SPACE FASCINATES ME....BUT......

                ...sometimes it confuses me also. When I was young, around 16 years, always loved to accompany dad, who was posted in Nashik as a Deputy Engineer with MHADA. He also liked my joining him in my young days and his lonely days. As mother and Kavan stayed back at Mumbai. 

               During such my visits to Nashik, Dhule, Malegaon, I used to get best ever chance to sleep out in the open, as my such visits were always used to be in summer vacations.

              While lying on bed in the open, under the night sky, I always wondered about its size and the gigantic nature of outer space, while dad discussed their projects with the other civil engineers. It used to be clear night skies and really enjoyed star gazing in those days. The sources of information on space were very limited but used to read mainly from the magazines and watching television. Unlike today, we can go and read and get any information we actually want at press of button. 

            The ineterest then was just limited in recognizing and differentiating between stars and planets. I could not afford a telescope then and considering my level of knowledge and interest not even today, the one which could satisfy my needs.

             There is lot of information with respect to space now. NASA on its web site posts some of the most spectacular pictures taken by Hubble telescope, which no telescope is capable of taking. There were few such stunning pictures were just released by NASA taken by Hubble telescope under the title XDF i.e., Extreme Deep Field. Picture adjoining hereby is one of those category. Taken of few galaxies forming, at distance of 12.3 billion Light Years away. (One must understand that while considering the outer space issues, time = distance) Our Universe is believed to have formed 12.7 billion years ago.

Now this has to be understood with logical deduction (theory) and it sounds very interesting, gigantic and stunningly difficult to understand its vastness and mammoth nature of material, space and time involved. This adjoining picture shows colorful dots, of different sizes are galaxies in various stages of formation about 12.3 Billion light years away from Earth. The light which emanates from these galaxies have reached us after 12.3 Billion light years. 

It means these galaxies in their different stages of formation are logically pictured just after 300 to 400 million years immediately following the big bang subsequent to which we believe to have formed our own Universe. 

Now from here it could be further deduced that with further more efforts we can go farther simultaneously back into the time, by another 300 to 400 million years and perhaps even could witness actual big bang happening at a distance of 12.7 billion years. Again wish to remind that the time= distance. 

So whats the point? 

The point is that scientists are logically imagining witnessing actual happening of Big Bang. It could be an event just happening there, from our mother earth. For this we must understand that the light travels at a speed of 297600 Km/s, which is the thumb rule for calculating distance in the space. Hence the light which comes traveling from those distant galaxies has actually emanated 12.3 billion years ago. Going further on that point, if we still try and find out galaxies little farther, perhaps another 300 to 40 million light years farther, we might actually witness the Big Bang happening there live.  We might not have to wait for such a news coming our way in the next 3 to 4 years. 

One thing which I wish to repeat here again is that the entire scientific fraternity believes that Universe was formed by a big bang nearly 12.7 Billion years ago. And what we see and take pictures now is what happened 12.3 billion years ago. So the light which started its travel 12.3 Billion years ago have reached us today here. Further simplifying it means what we see today is what happened there 12.3 Billion years ago. Hence with little more efforts we can perhaps see the actual Big Bang taking place and Universe getting formed.

                              Now the main point of confusion, why we always go into past? We may perhaps be watching our future, what it could look like after 12.3 billion years. The light emanating from 12.3 billion years, may not be our past but could be our future as well. People may argue that since the universe is just 12.7 billion years old how could one see the next 12.3 billion years. in such a case the age of the universe should be around 25 billion years.! Additionally in that case we ought to be in the exact middle of the Universe, which we are not sure.   That's the first part.

The point raised herein above about our position in the Universe, we do not exactly know where is our Milky-way galaxy situated in our own Universe, as we perhaps do not have the exact map of Universe and that process is going and might take years. Its very simple logically as to where we are placed in the Universe, will decide whether we are looking at the past or our future. (Perhaps a very good point for creating another Star Wars tiology..!!)

          Scientific community are doing a great job. There are events when they themselves have ridiculed themselves as happened it case of Planet Pluto. We learned since our childhood that Pluto was the last planet of the Solar system, then one day the world scientific congress decided to struck off poor Pluto from the favored list. Hence all scientific theories are created with the support of assumptions, ifs and buts. 

Looking at the picture we can hardly see our Sun in our own Galaxy, the Milky-way. We are not yet sure about the center of our galaxy of what it is formed. We assume due to various reasons that our milky-way galaxy has a very powerful black-hole at its center, which prevents us to look on the other side of our galaxy. The black-hole perhaps is approximately 25000 light years away from Earth and is covered with thick gases and such other particles, which prevents even light from coming out of the center of the Galaxy, Milky-way. Hence we can not see beyond the center of our own galaxy.

Such events confuses me...and it still confuses me....but I know that those think, question. Some thing more on this next time with some more such write ups.