Category: Our World

Wormholes

Wormholes are passageways through space-time, that are essentially connecting points between two separate distances or locations in the universe. If visualized, a wormhole is a tunnel connecting the entry and exit points linking two different points in space time, or different galaxies. The best and simplest way to show this phenomenon is a paper example when two dots are drawn at the opposite end of the paper, the paper folded in half and a hole pierced through the dots connecting the two dots with a pencil.

Wormholes are based as a solution to Albert Einstein’s equation of general relativity – the equation for which accounts for the short child wormholes, or Einstein Rosen Bridges, which essentially acts as giant blackhole linking two areas of space time. The theory suggests that the matter and light that is absorbed from one end escapes out of the other at the point known as a whitehole. This whitehole will be located somewhere else in the galaxy or maybe even in some other dimension.

These theoretical wormholes could be utilized for a variety of different things. Some say that travelling through a wormhole would take less time than through actual space, creating an enormous shortcut between any two destinations. Traveling at light speed seems impossible but we can easily travel faster than light using a wormhole. If two massively separated points are connected in this way, it would be possible to travel conventionally between the two locations, therefore even though the object is travelling slow inside the wormhole itself, it would still reach its destination before a beam of light outside. There are also theories surrounding significant gravitational field. For example, if we can place one end of a wormhole close to a blackhole, which has an incredible amount of gravity and acts to slow down the apparent time, the link between that place and somewhere else could provide the means of time travel.

Next step into space travelling or travelling to other dimensions, this theory relies on the many-world’s hypothesis and interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that reveals infinite universes in timelines. According to this idea, every choice or branching path that we take, exits in the endless list of others. Experts like Stephen  Hawking suggest that the wormholes could be all around us but they are microscopically small existing in very deceptive spacetime as nothing is completely flat or solid. According to this theory, there are incredibly small holes in every piece of matter including the time itself, even smaller than the atoms. However, being so tiny we can’t even begin to imagine traveling between them or manipulating them.

Of all the options, these are imaginably the least likely scenario, primarily because we are not even sure if the many wormholes interpretations have any basis in reality because scientists are not even sure if wormholes exists. They do exist in theory, but there is no empirical proof that they are there. The whole idea is still far far more science fiction than fact.

Neom – Future city

Neom is a future city that is being planned by the Saudi government and especially the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman. He plans to create a city that will be out of a movie using all sorts of technology and advancements. Some of the features of the city were listed in a 2,300-page document that has been created by the Saudi government while planning for this mysterious and futuristic city.

The city will have many attractions that the tourists will love and will definitely want to see. They will have an artificial moon that will light up the night sky, every night. They plan to have Jurassic park inspired robotic dinosaurs that people interact and mingle with. They also will have robot maids, glow in the dark beaches and even flying cars! This ambitious city looks like something that will attract the whole world and will encourage people to visit Saudi Arabia, which hasn’t really been a hub for tourism, except the holy pilgrimage.

However, the downfall of this futuristic city is that it will force the local tribes to relocate that have existed in Saudi Arabia for centuries. It is also planned that a human gene-editing clinic will be placed within the city and the city will be under surveillance of the government 24 hours of the day. It seems that the city is more of a dystopian future in books rather than a futuristic, fun tourist spot.

The location that has been planned for this city is the North-west of Saudi Arabia, which at the moment is barren except for a few tribes that live there. The city is said to cost around 500 billion dollars and will need a lot of investment from very rich people and the crown prince himself, who will also be overseeing the construction of the city.

Right now the place where Neom is said to be created is barren and is a large desert, like most of Saudi Arabia. However, the crown prince plans on using the method of cloud seeding, which means that they engineer the clouds to produce rain and this will not only improve the climate of the city but also enable fresh produce to grow on a barren land.

According to the document, Neom plans to have more Michelin star restaurants in one city than anywhere around the world. The city also plans on having the best education provided to children who inhabit the city with holographic teachers. The crown prince wants to give people the best-paying jobs and wants to create a healthy economy where both parties are satisfied.

The chief executive of the city says that they plan on using the latest and most advanced technology; hence this is the reason why some of it is still theoretical and may take time to develop.

Elon Musk’s Mars City

Elon Musk has decided to build a city on Mars, the neighboring planet to Earth. It is said that if it were to be built, it would be the most expensive construction in human history and could even cost up to 1/8 of the world’s total economy.

The CO of SpaceX does not only want to send humans onto mars to visit but he even sees them starting a permanent settlement. If things go according to the Musk’s plan, a proper city and settlement on Mars could be developed as early as 2050.

After that, there are many questions that may arise. Specialists believe that the people living there could develop and evolve according to the conditions of the planet; they could inhabit the planet and even build an economy from ground up. Musk even suggests that they plan on selling people return tickets to Mars at the same price as a house may cost in the United States.

It is said that the new futuristic city will cost within 100 billion dollars to 100 trillion dollars. These assumptions of the numbers are based upon the fact that around 1 million tons of cargo would be needed on Mars and would be transported from Earth to Mars. Hence, the extremely high cost.

It is said that they will be using the Starship to start the mission onto Mars. The rocket is a 348-foot rocket, made out of stainless steel and is completely reusable, it holds a pressurized cabin which could easily hold up to 100 people within it and take them up to Mars. It is also made to carry payload to Mars, however only if SpaceX can solve the problem of adding more fuel during orbit.

The journey, however, could only take place when Earth and Mars are closest. Hence to build a city by the year 2025, Musk believes that the ships need to start going up to Mars by 2024. He plans to update people in August 2019. He also said that they will be sending 4 ships of which 2 will be manned and other 2 will be unmanned.

The reason that Musk says he wants to carry out this project is that he believes that humans need something to look forward to. Due to climate change and global warming, our future seems to be bleak and depressed. He believes that space travel may be exciting for people and will free humans from the confinements of Earth. It could also be a way to solve all the global warming issues and save the human race from extinction that we are progressing towards, due to the current conditions within the world.

Capturing CO2 from the Environment

CO2 is present in the air and is absorbed by trees and plants from the atmosphere, but to what extent? With all the trees that are being cut down through deforestation, which is credited to urbanization, the carbon dioxide in the air is increasing. Factories and transportation are releasing greenhouse gases into the environment and increasing the temperature of the planet and melting ice. All of this is due to excess carbon dioxide within the atmosphere. However, someone has found a way to use that to the advantage of the plant – by using the carbon dioxide in the air to create energy.  They plan to use CO2, equivalent to that absorbed by 40 million trees in a year.

Carbon Energy, which is backed by billions of dollars of support, has finally been able to gather enough money to start the design process for their negative emissions project. The purpose of the project is to suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and re-use it to create energy. This facility is based in Calgary, Canada at the moment. The company has been able to raise 68 billion dollars for its project of using carbon dioxide from the air to create energy and is to date the most money raised for technology.

Steve Oldham, the owner of the company believes that besides awareness of environmental change and money, we also need technology to play a part. And he believes technology can play a major role in trying to turn around the environmental disaster that stands ahead of us. Through technology, new and innovative ways can be discovered to fix a problem which seems to have no solution. Through one factory, if 40 million trees worth of carbon dioxide is being used, then with many different factories in different parts of the world, a big change can be brought about in the world.

What the company plans to do is to use the carbon dioxide in the air and create carbon out of the air. The carbon will then be stored under-ground in the 230-acre factory and used to create fuel for different cars. Many different companies, like Chevrolet, might be interested in the company as a way to decrease their carbon footprint.

If big companies start to invest in projects like this and also become their customers, the difference to the environmental crisis the world is facing could be huge. Not only does this open ways for new technology and new ways to help the environment but it is also creating jobs, an alternative way of acquiring fuel and also helping companies reduce their own carbon emissions.

AI Universe

Our universe is billions of years old, so old that sometimes it is hard to fathom. But the rate of change has steadily increased to the stage that we are now capable of giving intelligence to machines. However, a new artificial intelligence machine has been created which will also help the human race understand our own universe better. It will show it to us in a broader perspective and help deepen our understanding. For the first time in history, astrophysicists are using 3D technology and artificial intelligence to generate complex 3D simulations of our universe. The results are so fascinating that even the creators are baffled by them.

Shirley Ho, a group leader at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City says that the simulations they have created can easily be run within a few milliseconds. However, other fast simulators take at least a couple of minutes to do the same thing. She also says that their simulations are much more accurate.

The project is called the “Deep Density Displacement model” or D3M for short. This is the name given to it because of the speed and accuracy of the project, which was not the biggest shock to researchers rather the fact that it could accurately predict how the universe would look after tweaking certain parameters. Shirley Ho says that it was like “teaching image recognition software with lots of pictures of cats and dogs, but then it’s able to recognize elephants.”

The predictions and model created by D3M have become a necessity for those working in the field of theoretical astrophysics. This is because scientists want to know how the cosmos might evolve or change under various scenarios and tweaks. It is also a way to test a few of their theories about the universe.

D3M is also able to show how gravity shapes and impacts on our universe. Gravity is the main focus of the model as gravity is the most important force with the greatest impact. These most accurate simulations are able to calculate effect on billions of particles over the entire age of the universe.

A deep neural network powers the D3M by feeding it 8000 different simulations from the highest accuracy model. The neural networks take training data and make calculations on the information, and then researchers compare the resulting outcomes with the expected outcomes. As time goes by, neural networks become faster and adapt.

After training the D3M, the researchers took it for a test run. They ran a simulation for a box shaped universe 600 million light years in size. Slower machines took hundreds of hours to compute the data, while the fastest previous model was a bit faster, but not as accurate. However, the D3M was able to compute it in 30 milliseconds.

The D3M is an amazing project that helps astrophysicists understand the universe better and make more accurate predictions and discoveries. It has made the universe a little more practical to explore.

Under the Moon’s Surface

Most of us have not studied the moon in great detail because we consider it as just a shiny white sphere that appears every night. However, we need to know that the moon is much more than that. It holds a lot under its surface. Recently, scientists discovered an enormous, metallic anomaly under the moon’s largest crater.

Interestingly, the pile of metal is considered to be five times larger than the Island of Hawaii. It weighs around 2.18 billion kilos and spreads across 300 kilometres. It is also considered to be millions of years old. Researchers identify two main reasons behind the existence of this huge pile of metal under the moon. Firstly, they assume that the metal that formed this crater is still set in the moon’s mantle. Secondly, they believe that the moon’s liquid magma surface turned into a solid which left heavy oxides of nickel and iron. However, both these reasons have not been confirmed yet.

Another study suggests that there is presence of water under the moon’s surface. Scientists say that there’s plenty of water beneath the moon, but it is slowly drying out. It was discovered that the existence of water is not new. It could have been there since the formation of the moon. However, it’s still uncertain how such large amounts of water ended up under the moon’s surface. According to researchers, the presence of water could be quite beneficial during future explorations. Transporting water from earth is a complex and expensive procedure which also requires a lot of time.

Both of these discoveries are quite impressive and have changed people’s perceptions about something as simple as the moon. Who would have thought that the moon could have so much going on beneath its surface, and who knows what else is yet to be uncovered?