The Theory of Everything

Chapter 5: The Origin and Fate of the Universe

This chapter discards the idea of Black Holes and goes back to what I thought was interesting, The Universe. This chapter begins by explaining the Big Bang Theory. For more information, look at my page labeled "Big Bang Theory for Dummies". The chapter then transitions into alternative ideas of the universe such as the Inflationary model. The inflationary model is similar to the big bang theory. The theory suggests that the early universe had a very rapid or exponential expansion. This expansion accelerated as time went on until gravity began to slow it down. The chapter then talks about laws which we require in order to find out more information about our universe. These laws must require quantum physics however are currently unknown.

In order to succeed in understanding this chapter I needed to research three main parts. I needed to understand; the difference between the Big Bang theory and the Inflationary model, Cosmology and Quantum physics.

 

I started off by going onto http://www.felderbooks.com/papers/inflation.html , I began by reading the introduction. The introduction helped me learn that the big bang theory and the inflation theory go side by side. When the big bang theory was originally created, Einstein learned that the universe was not static; it must be either expanding or contracting. There were however many problems with the big bang theory. These problems were not able to be solved. This is when a modified theory which is formulated from the big bang theory comes into play. It is very similar but is different in the first few seconds of the Big Bang. This is a phenomenal site; I wish I had found it earlier. It uses a very appropriate language and explains with detail.

 

The second research topic which I wanted to tackle had been Cosmology. I started my research with a paper I found online. It is called “Introduction to Cosmology” by Barbara Ryden, Department of Astronomy, and The Ohio State University. It was a very long paper so I decided to read the introduction.  Cosmology is the study of the universe or cosmos, regarded as a whole. It is a science which regards entire galaxies as small objects. It is an attempt to answer questions such as “where do we come from”, “what are we” “where are we going” etc… Cosmology deals with distances that are very large, objects that are very big and timescales that are very long.

http://carina.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar/extragalactica/Bibliografia/Ryden_IntroCosmo.pdf

I then regoogled Cosmology in order to get a non textbook answer of what it is. I found that it is “the branch of astronomy involving the origin and evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to today and on into the future. http://www.space.com/16042-cosmology.html

I started off researching Quantum physics by searching it up on space.com. I was not able to find anything. So I gave up from that site. I then decided to google “Quantum physics for Dummies” I thought this would be an ideal was to find what Quantum physics is in simple terms. I found many websites but the only one who gave me a real answer of what quantum physics is the most unreliable source, Wikipedia. I thought the definition did give me a starting base however. “Quantum mechanics is the science of the very small; the body of a scientific principles that explains the behavior of matter and its interactions with energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles.” I left this site right after because I did not want to waste anytime with an unreliable source. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_quantum_mechanics

The title of this chapter refers to the fact that black holes are not black. When observed using the correct technology, they are in fact similar to bodies. This chapter discusses black holes and their emission of particles. Contrary to previous beliefs, black holes do release particles and radiation at the event horizon, the very tip of the black hole's gravitational pull. The particles present in that location are particles and antiparticles. The first law of thermodynamics, the energy cannot be created nor destroyed; therefore the partitives both have positive and negative energy. The antiparticle must find its its particle partner in order to follow the law. This emission would be in the form of x-rays and/or gamma rays. The smaller the black hole, the greater the amount of radiation there would be. 

An interesting fact which I learned through this read was that, if an astronaut was to fall in the black hole, the mass of the black hole would increase. Eventually, the equivalent to the mass of the black hole would be let out through radiation

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This would be one of the most difficult and discouraging chapters I have ever read. It would happen to be either due to my lack of knowledge on black holes in the field of quantum physics, or simply because I do not even know what quantum physics is. First, it took me very long to read this chapter as I spent a lot of time analyzing it and trying to understand it. Then after that I spent very long watching YouTube videos and read up on articles for many aspects of this chapter. When I tried putting it all together... I still was unable to. This chapter really set me off pace on my project. It took me an additional week to do, and when it was all ready to be published, Google crashed and I lost all my research that I worked on for so long- with urls.
The chapter constantly speaks of the second law of thermodynamics, I further did research on what it was and found that it is  "the entropy of an isolated system never decreases in the course of every natural change." Despite being aware of the definition of entropy, I was not able to use it for the concepts which Hawking talks of. For example; "just throw some matter with a lot of entropy" I do not understand what entropy means here.
Black hole radiation was probably the easiest thing in this chapter as it was easier to research. Through the novel and chapters I discovered that in 1974 Hawking predicted that energy fluctuations from the vacuum causes the generation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles near the event horizon of the black hole. One of the particles falls into the black hole while the other escapes before they have an opportunity to annihilate each other. The result is radiation. I also thought it was really cool how the smaller the black hole is, the more radiation it emits off!

This chapter made me really stressed out. It constantly spoke of the uncertainty principle. I could not understand what it was. I researched and found that it is " any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical..." I did not understand any of that. I read further did research and got that it is "succinct statement of the "uncertain relation" between the poistion and the momentum (VxM) of a subatomic particle.It was an easier definition but still quiet hard. I finally kind of got what it was after the follwoing YouTube video.
I tried researching Quantum physics but after 30 minutes I stopped. I didn't understand anything. Anything connected to quantum physics in this chapter was an absolute blank.


http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/01/what-is-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics
http://physics.about.com/od/astronomy/f/hawkrad.htm
\http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/10/what-is-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle
http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140127-black-hole-stephen-hawking-firewall-space-astronomy/

I did not limit my research to just two background information pieces, I researched many other things such as spacetime, singularity, naked singularity , worm holes, light cones supernova, white dwarfs. All of these ideas were commonly used in this chapter and contributed to my research and discovery of blackholes.