MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE

ARE WE ALONE?

A great mystery that many thinkers and scientists have tried to

solve throughout the history of human civilization, but it has

yet to be answered. Can we recognize all kinds of life?

What if some different type of life is staring at us but

we can’t understand it?

WHERE DID LIFE COME FROM?

It’s without a doubt one of the oldest questions and biggest

mysteries in human history. Though there are theories out

there that seek to explain the dawn of life; explanations

that involve increasingly complex chemical reaction with

chemical reactions becoming self-sufficient, the truth is

scientists don’t have a clear definitive explanation for life.

DO WE LIVE IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE?

For as long as humans have been able to think and reason,

a question has loomed in the back of our head: How do we

know that everything we see is everything there is? Modern

science is almost certain there could be parallel universes

(and thus lives) but to test such a notion is difficult.

WHAT IS GRAVITY REALLY?

Gravity has played a big part in making the universe the way it is.

Gravity is the force that makes pieces of matter clump

together into planets, moons and stars. Because of

gravity, if you drop something, it falls down, instead of

up. Well, everybody knows that! But, what does this

really mean? Even though scientists can observe and

understand how gravity “behaves,” they have no clue 

why it exists. For example, if gravity is a force that

causes all matter to be attracted to all other matter,

why are atoms mostly empty spaces inside?  Or why the

forces that hold atoms together are different from

gravity? Is it possible that all the forces we see at work

in nature are really different sides of the same basic force

or structure? All these questions make gravity’s nature

and existence one of the biggest mysteries.

IS WATER NECESSARY FOR LIFE?

From antiquity to today, all scientists and biologists have been

absolutely sure about one thing: water is essential for life.

Recent studies, however, have shown that microbes can

remain alive in the absence of water nearly indefinitely and

science now wonders if water is essential only for the kind

of life we can recognize and understand.

ARE THERE OTHER PLANETS LIKE EARTH?

As of yet we have not found a planet exactly like Earth, or even

one that is capable of harbouring life. However there is

evidence that a planet like Earth is not that unrealistic.

Last year, NASA discovered the first near Earth size planet

in the “habitable zone” around a sun very similar to

our own (Kepler-186f).

WHAT IS THE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE?

A scary question to think about! When will the enigma we call

the universe come to its demise? The answer as you

might have guessed it is shrouded in uncertainty. Scientists

are not even sure if the universe will come to a defined

end or a more gradual “tail off”. Suggestions for the

universe’s death range from “heat death”, which is the

death of all differences in heat in the universe, to a

universe that collapses in on itself. All theories are scary.

DOES AN ANTI-UNIVERSE EXIST?

The whole “antimatter” issue started officially in 1928 with

physicist Paul Dirac, who developed a theory that

combined quantum mechanics and Einstein’s special

relativity to provide a fuller description of electron

interactions. What we learn from this theory is that matter

and antimatter annihilate each other. So if we and

everything else are made of matter, why do we still exist?

Didn’t matter and antimatter completely annihilate at the

time of the Big Bang? Perhaps some antimatter still exists

somewhere else? Such questions have led to speculative

theories, from a break in the rules that govern the

universe to the existence of an entire anti-universe

somewhere else.