Seven Things Scientists Learned In 100 Years

Most of these would have had your great-grandparents saying it's impossible, but since about 100 years ago, scientists have made some interesting discoveries.

Imagine, if you will, traveling back to 1926 and telling someone that humans would eventually photograph a black hole, detect planets around distant stars, observe galaxies billions of light-years away, and discover that most of the universe is made of things we don’t fully understand. People in 1926 would imagine you’re from Hollywood and describing science fiction.

You wouldn’t be, and that’s the interesting part. Over the last century, give or take, science has transformed some of humanity’s biggest mysteries into realities. But almost every major discovery has created an even stranger question. That’s the reality of science.

7 Things Scientists Have Learned In The Last 100 Years

1. Worlds orbit other stars. For most of human history, Earth was the only planet known to man. Today, astronomers have discovered more than 6,000 confirmed exoplanets. Exoplanets are planets orbiting stars outside our solar system.

• The most recent data from NASA’s scientists show there are 6,372 exoplanets in 4,779 planetary systems.

• Things change, and sometimes are reclassified. Remember Pluto, before it was removed from planetary status?

• There are tens of thousands of potential candidates awaiting confirmation.

• Some of these worlds are monster-sized gas giants. Others are rocky.

• There are worlds that, unlike Earth, orbit their stars in just days. And some are believed to be in regions where temperatures would allow liquid water.

Planets aren’t rare occurrences surrounding our Sun. They appear to be everywhere in the universe. And that leads to the biggest unanswered question.

How many of those worlds might contain life of some form? And how many might have intelligent life?

2. Mankind Discovered Objects So Dense Light Can’t Escape

Black Holes once existed as mathematical predictions and in science fiction stories. Today, astronomers and astrophysicists routinely study black holes. But we can’t see them directly.

Light cannot escape from the event horizon. Instead, scientists observe the effects gravity has on surrounding matter, stars, and light.

Even today, scientists don’t completely understand what happens near the deepest interior of a black hole. Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope are raising new questions about how some of the earliest supermassive black holes became so massive so quickly.

3. Most of the Universe is Still Invisible To Us

Everything you see, from people to stars, buildings to planets, to galaxies, is made of what they call ordinary matter. Anything that human eyes have seen is this way. But it only accounts for about 5% of the known universe.

NASA estimates that dark matter makes up nearly 27%, while dark energy makes up about 68% of the universe. Essentially, what we experience in our lives is the tiniest fraction of what the universe may be made of.

Dark matter doesn’t shine or reflect light the way normal matter does. So scientists believe in its existence largely because of its gravitational effects. And while there was an amazingly detailed mapping of dark matter from observations done by the James Webb Space Telescope, we’re only getting better at mapping out something we barely understand the nature.

4. Space is Expanding

Space expands. And even stranger, observations are showing that the expansion is accelerating. Scientists are calling the force behind the expansion Dark Energy. But the fact is, we don’t understand what dark energy actually is.

There’s an enormous cosmic mystery to solve, and dark energy is the label put on it. Scientists understand something is happening. They can measure the effects. But they don’t know what it is yet.

5. Space-Time Ripples Being Measured

Albert Einstein once predicted that violent cosmic events could create waves, or ripples, traveling through space-time. And for decades, these waves only existed as a theoretical prediction. Then, one was detected.

The sources all seem to be catastrophic events that involve black holes and other extremely massive bodies. Once, Astronomy depended primarily on light. Now, we have another way of looking at the universe.

6. Seeing The Ancient Universe

Today, looking at a distant galaxy, you’d be looking into the past. It takes time for light to travel. So, if a galaxy was millions or billions of light-years away and it appeared to us in the night sky, you’d be seeing something incredibly old.

With technology such as the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have pushed the idea to amazing distances and have been able to study galaxies from the early days of the universe. Some of these observations are of things that appear more massive, developed, or unusual than they expected.

This means that the universe still has plenty of surprises left for mankind to find.

7. Some Black Holes May Have Formed Differently Than Others

This is interesting because it might cause scientists to think differently about how the early universe was formed. There’s a chicken-and-egg scenario at the heart of studying the universe. What came first, the galaxy, or the giant black hole at its center?

Webb observations are providing some evidence that might support black holes forming extremely early, possibly without requiring a conventional stellar collapse as their origin. Interesting: a black hole without the need for a star collapsing inward.

The James Webb Space Telescope gives scientists the ability to investigate the idea.

Takeaways

In the last 100 years, our understanding of the universe has changed exponentially. As new and inventive technology has been created, it’s allowed humanity to explore the origins of things once only theorized about. From the ideas of space travel to understanding dark matter, black holes, and the infinity behind the universe, we have done truly incredible things in the pursuit of knowledge.

Scientists can effectively look back at things that happened a billion years ago, as if getting on a time machine. Astronomy is essentially a time machine. On a basic scale, imagine the sunlight you see when you walk outside. You’re looking approximately 8 minutes into the past.

The further we look, the farther back in cosmic history we are able to see. Because of the way light travels, the universe has preserved a historic record of its own, traveling in the light. And our modern telescopes are letting us read that record, or at least the portions we’re capable of understanding.

There’s one big mystery that remains. And that’s how much we still don’t know. Even as we continue to learn about the universe and the origins of all things, we can’t imagine what’s out there that we haven’t asked or theorized about. There’s no way for mankind to know what we don’t know to ask.