How Does The Universe Work?

[Lightknight924]

Ok, so I'm learning about The Universe in Science class right now. I understand that our Solar System is part of the Milky Way Galaxy. That we are no more than a small speck in the entire galaxy. So it got me thinking.....what does the galaxy revolve around? A larger star? A black hole? Then, what does that star revolve around? Is it possible that our galaxy is no more than just a small speck in The Universe? Could that mean our galaxy is just a small speck inside another galaxy which is just a small speck inside another galaxy and so on and so forth?

Another thing I'm wondering is what creates gravity. The larger the mass in space the more gravity. So what creates this pull and why does it pull inward to the planet? The Universe amazes me.

Answers? Suggestions? Theories?

[Afrobean]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Ok, so I'm learning about The Universe in Science class right now.

What? We don't even fully understand the Universe. How can they teach it in school (theories or something in college, sure, but silly high school level classes?)?

I understand that our Solar System is part of the Milky Way Galaxy. That we are no more than a small speck in the entire galaxy.

True. Our galaxy is nothing but a speck in terms of the Universe.

So it got me thinking.....what does the galaxy revolve around? A larger star? A black hole?

Pretty sure, yeah. There's definitely something of huge mass at the center of the galaxy. I assume it'd be an enormous black hole.

Then, what does that star revolve around? Is it possible that our galaxy is no more than just a small speck in The Universe? Could that mean our galaxy is just a small speck inside another galaxy which is just a small speck inside another galaxy and so on and so forth?

Watch Men in Black much? Might not be too far off, but as of now there is nothing bigger than the Universe that I'm aware of.

Another thing I'm wondering is what creates gravity. The larger the mass in space the more gravity. So what creates this pull and why does it pull inward to the planet? The Universe amazes me.

I actually have no idea about this. Gravity has always been one of those things that I just never questioned. I knew it existed, so knowing why it existed wasn't as important to me.

[MiniNeo]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

I think it is the all mass have an attraction to other masses, just that the more massive you are the more attraction you have to other masses. Explains how we have gravity on earth (since the earth is much bigger than us) and how the Sun make the Earth revolves around it (since the Sun is much bigger than the Earth)

[talisman]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

no one knows why gravity exists, although we've got a pretty decent grasp on how it works. no one really knows why matter exists either... the idea is that a particle named the Higgs boson might be responsible, and the LHC at CERN hopes to detect this when it's finished.

the milky way is part of a large cluster of galaxies that is itself spinning and is part of an even larger supercluster of clusters.

[T0rajir0u]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

1. Motion is relative. It's mathematically easy to picture the galaxy as revolving around a (very large) mass at the center of the universe, but in theory we could simply pretend that the Earth was the center of the universe and that everything else moved in a complicated pattern around us instead. (Although, to answer your question, it's meaningless for the "center of the universe," such as it is, to revolve around anything. It's the center!)

2. Gravity is gravity. Something with a larger mass has more atoms in it, and each atom exerts a specific amount of gravitational force on each other atom.

3. Nobody fully understands the universe. You can spend your entire life studying cosmology, which is what a lot of people do (they're called cosmologists, oddly enough). They end up learning a lot, but they're learning new things so fast it's getting hard to keep up.

[aperson]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

We are a brane that did not stop expanding. There can be an infinite number of other branes that could be in the same situation.

Oops.

[Reach]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Ok, so I'm learning about The Universe in Science class right now. I understand that our Solar System is part of the Milky Way Galaxy. That we are no more than a small speck in the entire galaxy. So it got me thinking.....what does the galaxy revolve around? A larger star? A black hole? Then, what does that star revolve around? Is it possible that our galaxy is no more than just a small speck in The Universe? Could that mean our galaxy is just a small speck inside another galaxy which is just a small speck inside another galaxy and so on and so forth?

Another thing I'm wondering is what creates gravity. The larger the mass in space the more gravity. So what creates this pull and why does it pull inward to the planet? The Universe amazes me.

Answers? Suggestions? Theories?

lol ap.

Let's break it down.

1. What does the galaxy revolve around? Depends what you mean. The galaxy is spinning around a supermassive black hole at the center. The sun is moving at near a milliion miles an hour around this thing at any given time. The galaxy itself though, the black hole at the center, does not 'rotate' around a larger mass, but it is always moving because space is always expanding and energy and matter is being dispursed more thinly.

2. Yes our galaxy is a small spec in the universe. WMAP results predict somewhere around the region of 500 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

3. Gravity is, basically, cause by bends in the space time fabric. I mean, it happens because energy within space causes causes distortions within it, or a dip for example. We revolve around the sun because, essentially the sun is creating a larger dip and gravitational pull which the earth falls into. To see gravity on an extreme scale, look at a black hole. To understand one in a simple sense, it is a hole or 'dip' in the space fabric that extends doward infinitely, so you can imagine what would happen if you got too close (event horizon).

This is exactly where e=mc^2(/(1-v^2/c^2) comes from, where mass and energy are different manefestations of the same thing. Creating a lot of either or distorts space time, which can start to produce neat effects like time dilation.

You could get a lot more technical but you don't need to to understand it.

[talisman]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

dammit you're all retarded. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS GRAVITY. it's easy as hell to figure out how it works, that's not the problem. no one knows WHY it exists because no one knows why mass exists, and mass is what causes the bends in space time. It's so incredibly profound... how the hell does spacetime know to bend just because there's some mass in it? Why does the earth orbit the sun? Does the earth know the sun exists? No... it has no clue. It's action at a distance and no one knows why it happens.

[Reach]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

dammit you're all retarded. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS GRAVITY. it's easy as hell to figure out how it works, that's not the problem. no one knows WHY it exists because no one knows why mass exists, and mass is what causes the bends in space time. It's so incredibly profound... how the hell does spacetime know to bend just because there's some mass in it? Why does the earth orbit the sun? Does the earth know the sun exists? No... it has no clue. It's action at a distance and no one knows why it happens.

Using your definiton we could say we can't understand anything. Noone knows why anything happens. Why do I say your post is retarded? How do I know to type this? Why does milk taste like milk? Why do the molecules in the milk have this reaction in my mouth? Why is the ground hard? Why is my desk a solid? How does the earth know to get cold when there is less molecular motion in the air.

It's just so stupid.

Noones cares why something happens. The universe isn't a living being like us, I don't even see why it would require a why since it isn't a thinking organism. We should only be concerned with how.

How does it know to bend? Because that's what it does, that's how it works. A really good question would be WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE REQUIRE REASON?

Not to mention why could be arbitrarily defined, and could also have more than one definition. Like I could reply, gravity is necessary, that is why it exists. But then you could change the question to be more specific. It's just an endless cycle of stupid questions that don't have to be known to understand something.

[aperson]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Magnetic monopoles.

[Reach]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Magnetic monopoles.

why?

[dooty_7]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

the idea is that a particle named the Higgs boson might be responsible, and the LHC at CERN hopes to detect this when it's finished.

The Higgs Boson is a particle that comes from the Higgs field, and I'm pretty sure that it isn't responsible for gravity. The related Boson that is theoretically responsible for gravity is the Graviton and also has yet to have been discovered.

To the whole orbit of galaxy's thing, There is some speculation that we (our galaxy as a whole) are rotating around something known as the The Great Attractor which i believe is supposed to be made up of dark matter.

[aperson]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

The Higgs Boson is a particle that comes from the Higgs field, and I'm pretty sure that it isn't responsible for gravity. The related Boson that is theoretically responsible for gravity is the Graviton and also has yet to have been discovered.

To the whole orbit of galaxy's thing, There is some speculation that we (our galaxy as a whole) are rotating around something known as the The Great Attractor which i believe is supposed to be made up of dark matter.

Yes, it's supposed to be located at the center of our intergalactic supercluster. The only problem is that it's really hard to detect it in any manner besides redshift variance, so we have trouble doing much research on it.

[-Izzy-]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Oh i remember seeing something that einstein was working on.

How the whole solar system would be layed out on some kind of 3d or maybe just 2d grid.
And the larger the object it pushes down and creates i guess a crater of some sort. We are falling around the crater the same way as if you throw a marbel around some round hole to where it spins. Except we go really slow and all. actually im just kinda making this up. But maybe thats why there is global warming as well. Cause over millions of years. we get closer on average. so then our solar system would be being pulled twords the center of the milky way cause there is something there causing a large crater. And the milky way is being pulled to an even larger crater and so on till you are at the center of the universe. Which obviously must be something really really large.

[Reach]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Yes, it's supposed to be located at the center of our intergalactic supercluster. The only problem is that it's really hard to detect it in any manner besides redshift variance, so we have trouble doing much research on it.

Shouldn't it just be a larger supercluster?