The year 2012 is a significant year to many different wisdoms and cultures and seen as a portal into "the golden age". According to the Mayan calendar, 2012 will mark the end of time (and the beginning of something New). The coming of the the new golden age is widely recognised among many spiritual authors, spiritual traditions and teachers. Amongst the many theories out there, the more popularly advocated is the theory on the acceleration of time and our consciousness. Barbara Hand Clow, a leading author on 2012, advocates how our own personal healing is the most important factor as we prepare to make this critical leap in human evolution - now referred to as the awakening of the World Mind.
Without going deeper into this theory of 2012 and time-acceleration, I would like to share the following article circulated by Margaret McElroy during a "an evening of Enlightenment with Margaret M: The Photon Energy, 2012 & YOU" which I attended last night at Lightworks, Kuala Lumpur. The article talks about scientists having found an unknown energy that is accelerating time although no reference is being made to the year 2012. It is still, however, an interesting read. I will blog about Margaret's talk soon.
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What We Know About The Universe Is About To Change
The Secrets of Dark Energy
By Meg Urry
Published: Sunday, May 27, 2007 in The Seattle Times Parade Magazine
Picture taken from http://www.astro.yale.edu
What if you wanted to count the number of people who live in the United States, but you could not move or communicate beyond your home?
You might start by counting the members of your family. By looking out a window, you could add your few dozen neighbors. Using binoculars, you might be able to tally all the buildings in your town and guess at the number of people in each. At that point, you’d have surveyed your known universe and everyone you could count in it. You could then construct a theory of why your world has this number of residents.
But how would you feel if you discovered that you had missed—by a huge factor—most of the people in the U.S.? That your picture of the larger world had been horribly incomplete?
In effect, this is what happened in 1998, when it became clear that the biggest part of our universe had been hidden for all of human history. Some fundamental aspect of our world had been missed and altogether unknown.
Scientists have long recognized that the universe has been growing larger since its origin 13.7 billion years ago in an extremely rapid expansion called the “Big Bang.” But we assumed that this expansion should be slowing down due to the pull of gravity. In 1998, however, two teams of astrophysicists discovered that the expansion is actually speeding up. They observed a mysterious form of “energy” that opposes gravity and is causing the galaxies throughout the universe to move apart faster and faster.
It’s as if you dropped this magazine and, instead of falling to the floor, it suddenly soared toward the ceiling. That would certainly signal the presence of an unexpected force of some kind. In the same way, the galaxies’ accelerated expansion signaled the presence of a previously unknown entity in the universe.
The discovery of “Dark Energy” is arguably the most important scientific breakthrough of the last 50 years. A full understanding of it eventually could have an effect on our daily lives.
But first, we have to figure out what exactly Dark Energy is. So far, we know only that it causes the expansion of the universe to speed up. We call it “dark” because we don’t directly see it. “ Dark” is code for “we have absolutely no clue what it is!”
Dark Energy is exciting for several reasons. Scientists have determined that Dark Energy makes up two-thirds of the universe. So, until we understand Dark Energy, we clearly cannot understand our universe. Also, Dark Energy was not predicted by standard theories of physics. That means our basic theories—our descriptions of elementary particles like electrons, neutrinos and quarks, and of the forces between them—need a major upgrade. Physics theories drive key parts of modern life, like electronics, engineering and medicine. Who knows what a more complete theory of physics could lead to?
We’ve been in this position before. Around the turn of the 20th century, physicists thought they understood nearly everything. Starting with Sir Isaac Newton’s brilliant theory of gravity in the 17th century, scientists had successfully explained one natural phenomenon after another—from motion to optics to heat, sound and finally, by the late 19th century, electromagnetism. But then radioactivity and subatomic particles like the electron were discovered, and these phenomena could be explained only with the invention of quantum mechanics—a new theory governing the physics of very tiny distances. At the time, quantum theory appeared to have little immediate practical value. Yet quantum mechanics dominates our daily lives today. It’s at the heart of computers, medical devices, cell phones, cameras, iPods and every other modern electronic device.
Now history seems to be repeating itself. Until very recently, we thought we were on the brink of understanding all of cosmology—then came Dark Energy. It is far too soon to know whether Dark Energy will fuel the economic engine of the 21st century the way quantum mechanics drove that of the last 50 years. But if history is a guide, it’s clear we’re on the brink of dramatic changes.
What excites me personally is how the discovery of Dark Energy illustrates that science is not a set of beliefs that one constructs. Instead, scientists observe nature, then develop theories that describe their observations. Science is driven by nature itself, and nature gives us no choice. It is what it is.
As new facts emerge, scientific theories can be proved wrong or in need of modification, but scientists cannot ignore them. Eventually the facts will lead to the right theory.
What’s next? NASA, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation have joined forces to plan space satellites and ground-based telescopes that will probe the properties of Dark Energy. What we observe about the history of Dark Energy light-years away will have huge implications for the future of the universe. If Dark Energy gets weaker, gravity could take over again and pull the universe back together. Scientists refer to this fate as the “Big Crunch.” If Dark Energy gets stronger with time, it eventually may pull apart the galaxies, stars and planets now held together by gravity. This is called the “Big Rip.” Or the universe could have an intermediate fate, expanding gradually to a vast, cold, empty place—called the “Big Chill.” When we understand Dark Energy, we will be able to predict which of these (or other) futures is most likely.
The answers are there, and I have no doubt that we will figure them out with the contributions of the smart young people now taking high school physics—though it may take a decade or two. We are now at the beginning of a great new adventure to push forward the frontiers of understanding.
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