While browsing around Ted Talks ( Tedtalks.ted.com) I stumbled upon a video of a conference in which they show the current view scientists have of the universe. It is certainly a great departure of what I was shown as a kid and even in early post secondary education.
Basically the video shows how small we really are in comparison to the vastness of the known universe and how beautifully arranged or "designed" it is. Instead of the traditional view of planets and stars scattered randomly through the cosmos modern science has shown that the universe itself has a well organized structure. Gravity creates a sort of web structure of filaments formed by billions of stars and planets that orbit near each other with empty gaps around them. Scientists were able to model the universe based on countless images that were catalogued and analyzed to create a three dimensional model. They were also able to create a computer simulation of the big bang that following very simple rules of physics displayed a strickingly similar final structure as our current universe does. The two strongest determining variables for the model are gravity and something scientists call Dark Matter. This term is used to describe matter that is invisible, which is incredibly abstract and hasn't completely been proven yet.
It is amazing to see how much more humans known about the universe and how much more there is still to discover. We may never get to fully understand our universe but we are certainly inching towards it.
TedTalks - Video
It is amazing how much science can reveal as time goes by.
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