Deep space
Henry Hurd
Ants are fascinating creatures. They are able to carry 5000 times their body weight (around 0.02kg), and supposedly, although I’m having a hard time believing it, to construct a colony spanning from southern
Spain to the south of France. All this, yet a child can squish one with their finger and kill it. If humans were that strong and efficient, think about how advanced we would be as a species. You’re probably wondering what ants are doing in an essay called ‘d eep space ’. What is it and will man ever make it further than the moon? Well, it’s all about scale. We as humans believe we’re the king of the jungle, as you will, and while it is reassuring to tell ourselves this, it is not true. Ants might be small to our human eyes, but ultimately, we are ants in terms of the universe: the world is our colony and it is very small in the grand scheme of space.
A long exposure shot of the Milky Way taken by myself using a Nikon D7500, fitted with an AF-S NIKKOR 18-140mm f/3.5 and the Ioptron Skytracker Pro.
The creation of the universe
Before we are able to understand the realities of deep space, we first need to understand how the universe came to be. A theory proposed in 1965 stated that the universe started as a singularity and, over the course of a few minutes, expanded and became a million billion miles across, turning into the universe we know. Another theory, one which I prefer, proposed in 1979, called inflation theory , said the episode, that is the creation of the universe, may have not lasted any longer than 10 -30 seconds, that’s one million million million million millionths of a second. At that time, it was suggested that the entirety of the universe was created, and all the forces which hold it together were also created. The beauty of it, no matter which interpretation you believe, is that the balance of forces in the universe is perfect. If there was a little too much gravity here, a little too little nitrogen there, then our species may cease to exist, and you and I would never have been created (Bryson, 2016).
Understanding deep space
Deep space can be defined as ‘ any region of outer space beyond the system of the earth and moon ’ (Collins Dictionary) and, while this is accurate, the more scientific version is ‘ the regions beyond the gravitational influence of Earth, encompassing interplanetary, interstellar and intergalactic space ’ . In English, it refers to the space beyond the dark side of the moon, aka the cis-lunar barrier. Since man first went to the moon, humans have not been interested in exploring further. Think of it like the reef in Moana, keeping those inside safe yet inhabitants are frightened to face it and cross. Since 1972, when the last man walked on the moon, no human has left Low Earth Orbit (LEO) which seems wrong, considering the first scientific pocket
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