Building Block of the Universe

Building Block of the Universe

The basic constituent of the universe is luminous matter i.e., galaxies which are really the collection of billions of stars. The universe contains everything that exists including the Earth, planets, stars, space, and galaxies. This includes all matter, energy and even time. No one knows how big the universe is. It could be infinitely large. Scientists, however, measure the  size of the universe by what they can see. This is called the ‘observable universe’. The observable universe is around 93 billion light years (1 light year = the distance that light travels in one year, which is 9.4607 × 10¹² km) across.

One of the interesting things about the universe is that it is currently expanding. It is growing larger and larger all the time. Not only is it growing larger, but the edge of the universe is expanding at a faster and faster rate. However, most of the universe what we think of is empty space. All the atoms together only make up around four percent of the universe. The majority of the universe consists of something scientists call dark matter and dark energy.

1. Age of the universe

Scientists think that the universe began with the start of a massive explosion called the Big Bang. According to Big Bang theory, all the matter in the universe was concentrated in a single point of hot dense matter. About 13.7 billion years ago, an explosion occurred and ejected all the matter in all directions in the form of galaxies. Nearly all of the matter in the universe that we understand is made of hydrogen and helium, the simplest elements, created in the Big Bang. The rest, including the oxygen that we breathe, the carbon, calcium, and iron in our bodies, and the silicon in our computer chips are formed in the cores of stars.

The gravity that holds these stars together generally keeps these elements deep inside their interiors. When these stars explode, these fundamental building blocks of planetary systems are liberated throughout the universe.

2. Galaxies

According to astronomers galaxies were formed shortly after the Big Bang that happened 10 billion to 13.7 billion years ago. Immediately after the Big Bang, clouds of gases began to compress under gravity to form the building blocks of galaxies. A galaxy is a massive collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars and their solar systems. Scientists believe that there are one hundred billion (10¹¹) galaxies in the observable universe. The size of the galaxies ranges having a few hundred million (10⁸) stars to one hundred trillion (10¹⁴) stars. Galaxies are also in different shapes. Depending on their appearance galaxies are classified as spiral, elliptical, or irregular. Galaxies occur alone or in pairs, but they are more often parts of groups, clusters, and super clusters. Galaxies in such groups often interact and even merge together.

Our Sun and all the planets in the solar system are in the Milky Way galaxy. There are many galaxies besides our Milky Way. Andromeda galaxy is our closest neighboring galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is spiral in shape. It is called Milky Way because it appears as a milky band of light in the sky. It is made up of approximately 100 billion stars and its diameter is 1,00,000 light years. Our solar system is 25,000 light years away from the centre of our galaxy. Just as the Earth goes around the Sun, the Sun goes around the centre of the galaxy and it takes 250 million years to do that.

3. Stars

Stars are the fundamental building blocks of galaxies. Stars were formed when the galaxies were formed during the Big Bang. Stars produce heat, light, ultraviolet rays, x-rays, and other forms of radiation. They are largely composed of gas and plasma (a superheated state of matter). Stars are built by hydrogen gases. Hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium atoms and in the process they produce large amount of heat. In a dark night we can see nearly 3,000 stars with the naked eye. We don’t know how many stars exist. Our universe contains more than 100 billion galaxies, and each of those galaxies may have more than 100 billion stars.

Though the stars appear to be alone, most of the stars exist as pairs. The brightness of a star depends on their intensity and the distance from the Earth. Stars also appear to be in different colours depending on their temperature. Hot stars are white or blue, whereas cooler stars are orange or red in colour.

They also occur in many sizes. Some stars have radii a thousand times larger than that of our own Sun.

A group of stars forms an imaginary outline or meaningful pattern on the space. They represent an animal, mythological person or creature, a god, or an object. This group of stars is called constellations. People in different cultures and countries adopted their own sets of constellations outlines. There are 88 formally accepted constellations. Aries, Gemini, Leo, Orion, Scorpius and Cassiopeia are some of the constellations.