space is hella weird

so according to the first law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed

according to scientists, the universe started with the big bang

so i have three questions:

1. if energy cannot be created or destroyed, then how is there such thing as energy today? was there just always energy from the very beginning of time? (and what even is “time”, anyways?)
2. what was before the big bang and how did a huge explosion happen out of nothing?
3. ARE WE EVEN SUPPOSED TO EXIST? because honestly, life seems unnatural. based on our current knowledge, EARTH IS THE ONLY PLACE IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE THAT HAS LIVING BEINGS LIKE US.

and then you have to remember that the universe could very well be infinite and if it isn’t, it’s constantly expanding. but imagine if it was infinite. imagine moving at the speed of light (which can travel 7 times around the equator in a second) and NEVER EVER reaching the end.

ok but now imagine that there was an end and you reached it. then what? would there be a barrier that would prevent you from crossing? would you just “fall off” the universe? (but that can’t be possible because then you’d be free-falling and wouldn’t that still be part of the “universe”? you couldn’t be falling in absolutely nothing.)

if you think about it that way, then it makes much more sense for the universe to be infinite because if it wasn’t, then what would be past it? (still hard to wrap my head around it, though.)

and now there are black holes that suck EVERYTHING in no matter what. that’s hard to imagine by itself but let’s add on a layer. say you travelled through a black hole and somehow survived completely intact. that’s great for you and all, but where would you be now? there has to be something on the other side, right? otherwise everything would be sucked into nothing. do things just somehow cease to exist after going through a black hole? (and what about the first law of thermodynamics? where does all the energy go?)

and did you know that black holes can make time appear to go slower? to someone watching something nearing a black hole, it would appear to take an infinite amount of time to reach just the event horizon (the actual part of the black hole). tell me that doesn’t sound a bit like time travel.

some people even believe that white holes exist, which is the opposite of a black hole. it seems pretty impossible and may only be hypothetical, but the entire universe is already impossibly weird enough so who’s to say they don’t exist?

if you think of a black hole as something that sucks everything and doesn’t let anything out, a white hole is something that spills everything out and doesn’t let anything in. sound impossible right? but although it violates the second law of thermodynamics, i’m pretty sure that by existing, we’re already violating a lot of scientific laws.

if you think about it, though, a white hole could on the “other side” of a black hole, creating a wormhole. einstein knew that. a wormhole is a solution to his equations.

a white hole could have also been the reason to the big bang. it kind of makes sense, actually. an explosion of matter and energy happening out of nothing, which is what a white hole can do. it seems almost… reasonable, at least compared to other parts of space.

space may be really weird but it’s hella interesting too. i would’ve loved to become an astrophysicist or cosmologist if it weren’t for the fact that i suck at math.

-grace