This is great news for our sun and our world. Our Sun is 4.5 billion years old and while that sounds old, it isn't. It is middle-aged. Our Sun has burnt through about half of its supply of hydrogen. That is our Sun's fuel. It fuses 4 billion kilograms of hydrogen per second into helium. In that process, it produces heat and light that reaches our world in about 9 minutes, to provide life-giving warmth. Otherwise, our world would be as cold and desolate as Mars. White Dwarf So what happens to our Sun when it runs out of hydrogen? Well the latest theory predicts that our Sun will dwindle and collapse under its gravity to a much smaller white dwarf. At this point it will not produce enough energy to heat the Earth. Super Nova However, other stars that are about 10 times the size of our Sun have a different fate. These stars explode in something called a "super nova". These explosions are enormous and extremely destructive, distributing their mass into the universe for future star birth. These stars are massive so they have enormous gravity, which condenses the mass into a neutron star. This is a star with mass composed entirely of neutrons with no protons. A teaspoon of its matter would weigh a billion tons on Earth! Stars that are about 20 times the size of our Sun have yet a different and more intriguing ending. These stars are so massive and burn so intense and have such a large gravitational pull that their ending is the most spectacular cataclysm of the cosmos. When these stars burn out of fuel, their massive gravitational pull takes over and sends them into implosion from which they cannot recover. Core temperature reaches 100 billion degrees. Gravity is so intense that all of its mass is collapsed into a single point or singularity. Nothing can escape this singularity, not even light. This is a black hole, where all our laws of physics break down. No-one really knows what happens in a black hole, but they know that every galaxy in the universe has a black hole at its center and some are bigger than others. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy has a black hole at its center that is 4.3 million times heavier than our Sun. Black holes have such an enormous gravitational pull that they can attract other galaxies, and consume entire stars. When they consume star matter, there is x-ray radiation emitted in astounding jet rays millions of miles long (see below-compliments www.astronomyfactbook.com) There is a lot of information being gathered on Black Holes and we are only in the very early stages of understanding them.
Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena Worm Holes are theoretical passage-ways through spacetime. They exist only in the equations of special relativity by Einstein (Einstein-Rosen Bridge). It is known that massive objects with immense gravity warp space-time. This has been proven by observations (i.e. extremely accurate satellite clocks in orbit around the Earth are known to be consistently picoseconds faster than the same clocks on Earth). Therefore as one gets closer to extremely large objects, space is warped and time slows. This is exaggerated millions-fold when a Black Hole is approached. It is theoretically possible for space to be warped so much that it can be bent over on itself like a sheet of paper. Consider space is like a sheet of paper that is bent forming a "U". A black hole at one side of the sheet of paper can connect with the opposite "White Hole" on the other side. This connection can be considered a Worm Hole through space-time (below). So Worm Holes are currently possible only in theory. However, the same was true for Black Holes only a few years ago, and today, Black Holes are science fact. They not only were calculated by Einstein to exist, but their interaction with matter has been observed and has been documented. Who knows, the same may be true of Worm Holes in the future.
Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena Worm holes are theoretical concepts that are calculated to exist only in Einstein's equations of special relativity. They have never been observed directly or indirectly, but if they do, they are considered to be immense distortions of space, possibly having a black hole at one end and white hole at the other. Worm holes are the doorways between two areas of space and time that are so extremely distorted, that they are folded like a sheet of paper (below).
In this video, astronomer Ian Morison discusses how a worm hole could act as a theoretical time machine (assuming humans can ever develop technology to travel at 99.999% of the speed of light and assuming we could survive a trip through a worm hole. Dr. Morison is illustrating Einstein's Theory of Relativity quite nicely with this analogy. Right now, travelling through a worm hole is pure fantasy, but not too long ago, the scientific community was saying the same things about black holes, which now are scientific fact. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena According to Einstein, massive objects have immense gravity that actually distort space and time. If you consider our Earth, which is a massive object in space, its gravity is not a "force that acts to pull on objects" but rather, it actually warps the surrounding space and time. The moon actually orbits the earth because it is following the curvature of distorted space around the Earth created by the Earth's warping of space. In the great video (Top by Kurdistan Planetarium) there is a good explanation of how a massive object (Sun) warps space causing the Earth to orbit it. In the middle image above (from Quora.com), the curvature of space-time created by the Earth is represented by the blue lines creating sort of a "distorted web". Now consider, a larger object such as our Sun which is thousands of times larger than our Earth. The Sun's gravity is thousands of times larger than the Earth's so its radius of influence is larger, which means the distance that it warps space and time is thousands of times larger than the Earth's. That is why so many planets orbit the Sun. Image compliments of Quora.com Now imagine the extreme influence and warping of space created by a black hole, which distorts space so much that it is orbited by an entire galaxy thousands of light-years in diameter. Such is the power and strength of gravity exerted by a super massive black hole at the center of each galaxy! In summary, here is a diagram (below) that depicts the progressive warping of space caused by progressively larger objects that have progressively larger gravity. The ultimate object, is of course a singularity or black hole, the largest of which, are supper massive black holes at the center of every galaxy.
How cool is that. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena Image compliments of New York Times
At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, there lies a Super-Massive Black Hole called Sagittarius A. It is the size of 4 Million Suns. An enormous gas cloud (see above) is being absorbed by this supermassive black hole so fast that it will likely stretch out in a vast spaghetti-like strand and heat up, possibly creating super heated gas ejecting jets as well as x-rays. The gas was thought to be sucked into the Black Hole so quickly that it essentially creates a "traffic jam" at the Event Horizon, causing collision of mass and super-heating of atoms. This was exciting for astronomers because it is the first time they are able to study interaction of a gas cloud with a Super-Massive Black Hole. However, as you can see in the 2016 view, most of the gas did not get sucked in and was merely deflected around Sagittarius A. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena |