Movement in the Universe When we look at the universe it is hard to realize nothing is static. Everything is in motion, where does all this energy come from and could that be contributing to what is known as dark energy? Dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scale. It was discovered when it was realized the expansion of our universe is accelerating, that is everything is drifting apart and this expansion is faster now than in the past, the past being the Big Bang which is said to have started our universe. If we could harness this energy from all this movement, we would have enough energy for anything we wanted to do and that would be true even if we only could harness a tiny bit of it. It is believed the moon has been drifting away from the earth for over 4,500,000,000 years. The rate of drift is 1.5 inches per year but this has changed over time. Scientists tell us the moon will never leave the earth’s orbit at the rate it is moving and the earth probably will be destroyed by the sun before the moon could ever escape. While the amount of movement is not much think about it this way, the moon is 6 feet 4.5 inches further away now than it was when we first landed on it. This is just an interesting point of information, at least it interests me. I know many people think I am a little nerdy with this stuff and they could be right. The planets themselves are slowly drifting away from the sun. The earth is drifting away from the sun at a rate of 0.59 inches per year. This means for 4,500,000,000 years the earth has traveled a little over ½ inch away from the sun every year. This may not sound like much, but over time it really adds up. This comes out to hundreds of miles if I am correct probably a little over 400. Saturn’s moon Titan is drifting away from Saturn even faster than our moon is drifting away from earth. As the satellites move further away from their planets the friction they cause is lessened, but since their movement is relatively slow the effects are not noticeable to most of us who are not watching scientific instruments. So far, I am still talking about movement in our solar system. Strangely enough it doesn’t seem the planets themselves are moving away from each other, which is a little surprising. The sun’s gravity is responsible for that, but is it solely responsible? The asteroid belt orbits the sun the same way the planets do. It is believed by most scientists the asteroid belt was formed by debris left over from the formation of the solar system. Once in a while an asteroid is knocked out of the belt or falls under gravitational influence from some source. When you consider the number of asteroids in the belt very few escape. It has been assumed by scientists if there is not enough energy for a black hole it will eventually evaporate. It is believed they gradually shrink if they can’t absorb mass and eventually are gone. I believe this is only a theory and I also believe we have never seen a black hole vanish. At least some scientists claim catastrophic events can cause black holes to move. The type of events I am talking about are when galaxies collide, which seems to happen from time to time. Stars move, but they are so far away it takes much longer than a human lifetime to notice it. Somebody once gave an illustration about why we never noticed the movement, he said think about something many millions or billions of light years away. As you walk towards it, it would never look like you were getting any closer. Just about everything in the universe is in motion one way or another. Even if it is moving away, it is probably traveling in an orbit and more than likely rotating. Some objects like pulsar stars can rotates so fast it is unbelievable. The fastest one found so far is PSR J1748-2446ad. It makes 716 full rotations every second. Can you imagine the energy being put out? Sometimes objects in space get knocked out of their orbits and it doesn’t seem to matter how big they are. If a star is knocked out of its orbit it becomes known as a rogue star and travels the galaxy on its own. As hard as it is to believe, astronomers have identified 700 Rogue stars they believe were ejected from the Milky Way galaxy. It is a lucky thing for all of us space is so big otherwise we would be experiencing a lot more collisions. Constellations are subject to this movement and over time they will break apart. After all the description of how they appear is man-made and not scientific so what might be the belt of Hercules now in 10,000 years might be something else. Movement is at the heart of everything in the universe. There may be other constructs we don’t know about yet which are also moving around. They could be so far away we don’t know about them, be in another dimension or even be invisible for some reason. We discovered the fact invisibility can be created by steering light around an object and we really have no way of knowing if that is happening some way in the vastness of space. Scientists have long predicted the end of the universe will be a cold dark ending with everything so far apart from each other we may not notice anything else is there. Of course, if this happens it will be so far into the future there will be nothing for any of us to worry about for millions of years. We don’t even know what is pulling the expanding universe if it is anything at all. Scientists think there is something there but not being able to see it makes this more theory than not. Perhaps we have missed something about all this movement and in the future we will have an aha moment. Maybe it will even turn out instead of the universe being pulled each individual item or object in it is being pushed. We really don’t know that much about the subject and years ago it was felt there would be a limit on the expansion and eventually it would slow down and stop and somewhere along the line contract until everything was pulled back into one giant atom and we had another Big Bang. As you can see this is no longer the belief.
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