February 2nd, 2020
By: Haris Ahmad[1]
The universe is a vast place, which is constantly expanding. It is immeasurable heaven that we have studied a bit. Many people have a lot of misconceptions about the universe, which literally makes no sense. In this blog, I will highlight some of the main misconceptions about the universe and give counter-arguments in defense.
The universe is a vast place, which is constantly expanding. It is immeasurable heaven that we have studied a bit. Many people have a lot of misconceptions about the universe, which literally makes no sense. In this blog, I will highlight some of the main misconceptions about the universe and give counter-arguments in defense.
The first misconception is that there is a dark side of the moon. The word ‘dark’ basically means the absence of light, as darkness is not a thing itself. The moon is tidally locked while orbiting the Earth. Hence, we can only see one side of it but wait. This doesn’t mean that the other side of the Moon is dark. It’s just that the other side of the Moon is not observable from the Earth. Each side of the Moon has two weeks of day and two weeks of night. Therefore, there is no such thing as the dark side of the Moon. The following image of the moon, taken by Luna 3, launched by the Soviet Union in 1959 proved the fact that that Moon has no dark side.
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Image Source: https://www.wired.com/2011/10/1007luna-3-photos-dark-side-moon/ |
The second
misconception about the universe is that black holes act like funnels. This
misconception basically rose after the images of how a black hole bends space-time.
A Blackhole is not a funnel. A Black Hole is a spherical hole, which due to
its immense gravitational force; will pull anything near it towards itself. The
gravitational pull of these objects is so immense that not even light can
escape from it.
Another misconception about the universe, which is very common, is that Mercury is the hottest planet in the Solar System due to the fact that it is the closest planet to the Sun. This is totally wrong because the hotness of a celestial body does not only depend on its distance from its star.
Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun orbiting at a distance of 57 million km, and has the highest surface temperature of 427 degrees Celsius, it is still not the hottest because it has no atmosphere. This planet has no atmosphere, due to which heat cannot be trapped inside the planet. On the other hand, Venus is almost twice the distance from the Sun than of Mercury. However, Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System reaching a temperature of 462 degrees Celsius. The reason for its hotness is its thick atmosphere, which traps the heat from the Sun inside the planet.
Lastly, another misconception is that space probes cannot travel through the asteroid belt because due to the vast number of asteroids, it will collide with one and will get destroyed. Well, this is also greatly wrong, as, even though the asteroid belt has millions of asteroids packed in it, the asteroids are very distant from each other. Therefore, the chances of colliding with one are one in a billion. For example, NASA has sent 11 probes through this belt and not even one has ever got close to an asteroid.
Remember, we need to verify the information before we spread it among others because if that information is wrong, the other people that you have spread it to, will also spread it among others which will affect many points of view, wrongly.
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