![]() It's important to know, before we go further, that over the last couple of decades, many theoretical physicists have come to believe that our universe is not the only one. (See " Star Eater" in this month's National Geographic magazine.) So how is such a seed created? One idea, bandied about for several years-notably by Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven-is that the seed of our universe was forged in the ultimate kiln, likely the most extreme environment in all of nature: inside a black hole. If you really want to call something the God particle, this seed seems an ideal fit. ![]() And yet it's a particle that can spark the production of every other particle, not to mention every galaxy, solar system, planet, and person. This seed is thought to have been almost unimaginably tiny, possibly trillions of times smaller than any particle humans have been able to observe. Let's call it the seed of a new universe. These physicists theorize that, a moment before the Big Bang, all the mass and energy of the nascent universe was compacted into an incredibly dense-yet finite-speck. Such notions are beyond human understanding.īut a few unconventional scientists disagree. ![]() We'll never understand what pre-Big Bang reality was like, or what it was formed of, or why it exploded to create our universe. Time began ticking, they insist, at the instant of the Big Bang, and pondering anything earlier isn't in the realm of science. This happened 13.8 billion years ago.īut what about before that? Many physicists say there is no before that. Before humans existed, before Earth formed, before the sun ignited, before galaxies arose, before light could even shine, there was the Big Bang. The first exoplanet was discovered nine years later in 1992 and the numbers of known planets beyond our solar system have been growing rapidly ever since.įor more discoveries and stories of exploration, visit the Exoplanets Exploration Timeline. Then a team in 1983 spotted a disc around Beta Pictoris believed to be made up of the raw materials of planet formation-the first evidence of an exoplanet. Significant Eventsīefore 1983, the only confirmed planets were those in our own solar system, though scientists believed many planets were in orbit around distant stars. As will the now inactive Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. NASA’s New Horizons, which flew past Pluto in 2015 and is currently exploring the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune, will eventually leave our solar system. Both spacecraft, launched in 1977, are still in contact with NASA’s Deep Space Network. Voyager 1 transitioned into interstellar space in 2012. Levay (STScI)įive robotic spacecraft have sufficient velocity to escape the bounds of our solar system and travel into interstellar space, but only one-NASA’s Voyager 1-has crossed that boundary so far. ![]() Each sight line stretches several light-years to nearby stars. The telescope's goal is to help astronomers map interstellar structure along each spacecraft's star-bound route. Hubble is gazing at two sight lines (the twin cone-shaped features) along each spacecraft's path. In this illustration oriented along the ecliptic plane, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope looks along the paths of NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they journey through the solar system and into interstellar space.
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