Genius Hour 2 - Space

Genius Hour 2 - Space

By: Nikky Mader

Dylan was a big help to this second Genius Hour.

For this Genius hour I decided to do research on space about the universe and anything else in space. I enjoy researching these topics due to my interest in science. I focused more on what shape the universe is in.

What is Space?

I'm sure we all know what space is, but lets look more scientifically at space. In 1957, our worlds first artificial satellite was sent to space called sputnik 1. Now we have a international space station and landed on the moon several times. Now there's a theory that humans are being sent to Mars. Scientists estimated the universe is far larger then 28 billion light-years in diameter. If your not shocked already, lets just say this, one light-year is almost 6 trillion miles. That's almost 10 trillion kilometers!! 1 trillion is a million times a million.

Different Universes (Theoretically)

What shape is the universe? 
 Scientists have yet to confirm the exact shape of the universe. But don't get upset because many scientist have created theories to what shape our universe might be. In the picture below there are 3 theoretical answers to our question. The third one down is what scientists think is the most plausible out of the 3 theories. In other words, scientists think the universe is flat (has no curvature). But NASA has confirmed that the universe IS expanding. Now you would think if the universe was flat, we would have a 2-d world, right? Well no… Space as we all know is three dimensional so all 2 dimensional planes are like really small and thin slices in our 3-d world. So space is 3-d but what about time? Time is the fourth dimension. And let's get things clear here, a dimension isn't an alternate reality, it’s how we perceive space and time and well reality. Back to time, time is the fourth dimension, and our 3-d world is basically one of many slices in the 4-d world. So space and time are whole two different things so right now we are talking about space not space-time, space-time is the 3 dimensional world being interwoven with the 4 dimensional world, Very confusing I know so let's keep things simple and just talk about space not space-time. So space is flat when we say it's flat we do not mean that we live on a big black sheet of paper, We live in a world where all triangle’s angles will be 180 degrees and all cube angles will all be right angle. Now you are probably thinking well of course they will. Well if the universe wasn't “flat” no the angles would be totally off. Back to the picture, Two of the three theories state that there is curvature in the geometry of the universe. The first one ( the sphere ) would be positively curved the second negatively curved ( the saddle) or the final one no curve ( the boring flat theory ). A positively curved universe would mean that it would be a 4 dimensional sphere with a finite shape but no “edge” in order for the universe to be positively curved the universe would have to stop expanding. But in order for that to happen the amount of energy in the universe would have to give gravity the upper hand with modern day research is suggesting that the universe will expand for ever, so let's just toss that idea out the window. The second idea is the universe to be negatively curved ( like a saddle ) would be open and if two particles would go it different ways they would not meet each other unlike the other theory. The theory of a negatively curved universe is a little more plausible than the positively curved universe theory. The most plausible is the flat universe theory. This theory states that the universe will expand for ever and any particle that moves in the opposite direction of another particle would never cross each other's path. And the universe has too little energy for gravity to take the upper hand so the universe will continue the expand forever.