I was flipping through TV channels and I saw that on the discovery channel there was something on the universe and it caught my attention so I just decided to watch it.
It was a special about Stephen Hawking, and his thoughts on the universe. It was UNBELIEVABLE to see all of the things he was taking about from our galaxy to the billions and billions of other ones out there.
One of the things he talked about was the thought of life on other planets, and how it may be more likely than we all think. He started out by saying that if you look at the odds of having another planet with some form of life on it, the odds are very great. If you think about it we are in our own solar system that is part of a galaxy that has a billion other solar systems in it, and that galaxy is a part of a universe that has a billion billion other galaxy's in it. So if you take time to think about that for a second, it would NOT make sense to have all of that space and only have us on our tiny little planet be the only forms of life. To me that is astonishing and very cool and kind of scary at the same time. I mean what if there are other life forms out there, what are they like and will we ever meet them.
One more thing that he talked about during the special was the ability to travel through time. While its not possible now, it could be sometime in the future. He talked about how in order to travel through time you have to be able travel at the speed of light, which is impossible. But while it is impossible to travel at the speed of light you could get very close to that speed and still travel through time. One way to travel through time would be to get very close to a black hole, because they have the most mass of anything in our universe, and the closer you get to a black hole the slower you move. So if you were able to get very close to a black hole without falling into it, you could actually travel through time. An example he gave was that if you were to fly close to a black hole and orbit it for a week, when you got back to earth you would only have aged one hour. Another way to travel through time would be to build a sort of train system that circled the earth. He stated that if you could get the train to go almost as fast as the speed of light, which would mean it would have to circle the earth 7 times in one second, you could actually travel through time. He gave an example that said if you got on the train and stayed on it for 50 years traveling at that speed, you and whomever else were on the train would only have aged a week and when you got off while the world would be a lot different you would still be only a week older.
To me all of the things about the universe are mind blowing. I mean to think of how we got here, and how did everything start, and how will it all end, is something that is very interesting, if you actually take the time to think about it.
