explanations for the existence of the cold spot are also equally unlikely.
In terms of indirect evidence, there's actually plenty for Level Two parallel universes. First, cosmic inflation gave rise to the Big Bang and gives us predictions for our universe that match what we observe. Second, we have quantum uncertainty, a rule governed by quantum mechanics.
The values of certain pairs of properties in the quantum world can't ever be known at the same time with perfect accuracy. For example, both the speed of something and its position. You can measure one precisely, but you won't really know anything for sure about the other.
Quantum uncertainty allows for a range in particle states and positions. This explains the fluctuations that gave rise to all matter in the early universe. But according to this rule, it's not just values of pairs of properties that can't be known accurately; there's also an inherent uncertainty in the value of a quantum field.
A quantum measurement is assigned to every single point in space. As time inevitably goes on, a field value that was certain at an earlier time now has a less certain value, so now you can only talk about it in terms of probabilities, not certainties. The value of any quantum field spreads out over time.
A Level Three parallel universe is a consequence of the many-worlds interpretation given to us by Everett. Every single quantum possibility inherent in the quantum wave function becomes a real possibility in some reality.
It's based on an idea called superposition from quantum mechanics, which is to say that if an electron can exist in multiple places and multiple states at any one time, then why wouldn't we also exist in the same way, given that we're made up of these subatomic particles? When most science fiction fans think about the multiverse, they're most likely thinking about this model. The possibilities are quite literally endless.
Level Three parallel universes are different from Level One and Level Two parallel universes in that they take place in the same space and time as our own universe. You still have no way to access them, even though you're continually in contact with them. In fact, every moment you live and every decision you make is causing a split of your current self into an infinite number of future selves, all of which are totally unaware of each other—although I guess now you are.
And this gives rise to important ethical and moral questions, which I'll come back to a little later. The evidence for this type of multiverse is pretty indirect. The empirical evidence for quantum mechanics is simply overwhelming. Quantum mechanics simply demands the existence of the multiverse.
It seems as if there's a pattern emerging. Level Three parallel universes raise an interesting extra question that other models don't. Every decision you make may create any number of parallel universes where other you and other people could either be negatively or positively affected by your choice.
Your actions are not only shaping the course of just your life but the countless lives of duplicates in other worlds. So, should we be considering our decisions even more carefully? Well, if you're aiming to reduce potential harm or suffering by doing this, of course, you'd be more careful.
Whether we live in many worlds or just one, shouldn't we aim to minimize suffering regardless if there's even a small probability of a very bad outcome? Right now, wouldn't it be equally worth avoiding a Level Four parallel universe?
Perhaps it has the potential to be the strangest place of all, and for this reason, it's also the most controversial prediction. We're talking about other universes here—obviously, it won't make sense. Basically, any universe that you can get to work on paper would exist based on the mathematical democracy principle, which simply means any universe that is mathematically possible has an equal possibility of actually existing.
If the math works, chances are it could exist. That just covers the very tip of the iceberg of the different multiverse models and the science behind them. You can't really argue with all of that, right?
Well, of course, you can—and quite strongly. It's no secret that there's a strong opposition towards the idea of the multiverse itself. And its general arguments are: there’s no reality without observation, which shuts down Level Four parallel universes right away.
To be honest, these arguments are all valid. There's a ton of these potential weaknesses in the arguments for parallel universes—way more than I could cover here, and checking it all out in detail involves a lot of physics research and time that I really don't have or know how to do.
I don't know whether the multiverse exists. I bet you're not really surprised by that answer though. But if modern physics is to be believed, our own universe shouldn't even be here at all.
And if that's the case, then the same could be said for the multiverse: it really shouldn't be here either. But against all odds, just like ours, it just might be. In the year 1925, Einstein shared with a student his burning desire to understand the universe.
"I want to know how God created this world," he said as they strolled along. "I'm not interested in this or that phenomenon in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are just details." This one conversation expresses the core of Einstein's guiding principle—one that has driven humanity to inquire, discover, experiment, and most importantly, learn about this universe we call home.
But what was Einstein really talking about? And can human knowledge ever reach a point where we understand everything? Since the discovery of the world of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, scientists have been racking their brains trying to understand how it works. Even a century later, we're still not sure how and why subatomic particles behave the way they do.
But that's just half the problem. The discovery of quantum theory posed a more serious issue that Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and other world-renowned physicists have been working tirelessly to solve. That challenge can be summarized in one word: unification.
You see, modern physics is split into two pillars: classical physics—the physics of Newton, Einstein, and Galileo, which predicts gravity and describes the motion of massive things in our cosmos, like stars and planets—and quantum physics, which governs the world of subatomic particles according to its own set of laws and rules.
Both pillars describe their respective worlds accurately, but fail when applied to each other's subject matter. Einstein's preoccupation was that there must be a way that these two worlds could reconcile. There has to be a theory that unifies the world of the subatomic with the world of the massive—a theory that can predict, well, everything!
Now, you might be thinking, "So why should we care?" Well, a unified theory that can bridge both of these worlds could potentially unlock many of our universe's secrets and answer some of the deepest philosophical and theological questions that we've been asking since the days of Galileo.
What are we truly made of? What happened before the Big Bang? Are we living in a multiverse? The unified theory, or the theory of everything, might just have the answers to all of these questions.
The universe and everything in it is glued together by four fundamental forces. I made an entire video on these four forces, so if you really want to fully understand all of them, I suggest you check it out. But for the sake of this video, here is the gist of what they do: big objects like stars, planets, humans, and cats are all governed by the force of gravity.
And thanks to Einstein and his general theory of relativity, we now know that gravity isn't a force that magically pulls objects together; instead, it's the curving and warping of the fabric of our universe, spacetime. While all these big objects are governed by just one fundamental force, subatomic particles, on the other hand, are governed by three fundamental forces.
As if they weren't already confusing enough! These three fundamental forces are electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. Electromagnetism holds atoms together, the strong force holds nuclei together, and the weak force is responsible for some types of nuclear decay.
These particles, along with their respective forces, make up what we call the Standard Model. The Standard Model describes the world of the very small. We know that everything in the universe is made of subatomic particles, from planets and stars to humans and dogs. We know that all of these things are made of atoms, and atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
In the 1960s, we discovered that even protons and neutrons are made of even smaller particles called quarks and electrons from leptons. Using different combinations of these particles and their respective forces, we can build atoms, molecules, humans, planets, and even stars.
So it seems that the Standard Model is a comprehensive interpretation of our universe. But it doesn't include everything. The truth is, finding the smallest subatomic particles is only the first step to getting to a Theory of Everything. The second step would be finding a place for gravity in this model.
There are two reasons why gravity isn't included. The first is that when it comes to small particles, the force of gravity is so weak that it doesn't have any effect on a quantum system. The second reason is that we don't really know how to incorporate general relativity, which describes the motion of large objects, into the world of quantum that governs subatomic particles.
Many great minds, including Einstein, tried tirelessly. It’s said that even on his deathbed, Einstein revisited his notes on the theory of everything and tried one last time to find an elegant solution to explain the fundamental differences between the world of the small and that of the large. But unfortunately, he ran out of time.
So, that's that, right? While we still haven't found a theory that can explain everything, we have made significant progress. And maybe the most groundbreaking was that of another brilliant mind: Stephen Hawking. In 2014, a movie was made on the impactful life of Stephen Hawking. As a result, Hawking became one of the most revered physicists in the world and one of the most admired by pop culture.
Away from the limelight, however, Hawking, like Einstein, had an obsessive yearning to understand the universe and never ceased to challenge our knowledge of it. One of his greatest contributions was the discovery of what is now known as Hawking radiation.
In 1974, Hawking discovered one of the biggest breakthroughs of the 20th century: a groundbreaking interpretation of black holes, as well as an unprecedented interaction between the world of quantum and gravity. Hawking's discovery was so ingenious that it gave us hope that the theory of everything, the Holy Grail of physics, is still a human possibility.
Black holes are densely packed regions of space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape—not even light. Einstein predicted the presence of black holes through his general theory of relativity in 1916, and we confirmed his predictions in 1974 when we observed our first black hole in the Milky Way.
In the same year, Hawking discovered that black holes are like a vitamin tablet placed in water—they can dissipate in time and release energy. This is what we know as Hawking radiation today. But how can energy escape a black hole when nothing else can?
Hawking used a quantum understanding to explain this. When we think of space, we imagine large, cold, empty places. But in reality, space is alive with the active creation and destruction of energy at the subatomic stage. Particles are created in pairs: matter and antimatter.
And they are constantly created and destroyed in a concept known as annihilation. Hawking imagined a pair of particles created very close to the event horizon of a black hole. This is the boundary around a black hole from which nothing can escape.
He then showed that these particles don't need to annihilate each other since one of them can be sucked into the black hole. If the black hole is receiving negative energy, then it has to release energy in order for the law of conservation of energy to hold.
Hawking also proved that black holes lose mass with time, and they don't last forever. But more importantly, he was able to arrive at this discovery by merging a quantum principle with the concept of gravity. This is by far the closest we've come to a theory of everything—a unified field theory, or quantum gravity.
But as with most things in science, the fact that we haven't found that one elegant equation does not mean that we have failed. In fact, maybe the real treasure was the discoveries we made along the way—many of which have paved the way for a brighter future for humankind.
String theory is one of the most prominent ones. It suggests that subatomic particles, such as electrons and quarks, are made of tiny vibrating strings or filaments that twist and fold, creating everything in our universe. Just like the strings of a violin, they can vibrate in various patterns, creating different kinds of particles, including the graviton—a hypothetical particle that, according to quantum mechanics, should carry the force of gravity.
On paper, string theory could unite gravity and quantum mechanics under one framework once and for all. The theory was popularized in the '60s and '70s, and its mathematics predict small, bundled-up extra dimensions that give rise to a network of universes, or a multiverse.
Well, this theory is prominent; it's highly untestable—even with access to the latest technology. String theory though is only the beginning. After almost two decades of tireless research, we've discovered the Higgs boson. This proved that electrons and quarks inside the atom get their mass from an invisible field that spreads throughout space.
The discovery took an effort from a group of 3,000 scientists that dedicated endless hours to the cause that would surely bring our species one step closer to understanding our universe. We've also discovered that all the atoms and light in the universe only make up less than 5% of the total content of the cosmos.
The remaining 95% is composed of dark matter and dark energy, which are invisible, but whose effects dominate the evolution of our universe. Dark matter provides the gravitational pull that keeps galaxies together, while dark energy is responsible for the ever-accelerating expansion of our universe.
For thousands of years, we've looked to the heavens and wondered what mysteries are hiding beyond the clouds. Since 1970, there have been more than 90 telescopes placed in orbit by NASA and the ESA to bring the universe closer to us. And with the James Webb Telescope that launched on December 25th, 2021, we entered a new era of discovery.
This telescope is the largest and most powerful one ever built, and its daunting task is to find the first galaxies that formed in the early universe and peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems. We may not have found the theory that unites quantum with gravity yet, but every discovery brings us one step closer to that ultimate goal of unification.
Throughout our time on this planet, we've pushed the boundaries of existence by asking tough questions and working tirelessly to find the answers. Our species has been defined by its incessant thirst for knowledge and unwavering hope in a unified universe.
350 years have elapsed since our first successful step in this journey when Newton unified the heavens with the Earth, revealing that planets, stars, and apples are guided by the same set of laws. 200 years later, James Clerk Maxwell coupled electricity with magnetism, and then Einstein linked space and time and warped them into one fabric that we now know as spacetime.
Looking at the timeline of these events, it shouldn't be surprising that the road ahead could be much longer. Einstein died dreaming of a physical world governed by one set of laws—a unified framework that can unlock the mysteries of our universe. And Hawking never ceased to look up at the stars and wonder what mysteries lie ahead, waiting to be found.
Whether the theory of everything is a realistic quest or a delusional attempt to make sense of the absurdity of the universe, one thing is certain: our unwavering hope in the search for unification will only lead to humanity's advancement as a species.
If you feel you're in a black hole, don't give up; there's a way out. The impact of NASA is undeniable. They have the ability to burn the importance and results of pure physics, math, engineering, and science in general into the minds of everyone they reach.
Go into any middle school science classroom, and you'll see posters of rockets, planets, black holes, many of which have the NASA insignia stamped right on them. If you were to ask any of those science-minded kids what they want to be when they grow up, they're not going to tell you they want to work for the Department of Agriculture or be a defense contractor. They're going to tell you that they want to work for NASA, and that's pretty important.
Unfortunately, when NASA is brought up into the public eye, as much cool stuff that they accomplish and achieve, people still tend to think it's a waste. And to be honest, I can kind of understand that point of view. Why spend money on sending chunks of metal to other planets when my job isn’t paying me enough? Why should I spend my tax dollars on something that doesn't affect my day-to-day life?
And sadly, this is where many people are mistaken. For starters, your tax dollars are hardly going to NASA. For every dollar you're taxed, you're not giving NASA a quarter; you're not giving them a dime. In fact, about half a penny is going to NASA. For an average American, that's about $10 a year.
To compare, when you buy something off the dollar menu at McDonald's, you're paying more in sales tax than you're giving to NASA. They're pretty much running on empty all the time. And all right, I know NASA isn't broke—$20 billion is a lot of money—except when you realize that the U.S. military spends this in about 2 weeks.
Now, this isn't a video to stomp all over the budget of the military. In fact, a lot of the technology that is developed through that funding is the reason why you have a lot of the things you do today. But when you look back, you realize that on average, about $300 billion a year has been given to the U.S. military since the mid-1900s.
You can only wonder what would happen if a similar budget was given to NASA and other space-centric companies. In case you ever want to be sad, just take a look at this: NASA's budget has been going down for a long time, from over 4.5% of the annual federal budget down to less than a measly 0.5%.
What if this wasn't the case? What if, instead, spending went up through the roof and to the stars? Let's think about it. If they miraculously ended up with tons and tons of money, where would it go? Is money even the issue?
NASA has been working on a little something called the Space Launch System, or SLS, for the better part of the last decade. Think of it as the BFR of NASA. This system is similar to the Saturn V, the rocket responsible for all the feats NASA accomplished during the Space Race.
It's capable of launching humans into deep space missions to the Moon, to Mars, and perhaps even further. But as is NASA's tradition, it keeps getting delayed. It was first planned to fly in 2017, but that's been pushed back to 2020, and even now, that deadline isn't looking too promising.
With proper funding, though, this project could be completed within the next 24 months at the latest. We would literally have rockets capable of putting us back on the Moon on standby, waiting to be launched at any time.
Funding this project is beneficial in multiple ways. Not only will it provide us with the ability to carry out thousands of experiments that are just waiting to be tested on and around the lunar surface, but it supplies tons of jobs for us here on Earth. And this wouldn't be the first time that NASA has actually brought money into the economy.
For example, the $25 billion spent on NASA's research and development from 1959 to 1969, which included some of the main technology that allowed us to reach the Moon, continued to return money into the economy until 1987—almost 30 years later. They returned over $181 billion. Coincidentally, this $181 billion is just enough money to build an entire International Space Station and still have about a year's worth of money left over.
The International Space Station is still the most expensive thing ever built to date; its cost is over $160 billion to create. It serves as an overseeing oracle for us. It can monitor natural disasters before we can detect them here on Earth. It's helped provide medicine for some of the worst diseases known to man. We've learned more about the human body in space than anything else.
Each year, NASA spends about $3 to $4 million just maintaining and keeping the station moving forward, or about 20% of its annual budget. And this cost is only going to go up. Right now, there are six people in space—six out of 7.7 billion! Given proper funding, the ISS could expand.
It can make room for new astronauts and new experiments, and perhaps even change the entire purpose of the space station in general. Instead of being a permanent and final settlement for all modern astronauts in the future, it could serve as a pit stop on the way to other destinations in our solar system.
One day, these six people could turn into ten, then that ten could turn into 100, and before you know it, we have an entire community of people orbiting around us every 90 minutes. When you look at that big rock that's spinning around our planet, somewhere on it lies the remains of six different Apollo missions from over 50 years ago.
There are tons of surveyor drones, multiple lunar rover vehicles that the astronauts drove around the landing sites, and bags full of—uh, waste. Yeah, let's call it waste. In 1973, the total cost of the Apollo program—the one that sent 12 astronauts to the surface of the Moon and returned them to Earth—was reported to Congress as about $25.4 billion.
In today's money, that's about $146 billion. That's about 3% of the total United States current budget. With just 3% of the national budget for one year, we not only accomplished the amazing feat of putting people on another world, but we quite literally built NASA from the ground up.
You see, we didn't have the Kennedy and Houston or other space centers. We didn't have the equipment. We didn't have the rockets or vehicles or means of accomplishing anything. But yet, we were able to create all of it on a really impressive time scale. And that was just with the technology we had in the 1970s.
If it wasn't for the Apollo program, chances are that companies like Intel, AMD, and Nvidia might not even be around today. These three companies have a massive impact on almost every device you use today—today, even the one you're watching this video on right now.
We've been to the Moon, and it could be time to go back. As we said in the past, it cost about $150 billion for the entire Apollo program. But today, that number could be drastically lower. It could even be covered in six months of NASA's current budget.
NASA has made claims that we could return to the Moon within the next five years for only $10 billion. To be honest, a lot of the technology we have today is actually capable of sustaining a small colony on the Moon, but the only problem is, of course: money.
At first, we most likely wouldn't be living on the surface—it's too risky, and we don't have the resources to stay there for long periods of time. The most likely course of action is something called the Lunar Gateway. If you've seen Interstellar or pretty much any space movie, it's about to become a reality.
The Lunar Gateway will essentially act as an International Space Station but for the Moon. It will be our main base of operations for everything taking place on the lunar surface. It will serve as a laboratory for any and all work. It will serve as living quarters for all the scientists on board.
It'll be able to hold new kinds of rovers, robots, and other technology to be put to use down on the surface. The Gateway could be regularly serviced, just like the ISS. Things will start off slow, but before you know it, we could have a rapidly growing city of sorts on the Moon.
But what good would come out of living there? Well, it could potentially be one of the most profitable adventures humanity has ever gone on. There's a lot of metals and materials on the Moon that are actually pretty rare here on Earth.
There's a chance that there could be some concentrated groups of materials that are just not as abundant on Earth, like uranium, thorium, and more. And let's not forget the poles. Exploring the lunar poles of the Moon is one of the most important things on the todo list.
Why? Water! To keep it short, both humans and rockets have one thing in common: we both require oxygen. If there's a substantial amount of water near the Moon's poles, we could process that into fuel for ships or air we can breathe.
This would drastically reduce the amount we would have to bring all the way from Earth. Once we have the foundation, we could pretty much use the entire Moon as a mining base for anything we need. Numbers estimate that with about $40 billion, we could realistically begin planning on building a long-term sustainable base on the Moon with only about 4 days of the United States' annual budget.
There are a lot of challenges to space travel, of course. How do we get rid of our trash? How do we recycle our oxygen and other resources effectively? The list goes on. Missions to the Moon are about a thousand times farther from Earth than missions to the International Space Station.
So this means that we need capable and ample systems that can reliably operate far away from our current home, support humans effectively, and still be able to be launched without being too heavy to get off the ground. It's complicated, but if we can't get to the Moon with this technology, how are we expected to complete the 54 million km journey to Mars?
You see, the Moon and Mars are linked in a