10 Ways The Universe Could Destroy Us At Any Moment

ten ways the universe could destroy us at any moment number 10 rogue planet despite the name rogue planets are planets who ride around on motorbikes or sneak cigarettes behind the bike sheds instead their planets that have for one reason or another broken free of their original orbit without a star to rotate around these planets are left to roam through space causing chaos how common is this well astronomers believe that in our galaxy rogue planets may outnumber stars 100,000 to 1 considering there's 400 billion stars in the Milky Way we're talking about a lot of planets hurtling around you don't have to be a genius to spot the problem here colliding with one of these careening planets would likely wipe out humanity and crack the earth to pieces though we probably see it coming the speed and size of our planets would be impossible to stop could this ever happen to us well they kind of already has a team at NASA believes that the current earth was formed by two rogue planets colliding into each other the two planets Earth and Theia smashed together fusing into one planet with a small break off part becoming the moon number 9 galactic cannibalism galactic cannibalism isn't just the most metal band name ever it's also a real phenomenon and one that could destroy the earth along with most of the Milky Way when the size difference between two neighboring galaxies becomes too extreme the pressure caused by the gravity and balance forces the smaller one to collapse into the larger one in other words the big universe swallows the little one this is probably a good time to point out that the galaxy nearest towards the Andromeda galaxy is way bigger than the Milky Way not only that but Andromeda is well known for routinely snacking on nearby galaxies galactically speaking that's like living next to a guy who's known for making lamps out of human skin if the Milky Way is consumed the shifting gravity would likely throw the earth out of the sun's orbit without the Stars Heat we've quickly freeze to death with the earth reaching minus 70 degrees Celsius within a week number eight black holes black holes have appeared in more sci-fi films than killer robots and sexy aliens and honestly it's not hard to see why black holes are arguably the most powerful things in the universe what's beyond a black hole's event horizon nothing can escape its gravitational pull not even light if the earth was unlucky enough to fall into one the localized bending of space would stretch us thinner and thinner until our atoms ripped apart it's a process physicists have genuinely called spaghettification the good news is that the nearest black hole we know about is about 27,000 light years away but it's worth noting that a there may be other near a black holes because it's really hard to spot a random black circle in the middle of the blackness of space and be some black holes can move in 2017 NASA spotted a supermassive black hole hurtling through a far-off galaxy at eight million kilometers per hour the space organization believes that it was pushed out of its original orbit by gravitational waves and while that hole will never be a threat to us it's not exactly comforting to know that sometimes inescapable planet eating sinkholes go walkabout number seven gamma-ray bursts so black holes are pretty deadly once they exist but even their birth could destroy our entire planet in an instant black holes are formed when a star dies and go supernova when that transformation happens an almost unimaginable amount of energy is released in two giant heat beams these beams are called gamma ray bursts and each one has as much energy as our Sun will release in a billion years obviously being in the path of one of these bursts is bad news if one such beam shot through the earth the entire planet would be flash-fried burning almost all life on its death within seconds of the initial blast in fact some researchers believe that a gamma ray burst was responsible for the mass extinction that took place on our planets 450 million years ago that extinction wiped at around 85 percent of life on Earth completely changing the course of history one of these explosions happens in the universe every day but luckily we don't know of any happening within our galaxy less luckily though if even one of the four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way did release a gamma-ray burst every planets in the galaxy would be torched number six meteorite impact no doubt you know about the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs after all anything that can kill an entire world of giant lizard monsters tends to capture the imagination but that was far from the first place we ought to come Carini into the earth between four billion years BCE and three billion years BCE our planet was pelted with five thousand meteorites a day one meteorite strike about 3.2 6 billion years ago was so powerful that scientists think the force of the impact caused the earth to shake for half an hour the energy released from the collision also rose the Earth's air temperature to 480 degrees Celsius and caused the oceans to boil needless to say a meteorite powerful enough to fry our seats and turn the air into an oven would be bad news to humans but even smaller contacts could spell the end of life on Earth in 1908 the impact of a comet only 60 meters wide was powerful enough to rip two thousand square kilometres of forest out of the ground we know that an asteroid capable of 100 times the force of the Hashima atom bomb is headed to earth for 2030 but we may be wiped out before that a NASA scientist has warned us that humanity is completely unprepared for a surprise asteroid strike with even several months warning not being enough time to effectively stop a meteorite number 5 cosmic radiation as if the fact space routinely chucks giant boulders at us wasn't enough the universe is also constantly trying to irradiated although we don't notice it the earth is constantly being bathed in radiation from space fortunately our planet has a built-in defense system against this non-stop cosmic Chernobyl the ozone layer yep that same ozone layer we've been punching holes in for decades is our one and only defense against all sorts of radioactive energy flooding our atmosphere if the ozone layer grows too thin scientists predict cases of cancer brain damage and radiation sickness to skyrocket facing cosmic radiation without an ozone layer is so dangerous it may prevent us going to Mars as the astronauts would be exposed to enough radiation to give them early Alzheimer's after only six weeks were the ozone layer to be completely depleted staying outside for five minutes would be enough to give anyone skin cancer the brightness of the Sun would cause widespread blindness and we'd all start dying from radiation poisoning not a great way for the human race to end number four coronal mass ejection in 1859 a brief white light flashed across the sky seconds later Telegraph stations all over Europe and North America stopped working we now know that this bizarre sky flash and southern telegram shut down was caused by coronal mass ejection a sudden release of energy on the surface of the Sun when these solar flares are large enough to reach earth they mess with our technology and wreak havoc on humanity if the 1859 flare had occurred today things would have been a lot worse all electrical items like lighting telephones and computers would stop working traffic lights would fail causing car crashes across the world anywhere with electrically controlled water supplies would no longer have running water or sanitation cities would be plunged into darkness and rioting would almost certainly break out globally the technological blackout would take years to reverse and that's if society managed to keep itself together and not turn into a mad max-style dystopia we almost face this disaster in 2012 when a solar flare now really missed our planet had it happened a week earlier we'd have been hit and said back to the Stone Age experts estimate the technological shutdown damage would have taken two point six trillion dollars and ten years to fix but don't relax just yet scientists put the odds of a solar flare hitting us within the next decade as high as 12 percent number three vacuum at a stability event theoretical quantum physics may not seem as exciting as colliding planets or world guzzling black holes but by the end of this century you're stopped associating quantum physics were falling asleep in science classes and starts associating it with a terrifying universe any apocalypse the false vacuum theory takes the well-established idea that quantum particles are trying to exist in the lowest possible energy states a vacuum it then posits that the universe that place we all live is not in a vacuum state but is actually a false vacuum this would mean that's at any moment a section of the universe would collapse into a vacuum with this vacuum spreading at the speed of light earth along with all life everywhere would be enveloped into a vacuum not only would there be nothing we could do to stop the collapse of the universe but we probably wouldn't even see it coming on top of that the entire universe would be gone and no life as we currently understand it could ever exist again so there you have it quantum physics isn't boring just piss your pants terrifying number two hypervelocity stars if you thought rogue planets were bad well you're right but they're nothing compared to hypervelocity stars you see planets aren't the only things that you can get pulled out of orbits stars can also end up rocketing through space burning everything in their path as they do traveling at 4000 kilometers per second and being you know giant balls of hellfire there's really no way to stop a hypervelocity star in fact a freewheeling star the size of the Sun would only have to come within 148 million kilometers of earth to burn us all to death you'd think one of the very few plus sides of being in the path of a jar ball of fire is that is it'd be easy to spot but it turns out that even seen these things coming is hotter than you think those scientists estimate that there are 1000 hypervelocity stars shooting through our galaxy we've only ever been able to find 16 number one magnet ours you know something is pretty deadly when it could wipe us out without even being in the same galaxy this ball of space light is a magnet on a type of dead neutron star that's prone to starquakes which are basically like earthquakes except they happen on a star and caused a huge wave of gamma rays and x-rays to be released these waves travel a long long way in 1979 the USSR and NASA both reported that their satellites around Earth had been overwhelmed by a sudden wave of gamma energy decades later scientists worked out this blast came from a magnetar 165 thousand light-years away despite the distance the search was still 100 times more powerful than any gamma-ray burst ever detected in 2004 a starquake on a magnetar 50 thousand light-years away dosed us with enough gamma energy to temporarily change our atmosphere causing the ionosphere at the top of our sky to briefly swell up a similar blast would only have to be within 10 light years of Earth to strip away the ozone layer leaving us to be irradiated by space and cook by the Sun so that was 10 ways the universe could destroy us at any moment which earth and egg threat scared you the most did we leave any great galactic apocalypses out of the video let us know in the comments below and if you haven't had enough existential terror for the day check out 10 reasons humans will be extinct in 1,000 years playing

Channel: Alltime10s

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Keywords: Alltime10s, 10s, facts, video, list, top 10, destroy, world end, armageddon, apocalypse, space, physics, rogue planet, Milky Way, galactic cannibalism, Mars, Andromeda, black hole, event horizon, gamma ray, meteor, cosmic radiation, hypervelocity stars, magnetars, Quantum Physics, energy, solar system, astrophysics, astronomy, orbit, Venus, ozone layer, ways the universe could destroy us, universe, end of the world, universe end, universe destroyed, end of the universe, destroyed universe

Id: PKSQ5LjgHXw

Length: 10min 31sec (631 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2017