Hey Thoughty2 here. The corner of the universe that we live in
is pretty quiet; there’s nothing nearby likely to explode, swallow us or just generally
try to ruin our weekend. But that’s not to say that there aren’t
some terrifying things out there in the darkness that would make you cower under your bed with
Mr Fluffles and hope the solar system is just how you left it when you finally crawl out
again. Today, we’re looking at some of the most
terrifying monsters we have discovered in the universe. Brontophobia is the fear of lightning and
there are estimated to be 24,000 lightning-related deaths a year. A typical lightning strike is about 30,000
amps and even these can vaporise metal and fuse sand into glass. But a team at the University of Toronto have
found the highest electrical current that has ever been measured, somewhere out in space,
measuring an enormous 1018 amps, which is the same as a trillion of our lightning bolts
here on Earth. So what’s causing this massive surge of
electricity? Has Thor been on the steroids again? It’s actually down to a gigantic black hole
at the core of a galaxy called 3C303. The magnetic fields that it produces are moving
and interacting and this is what generates the massive electrical surge, like a supersized
dynamo. And if we to manage to avoid being struck
by lightning, that doesn’t mean were safe from all burning up like a Walmart on Black
Friday. In every galaxy there are stars moving so
quickly that they are able to escape the pull of gravity and race through space unchecked. Stars, much like those of Hollywood, are single
much less than you think. About half the stars in our galaxy form a
binary pair, where two stars orbit around each other in a beautiful cosmic dance. Our sun has to sit on its own, in the corner
like the ugly fat kid at a dance. So sometimes, when these binary pairs are
dragged towards the large black hole that always sits at the centre of every galaxy,
one of the stars can be ripped free and hurled off at a speed of 10,000 kilometres per second. The other is swallowed into the black hole,
like when that lonely fat kid finds the buffet table. And if such a rogue star came anywhere near
our solar system, there’s not very much we could do to stop it as it burned us up
and its enormous gravity pulled everything out of orbit. The likelihood of this is fortunately very
low though, so if you do see a bright dot in the sky, don’t stop doing your homework
and wait for the world to end just yet, it’s probably just an aeroplane or a really shiny
pigeon. At some point our galaxy is going to collide
with the Andromeda galaxy so make sure that you don’t put anything in the diary for
about 3 billion years in the future, you know; just in case. When the two combine, the black holes at their
centres will either merge into a supermassive black hole, or they form a binary pair, just
like the stars we mentioned earlier. The compressed matter around these supermassive
black holes becomes a quasar, which stands for quasi-stellar radio source, since they
emit similar electromagnetic radiation to stars, including radio-waves and visible light. They are incredibly bright; you’d need 100
Milky Ways just to match them. Just one quasar is enough to use up our entire
stock pile of sunglasses, but the Huge Large Quasar Group, who names this crap, is a string
of 73 quasars that spreads 4 billion light years across, making it the second largest
structure in the known universe. The biggest of which is the fancily named
Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, okay that’s slightly better, a group of 14 gamma
ray burst walls, which are very bright objects caused by dying stars. Both of these gigantic monsters you will want
to avoid if you value your eyesight. Sometimes, when you have a massive star, it
goes supernova and collapses under its own weight and ends up as a neutron star, which
are hyper dense balls about 11 kilometres across yet they can have the mass of double
our sun. How is this possible? How can you fit that much into such a ridiculously
small space? Are neutron stars made by IKEA? No, there is a scientific explanation; as
anyone who has ever tried to pack a week’s clothes into their hand luggage will tell
you, if you push things together that tightly, they will push back. Those same people will tell you it wasn’t
worth the £11 they saved on luggage fees when their underwear and spare teabags burst
all over security control. The neutron stars are, unsurprisingly, made
up of neutrons. When you pack them together that tightly,
the only thing that stops it collapsing into a black hole is this repulsion between the
particles, which only becomes powerful at such immense densities. A neutron star is so dense that just a matchbox
sized amount would weigh about 13 million tonnes on Earth. Occasionally these neutron stars become magnetars,
where they produce such a powerful magnetic field that they even alter the vacuum of space
around them. They are the most powerful magnets in the
universe, so if you visit, remember to leave behind your credit card and take out your
nipple piercing. Ouch. Stars are messy little things; not only do
they pump out a wide spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, but when they are finished, they
often leave behind huge clouds of dust, called a nebula. If you were up close, you probably wouldn’t
notice since it’s spread out more thinly than any artificial vacuum we’ve ever made
on earth. But from far enough away, we can spot what
remains of the star, and if we watch for long enough, we’ll probably see surrounding solar
systems complaining about their messy neighbour. These nebulae can be hundreds of light years
across and while our clouds on earth are often fat, cute and fluffy, these space giants form
strange and twisted shapes that truly look like monsters of the universe. Just seven thousand light years away, within
the Eagle Nebula, there are the towering space worms known as The Pillars of Creation. These dark clouds will slowly draw together
and form the stars of the future, where their simple hydrogen will heat and eventually produce
all the rich and complicated material like we see here on earth. How about a real monster this time? Just when you thought that space was quiet
as the grave, you hear a horrifying moan; it’s a Zombie Star. I’m not sure you can defeat this one with
a cricket bat to the head, so probably best to head down the Winchester, bar the doors,
and hope it doesn’t find you. This is the result of a binary pair of stars,
where one of them is a white dwarf. A white dwarf is similar to a neutron star
except that the original star didn’t have enough mass to fully collapse into a neutron
star, so you’re left with a ball of mostly carbon and oxygen. There’s no fusion reaction going on anymore,
so it’s just a corpse left out on the porch, slowly losing its heat. But when you have a binary pair, it’s possible
that the white dwarf will leech energy off its partner and slowly regain the mass it
needs to come alive again, kick starting the fusion reaction, probably resulting in a final
rampaging supernova. Such stars are fittingly known as “zombie
stars”. It’s a similar story for vampire stars,
also known as blue stragglers. We discovered stars that seemed to be much
hotter than those in their local area, and when it comes to stars, hotter means younger. But since they all formed from the same nebula;
how can this happen? Well, like with the zombie, we think one star
sucks the life out of the other, giving it that youthful glow we all long for. So put down your quinoa cream, pour away that
disgusting kale juice, and stop going to bloody Zumba class, all you need to do is eat a star. Lastly, a weird one. If you were an interstellar explorer, living
off vacuum dried protein bars and drinking your own recycled liquids, there are probably
times you stare out into the frozen blackness and think; god dammit I need a drink. Well ask and ye shall receive. Sagittarius B2 is a 150 light year long booze
stop. This dust cloud within the Milky Way contains
vast, vast quantities of ethyl formate, which give it the unique flavour of raspberries
and rum. There’s also enough ethyl alcohol there
to get everyone on earth drunk for trillions of years. So, if NASA are really worried about the public
losing interest in the space program, just tell them for a few billion dollars, we’re
going to build a ship and go and raid god’s liquor cabinet. Maybe this is why we’ve yet to meet alien
life, they’re all waiting for us to join them at the gigantic bar in the sky. With all these monsters creeping around, perhaps
we should be grateful that all we have to deal with is one sun, the occasional asteroid
and all those other weird monsters, I mean people, that we’ve managed to get stuck
on this little rock with; I think we can all raise a rum and raspberry to that, right? Thanks for the view, subscribe for more Thoughty2.
