THE AMAZING MANTIS SHRIMP

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 We all consider the ant to be a true heavy hitter, lifting weights 20 times its own body weight, hurrying around  building nests and tunnels without sleep but, if you consider that amazing just wait till you see this critter, The mantis shrimp.   The mantis shrimp unlike other shrimp in it’s family takes a much fearsome role as a predator This one is about to devour the snail, but she’s gotta crack open it first right??. She carefully positions her legs and punches the snail with its legs with the force of a .22 caliber bullet, yup you heard me right an aquatic organism that can punch and crack open a snail’s shell with the force of a .22 caliber bullet!!, it’s the fastest attack in the entire animal kingdom!!.   This shrimp is called a smasher. The other is called a spearer buried under sand ambushes and impales its prey using a blade at blinding speed and drags it into the sand!! What makes mantis shrimp amazing isn't only it’s blinding speed but also i...

The entire history of the universe

The universe began with a Big Bang (13.8 million years ago) and for some time there was nothing but hot matter flying in all directions at the speed of light (300,000 Km per second).

First few seconds after the Big Bang!

 Very shortly a star was formed and was Methuselah at approximately 13.6 million years ago! It confused astronomers for a long time that this star was older than the universe! At 13.5 billion years ago the first black hole started forming. Scientists believe they are what that’s left from the explosion of stars, but that’s not sure for even today! At the same time, cosmic dust and matter began ionizing helping to form new stars. In the end, it led to thousands and then millions of stars appearing in space. The universe left cold after the enormous explosion started. Then it started heating up again. In about 13.3 to 13.1 billion years ago these stars started to form clusters leading to the formation of galaxies. The earliest of the galaxies did not include any galaxies though! It was still too soon for the matter to shape into something so big and solid. So galaxies consisted of mainly interstellar gases and stars. The oldest one is found to have been formed in a relatively small patch of sky called Hubble ultra deep field! Named after the Hubble space telescope. It includes over 10,000 galaxies! After some time the first known exoplanet was found. (Exoplanet: - also called extrasolar planet because these planets are situated outside the solar system!). It was located 12.5 thousand light-years from the earth!


                       Exoplanet

 At approximately 12.5 billion years ago the Milky Way galaxy began taking into shape. Our home galaxy is barred spiral at the center which means it has a bar at its center and several arms. The Milky Way galaxy started forming just only 200 million years after the big bang.


Milky Way galaxy

 At the same time, millions of other galaxies burst into existence with stars and planets clustering together. About 11.5 billion years ago a peculiar planet popped up. Captain-B is the oldest known exoplanet uncannily similar to earth! Nobody knows it’s inhabited but it sure can be! It had more than enough time to develop life. Spirals are the most common galaxy. Probably the oldest galaxy was named Bx442 whose light reaches us at about 10.7 billion years. At the same time the rate at which the stars were appearing reached its peak every second! Thousands of thousands of stars would burst into existence, immediately starting to gravitate towards each other and forming clusters and later becoming galaxies. At this time the temperature of the universe slowly began to fall. Until now it was hotter than the sun’s surface. At 11 billion years ago everything changed powerful galactic cores and newborns stopped sending out sending energy into space and the first metal-rich began appearing. Metals made them cool down at a higher rate so the universe stepped on its track to becoming habitable! At about 9.9 billion years ago the first group of galaxies emerged and was named (JKCS 041). It was the farthest known galactic cluster. At roughly about the same time, Bernard’s star appeared in the Milky Way galaxy.


Bernard's star

It’s one of the Ancient stars in our galaxy and also our close neighbor is just 6 light-years away from the sun. At about roughly 8.8 billion years ago it had only its thick disk structure around the center where the gas-rich stars mostly dwell. Now the thin disk starts forming, it’s a thinner layer within the thick disk in which younger stars more abundant in metals appear. Stars still get born at an astonishing rate. At 8 billion years ago when this growth rate finally began to subside and this occurred to lots of other galaxies too! It was due to not enough matter to form new stars in such a cluttered space. At approximately 7.5 million years ago something happened a long way from our galaxy and gamma-ray burst began traveling along the universe reaching earth only in 2008! Such bursts occur because of a star exploding into a supernova.


                 Supernova

 This one was special it was the brightest one ever observed. If it was close to the sun it would be 21 Quadrillion times brighter than the sun! (If u wonder what is a quadrillion it's 1 followed by 15 zeroes!). At about 7.2 billion years ago the universe cooled down at a gradual rate. At this time the average temperature of space was only 5 degrees Kelvin or -450 degrees Fahrenheit. In the end, the universe reaches absolute zero temperature where the atoms don’t move! And space will be dark and absolutely still. At 6.5 million years ago the Milky Way galaxy started taking its recognizable shape (spiral). Soon later many galaxies started taking their own shape and stars kept exploding and forming leaving behind quasars and black holes which in turn gave birth to other galaxies.


Black hole

 6 billion years ago Dark energy the most mysterious force in the universe to this day somehow accelerated the speed at which the universe expands. No one is sure how it does! At 5.5 billion years ago the solar Nebula began collapsing. It’s important to us because this nebula would eventually become the Solar System. At this time it was no more than giant interstellar dust and gas and would need another billion years to clump together and form our star and planets orbiting towards it. About 4.6 billion years ago the Milky Way galaxy has finally become a complete spiral barred shape. Supernova exploding, new stars forming all of these never stopped in space. After some time the most important thing happened that’s the formation of the sun. It just took a couple of million years to form the earth (4.55 billion years ago).           


Earth

it was extremely hot back then and there was no chance of life to ever survive. But after a few million years a miracle happened! The first living creatures appeared on the planet’s surface. Finally, here we are at the most unique and undoubtedly the most beautiful planet than the entire universe!
 
 

CREDITS:


CONTENT WRITTEN BY:  Vageeshram

Other team members

  uday

Christy Samuel

War Mudasir
Hridyansh Sharma


 


  

Comments

  1. Well researched. A lot of hard work is evident. Why to keep digging into how the universe was created. Let's enjoy what we have now and preserve the earth.

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