Space is often referred to as “the final
frontier”. As planet Earth grows crowded, with few blank
places left on the map to explore, mankind has turned its attention to the stars, seeking
to uncover the secrets of the Universe. With so much space to cover, exciting new
discoveries are made almost daily, and as technology progresses we’re seeing farther
than ever before. Let’s take a look at 9 Fantastic Things
in Space that will blow your brain into the cosmos. Floating among the other space rocks in our
solar system’s asteroid belt, the asteroid designated P/2013 P5 doesn’t quite fit in
with the rest. Most asteroids are simply pinpoints of light
against the black of space through our telescopes, but this one in particular drew the attention
of NASA scientists due to the six milky white tails that seem to sprout from it. It’s not every day you find a “lawn sprinkler”
in space, so naturally, astronomers wanted to figure out what caused it. The tails seemed to change every few days—quite
perplexing until they realized that the asteroid was actually spinning quite fast. Then, things started to click into place. The prevailing theory regarding the breakdown
of small asteroids into space dust considers interstellar collisions to be the most likely
culprit. But since P/2013 P5 lacks a large burst of
stellar dust seemingly cast off all at once, the implication is that it’s unique tails
weren’t caused by a collision. Instead, observations offer up another potential
cause—rotational stresses that break up asteroids bit by bit. The core of the asteroid is 1,400 feet wide—a
good deal larger than the amount of dust spun off to form the tails. As it continued to shed its outer layers,
adding to the several hundred tonnes of dust already streaming behind it, scientists will
study it to gather more data on the final phase of an asteroid’s life cycle. And hopefully, P/2013 P5 will continue to
water celestial lawns for many years to come. In February of 2006, astronomers searching
for the telltale flash of supernovae via the Hubble Telescope spotted a bright burst of
light from the constellation Bootes. Mysteriously, nothing was visible at the location
before it flared, and nothing has been visible since. After bestowing the phenomena with the name
SCP 06F6, scientists set to work trying to reason out what exactly they had witnessed. They dubbed it “an unusual optical transient”
and “one of a new class”—which can be roughly translated as “we have no idea what
that was”. It’s not likely to have been a supernova—or
at least, not one as we know them—for a number of reasons. First, a star going supernova brightens dramatically
over a short period of time, before fading more slowly than it appeared. It takes around twenty days on average for
the event to reach its peak intensity. But then we have SCP 06F6, which took one
hundred days to reach full luminosity before fading away at an equally slow rate. Slow to arrive and slow to leave—kind of
like in-laws. Second, the supernova explanation takes another
blow when scientists consider the spectral lines given off by the event. The light emitted could indicate a carbon-based
star going supernova, which would generate an explosion of a relatively low temperature
between 5,000 and 6,000 degrees Kelvin—of course, this is only low, relative to other
exploding stars. However, in August of 2006 the European X-ray
satellite discovered an X-ray glow around SCP 06F6’s location—not a feature shared
with other low temperature supernovae. Third, the event generated unusual patterns
in the visible light spectrum, showing “broad line features” in the blue light region
while maintaining “continuous emission” in the red light region. There is currently no known object that shares
those variations. Perhaps there was a containment breach at
some deep-space research facility—that’s as likely of a theory as any other, for now. Until we find another “optical transient”
like SCP 06F6 to study, we’ll have to be comfortable with the knowledge that we understand
far less about the universe than we think. Another example of how little we actually
know about the furthest reaches of space comes in the form of The Great Attractor—proof
that the universe might not be as uniform as scientists have theorized. It’s the great galactic bathtub drain, pulling
in everything around it, and the interesting part is that there isn’t nearly enough visible
mass to account for the massive gravitational pull. The Great Attractor manifests itself as a
“dipole pattern on the sky”, first discovered in the 1970s during a study on the homogeneity
of the Universe. From our perspective in the Milky Way, the
Attractor is located through the “zone of avoidance”—a region of space filled with
so many stars, galaxies, and other interstellar debris that we aren’t able to make out much
using the visible light spectrum. However, its location can be inferred based
on the “great river of galaxies” sixty megaparsecs wide—including our own Local
Group, the Virgo Cluster, the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster, and more—all flowing toward
the Attractor at a rate of six hundred kilometers per second. Using infrared and radio based methods of
seeing through the “zone of avoidance”, scientists found the Norma Cluster, which
is estimated to contain at least one quadrillion solar masses. That’s astronomically huge, and a good contender
for the source of the Great Attractor—except that the mass in the Norma Cluster still can’t
sufficiently explain the full range of motion astronomers see on a galactic scale. Located beyond the Norma Cluster is the Shapely
Supercluster, which dwarfs the former at nearly ten quadrillion solar masses. Prevailing theories today suggest that nearby
galactic clusters and even the Great Attractor itself are all ultimately moving toward the
staggeringly massive Shapely Supercluster. Just when scientists think they’ve found
the biggest thing in the universe, something else comes along and flips everything we thought
we knew upside down. Stars have a reputation for being burning
globes of elemental gasses that sparkle at night and warm our world during the day. But some stars aren’t quite as fiery as
the image you’re led to believe. The Y-class “dwarf” stars completely shattered
the stereotype, prompting astronomers to create a new star classification after their discovery—not
just because of their size, but because they were so shockingly cold! The first Y dwarf stars were introduced to
the scientific community by NASA in late 2011, thanks to the efforts of the Wide-field Infrared
Survey Explorer program. They drew a great deal of attention due to
one of their number having an estimated surface temperature of 25 degrees Celsius—or perhaps
even less! It’s not often you find stars colder than
the human body out in the cosmos, so this naturally encouraged the search for additional
Y class stars to see if there were more that defied expectations. In 2014 the search proved fruitful, as another
dwarf star discovered by NASA was found to boast sub-zero temperatures of between minus
48 and minus 13 degrees Celsius. If there are any planets orbiting it, they’d
better have some good space heaters. Because these sorts of stars are so abnormal,
it is difficult for scientists to determine whether they are in fact remarkably cool stars
or “free-floating planets” drifting through the universe. But at the very least, they offer some very
exciting possibilities. Swap out our sun for a Y-class dwarf, and
global warming would be nothing but a distant memory. Sometimes, it isn’t what astronomers find
in space that piques their interest, but what they don’t. Current models of the universe allow for a
certain amount of variation, but when there’s a statistically significant anomaly that breaks
the mold, there are plenty of questions to be asked. The discovery of the Eridanus Supervoid begs
one question in particular: why is there a massive hole in the Universe? Scientists study the early years and subsequent
expansion of the universe by mapping the Cosmic Background Radiation that’s visible in all
directions. By measuring the variations in energy given
off by radioactive sources, they can identify pockets of matter like galaxies and superclusters,
as well as the empty spaces in between. On a large scale the universe is expected
to be relatively uniform when it comes to the distribution of background radiation. But near the constellation Eridanus, there’s
a peculiar pocket of—nothing. The Eridanus Supervoid is somewhere between
six and ten billion light years away, and NASA estimates it to be 500 million light
years across. It’s the largest structure astronomers have
discovered to date in the Universe—and they don’t have any solid theories yet on why
exactly it’s so empty. It’s so extraordinary that even quantum
entanglement with another universe has been considered. But until the Doctor drops by in his TARDIS
to let us know that we’re on the right track—or at least until we gather more data—the Supervoid
will remain a mystery. You’re likely already familiar with the
concept of black holes: ominous dark maws in space, consuming anything that gets caught
in their gravitational pull—chewing up matter and even light itself as though they were
little more than an appetizer before the main course. There’s a lot we don’t know about black
holes—like what happens after something is sucked beyond the event horizon—but if
there’s one thing we know for certain, it’s that black holes are equal parts fascinating
and terrifying. But even more unnerving is that some of them
are known to “wander” aimlessly around space chewing up everything in their path. Such entities are known as “Wandering Black
Holes”. A huge, wandering black hole was discovered
in 2012 by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, thanks to the efforts of a research team led
by Harvard-Smithsonian scientist Francesca Civano. They found it in the vicinity of a galaxy
known as CID-42—of no relation to this channel, of course—situated four billion light years
away from Earth. It attracted the team’s attention due to
their observation that it was moving rather quickly for an object containing many millions
of solar masses—clipping along at a speed of no less than 4,820,000 kilometers per hour. Any planets in its way are going to end up
the galactic equivalent of a fly on a windshield—perhaps we’re lucky it’s so far away. But there is in fact a “rogue” black hole
in the Milky Way galaxy, measured on two separate occasions in 1996 and 2001 by the Hubble Space
Telescope. Thanks to a star accompanying it along its
trajectory and the movement of the surrounding stars, scientists were able to track it and
determine that it was moving four times faster than anything nearby. Speculation about its origin has led to multiple
theories, one being that it was shot out of a supernova by the tremendous explosion of
a dying star, and the other concerning two smaller galaxies which collided, ultimately
merging the black holes at their hearts, together. Regardless of how it came to be, there is
little that can stop it now. Just remember to look both ways when crossing
the interstellar highway. While we’re on the topic of black holes,
at the center of our galaxy is a theorized black hole so big that Muse wrote a song about
it. And it is indeed “supermassive”. The distance from our humble home in a spiral
arm of the galaxy to the Milky Way’s galactic core is just over eight kiloparsecs. For perspective, that’s more than two hundred
and forty-six quadrillion kilometers - though the exact distance is difficult to measure
accurately due to the same “zone of avoidance” that confounds scientists studying the Great
Attractor. From our perspective here on Earth, the Galactic
Core is a densely packed nest of “globular clusters”, each one a group of many thousands
of stars. Imagine a ball of popcorn and you’re pretty
close to what it would look like. In the early 20th century, the very same Harlow
Shapely for whom the Shapely Supercluster was named after, began trying to discover
the distances of different globular clusters from our solar system. He soon found a notable collection of them
in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and theorized that such a massive assembly
of them might be gathered at the galaxy’s heart. His work led scientists to determine decades
later that he had in fact found the Galactic Core. And just like the classic Joseph Conrad novel,
we also discovered that our galaxy has its very own dark heart nestled deep within. The Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole
can’t be detected directly via visible or infrared light, so instead we infer its existence
due to the radio waves it gives off. They provide scientists with sufficient data
to calculate its mass—and it’s a big one, more than four million times bigger than our
sun. At least it knows to stay put, instead of
careening across the universe like it’s a free matter and light buffet. In a universe that seems to be expanding in
all directions, it’s surprising to find something out there that’s travelling straight
for us. The Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large galaxy
to our own, is currently approaching us at a rate of around 400,000 kilometers per hour. But don’t worry just yet—it still has
another 2.5 million light years to travel, which puts it on track to reach the Milky
Way in around four billion years. Astronomers with NASA speculate that the collision
will result in a merging of the galaxies—which could seriously shake up the neighborhood,
pushing our sun into a new section of the galaxy. They speculate that Earth and the other planets
in our solar system will continue orbiting our sun after the mix-up, but of course, such
an event is unprecedented. There’s not a lot of data to work with. On the initial approach, the galaxies will
most likely skirt each other without full contact, narrowly missing before they spin
back around and slam into one another. Another theory suggests that after the merger,
our solar system might become a part of the Andromeda galaxy afterward, looking back on
the spiral arms of our old galaxy in the night sky. Quality fodder for science-fiction fans today—the
science-fact of tomorrow. This will all be happening in slow-motion;
very, very slow-motion. It’s expected that two billion years will
elapse between the near miss and the final collision, so there’s plenty of time for
the futuristic Earthlings to admire the Andromeda Galaxy taking up nearly all of the night sky
on the first go-around. There’s even a slight chance that a satellite
galaxy of Andromeda’s could reach us first—but hey, the more the merrier! In a universe filled with rogue black holes
and colliding galaxies, it’s nice to find something that’s pretty to look at without
posing a risk to our well-being. In the Serpens constellation, around 5,000
light years from Earth, astronomers were baffled to discover a nebula with a very distinctive
shape. Thanks to the human mind’s tendency to find
familiar images in random patterns—known as Pareidolia—many nebulas have been named
for their uncanny similarity to objects we know, like the Horse Head nebula and Cat’s
Eye Nebula. But there’s no room for creative interpretation
here; the Red Square nebula of the Serpens constellation is—well, a giant red square
among the stars. The Red Square nebula is certainly eye-catching—appearing
to be an almost perfect square at first glance. It’s actually formed by two cone-shaped
nebulae, which meet at the tips, and the mind simply fills in the blanks to complete the
square. But the sharp angles and lines that define
it grant it the honor of being “the most symmetrical object of comparable complexity”
found among the stars to date.
