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What is cosmic microwave background and what is its connection with our expanding universe?

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It is a result of the red-shifting of light from distant objects, because of the expansion of the Universe. You can read about the red shift in the first part of this answer:  Ilavenil Surya Thirumavalavan's answer to How scientists measure the age of light coming from stars? After the Big Bang, there were various stages in which the Universe expanded and cooled. First the elementary particles formed (quarks, electrons, etc.) and then came the subatomic particles (protons and neutrons.) This was very chaotic, as particle-antiparticle pairs annihilated continuously. The light that was emitted would traverse a very short distance before it hit another particle, and would scatter. At a certain stage in the very early Universe (377000 years later, but we’re talking about something that happened 13.6 billion years ago) the temperature of the Universe dropped enough for protons and electrons to form the first hydrogen atoms (shown as the Era of atoms in the above di...

Why is matter dominant over anti-matter?

I think you are asking about the early stages of the Universe in which there was a slight imbalance of matter over antimatter. The reason for this is not known, in fact it is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in Physics. Today’s Universe is dominated by matter only because of that imbalance.

Is there any evidence that wormholes exist? (Answered on Quora)

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The concept of “Wormholes” came about this way: Einstein published his description of Space is in the form of “Field Equations,” in 1915. They are given below. The equations involve tensors, so the above line is actually a way of representing a number of partial differential equations. A solution of these equations will give a mathematical model of space-time. Over the years, many people have worked on these equations. Any solution of the Field Equation will start with some assumptions. One of these solutions is the Schwarzchild metric, published in January 1916 (Just over a month after Einstein published his equations). The metric describes the gravitational field outside a spherical mass, with the assumptions that the angular momentum and electric charge of the mass are zero. One of the implications of the Schwarzchild metric is the existence of black holes. This is because at r=0, the curvature of space time becomes infinite, and the nature of the gravitational field c...

Spin a top and leave it, and it stops after a while. Why does the Earth continue to rotate?

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To answer this question, we have to see why the rotation started.  Most of the celestial bodies in the Solar System rotate in a counter-clockwise direction, when seen from directly above Earth's North Pole. This is because the Sun, the planets, their satellites, asteroids and other objects in the Solar System all formed out of a protoplanetary disk, which was moving in a counter-clockwise direction.  The protoplanetary disk was a huge amount of matter, thrown out by a star that existed before the Sun formed. It was not a uniform disk - mass was concentrated more in some parts than others, and these regions could exert gravitational attractions towards the material around them. The center of this disk, where the mass concentration was the most, formed the Sun, while around it, material collected into smaller bodies.  One of these was the Earth, which was at first a concentration of matter. The material around it was captured by the gravitational field of th...

I go to a planet, and spend 10 years according to that planet's calendar. But I have spent only 5 months in Earth time. Will I have aged 10 years by the time I am back?

A "Year" on a planet is the time it takes to go around the Sun. None of the planets in the Solar System fit the question, though, so I'll just treat it as a hypothetical planet, around a hypothetical star. In 5 months, if the planet goes around the star 10 times, it means that a year would be just 12.5 years long. Now, it is not possible to directly calculate the distance of the planet from the star from this, or the mass of the planet. All we know that the planet's centripetal force (from rotation) should balance the gravitational pull for it to be in a stable orbit. If the star is similar to the Sun in size, the planet will have to be: 1. Much smaller than the Earth, and very close to the star 2. At least as large as the Earth, but farther from the star, moving much faster than the Earth. When it comes to age, gravity and exposure to radiation are both major factors. So, if you're farther, you will probably age even less than the 5 months. But if you...

What are we not seeing in the Universe?

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This question can be answered in two ways - the first, what we literally cannot see, that is, the part of the Universe that is beyond the scope of our eyes. Second, the part of the Universe that we do not know about at all, even using all our senses and all the instruments at our disposal.  Our eyes are sensors of electromagnetic radiation, that is, light. As Nature is very efficient, our eyes detect only the right amount of the Sun's light to protect ourselves from predators and find food. Unfortunately, this means that we do not see a lot of the light that is around, such as X-Rays, UV-rays, IR rays, Radio waves, Microwaves, etc. This image shows how much we don't see - the same object photographed in six different frequency ranges.  Today there are telescopes that look at every part of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, there are not enough to look at every part of the sky, so quite a lot of the Universe remains unseen.  The part of the Universe that we...

What is the Hubble Telescope? Is it being used now?

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The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched in 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. It was the beginning of a revolution in Astronomy, as it could see beyond the veil of the atmosphere. It was not the first space telescope -  working telescopes have been used in space as early as 1968. However, Hubble was larger than the previous telescopes, and could capture visible light as well as near-infrared and near-ultraviolet frequencies. The telescope has contributed vastly to human knowledge, not to mention photographs beyond human imagination. Here are some of the most spectacular: The Hubble Extreme Deep Field Light can travel only at the rate of 3 lakh kilometers per second. This implies that if an object is so far that it takes light a year to reach us, we will see it as it was a year back. This is an especially exciting concept in astronomy - telescopes actually show you the past, and the more powerful the telescope, the more you see into the past. The Hubble E...