Eli5: How come the universe is always expanding?
In: 1
We do not know. Answering that question would be a huge breakthrough in science.
We do know that since the Big Bang the universe has been expanding, though not always at the same rate. The initial expansion was incredibly rapid and lasted less than 375,000 years before expansion slowed down a lot. Then about 5-6 billion years ago expansion started accelerating again.
We do not know. Answering that question would be a huge breakthrough in science.
We do know that since the Big Bang the universe has been expanding, though not always at the same rate. The initial expansion was incredibly rapid and lasted less than 375,000 years before expansion slowed down a lot. Then about 5-6 billion years ago expansion started accelerating again.
The answer to this question is probably worth at least one future Nobel Prize. Because we don’t know.
We know the universe is expanding, we can measure how fast it is expanding, and we can include the expansion in our understanding well enough to make predictions based on it – but we don’t actually know what causes it or how.
So far, scientists call it “dark energy” – but that’s as far as it goes. Scientists are trying to understand dark energy; but they haven’t had much success. There’s some recent studies that show it might be connected to black holes – but that’s about it.
The answer to this question is probably worth at least one future Nobel Prize. Because we don’t know.
We know the universe is expanding, we can measure how fast it is expanding, and we can include the expansion in our understanding well enough to make predictions based on it – but we don’t actually know what causes it or how.
So far, scientists call it “dark energy” – but that’s as far as it goes. Scientists are trying to understand dark energy; but they haven’t had much success. There’s some recent studies that show it might be connected to black holes – but that’s about it.
The answer to this question is probably worth at least one future Nobel Prize. Because we don’t know.
We know the universe is expanding, we can measure how fast it is expanding, and we can include the expansion in our understanding well enough to make predictions based on it – but we don’t actually know what causes it or how.
So far, scientists call it “dark energy” – but that’s as far as it goes. Scientists are trying to understand dark energy; but they haven’t had much success. There’s some recent studies that show it might be connected to black holes – but that’s about it.
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