Well-known TV presenter Igor Prokopenko in his new book turns to an analysis of the threats that await humanity on planet Earth in the foreseeable future. Predictions of the end of the world, or the Apocalypse, are presented in all world religions, and it is time to take these prophecies seriously.
Igor Prokopenko’s new book will help you gain a fresh look at the problems of climate, mutations of representatives of the earth’s fauna, the origins of earthquakes and tsunamis, and will also make you think about how to preserve the life of the human race in galactic and natural disasters.
The work was published in 2017 by Eksmo Publishing House. The book is part of the series “The most shocking hypotheses with Igor Prokopenko.” On our website you can download the book "Secrets of the Apocalypse" in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format or read online. The book's rating is 5 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also turn to reviews from readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In our partner's online store you can buy and read the book in paper version.
Igor Stanislavovich Prokopenko
Secrets of the Apocalypse
© Prokopenko I., 2017
© Design. LLC Publishing House "E", 2017
© FLPA / Rebecca Hosking / DIOMEDIA
© Mike Hayward Archive / Alamy / DIOMEDIA
© Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy / DIOMEDIA
© Li he bj / ICHPL Imaginechina / AP Photo / East News
© Mark Farmer / AP Photo / East News
© Hassan Ammar/AP Photo/East News
©NOAA/AP Photos/East News
© Ruben Sprich / Pool Photo / AP Photo / East News
© David Crane / Los Angeles Daily News / AP Photo / East News
© AP/East News
© Alexey Varfolomeev, Evgeny Kozyrev, Sergey Pyatakov, Zorikto Dagbaev, Boris Prikhodko, Nikolay Zaitsev, Abdula Magomedov, Mikhail Klimentyev, Ilya Pitalev, Vyacheslav Reutov, Voldemar Maask, Vladimir Sergeev, Grigory Sysoev, EMERCOM Main Directorate for the Rostov Region, Press Service of the JSC Uralkali / RIA Novosti
Infographics © RIA Novosti
Preface
Why do planes crash, ships sink, and cars crash on the roads? We are told that the human factor is to blame. That is, the person himself made a mistake, it happens to everyone. However, is everything so clear in our modern world? Let's see, for example, if you were told about thirty years ago that with one button in one second you could send a letter to the ends of the world, you would have said: fairy tales. And today, sending a text message to Australia is not a fairy tale, but a simple everyday convenience.
And here lies a big and insidious misconception. Because all this was not invented so that we could send stupid photos to the other side of the world. Global network! Today she is redrawing the political map. He creates world-famous figures overnight and just as easily sends them to the dustbin of history. But what is the price to pay for these unprecedented flowers of progress? She will be cruel.
One more alarming than the other, scientists put forward hypotheses that artificial intelligence is more likely to destroy humanity, considering you and me unnecessary ballast of the planet, and the megatons of poison that we produce in pursuit of cheap goods will complete the dirty work of a man-made apocalypse! What does science think about the imminent end of the world? What are the alternative points of view regarding the death of the Earth?
A shocking prediction was recently made by the famous British scientist Stephen Hawking. Having summed up all the information about the reality around us, he mathematically calculated that our human civilization is doomed.
It will inevitably perish, and already in this millennium.
However, the cause of the earthly apocalypse will not be a stray asteroid, which astronomers scare us with, or the solar wind, or a new ice age, but man himself. And there is no exaggeration in this. The ability of modern humanity to self-destruct today has approached that fatal line, beyond which - no matter what actions a person performs - he will inevitably end up in the cemetery of history.
What should we, the sinful inhabitants of the Earth, really be afraid of, and what horror stories should we ignore? To answer this question, we sorted out all the threats to humanity, separated scientific from unscientific, scary from funny, real from potential, and we came up with this book. This is the result of the work of the creative team of the television program “The Most Shocking Hypotheses.” I hope you find it interesting!
Space disasters
1. Galaxy Eaters
The Great Attractor is drawing in our galaxy - this gigantic gravitational force became known not so long ago. But the most important thing: our Milky Way finds itself in a kind of cosmic funnel - at the same time it is affected by antigravity, which is caused by dark energy. And there is nothing mystical about this - the Nobel Prize has already been received for the discovery of such a property of the Universe.
Dark energy not only occupies most of outer space, but also stretches it. Everything that is in the Universe moves away from each other, the forces of antigravity defeat the forces of attraction that are well known to us, thanks to which we safely move on our own two feet around our planet, and do not fly away from it. But this is for now - what will happen next to us, to the Earth, to the Solar System, given that scientists have already calculated possible options, the most likely of them being the Rupture of the Universe? The shocking assumption of astrophysicists has already found a lot of confirmation.
Right now one of the galaxies is dying in space. Stripes of gas and stars remain from it, and it is torn apart by one of the most gigantic structures of the Universe - the Great Attractor.
The same thing threatens our Milky Way: we are rushing through the Universe towards this Great Attractor. It draws both us and our neighboring galaxies into its funnel; soon this cosmic colossus will swallow the entire solar system, including the Earth.
Mikhail Savrov, associate professor of general physics at MIPT, says that the mass of this giant is more than a million times greater than the mass of galaxies like ours. That is, if there are a billion stars in our Galaxy, there are correspondingly a million billion or even more. And they also assume that this is the mass of only visible stars - it’s even difficult for us to imagine such gigantic dimensions. Apparently, this Great Attractor is the largest cluster of stars of its kind, a supercluster, close to us.
Astronomers named this supercluster of galaxies appropriately: from the English word attraction - “gravity” - they also speak of it as the center of gravity of the Universe.
Alexander Ivanchik, professor at the Department of Space Research at St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, believes that this is the most powerful gravitational formation in which the most galaxies are formed - this can be called a gravitational node.
A galaxy named ESO 137–001, which is now in its dying stage, was pulled towards itself by the Great Attractor at a speed of about 7 million kilometers per hour. Incredible power even by cosmic standards!
We recently learned about the existence of a giant gravitational funnel. Observations showed that our galaxy was heading somewhere, but what this source of attraction was could only be speculated. The part of the Universe where the Great Attractor is located is very difficult to explore even with the most advanced telescopes today.
Yes, that’s right, the main intrigue with this Great Attractor is that it was discovered recently. Why? Because it is located exactly in the galactic plane. That is, if we look at the sky, there are stars, stars, stars everywhere, and in one place there is such a foggy strip - the Milky Way. This is the plane of our Galaxy - and if we look into this plane, then the stars block the angle of view not only of the eyes, but also of the most powerful telescopes, and nothing is visible in that direction.
But astronomers were lucky and still managed to look behind the curtain of stars and dust that hides the Great Attractor from us, and now scientists are paying increased attention to it. This gravitational funnel is interesting, but - the main thing! – is dangerous because it is closest to us.
Sergei Rubin, professor at the MEPhI Nuclear Research University, emphasizes that this is indeed the largest cluster of galaxies, which is why the gravitational forces there are enormous. At the same time, there is an opinion that our galaxy is being torn apart by this Attractor.
This is the kind of tearing that the Hubble telescope recorded. The galaxy found itself in the midst of gravitational forces - it was captured by the attraction of the center of the Great Attractor called Abell 3627. Judging by the images from the telescope camera, the unfortunate one was already torn to pieces.
Powerful gravitational fields simply pull the gas out of it. What will it lead to? Moreover, having passed through this zone of attraction, through a strong gravitational field, the galaxy will come out of there without gas, that is, with its stars that exist now, but no new stars will be formed.
Without new stars, the galaxy will gradually die. What will happen to our Milky Way when it approaches the Great Attractor?!
Perhaps a catastrophe can be avoided - new calculations of the movement of our galaxy relative to the Great Attractor have recently been presented. We've slowed down! The speed is not 600 kilometers per second, as previously thought, but a third less. What's going on? As it turned out, the Milky Way galaxy and its neighbors are being pulled back by another powerful force, scientists called it dark energy - it causes an accelerated expansion of the Universe, that is, galaxies are not attracted, but are moving away.
Graphic representation of two neighboring galaxies, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy
Vyacheslav Dokuchaev, a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, reports that now all physicists, including astronomers, are excited about studying this new phenomenon, because this thing is absolutely mysterious. What's the mystery? After all, something must cause this accelerated expansion - it turns out that this is done by dark energy, which would be more correctly called a dark field.
The laws of attraction and gravity, known until now, change in space to antigravity. This is a discovery that recently won a Nobel Prize!
Current page: 1 (book has 16 pages total) [available reading passage: 11 pages]
Igor Stanislavovich Prokopenko
Secrets of the Apocalypse
© Prokopenko I., 2017
© Design. LLC Publishing House "E", 2017
© FLPA / Rebecca Hosking / DIOMEDIA
© Mike Hayward Archive / Alamy / DIOMEDIA
© Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy / DIOMEDIA
© Li he bj / ICHPL Imaginechina / AP Photo / East News
© Mark Farmer / AP Photo / East News
© Hassan Ammar/AP Photo/East News
©NOAA/AP Photos/East News
© Ruben Sprich / Pool Photo / AP Photo / East News
© David Crane / Los Angeles Daily News / AP Photo / East News
© AP/East News
© Alexey Varfolomeev, Evgeny Kozyrev, Sergey Pyatakov, Zorikto Dagbaev, Boris Prikhodko, Nikolay Zaitsev, Abdula Magomedov, Mikhail Klimentyev, Ilya Pitalev, Vyacheslav Reutov, Voldemar Maask, Vladimir Sergeev, Grigory Sysoev, EMERCOM Main Directorate for the Rostov Region, Press Service of the JSC Uralkali / RIA Novosti
Infographics © RIA Novosti
Preface
Why do planes crash, ships sink, and cars crash on the roads? We are told that the human factor is to blame. That is, the person himself made a mistake, it happens to everyone. However, is everything so clear in our modern world? Let's see, for example, if you were told about thirty years ago that with one button in one second you could send a letter to the ends of the world, you would have said: fairy tales. And today, sending a text message to Australia is not a fairy tale, but a simple everyday convenience.
And here lies a big and insidious misconception. Because all this was not invented so that we could send stupid photos to the other side of the world. Global network! Today she is redrawing the political map. He creates world-famous figures overnight and just as easily sends them to the dustbin of history. But what is the price to pay for these unprecedented flowers of progress? She will be cruel.
One more alarming than the other, scientists put forward hypotheses that artificial intelligence is more likely to destroy humanity, considering you and me unnecessary ballast of the planet, and the megatons of poison that we produce in pursuit of cheap goods will complete the dirty work of a man-made apocalypse! What does science think about the imminent end of the world? What are the alternative points of view regarding the death of the Earth?
A shocking prediction was recently made by the famous British scientist Stephen Hawking. Having summed up all the information about the reality around us, he mathematically calculated that our human civilization is doomed.
It will inevitably perish, and already in this millennium.
However, the cause of the earthly apocalypse will not be a stray asteroid, which astronomers scare us with, or the solar wind, or a new ice age, but man himself. And there is no exaggeration in this. The ability of modern humanity to self-destruct today has approached that fatal line, beyond which - no matter what actions a person performs - he will inevitably end up in the cemetery of history.
What should we, the sinful inhabitants of the Earth, really be afraid of, and what horror stories should we ignore? To answer this question, we sorted out all the threats to humanity, separated scientific from unscientific, scary from funny, real from potential, and we came up with this book. This is the result of the work of the creative team of the television program “The Most Shocking Hypotheses.” I hope you find it interesting!
Chapter 1
Space disasters
1. Galaxy Eaters
The Great Attractor is drawing in our galaxy - this gigantic gravitational force became known not so long ago. But the most important thing: our Milky Way finds itself in a kind of cosmic funnel - at the same time it is affected by antigravity, which is caused by dark energy. And there is nothing mystical about this - the Nobel Prize has already been received for the discovery of such a property of the Universe.
Dark energy not only occupies most of outer space, but also stretches it. Everything that is in the Universe moves away from each other, the forces of antigravity defeat the forces of attraction that are well known to us, thanks to which we safely move on our own two feet around our planet, and do not fly away from it. But this is for now - what will happen next to us, to the Earth, to the Solar System, given that scientists have already calculated possible options, the most likely of them being the Rupture of the Universe? The shocking assumption of astrophysicists has already found a lot of confirmation.
Right now one of the galaxies is dying in space. Stripes of gas and stars remain from it, and it is torn apart by one of the most gigantic structures of the Universe - the Great Attractor.
The same thing threatens our Milky Way: we are rushing through the Universe towards this Great Attractor. It draws both us and our neighboring galaxies into its funnel; soon this cosmic colossus will swallow the entire solar system, including the Earth.
Mikhail Savrov, associate professor of general physics at MIPT, says that the mass of this giant is more than a million times greater than the mass of galaxies like ours. That is, if there are a billion stars in our Galaxy, there are correspondingly a million billion or even more. And they also assume that this is the mass of only visible stars - it’s even difficult for us to imagine such gigantic dimensions. Apparently, this Great Attractor is the largest cluster of stars of its kind, a supercluster, close to us.
Astronomers named this supercluster of galaxies appropriately: from the English word attraction - “gravity” - they also speak of it as the center of gravity of the Universe.
Alexander Ivanchik, professor at the Department of Space Research at St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, believes that this is the most powerful gravitational formation in which the most galaxies are formed - this can be called a gravitational node.
A galaxy named ESO 137–001, which is now in its dying stage, was pulled towards itself by the Great Attractor at a speed of about 7 million kilometers per hour. Incredible power even by cosmic standards!
We recently learned about the existence of a giant gravitational funnel. Observations showed that our galaxy was heading somewhere, but what this source of attraction was could only be speculated. The part of the Universe where the Great Attractor is located is very difficult to explore even with the most advanced telescopes today.
Yes, that’s right, the main intrigue with this Great Attractor is that it was discovered recently. Why? Because it is located exactly in the galactic plane. That is, if we look at the sky, there are stars, stars, stars everywhere, and in one place there is such a foggy strip - the Milky Way. This is the plane of our Galaxy - and if we look into this plane, then the stars block the angle of view not only of the eyes, but also of the most powerful telescopes, and nothing is visible in that direction.
But astronomers were lucky and still managed to look behind the curtain of stars and dust that hides the Great Attractor from us, and now scientists are paying increased attention to it. This gravitational funnel is interesting, but - the main thing! – is dangerous because it is closest to us.
Sergei Rubin, professor at the MEPhI Nuclear Research University, emphasizes that this is indeed the largest cluster of galaxies, which is why the gravitational forces there are enormous. At the same time, there is an opinion that our galaxy is being torn apart by this Attractor.
This is the kind of tearing that the Hubble telescope recorded. The galaxy found itself in the midst of gravitational forces - it was captured by the attraction of the center of the Great Attractor called Abell 3627. Judging by the images from the telescope camera, the unfortunate one was already torn to pieces.
Powerful gravitational fields simply pull the gas out of it. What will it lead to? Moreover, having passed through this zone of attraction, through a strong gravitational field, the galaxy will come out of there without gas, that is, with its stars that exist now, but no new stars will be formed.
Without new stars, the galaxy will gradually die. What will happen to our Milky Way when it approaches the Great Attractor?!
Perhaps a catastrophe can be avoided - new calculations of the movement of our galaxy relative to the Great Attractor have recently been presented. We've slowed down! The speed is not 600 kilometers per second, as previously thought, but a third less. What's going on? As it turned out, the Milky Way galaxy and its neighbors are being pulled back by another powerful force, scientists called it dark energy - it causes an accelerated expansion of the Universe, that is, galaxies are not attracted, but are moving away.
Graphic representation of two neighboring galaxies, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy
Vyacheslav Dokuchaev, a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, reports that now all physicists, including astronomers, are excited about studying this new phenomenon, because this thing is absolutely mysterious. What's the mystery? After all, something must cause this accelerated expansion - it turns out that this is done by dark energy, which would be more correctly called a dark field.
The laws of attraction and gravity, known until now, change in space to antigravity. This is a discovery that recently won a Nobel Prize!
Previously, scientists believed that there was only gravity, thanks to which planets rotate, comets fly, stars and galaxies are formed. And now it turns out that on the largest scales the world is controlled by antigravity!
The discovery of American astronomers who received the Nobel Prize really shows the life of the Universe from a completely different side. This also applies to its origins, evolution, and future! But the most important thing: it becomes clear that right now space is undergoing a global restructuring! And it directly concerns us: our Galaxy, the Solar System, and the Earth.
Ordinary gravity, familiar to us on Earth, attracts everything to everything. This implies the law of universal gravitation formulated by Newton - two masses attract each other. Now it has been established that dark energy creates forces that lead to the expansion of galaxies over large distances, and this expansion accelerates everything else. And we now live precisely at the stage of this accelerated expansion of the Universe, in which this dark energy already dominates, it is 70 percent, and it precisely leads to the accelerated expansion of the Universe.
70 percent of everything in our Universe is dark energy! This is what is invisible to the eye, not visible to the most powerful telescopes, but this is what controls the Universe!
Arthur Chernin, chief researcher at the State Astronomical Institute named after P. K. Sternberg, says that we are talking about a grand discovery - the largest discovery of recent times in astronomy and astrophysics, and even in all of science, in the science of everything in the world. But we don’t yet know what dark energy consists of.
The fact that gravitational forces do not behave exactly as they should in accordance with accepted physical laws was noticed when the Galileo research apparatus was sent to Jupiter in the late 1980s. The scientists acted as usual - they used a “gravitational maneuver” to impart the required speed. The probe was brought closer to Earth twice so that the planet's gravity pushed it and gave it additional acceleration. But something strange happened - after the maneuvers, the speed of the Galileo turned out to be higher than calculated. The same thing happened with the next three devices, and the scientists were confused; they could not explain why the usual launch pattern was disrupted. Errors in calculations? Equipment malfunction? Or what unknown “something” gives the probes additional acceleration? At that time, astronomers had not yet talked about antigravity; the term “dark energy” did not exist, nor did the theory itself. But even now this phenomenon is a mystery for researchers of the Universe; very little is known about it.
For this fundamental natural phenomenon, even a corresponding name has not been invented - it is not known what it consists of, what it is.
Could dark energy manifest itself so close to us and make its own changes to the work of spacecraft sent from Earth?
Hubble telescope model
There is a six-meter telescope in the North Caucasus; for a long time it was the largest in the world; now it already has competitors, but among the Russian ones it is still the most powerful. As soon as the existence of dark energy in the Universe became known, here, at this telescope, a group of astronomers began to study phenomena associated with antigravity. But not in distant space - from there the information comes thanks to the famous Hubble telescope, but in the near environment - inside our Galaxy. And the results of this study are amazing! The Russian telescope provided information, without exaggeration, shocking - dark energy is around us!
Scientists saw the effects of anti-gravity, the effects, as they put it, of a universal Einsteinian anti-gravity not far from us. And from this a new concept emerges - the concept of local dark energy. This dark local energy was discovered here, in Russia, in the North Caucasus.
Does this mean that the gravity that holds us - humans and everything else near the surface of the Earth - will be replaced by antigravity? Will this mysterious dark energy work here, about which it is already known for sure that it has violated all the laws of cosmic gravity known and in force up to this time?
It is undeniable that antigravity from the point of view of dark energy is present on Earth as well. But its magnitude within such systems as man - Earth and Earth - Sun is so insignificant that it cannot even be confirmed experimentally. The experimental difference between gravity and antigravity appears only on enormous scales, on scales greater than hundreds of light years.
According to the latest data, the density of dark energy is not increasing. Perhaps its value will remain constant. But what could be the development of events if the recently discovered dark side of the Universe behaves unpredictably?! This cannot be ruled out, because, as astronomers themselves say, we don’t know what it is, what it consists of...
We all know from school physics lessons that humans are very dependent on gravity, attraction, and the forces of universal gravitation. Thanks to this, we can walk and run, and our houses and everything else do not fly up into the air. And we also drink tea from mugs thanks to gravity. If it weren’t for her, they would squeeze the liquid out of the tubes like astronauts...
But what will happen to the Earth and us if gravity disappears and there is no gravitational force? There is only one option: in a second, or even faster, everything will die. The planet will be left without an atmosphere, without air, oceans... Everything stays here and lives only in the presence of gravity.
But for now we are in place and, according to astronomers, we will not fly into space due to the dark energy and antigravity reigning in the Universe. Another thing is that the expansion of the Universe, and even with acceleration, will ultimately turn out to be disastrous for us in any case.
Catastrophic scenarios are possible – scientists admit it. The theoretical horror story is that it will all end with us being torn to shreds, because of which antigravity will become the main type of energy on our planet.
For urgent research, the European Space Agency is preparing to launch the Euclid telescope. The observations will cover a space with a radius of 10 billion light years. It will be possible to measure changes in distances between galaxies that are very far from us. This is important because it will be possible to calculate the prospects. For now, the most common thing that astronomers talk about is the future Big Rip of the Universe.
There are models of so-called phantom dark energy, when the expansion rate of the Universe is so high that there is a finite period of time during which the scale factor of the Universe, that is, physical distances, will rush to infinity. In English-language literature this is called bigrip, in the Russian version it is translated as a big gap. That is, when everything in the Universe begins to diverge from each other so quickly that everything will be torn into elementary components and taken beyond the so-called “visible horizon.”
But what is the “visible horizon”, or is it sometimes referred to as the “event horizon”? This is a kind of line beyond which we do not know what is happening, and, by the way, we will not find out. Space objects will be so far away that they cannot be felt, heard or seen by any apparatus or telescopes. Any contact of everything with everything in the Universe will be lost!
According to astronomers, the expansion of the Universe can be imagined as a limitless rubber tablecloth, which someone is stretching from different sides - while any two galaxies that were at a certain distance from each other will constantly move away. This is the expansion of the Universe.
But in this whole catastrophic situation there is one significant “but”. What's inside our Milky Way won't move away from each other. The Sun and all the planets will remain in place, and our neighboring galaxies will not fly away either. For example, the Andromeda Nebula will not be carried away from us - it is too tightly bound to us gravitationally. Here dark energy is powerless, but is there a plus in this?! As it turns out, no! For the Earth and the Solar System, a neighboring galaxy is a very serious threat. It's falling on us!
Astronomical modeling pictures show how two galaxies are now approaching each other. Milky Way – “Milky Way” – that’s us. The simulation shows that Andromeda is twice as large. This means that the power of gravity is much higher.
There are already numerical calculations of the dynamics of the merger of these two galaxies, while various cataclysms are possible in their centers - absorption of stars, explosions of stars, dynamic instabilities that will eject stars.
But what do explosions of stars, even those too distant, mean to us?! This could lead to a mass extinction of all life on Earth, and there is evidence of this from history. A group of paleontologists has revealed the periodicity of just such global catastrophes on our planet over the past 250 million years. There were 12 of them, and the average interval between them was 26 million years. These extinctions are associated precisely with various events in space. Two, for example, occurred due to the fall of asteroids to Earth, and one definitely happened due to the explosion of a star.
Physicists note that the intensity of the resulting gamma rays is not so great as to burn all living things, but they burn the ozone layer, and it takes several months or even several years to restore it. Without the ozone layer, which protects life on Earth from ultraviolet radiation, if not all, then 80–90% of living organisms will die out.
But we are talking about the disastrous results from the explosion of one star. How many of them could explode when our Galaxy is absorbed by the neighboring Andromeda Nebula? Dozens? Hundreds?...
There are many examples in the Universe when one galaxy merged with another. Mostly the big ones devoured the little ones. Our Milky Way is also a kind of hannibal - it contains several dwarf galaxies. First, he stretched them with his tidal forces, slowly pumped gas out of them, and that’s it - absorption happened.
For us this happens without much catastrophism, but the dwarfs get it. Here is an example - the Magellanic Clouds. We can see them even with the naked eye. The navigator Ferdinand Magellan, after whom these two tiny galaxies - satellites of the Milky Way are named, used them for navigation.
They are not yet part of our Galaxy. But they will be soon - the merger is already happening!
Observers of life in the Universe indicate that the Magellanic Clouds fly through our galaxy, and they are greatly distorted by this, because of this they even have a shapeless appearance.
When the Andromeda Galaxy begins to approach our Milky Way, we, the inhabitants of Earth, will notice it. Astronomers say that first of all, the structure of the starry sky will be rebuilt. For example, we will no longer see the familiar Ursa Major.
When this will happen is difficult to say. Before 2012, there was no way at all to know whether a collision would occur or not. Only after 10 years of tracking Andromeda with the Hubble telescope, it became clear that it was moving directly towards us and at a very decent speed, about 110 kilometers per second.
But scientists do not rule out that the neighboring galaxy will deviate slightly from its course and a head-on collision will not occur. The consequences for us in this situation are less catastrophic, however, the impact will be significant - the power of gravity will partially destroy both one and the other galaxy.
Tidal forces in such situations - and these are also gravitational forces - begin to tear galaxies apart, tearing off pieces from them, even small ones. Subsequently, these pieces either fly off somewhere into space or are attracted to one of the galaxies.
Black holes will definitely benefit from the collision of two galaxies. These gravitational funnels of incredible force pull into themselves everything that falls into their field. Any progress, changes in outer space, and especially such global ones as the merger of two galaxies, are a real holiday for these monsters. They will have something to eat for lunch and dinner!
Using an elementary example, this can be explained this way: when two galaxies collide, the motion of stars becomes more chaotic. And some stars and galactic clouds fall into the area of influence of this very black hole, and it begins to absorb them. At the same time, intense light is emitted, and we can already see this black hole from Earth.
Astronomers are not particularly clever when naming space objects. If you can’t see it, it means dark energy. If everything falls into something and this funnel is also invisible, then it is a black hole. Such a monster sits in the center of the Milky Way. Without interruption, absorbing everything that attracts. This is the main black hole of our Galaxy.
Hubble telescope model
Everything moves around her. It's like the Sun sits at the center of the solar system and all the smaller objects revolve around it, so does the black hole. This is apparently the most massive object in our Galaxy, approximately one thousandth the mass of all its matter. That is, there are about a billion stars in our Galaxy, several million of which are the mass of the black hole in the center.
And this black hole is the main source of danger located inside the Galaxy, within its borders.
And even now – there, high above us – a monstrous and colossal event is taking place. A black hole devours a gas cloud.
Anyone can look at a photograph of our Galaxy and see that there is a brightly glowing area in the center. This black hole absorbs matter faster or slower. Ordinary matter, which is found in clouds and some in some stars, is now falling into our black hole. And in the center we see this glow, which, by the way, prevents our instruments from approaching the black hole itself and finding out anything there, at too close distances, directly next to the black hole.
This colossus is being closely monitored by several observatories around the world. Russian astronomers today have Radioastron as their main source of information. This radio telescope is in orbit, but it works in close conjunction with ground-based equipment.
Nikolai Kardashev, head of the Astrospace Center of the Lebedev Physical Institute, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, notes that the very great interest of foreign scientists has led to the fact that almost all radio observatories in the world with their large telescopes are participating in these observations. Participating telescopes in Western Europe, radio telescopes in Japan, India, Australia, Canada, the United States itself, the 100-meter radio telescope at Charlesville and the 300-meter radio telescope at Arecibo are all participating. And then all the information recorded on magnetic disks is sent to processing centers. And the largest processing center is in Moscow.
It is expected that scientists will finally be able to obtain more accurate information about black holes. After all, most of the information about these invisible giants is still at the level of hypotheses. There will be even more astrospace technology aimed at black holes over time. All this is to help Radioastron.
Vladimir Bobyshkin, chief designer of the NPO named after S.A. Lavochkin, claims that this object is unique, there are no analogues to it in the world today. It includes the Radioastron radio telescope, an X-ray observatory with qualitatively new scientific instruments, and an ultraviolet telescope.
It is possible that with the help of the latest space equipment it will be possible to look, if not into the inside of a black hole, but to take a closer look at its most dangerous zone.
Scientists hope that they will be able to get very close to the so-called event horizon. The event horizon is that sphere or surface around a black hole where an incoming object should simply disappear. There is very strong gravity there, there may be all sorts of unusual properties of this volume around the black hole.
Why is this important to know now? It's all about Andromeda, which is rushing towards us - it, like many galaxies, has its own central supermassive black hole.
The fall and merger, the passage of these two galaxies can lead to the fact that our black hole and, possibly, the black hole in the Andromeda Nebula can be shifted by some dynamic phenomena.
It is the behavior of the two black holes that will determine the fate of the two galaxies! Just imagine what can happen when giants touch, possessing incredible gravity and pulling everything into themselves! The most powerful one, and this is most likely the one in the Andromeda Nebula, will absorb the second one. A cosmic monster is being formed, the likes of which have yet to be found in the entire Universe. And all this is near us! It is difficult to predict in detail how events will develop; the consequences can only be assumed, knowing how the merger of black holes has already occurred in the history of the Universe.
On September 14, 2015, gravitational waves were detected for the first time. Never before has it been possible to confirm their existence in practice! And finally, astrophysical equipment was able to sense gravitational waves. They came from two colliding black holes.
This is a vibration of space itself, space itself begins to vibrate when two black holes merge. And these vibrations propagate in the form of waves of a special shape, exactly what was expected in theory, and this is what was discovered. This is being called an incredible triumph of 21st century science.
The catastrophe occurred in the depths of the Universe. Two black giants - each about 30 times larger than our Sun - came too close to each other. What was the reason why they were attracted is difficult to establish. But scientists are good at modeling the merger process itself.
According to the professors, the collision occurs as follows - they approach each other and begin to rotate around each other faster and faster, the distance between them decreases, and at some point they merge. And at this time, in the last moments of rapid rotation and merger, the most intense gravitational waves are emitted, which there was hope to measure.
The merger of two black holes and the formation of gravitational waves in the diagram
The radiation power of the waves was approximately 50 times greater than that from the entire Universe. But this is at the initial stage. Since the colliding black holes were very far away, the gravitational waves reached us with much less radiation power. We - people - did not feel them. But! What’s amazing is that the planet itself did not experience the best moments - gravitational waves, having reached the Earth, began to compress and expand it. This has been accurately established by ultra-sensitive detectors of astrospace observatories!
If these gravitational waves were a little more powerful, we would be very unlucky.
After all, a gravitational wave is a local disturbance of the gravitational field. Moreover, when it passes through a person, for example, he will feel how it compresses him and, on the other hand, somewhat stretches him in the perpendicular direction. On Earth, this gravitational wave will be felt by buildings, mountains, and oceans. That is, everything will shrink a little, stretch a little - with all the ensuing consequences. But gravitational waves of such amplitude can only be produced by the merger of black holes, which is what happened.
The formation of one black hulk from two is very rare. Those from which gravitational waves are recorded are about one and a half billion light years away from us! Now imagine what will happen if black holes near us merge - and this is what will happen when the Milky Way collides with a neighboring galaxy!
Moreover, there is more than one black hole in our Galaxy. There may be hundreds or more of them. But there are only a few supermassive ones. These are the ones that have been discovered so far. But there are several giant stars that could very well turn into a black hole in the near future.
On February 23, 1987, a sensation occurred in astronomy - light from a star that exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud reached the Earth. A star closer to us has not yet exploded! At least since the invention of the telescope. By May of that year, this star could be seen with the naked eye. She shone so brightly! The explosion of a star is essentially its death. And a very bright light is a sign of death agony.
God forbid this happens to a star not very far from us, then life will disappear on Earth. If it flashed at a distance of a billion light years and the device is now going off scale, and if a star explodes at a distance of 10 parsecs from the Earth, it will simply blow away the entire atmosphere of the Earth, such intensity will be gamma radiation.
This phenomenon is now being studied in great detail and scrupulously by almost all astronomical observatories, and in the place of this star they see expanding clouds - shock waves of glowing gas. And the most mysterious and intriguing thing is what is left there, in the center? What could remain: either a neutron star or a black hole. It had a mass somewhere on the order of 30 solar masses, and according to all scientific concepts, it should form a black hole.
There is a star in our Galaxy called Eta Carinae. Its mass is a hundred times greater than that of the Sun, and its luminosity is 5 million times (!) higher than the Sun. And it is in a stage close to explosion! When will this happen? Perhaps in ten, twenty thousand years, and perhaps tomorrow.
By all indications, the explosion will be much more powerful than that of the star in 1987. Astronomers don’t even call this phenomenon a supernova explosion, but a hypernova!
After the explosion, most of the matter will scatter in space, and in place of the star, most likely, a black hole will remain. The consequences for us are absolutely catastrophic, because even explosions of much smaller stars are seriously dangerous.
Imagine, 30 masses of the Sun explodes, 10 masses of the Sun contracts and forms a black hole, and 20 masses of the Sun, like pieces of hot gas, scatter to the sides. And if there is any other star or planet in their way, they will simply tear it down and burn it.
© Design. LLC Publishing House "E", 2017
© FLPA / Rebecca Hosking / DIOMEDIA
© Mike Hayward Archive / Alamy / DIOMEDIA
© Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy / DIOMEDIA
© Li he bj / ICHPL Imaginechina / AP Photo / East News
© Mark Farmer / AP Photo / East News
© Hassan Ammar/AP Photo/East News
©NOAA/AP Photos/East News
© Ruben Sprich / Pool Photo / AP Photo / East News
© David Crane / Los Angeles Daily News / AP Photo / East News
© AP/East News
© Alexey Varfolomeev, Evgeny Kozyrev, Sergey Pyatakov, Zorikto Dagbaev, Boris Prikhodko, Nikolay Zaitsev, Abdula Magomedov, Mikhail Klimentyev, Ilya Pitalev, Vyacheslav Reutov, Voldemar Maask, Vladimir Sergeev, Grigory Sysoev, EMERCOM Main Directorate for the Rostov Region, Press Service of the JSC Uralkali / RIA Novosti
Infographics © RIA Novosti
Preface
Why do planes crash, ships sink, and cars crash on the roads? We are told that the human factor is to blame. That is, the person himself made a mistake, it happens to everyone. However, is everything so clear in our modern world? Let's see, for example, if you were told about thirty years ago that with one button in one second you could send a letter to the ends of the world, you would have said: fairy tales. And today, sending a text message to Australia is not a fairy tale, but a simple everyday convenience.
And here lies a big and insidious misconception. Because all this was not invented so that we could send stupid photos to the other side of the world. Global network! Today she is redrawing the political map. He creates world-famous figures overnight and just as easily sends them to the dustbin of history. But what is the price to pay for these unprecedented flowers of progress? She will be cruel.
One more alarming than the other, scientists put forward hypotheses that artificial intelligence is more likely to destroy humanity, considering you and me unnecessary ballast of the planet, and the megatons of poison that we produce in pursuit of cheap goods will complete the dirty work of a man-made apocalypse! What does science think about the imminent end of the world? What are the alternative points of view regarding the death of the Earth?
A shocking prediction was recently made by the famous British scientist Stephen Hawking. Having summed up all the information about the reality around us, he mathematically calculated that our human civilization is doomed.
It will inevitably perish, and already in this millennium.
However, the cause of the earthly apocalypse will not be a stray asteroid, which astronomers scare us with, or the solar wind, or a new ice age, but man himself. And there is no exaggeration in this. The ability of modern humanity to self-destruct today has approached that fatal line, beyond which - no matter what actions a person performs - he will inevitably end up in the cemetery of history.
What should we, the sinful inhabitants of the Earth, really be afraid of, and what horror stories should we ignore? To answer this question, we sorted out all the threats to humanity, separated scientific from unscientific, scary from funny, real from potential, and we came up with this book. This is the result of the work of the creative team of the television program “The Most Shocking Hypotheses.” I hope you find it interesting!
Space disasters
1. Galaxy Eaters
The Great Attractor is drawing in our galaxy - this gigantic gravitational force became known not so long ago. But the most important thing: our Milky Way finds itself in a kind of cosmic funnel - at the same time it is affected by antigravity, which is caused by dark energy. And there is nothing mystical about this - the Nobel Prize has already been received for the discovery of such a property of the Universe.
Dark energy not only occupies most of outer space, but also stretches it. Everything that is in the Universe moves away from each other, the forces of antigravity defeat the forces of attraction that are well known to us, thanks to which we safely move on our own two feet around our planet, and do not fly away from it. But this is for now - what will happen next to us, to the Earth, to the Solar System, given that scientists have already calculated possible options, the most likely of them being the Rupture of the Universe? The shocking assumption of astrophysicists has already found a lot of confirmation.
Right now one of the galaxies is dying in space. Stripes of gas and stars remain from it, and it is torn apart by one of the most gigantic structures of the Universe - the Great Attractor.
The same thing threatens our Milky Way: we are rushing through the Universe towards this Great Attractor. It draws both us and our neighboring galaxies into its funnel; soon this cosmic colossus will swallow the entire solar system, including the Earth.
Mikhail Savrov, associate professor of general physics at MIPT, says that the mass of this giant is more than a million times greater than the mass of galaxies like ours. That is, if there are a billion stars in our Galaxy, there are correspondingly a million billion or even more. And they also assume that this is the mass of only visible stars - it’s even difficult for us to imagine such gigantic dimensions. Apparently, this Great Attractor is the largest cluster of stars of its kind, a supercluster, close to us.
Astronomers named this supercluster of galaxies appropriately: from the English word attraction - “gravity” - they also speak of it as the center of gravity of the Universe.
Alexander Ivanchik, professor at the Department of Space Research at St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, believes that this is the most powerful gravitational formation in which the most galaxies are formed - this can be called a gravitational node.
A galaxy named ESO 137–001, which is now in its dying stage, was pulled towards itself by the Great Attractor at a speed of about 7 million kilometers per hour. Incredible power even by cosmic standards!
We recently learned about the existence of a giant gravitational funnel. Observations showed that our galaxy was heading somewhere, but what this source of attraction was could only be speculated. The part of the Universe where the Great Attractor is located is very difficult to explore even with the most advanced telescopes today.
Yes, that’s right, the main intrigue with this Great Attractor is that it was discovered recently. Why? Because it is located exactly in the galactic plane. That is, if we look at the sky, there are stars, stars, stars everywhere, and in one place there is such a foggy strip - the Milky Way. This is the plane of our Galaxy - and if we look into this plane, then the stars block the angle of view not only of the eyes, but also of the most powerful telescopes, and nothing is visible in that direction.
But astronomers were lucky and still managed to look behind the curtain of stars and dust that hides the Great Attractor from us, and now scientists are paying increased attention to it. This gravitational funnel is interesting, but - the main thing! – is dangerous because it is closest to us.
Sergei Rubin, professor at the MEPhI Nuclear Research University, emphasizes that this is indeed the largest cluster of galaxies, which is why the gravitational forces there are enormous. At the same time, there is an opinion that our galaxy is being torn apart by this Attractor.
This is the kind of tearing that the Hubble telescope recorded. The galaxy found itself in the midst of gravitational forces - it was captured by the attraction of the center of the Great Attractor called Abell 3627. Judging by the images from the telescope camera, the unfortunate one was already torn to pieces.
Powerful gravitational fields simply pull the gas out of it. What will it lead to? Moreover, having passed through this zone of attraction, through a strong gravitational field, the galaxy will come out of there without gas, that is, with its stars that exist now, but no new stars will be formed.
Without new stars, the galaxy will gradually die. What will happen to our Milky Way when it approaches the Great Attractor?!
© Prokopenko I., 2017
© Design. LLC Publishing House "E", 2017
© FLPA / Rebecca Hosking / DIOMEDIA
© Mike Hayward Archive / Alamy / DIOMEDIA
© Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy / DIOMEDIA
© Li he bj / ICHPL Imaginechina / AP Photo / East News
© Mark Farmer / AP Photo / East News
© Hassan Ammar/AP Photo/East News
©NOAA/AP Photos/East News
© Ruben Sprich / Pool Photo / AP Photo / East News
© David Crane / Los Angeles Daily News / AP Photo / East News
© AP/East News
© Alexey Varfolomeev, Evgeny Kozyrev, Sergey Pyatakov, Zorikto Dagbaev, Boris Prikhodko, Nikolay Zaitsev, Abdula Magomedov, Mikhail Klimentyev, Ilya Pitalev, Vyacheslav Reutov, Voldemar Maask, Vladimir Sergeev, Grigory Sysoev, EMERCOM Main Directorate for the Rostov Region, Press Service of the JSC Uralkali / RIA Novosti
Infographics © RIA Novosti
Preface
Why do planes crash, ships sink, and cars crash on the roads? We are told that the human factor is to blame. That is, the person himself made a mistake, it happens to everyone. However, is everything so clear in our modern world? Let's see, for example, if you were told about thirty years ago that with one button in one second you could send a letter to the ends of the world, you would have said: fairy tales. And today, sending a text message to Australia is not a fairy tale, but a simple everyday convenience.
And here lies a big and insidious misconception. Because all this was not invented so that we could send stupid photos to the other side of the world. Global network! Today she is redrawing the political map. He creates world-famous figures overnight and just as easily sends them to the dustbin of history. But what is the price to pay for these unprecedented flowers of progress? She will be cruel.
One more alarming than the other, scientists put forward hypotheses that artificial intelligence is more likely to destroy humanity, considering you and me unnecessary ballast of the planet, and the megatons of poison that we produce in pursuit of cheap goods will complete the dirty work of a man-made apocalypse! What does science think about the imminent end of the world? What are the alternative points of view regarding the death of the Earth?
A shocking prediction was recently made by the famous British scientist Stephen Hawking. Having summed up all the information about the reality around us, he mathematically calculated that our human civilization is doomed.
It will inevitably perish, and already in this millennium.
However, the cause of the earthly apocalypse will not be a stray asteroid, which astronomers scare us with, or the solar wind, or a new ice age, but man himself. And there is no exaggeration in this. The ability of modern humanity to self-destruct today has approached that fatal line, beyond which - no matter what actions a person performs - he will inevitably end up in the cemetery of history.
What should we, the sinful inhabitants of the Earth, really be afraid of, and what horror stories should we ignore? To answer this question, we sorted out all the threats to humanity, separated scientific from unscientific, scary from funny, real from potential, and we came up with this book.
This is the result of the work of the creative team of the television program “The Most Shocking Hypotheses.” I hope you find it interesting!
Chapter 1
Space disasters
1. Galaxy Eaters
The Great Attractor is drawing in our galaxy - this gigantic gravitational force became known not so long ago. But the most important thing: our Milky Way finds itself in a kind of cosmic funnel - at the same time it is affected by antigravity, which is caused by dark energy. And there is nothing mystical about this - the Nobel Prize has already been received for the discovery of such a property of the Universe.
Dark energy not only occupies most of outer space, but also stretches it. Everything that is in the Universe moves away from each other, the forces of antigravity defeat the forces of attraction that are well known to us, thanks to which we safely move on our own two feet around our planet, and do not fly away from it. But this is for now - what will happen next to us, to the Earth, to the Solar System, given that scientists have already calculated possible options, the most likely of them being the Rupture of the Universe? The shocking assumption of astrophysicists has already found a lot of confirmation.
Right now one of the galaxies is dying in space. Stripes of gas and stars remain from it, and it is torn apart by one of the most gigantic structures of the Universe - the Great Attractor.
The same thing threatens our Milky Way: we are rushing through the Universe towards this Great Attractor. It draws both us and our neighboring galaxies into its funnel; soon this cosmic colossus will swallow the entire solar system, including the Earth.
Mikhail Savrov, associate professor of general physics at MIPT, says that the mass of this giant is more than a million times greater than the mass of galaxies like ours. That is, if there are a billion stars in our Galaxy, there are correspondingly a million billion or even more. And they also assume that this is the mass of only visible stars - it’s even difficult for us to imagine such gigantic dimensions. Apparently, this Great Attractor is the largest cluster of stars of its kind, a supercluster, close to us.
Astronomers named this supercluster of galaxies appropriately: from the English word attraction - “gravity” - they also speak of it as the center of gravity of the Universe.
Alexander Ivanchik, professor at the Department of Space Research at St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, believes that this is the most powerful gravitational formation in which the most galaxies are formed - this can be called a gravitational node.
A galaxy named ESO 137–001, which is now in its dying stage, was pulled towards itself by the Great Attractor at a speed of about 7 million kilometers per hour. Incredible power even by cosmic standards!
We recently learned about the existence of a giant gravitational funnel. Observations showed that our galaxy was heading somewhere, but what this source of attraction was could only be speculated. The part of the Universe where the Great Attractor is located is very difficult to explore even with the most advanced telescopes today.
Yes, that’s right, the main intrigue with this Great Attractor is that it was discovered recently. Why? Because it is located exactly in the galactic plane. That is, if we look at the sky, there are stars, stars, stars everywhere, and in one place there is such a foggy strip - the Milky Way. This is the plane of our Galaxy - and if we look into this plane, then the stars block the angle of view not only of the eyes, but also of the most powerful telescopes, and nothing is visible in that direction.
But astronomers were lucky and still managed to look behind the curtain of stars and dust that hides the Great Attractor from us, and now scientists are paying increased attention to it. This gravitational funnel is interesting, but - the main thing! – is dangerous because it is closest to us.
Sergei Rubin, professor at the MEPhI Nuclear Research University, emphasizes that this is indeed the largest cluster of galaxies, which is why the gravitational forces there are enormous. At the same time, there is an opinion that our galaxy is being torn apart by this Attractor.
This is the kind of tearing that the Hubble telescope recorded. The galaxy found itself in the midst of gravitational forces - it was captured by the attraction of the center of the Great Attractor called Abell 3627. Judging by the images from the telescope camera, the unfortunate one was already torn to pieces.
Powerful gravitational fields simply pull the gas out of it. What will it lead to? Moreover, having passed through this zone of attraction, through a strong gravitational field, the galaxy will come out of there without gas, that is, with its stars that exist now, but no new stars will be formed.
Without new stars, the galaxy will gradually die. What will happen to our Milky Way when it approaches the Great Attractor?!
Perhaps a catastrophe can be avoided - new calculations of the movement of our galaxy relative to the Great Attractor have recently been presented. We've slowed down! The speed is not 600 kilometers per second, as previously thought, but a third less. What's going on? As it turned out, the Milky Way galaxy and its neighbors are being pulled back by another powerful force, scientists called it dark energy - it causes an accelerated expansion of the Universe, that is, galaxies are not attracted, but are moving away.
Graphic representation of two neighboring galaxies, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy
Vyacheslav Dokuchaev, a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, reports that now all physicists, including astronomers, are excited about studying this new phenomenon, because this thing is absolutely mysterious. What's the mystery? After all, something must cause this accelerated expansion - it turns out that this is done by dark energy, which would be more correctly called a dark field.
The laws of attraction and gravity, known until now, change in space to antigravity. This is a discovery that recently won a Nobel Prize!
Previously, scientists believed that there was only gravity, thanks to which planets rotate, comets fly, stars and galaxies are formed. And now it turns out that on the largest scales the world is controlled by antigravity!
The discovery of American astronomers who received the Nobel Prize really shows the life of the Universe from a completely different side. This also applies to its origins, evolution, and future! But the most important thing: it becomes clear that right now space is undergoing a global restructuring! And it directly concerns us: our Galaxy, the Solar System, and the Earth.
Ordinary gravity, familiar to us on Earth, attracts everything to everything. This implies the law of universal gravitation formulated by Newton - two masses attract each other. Now it has been established that dark energy creates forces that lead to the expansion of galaxies over large distances, and this expansion accelerates everything else. And we now live precisely at the stage of this accelerated expansion of the Universe, in which this dark energy already dominates, it is 70 percent, and it precisely leads to the accelerated expansion of the Universe.
70 percent of everything in our Universe is dark energy! This is what is invisible to the eye, not visible to the most powerful telescopes, but this is what controls the Universe!
Arthur Chernin, chief researcher at the State Astronomical Institute named after P. K. Sternberg, says that we are talking about a grand discovery - the largest discovery of recent times in astronomy and astrophysics, and even in all of science, in the science of everything in the world. But we don’t yet know what dark energy consists of.
The fact that gravitational forces do not behave exactly as they should in accordance with accepted physical laws was noticed when the Galileo research apparatus was sent to Jupiter in the late 1980s. The scientists acted as usual - they used a “gravitational maneuver” to impart the required speed. The probe was brought closer to Earth twice so that the planet's gravity pushed it and gave it additional acceleration. But something strange happened - after the maneuvers, the speed of the Galileo turned out to be higher than calculated. The same thing happened with the next three devices, and the scientists were confused; they could not explain why the usual launch pattern was disrupted. Errors in calculations? Equipment malfunction? Or what unknown “something” gives the probes additional acceleration? At that time, astronomers had not yet talked about antigravity; the term “dark energy” did not exist, nor did the theory itself. But even now this phenomenon is a mystery for researchers of the Universe; very little is known about it.
For this fundamental natural phenomenon, even a corresponding name has not been invented - it is not known what it consists of, what it is.
Could dark energy manifest itself so close to us and make its own changes to the work of spacecraft sent from Earth?
Hubble telescope model
There is a six-meter telescope in the North Caucasus; for a long time it was the largest in the world; now it already has competitors, but among the Russian ones it is still the most powerful. As soon as the existence of dark energy in the Universe became known, here, at this telescope, a group of astronomers began to study phenomena associated with antigravity. But not in distant space - from there the information comes thanks to the famous Hubble telescope, but in the near environment - inside our Galaxy. And the results of this study are amazing! The Russian telescope provided information, without exaggeration, shocking - dark energy is around us!
Scientists saw the effects of anti-gravity, the effects, as they put it, of a universal Einsteinian anti-gravity not far from us. And from this a new concept emerges - the concept of local dark energy. This dark local energy was discovered here, in Russia, in the North Caucasus.
Does this mean that the gravity that holds us - humans and everything else near the surface of the Earth - will be replaced by antigravity? Will this mysterious dark energy work here, about which it is already known for sure that it has violated all the laws of cosmic gravity known and in force up to this time?
It is undeniable that antigravity from the point of view of dark energy is present on Earth as well. But its magnitude within such systems as man - Earth and Earth - Sun is so insignificant that it cannot even be confirmed experimentally. The experimental difference between gravity and antigravity appears only on enormous scales, on scales greater than hundreds of light years.
According to the latest data, the density of dark energy is not increasing. Perhaps its value will remain constant. But what could be the development of events if the recently discovered dark side of the Universe behaves unpredictably?! This cannot be ruled out, because, as astronomers themselves say, we don’t know what it is, what it consists of...
We all know from school physics lessons that humans are very dependent on gravity, attraction, and the forces of universal gravitation. Thanks to this, we can walk and run, and our houses and everything else do not fly up into the air. And we also drink tea from mugs thanks to gravity. If it weren’t for her, they would squeeze the liquid out of the tubes like astronauts...
But what will happen to the Earth and us if gravity disappears and there is no gravitational force? There is only one option: in a second, or even faster, everything will die. The planet will be left without an atmosphere, without air, oceans... Everything stays here and lives only in the presence of gravity.
But for now we are in place and, according to astronomers, we will not fly into space due to the dark energy and antigravity reigning in the Universe. Another thing is that the expansion of the Universe, and even with acceleration, will ultimately turn out to be disastrous for us in any case.
Catastrophic scenarios are possible – scientists admit it. The theoretical horror story is that it will all end with us being torn to shreds, because of which antigravity will become the main type of energy on our planet.
For urgent research, the European Space Agency is preparing to launch the Euclid telescope. The observations will cover a space with a radius of 10 billion light years. It will be possible to measure changes in distances between galaxies that are very far from us. This is important because it will be possible to calculate the prospects. For now, the most common thing that astronomers talk about is the future Big Rip of the Universe.
There are models of so-called phantom dark energy, when the expansion rate of the Universe is so high that there is a finite period of time during which the scale factor of the Universe, that is, physical distances, will rush to infinity. In English-language literature this is called bigrip, in the Russian version it is translated as a big gap. That is, when everything in the Universe begins to diverge from each other so quickly that everything will be torn into elementary components and taken beyond the so-called “visible horizon.”
But what is the “visible horizon”, or is it sometimes referred to as the “event horizon”? This is a kind of line beyond which we do not know what is happening, and, by the way, we will not find out. Space objects will be so far away that they cannot be felt, heard or seen by any apparatus or telescopes. Any contact of everything with everything in the Universe will be lost!
According to astronomers, the expansion of the Universe can be imagined as a limitless rubber tablecloth, which someone is stretching from different sides - while any two galaxies that were at a certain distance from each other will constantly move away. This is the expansion of the Universe.
But in this whole catastrophic situation there is one significant “but”. What's inside our Milky Way won't move away from each other. The Sun and all the planets will remain in place, and our neighboring galaxies will not fly away either. For example, the Andromeda Nebula will not be carried away from us - it is too tightly bound to us gravitationally. Here dark energy is powerless, but is there a plus in this?! As it turns out, no! For the Earth and the Solar System, a neighboring galaxy is a very serious threat. It's falling on us!
Astronomical modeling pictures show how two galaxies are now approaching each other. Milky Way – “Milky Way” – that’s us. The simulation shows that Andromeda is twice as large. This means that the power of gravity is much higher.
There are already numerical calculations of the dynamics of the merger of these two galaxies, while various cataclysms are possible in their centers - absorption of stars, explosions of stars, dynamic instabilities that will eject stars.
But what do explosions of stars, even those too distant, mean to us?! This could lead to a mass extinction of all life on Earth, and there is evidence of this from history. A group of paleontologists has revealed the periodicity of just such global catastrophes on our planet over the past 250 million years. There were 12 of them, and the average interval between them was 26 million years. These extinctions are associated precisely with various events in space. Two, for example, occurred due to the fall of asteroids to Earth, and one definitely happened due to the explosion of a star.
Physicists note that the intensity of the resulting gamma rays is not so great as to burn all living things, but they burn the ozone layer, and it takes several months or even several years to restore it. Without the ozone layer, which protects life on Earth from ultraviolet radiation, if not all, then 80–90% of living organisms will die out.
But we are talking about the disastrous results from the explosion of one star. How many of them could explode when our Galaxy is absorbed by the neighboring Andromeda Nebula? Dozens? Hundreds?...
There are many examples in the Universe when one galaxy merged with another. Mostly the big ones devoured the little ones. Our Milky Way is also a kind of hannibal - it contains several dwarf galaxies. First, he stretched them with his tidal forces, slowly pumped gas out of them, and that’s it - absorption happened.
For us this happens without much catastrophism, but the dwarfs get it. Here is an example - the Magellanic Clouds. We can see them even with the naked eye. The navigator Ferdinand Magellan, after whom these two tiny galaxies - satellites of the Milky Way are named, used them for navigation.
They are not yet part of our Galaxy. But they will be soon - the merger is already happening!
Observers of life in the Universe indicate that the Magellanic Clouds fly through our galaxy, and they are greatly distorted by this, because of this they even have a shapeless appearance.
When the Andromeda Galaxy begins to approach our Milky Way, we, the inhabitants of Earth, will notice it. Astronomers say that first of all, the structure of the starry sky will be rebuilt. For example, we will no longer see the familiar Ursa Major.
When this will happen is difficult to say. Before 2012, there was no way at all to know whether a collision would occur or not. Only after 10 years of tracking Andromeda with the Hubble telescope, it became clear that it was moving directly towards us and at a very decent speed, about 110 kilometers per second.
But scientists do not rule out that the neighboring galaxy will deviate slightly from its course and a head-on collision will not occur. The consequences for us in this situation are less catastrophic, however, the impact will be significant - the power of gravity will partially destroy both one and the other galaxy.
Tidal forces in such situations - and these are also gravitational forces - begin to tear galaxies apart, tearing off pieces from them, even small ones. Subsequently, these pieces either fly off somewhere into space or are attracted to one of the galaxies.
Black holes will definitely benefit from the collision of two galaxies. These gravitational funnels of incredible force pull into themselves everything that falls into their field. Any progress, changes in outer space, and especially such global ones as the merger of two galaxies, are a real holiday for these monsters. They will have something to eat for lunch and dinner!
Using an elementary example, this can be explained this way: when two galaxies collide, the motion of stars becomes more chaotic. And some stars and galactic clouds fall into the area of influence of this very black hole, and it begins to absorb them. At the same time, intense light is emitted, and we can already see this black hole from Earth.
Astronomers are not particularly clever when naming space objects. If you can’t see it, it means dark energy. If everything falls into something and this funnel is also invisible, then it is a black hole. Such a monster sits in the center of the Milky Way. Without interruption, absorbing everything that attracts. This is the main black hole of our Galaxy.
