Our Idea of Time Might Be Completely Wrong, Say Astronomers

Bright Side

What if everything we thought we knew about the Universe… was just slightly off? 🌌 Scientists now believe the entire cosmos might be slowly spinning — like a massive, invisible top — and that tiny twist could rewrite the laws of physics as we know them. 🌀 This jaw-dropping idea could finally explain one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology: why we get different answers when measuring how fast the Universe is expanding. 🤯 It’s called the Hubble tension, and this spin theory might just crack the case. In this video, we explore how this cosmic rotation was detected, what it means for our understanding of space and time, and why it could shake the foundations of modern science. Buckle up — this journey through the spinning Universe is going to leave you rethinking reality.  Credit: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/: cosmic distance: by NASA, ESA/Hubble, A. Feild (STScI), and A. Riess (STScI/JHU), https://esahubble.org/videos/heic1611a/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Animation_of_cosmic_distance_ladder_(heic1611a).webm cosmic distance: by Marc Kamionkowski, Adam G. Riess, https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-nucl-111422-024107, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_cosmic_distance_ladder_used_by_the_Supernovae_and_H0_for_the_Equation_of_State_(SH0ES)_Collaboration_to_infer_the_Hubble_constant_H0.png CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/: universe zero: by WillowW, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Closed_Friedmann_universe_zero_Lambda.ogv Universe: by APOD Video, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Illustris_Simulation_of_the_Universe_(w-_music).webm Rewind the Universe: by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio - Ashley Balzer, Scott Wiessinger, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14297, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:How_NASA%27s_Roman_Space_Telescope_Will_Rewind_the_Universe_(SVS14297_-_Yung_Structure_Slices_4k).webm Hubble Constant: by W. Freedman (University of Chicago), ESO, and the Digitized Sky Survey, https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2019/28/4558-Image, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Compass_Image_for_Hubble_Constant_(2019-28-4558).tif Evolution of Galaxies: by NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/Evolution_of_Galaxies_H264 Animation is created by Bright Side. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV  Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Our Social Media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00It looks like there's a terrifying crack in our understanding of the universe.

00:05Scientists have compared how fast the universe expands.

00:08Two methods, two measurements, completely different answers.

00:12And no one knows why.

00:15As they dive deeper into this, a new terrifying idea came up.

00:19Our entire universe might be spinning.

00:22If that's true, it changes everything we know about space, time, and even how the world will end.

00:29To understand what's going on, let's talk about how our universe expands.

00:34How exactly is it expanding?

00:36Into what?

00:38We first noticed this about 100 years ago.

00:41For many years, people thought the universe was eternal and unchanging.

00:46Then came Edwin Hubble.

00:48He observed the universe in the telescope and realized

00:51the light that came to our planet was coming from galaxies that were moving farther away from us.

00:57The galaxies weren't sitting still.

01:00The whole universe was moving.

01:02And this became one of the most revolutionary discoveries in history.

01:07The movement started with the Big Bang.

01:09It happened about 13.8 billion years ago.

01:12The entire universe, all matter, energy, space, and time,

01:17burst forth from an incredibly hot, dense point.

01:20The bang sent a shockwave, giving all the things and particles their initial boost.

01:27That's how they started drifting away from each other.

01:30The thing is, they weren't drifting away into open space.

01:34No, they created space themselves by drifting.

01:36Let's say you're holding a balloon.

01:39You draw some dots on it.

01:41You start blowing air into it.

01:44The balloon gets bigger and bigger.

01:46And every dot on its surface moves away from every other dot as the balloon expands.

01:51As dots move apart, they basically create space between them by moving away from each other.

01:56So the universe isn't expanding into some mysterious space.

02:02Space itself exists only within our universe, born between moving dots.

02:08The Big Bang boost was so strong that the universe started expanding incredibly fast.

02:14It's hard to even imagine.

02:15If you were chilling and watching this from the side,

02:18it would seem like the entire universe appeared out of nowhere in less than a moment.

02:23You wouldn't even hear it because there's no sound in vacuum.

02:27There would be nothing.

02:28Then you would just blink and bam!

02:31The world is everywhere.

02:33That bang was so huge that the universe is still expanding from it even now.

02:39Even billions of years later, it's space itself that's stretching.

02:43With every point on it drifting farther and farther away, including us,

02:48we're just moving at a more gentle pace, sort of.

02:51So when we figured out everything was expanding, the next question was,

02:55how fast?

02:57Turns out, the movement speed is different for different galaxies.

03:01We notice that the closer things are to us, the slower they drift away from us.

03:06And the farther a galaxy is from us, the faster it appears to be moving away.

03:11And they're moving constantly.

03:14We say, for example, this galaxy is 100 megaparsecs away.

03:19But since the galaxies don't actually stay in one place,

03:22that means this galaxy is moving at a speed about 4,300 miles per second away from us.

03:29If the distance doubles, then the galaxy's speed doubles.

03:33So, for example,

03:35if a galaxy is a million light-years away,

03:38it will move away from us at a speed of about 46,000 miles per hour.

03:432 million light-years away?

03:45Double it.

03:47Now it's about 92,000 miles per hour.

03:5010 million light-years away?

03:52Almost half a million miles per hour.

03:54Scientists call it Hubble's law.

03:58Speed is equal to Hubble constant multiplied by distance.

04:02And the Hubble constant is the exact magical speed number that we keep adding up

04:06every time we move a million light-years farther.

04:10So, the Hubble constant is basically the rate at which expansion happens.

04:15But there was a problem.

04:16A problem that seemed tiny at first,

04:18but it was actually hiding a huge disaster.

04:21When we measured Hubble constant using two different methods,

04:26for some reason, we got different results.

04:29The first method was to calculate it based on what we see around us right now, today.

04:35Different stars, galaxies, their light, and brightness.

04:38In certain stars, brightness changes in predictable ways.

04:43Huge star booms, like supernovas, act like cosmic lighthouses.

04:48We know how bright they should be.

04:49And thanks to that, we can calculate their distance and speed.

04:53It's all clear and simple.

04:56But then, scientists tried something totally different.

04:59They often used this trick.

05:02To figure out how the early universe behaved,

05:04and then simulate everything from the start,

05:07it's like creating your basic characters in Sims and letting them do whatever,

05:11hoping that they'll do things in predictable ways and not pull off something wild.

05:16We can guess what the early universe looked like because we can still detect the faint afterglow of the Big Bang.

05:23We have ultra-precise telescopes that allow us to find an ancient, very first light

05:28and very first traces of energy that were born in our world.

05:32This post-Big Bang afterglow is literally filling up the entire universe.

05:38It's just scattered around like some dinosaur fossils.

05:41So we take these fossils and recreate the entire dinosaur based on them.

05:46And when we measured what the Hubble constant should logically be,

05:50based on how our universe was starting,

05:53we got a different number.

05:55It doesn't sound like a big deal at first.

05:58Based on what we see today, every 3 million light-years away,

06:01things are moving about 40 miles per second faster.

06:04But based on how our universe was supposed to develop,

06:08the number is about 45 miles per second.

06:12Eh, literally just 4 miles or so, right?

06:15But in cosmology, it's an ultimate red flag.

06:18The error bars have shrunk so much that now this isn't just a meh, probably fine situation.

06:25It's a literal tension in measurement.

06:28And that's exactly what scientists call it.

06:31The Hubble tension.

06:32It's a serious difference between two super-precise measurements

06:36based on very different methods.

06:38And both of them seem equally right.

06:42Imagine using two ultra-precise clocks to check how fast an athlete runs a distance.

06:47And in the end, one of the clocks says 10 seconds,

06:51while the other says 11.

06:53What in the world does that mean?

06:55That's terrifying.

06:56The two numbers should match.

06:58And since they don't, one of three things must be true.

07:03First, maybe one of the measurements is wrong,

07:06which is very unlikely, because both methods are super reliable.

07:10Second, maybe something in our interpretation is wrong.

07:14But that's also unlikely,

07:16since many scientists get the same results

07:18and agree that the tension is a real deal.

07:21And finally, the scariest option?

07:25Our entire model of the universe is missing something.

07:28That's why scientists are freaking out.

07:30And as it turns out, they had a reason to.

07:33Recently, a new research team from Hawaii proposed something wild.

07:38What if the universe is very slowly rotating?

07:42If that's the case, it would be absolutely insane.

07:46Here's why.

07:47First, if the universe actually rotates, even super slowly,

07:51it would mean that the laws of physics might be slightly different

07:54depending on where you are or which way you look.

07:58That breaks one of our most sacred ideas about physics,

08:01that space is the same in all directions.

08:04Second, it could mean we've misunderstood the entire cosmic history.

08:10Maybe we don't actually know how fast the universe is expanding when it was born,

08:14or what dark energy is.

08:16That would be a huge disaster.

08:19And finally, the most horrifying of all,

08:21if it's spinning, then it must spin around something, right?

08:26If there is a cosmic axis or rotation,

08:29it might suggest a preferred direction.

08:31It would be something like Cosmic North.

08:34We thought there's no special place in the universe,

08:38but we might have been wrong.

08:40Maybe there's a special place after all.

08:43It's like finding out the reality itself has been tilted a tiny bit the whole time,

08:49and we just noticed.

08:51Right now, we're in an exciting and scary place.

08:55Either we'll discover new physics and maybe something about dark energy,

08:58or we'll find a subtle error in one of the measurements.

09:03Or, who knows?

09:04Maybe something totally unexpected will show up.

09:08In any case, solving the Hubble tension

09:10could revolutionize our understanding of the universe's origin,

09:14structure, and our place in it.

09:18That's it for today.

09:19So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,

09:21then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

09:24Or if you want more, just click on these videos

09:26and stay on the bright side.

09:28So let's go ahead.

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