Fresh Space Facts That Will Leave You Confused For Days

a trip to the nearest star apart from the sun would take you five million years on a commercial airplane that's what i call a long haul flight it would take you about a hundred thousand years to travel from one end of our milky way galaxy to the other at the speed of light on a plane that's just too many zeros to fit into a single screen the sun can fit about a million earths inside it but there's a star called uy scooty that's about times larger than the sun almost everything in space is connected with everything else by gravity star systems are part of galaxies galaxies are part of clusters and clusters are parts of super clusters the largest known super cluster in the universe is the hercules corona borealis great wall that's a name it's more than 10 billion light years wide mars has the largest natural formations in the solar system the mountain three times taller than everest the canyon almost seven times longer than the grand canyon and the crater that could fit half the amazon river across it although the big bang theory is the most viable one researchers still find evidence against it for example one theory suggests there's an axis around which the whole universe rotates it's aptly named the axes of evil there's a super massive black hole at the center of almost every major galaxy including ours black holes can attract not only stars and planets but also other black holes eventually merging and becoming one with a much greater mass the spinning movement and enormous gravity of black holes sometimes makes it throw jets of matter into space traveling at almost the speed of light there's a thing called the great attractor it's a gravitational anomaly outside our galaxy that can't be seen but is known to attract the milky way and lots of other galaxies toward itself the highest mountain in the solar system is olympus mods on mars it's three times as high as mount everest the earth's highest mountain above sea level if you were standing on top of olympus mods you wouldn't understand you were standing on a mountain its slopes would be hidden by the planet's curvature the moon's gravity is only 17 of the earth's if your weight was 100 pounds on our home planet you'd only weigh 17 pounds on the moon you would be able to walk a distance six times longer and carry a weight six times heavier there or just hire somebody from nasa to carry it for you though it's easier to walk on the moon it's more dangerous too an astronaut's foot in a heavy spacesuit sinks into the moon's ground up to six inches deep long distance jumps are uncontrolled and dangerous because the moon's surface is full of deep craters one of the things jupiter is famous for is the great red spot a giant spinning storm this phenomenon used to be so gigantic that it could fit 2 or even three earths but the spot is shrinking right now it wouldn't fit more than one earth if two pieces of the same kind of metal touch in space they bond and get permanently stuck together it doesn't happen on earth thanks to water and air that keep pieces separate the moon is not an ideal sphere it's shaped more like an egg because of the earth's gravity the base of the egg shape points toward our planet normal visible matter for example planets and stars make up just five percent of the universe the rest consists of invisible dark energy that's 68 percent and dark matter about 27 it leaves us with 95 percent of space we know nothing about the mysterious kuiper belt lies behind the orbit of neptune it's filled with massive icy objects the most curious thing about this phenomenon is its movement pattern the only explanation astronomers have neptune is hiding a ginormous planet this hypothetical planet has already got the name planet nine all we have to do is wait until its existence is confirmed or not the moon is the closest planet satellite to the sun since mercury and venus which are closer to the sun than earth is don't have satellite maybe they have cable [Music] with an average diameter of 2159 miles the moon is the fifth largest satellite in the solar system after jupiter satellites ganymede callisto and low and saturn's titan we can see solar eclipses pretty often but moon eclipses only happen once every several hundred years the moon looks as if it were the same size as the sun the star is about 400 times bigger than the satellite but astonishingly it's also 400 times farther from us that's why they seem to be equal in dimensions as viewed from the surface of the earth although the moon seems really bright its ability to reflect sunlight is three times less than that of earth that's why in combined photos they make the moon look brighter artificially it would take about three 000 moons to produce as much light at night as there is in the afternoon about 206 000 of them would have to be full the moon is getting one and a half inches farther away from earth every year at first it was about 14 000 miles from earth and now nearly 250 000 miles in about 600 million years its visual size from earth will be so small that there will be no full solar eclipses if you're still around then leave me a comment below the moon causes high and low tides on earth the gravitational influence of the moon has this effect on oceans the highest tide can be seen at full or new moon there are huge temperature fluctuations on the moon close to the moon's equator the temperature rises from minus 279 degrees fahrenheit at night to plus 260 degrees fahrenheit in the afternoon i think i dress in layers trash isn't just a problem in earth's ocean cities and forests there is a thing called space junk which is any human-made object that's been left in space and now serves no purpose there's also natural debris from meteoroids and other cosmic objects there are currently over 500 000 pieces of space debris orbiting the earth at speeds high enough to cause significant damage if they were to collide with a spacecraft or satellite nasa does its best to track every single object to ensure that missions outside earth can reach their destination safely have you ever looked up at the night sky and tried to count all the stars yeah good luck our galaxy the milky way not the candy bar the galaxy has about 100 billion stars but other estimates put it at over 200 billion since calculating the exact amount is an almost impossible task even for astronomers as for the entire universe there are at least a billion trillion stars that's a one with 21 zeros after it for comparison that means there are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on all of earth's beaches when the planets in the solar system were just starting to form earth didn't have a moon for the longest time it took a hundred million years for our natural satellite to appear there are several theories as to how the moon came into existence but the prevailing one is the fission theory is that where somebody went fishing caught the moon on a hook and dragged it over into earth's orbit no i made that up the fission theory proposes that the moon was formed when an object collided with earth sending particles flying about gravity pulled the particles together and the moon was created it eventually settled down onto earth's elliptical plane which is the path that the moon orbits this next one is 128 million miles in radius black holes in neighboring galaxies can eject gas in a synchronized way feral 9 147 million miles a galactic sized black hole can switch off star formation in a galaxy i'm too lazy to pronounce its name black hole 165 million miles this galaxy contains three supermassive black holes at its center with this next one we've reached million miles once caught by a black hole you can never escape but you could fire a rocket to increase the length of your fall whatever that means the andromeda galaxy's black hole is 312 million miles it will impact the milky way in about four and a half billion years so keep an eye out for that after andromeda we have this one at 404 million miles it takes less than a billion years for a supermassive black hole to form but the smallest ones can form in just a few seconds messier 59 is nearly 500 million miles this one rotates in the opposite direction to its galaxy and appears to be asleep here we have a radius of 621 million miles black holes can only be detected indirectly from the superheated material circling around them the black hole in ngc 4261 feeds on a disc of dust that's 800 light years wide the hole itself is 746 million miles in radius ngc blah blah blah 932 million miles even the biggest black holes aren't large enough to eat the entire galaxy around them that's a good thing with messier 49 we hit the one billion mile mark no one really knows if black holes help to create galaxies or the other way around ngc 1275 one and a half billion miles black holes have been discovered more than 13 billion light years from earth our next one is 1.8 billion miles it would take much longer than the current age of the universe for most black holes to evaporate at 2.1 billion miles this one has a diameter that's 11 times larger than the orbit of neptune messier 84 2.7 billion miles stars and gas circulate this black hole at 880 000 miles per hour with a 3.7 billion mile radius this one is so big that it begins to heat up gas falling into it at a distance of 700 light years cygnus a 4.6 billion miles scientists recently observed this one firing ricocheting jets of energy at nearby gas clouds how rude the seven and a half billion mile hercules a not b is more than a thousand times heavier than the milky way's biggest black hole messier 60 8.3 billion miles the largest black holes can grow faster than their galaxies and may tear them apart and that's the thanks you get m87 is the first and only black hole we've ever taken a photo of you're staring at a radius of 11.8 billion miles ngc something 13.7 billion miles objects that enter black holes can never be recovered by the universe now we're up to 17.8 billion miles with ngc 3842 particles may travel forwards in time when they enter a black hole and here comes some real monsters this black hole is 18.6 billion miles the light from it has traveled across the entire universe for nearly 11 billion years and on a few more billion and we're up to 22 billion miles black holes may be responsible for creating our universe as well as other ones our next giant is 30.4 billion miles some experts think there are traces of black holes that existed before the universe itself oj287 brings us to 33 billion miles black holes are so heavy that they literally make space around them curved now there are just too many ngcs on this list and this one is 36.6 billion miles ultra massive black holes like this appear in huge clusters of galaxies and swallow incredible amounts of hot gas it's all about gas now we're still not done this black hole is 55 billion miles in radius so its diameter is 14 times bigger than pluto's orbit but its big brother is 62 billion miles a black hole with a mass of two pounds would take a decillion years to swallow the earth our next ultra massive one is 73 billion miles it would take more than one thousand years traveling at light speed to reach the nearest black hole holmberg 15a 88 billion miles as you approach a black hole the space around you moves faster than light ton possibly the biggest ever black hole is 121 billion miles in radius and shines as bright as 140 trillion suns wrap your head around that one as the biggest galaxy in the known universe ic 1101 probably has the largest black hole as well at around 128 billion miles now let's look at the moon it always looks at us with one side this means the mood has a dark side and the sun's rays never get there well that's a myth the whole point is that the moon is gravitationally locked to the earth there are days and nights there too it's just that this rotation is perfectly aligned with the rotation of the earth so whenever you look at the moon you only see one side although there are days when the sun shines there too so it's not the dark side it's the far side and we even have pictures of this place and there's one of the biggest craters in our entire solar system the south pole aiken basin it's as wide as two states of texas one myth that turned out to be untrue is that people have never actually been on the moon this is the original spacesuit of the first astronauts who were there look at the soul of the shoe some people claim there's no way they could have left footprints like this there actually they could on the moon the astronauts wore extra boots over their suits and their souls matched the footprints on the moon perfectly the astronauts didn't grab them when they left the moon they left a lot of stuff there too they even ripped out the armrests of the seats of the lunar module to reduce its weight now the total weight of human trash on the moon is about 187 tons including several lunar rovers spacecraft debris rocket stages and lunar probes that's like three boeing 737s the next myth is about summer the hot season comes because the earth approaches the closest distance to the sun in a year the sun warms our planet more and we all have to go to the beach well not true let's draw an axis through our planet it's slightly tilted on one side and winter comes when our planet's axis is tilted away from the sun but over time the axis tilts toward the hot star then its rays shine at such an angle that it gets warmer it's true though that the earth happens to be at different distances from the sun this is because our orbit is not a perfect circle but slightly flattened and ellipse normally we think of the distance to our star as about 93 million miles but that distance may be longer or shorter than 3 million miles depending on which point in our orbit we pass another myth about the sun is that it's yellow well let's send you into space for this one you look out the window and it's white the sun only appears yellow to us through the filter of our atmosphere the composition of the air and its thickness just distorts the light of the star but stars do come in different colors cooler stars have bright orange and red colors these are usually very old stars older than our sun but young and very hot stars are bright blue the sun is about in the middle of the spectrum you've also heard about how if you take your spacesuit off in outer space you'll blow up like a balloon well our bodies are designed to function at atmospheric pressure like outside but space is a vacuum imagine a huge metal barrel and we sucked all the air out from there add to that a temperature of minus 455 degrees fahrenheit and you have space if you could get into those conditions all the air pockets in our body like our lungs would start to expand so you really could blow up like a balloon if it weren't for our elastic tissues they stretch and bend so you keep your body size you'll have enough oxygen in your body to last about 20 seconds then your brain will begin to starve and soon you'll pass out so you won't blow up and you won't even freeze because you'll be in a vacuum it doesn't conduct heat for example water conducts heat very well and you feel cold from it instantly but you feel better in the air of the same temperature if you're in the vacuum of space the super low temperature won't be a problem for you much worse is solar radiation on earth we have a shield against radiation in the form of the atmosphere it blocks the harmful rays in outer space you would be defenseless another myth is related to cell phones people think that when you dial your friend's number your phone sends a signal into space there are a bunch of satellites out there that will pick up your signal and reflect it like a mirror right into your friend's home no not true however there are satellite phones in the world that work that way but when you make a cell phone call your signal is transmitted through a system of cell towers from one to another until it gets to your friend's phone there's a giant ghostly hand that stretches across space its eerie fingers are reaching for a glowing red cloud that looks like molten space lava although it looks like a scene straight out of a sci-fi movie it's 100 percent real the hand was formed after an enormous star collapsed in a huge supernova explosion the boom created a new star that is bursting with energy the energy given off by the star is so big that it caused debris from the explosion to swirl around it this is what created the supernatural looking hand the hand is so big that it stretches a colossal 150 light years as for the lava-like structure it's reaching for that's actually a huge gas cloud so while it looks spooky it's completely harmless and you can go to sleep tonight without worrying about a giant ghostly space hand scooping you out of bed there's a bizarre star hidden in the depths of space that seems to randomly flash on and off it's known as tabby's star and its light dims at super irregular intervals for really odd lengths of time there have been so many theories about what's causing this from meteor showers to outer space interference the comet shower idea was quickly debunked dust from comets which would block the light goes away after a couple of months tabby's star fades slowly over decades so the timing just doesn't add up it can't be down to planets either as no planet is big enough to block that much light from a star after years of speculation scientists have finally found an explanation for the strange phenomenon the dimming and brightening are actually a result of space dust a ring of dust surrounds the star which often temporarily blocks its light on day eight of its mission in 2019 china's lunar rover discovered something really strange on the far side of our moon that caught the attention of the entire world while navigating a path around a bunch of lunar craters it spotted something really weird lurking inside one of the moon's holes it was a colored substance just like gel that we'd never encountered before the curious material was a rich dark green color and glistened like diamonds after a year of analyzing the foreign substance that measured 20 inches by 6 inches the scientists finally came to a conclusion the glistening effect seems to come from glass in space it usually appears as a result of lunar impact melts this means that it's most likely from a comet or rock that has hit the moon and melted upon impact but while it's likely that the strange substance is just melted rock scientists aren't 100 percent sure this is because the pictures were captured under bad lighting conditions and there were a bunch of other factors that badly impacted the quality of the images so the jury is still out on this one for years we've been told there are eight planets in our solar system nine if you count pluto which got kicked out of the club some years ago but that might all be about to change there may be an enormous secret world lurking in the midst of our system which scientists are calling planet nine this undiscovered planet could be way out past neptune there are seemingly unexplained clusters of orbits there and this hidden ninth planet would explain this the planet if it exists would be ten times the size of earth take at least 10 000 years to orbit the sun and would sit over 200 times further out than our home planet this is why it's been so tricky to identify as it's almost impossible to take a picture of in 2019 30 of the area that the planet is likely to be in had been surged it will take at least another two years to cover the remaining area in the meantime we'll be waiting on the edge of our seats now strange radio waves are beaming down on earth and scientists are baffled these fast radio bursts are sudden unexplained and last just milliseconds we first picked up the weird signals in 2007 and scientists have been scratching their heads ever since they appear to be coming from outside the milky way millions of light years away for us to pick them up from that far away they must be emitting more energy in a fraction of a second than the sun does in 80 years most of these signals only came once which would have made identifying them much easier until this all changed in 2017 in august a signal was picked up that repeated 93 times ruling out speculation that the signals were being caused by random one-off events to this day we still don't know what's causing the signals back in 2014 nasa captured a surprising picture of the sun that showed that it might like to play dress-up a brilliant storm of magnetic fields caused the sun to look like a flaming jack-o-lantern even weirder is that the image was captured on october 8th it was possible because of something called active regions these are basically areas of the sun that have greater levels of light and energy this is what gives the flaming look in the images the light forms two eyes a nose and a wide jagged smiling mouth fortunately this look was just a coincidence and there isn't a giant pumpkin carving enthusiast lurking in the depths of space hey i want to know is this a trick or treat space fans spotted what appeared to look like a spoon on the surface of mars it was half covered in dust they noticed it after images from a mars rover had been released as spooky as the suspicious silverware may sound it was just a trick of the light the spoon is just a regular old rock albeit in a slightly odd shape the play of shadows in the photo made the object look even more spoon-like maybe there's a dish nearby that the spoon ran away with a cosmic eyeball floating somewhere among the stars is no regular sized eye it measures an incredible 660 miles across one of saturn's moons tethys has become a bit of a celeb to space fans the spherical moon sports a large crater that makes it look exactly like a giant interplanetary eyeball there's even a set of peaks inside the crater that look like an iris saturn has a gang of 60 moons in total and tethys isn't the only one that looks like a random earth object prometheus looks like a potato atlas resembles a pita bread freshly served from a greek restaurant and mimas even looks like some villain spacecraft our milky way galaxy and the andromeda galaxy our closest neighbor are going to meet but it'll happen in about 4 billion years when they collide an enormous elliptical galaxy will be formed there might be more water on the moon than scientists thought before and not only on its dark side but also its sunlit side this water is likely to come in handy during the already planned missions in the future cotton candy exoplanets are particular planets outside of our solar system also called super puffs they have the lowest density ever discovered this gives them an airy fluffy appearance but despite looking like the most popular amusement park treat these planets are enormous the juno mission has noticed something weird in the upper atmosphere of jupiter the unusual phenomenon was blue sprites and elves twirling above the planet these are two kinds of bright flashes of light that appear for short periods of time mere milliseconds they extend up and down toward the surface of the planet on earth such flashes usually happen at a height of 60 miles above massive thunderstorms in the universe there are not only dwarf planets but also dwarf galaxies they have from 1 000 to a few billion stars for comparison the milky way galaxy is made up of 250 to 400 billion stars a storm the size of our planet keeps raging on saturn it's called the great white spot the storm has a tale of white clouds and it encircles the entire planet the storm occurs every 30 years or so when saturn's northern hemisphere tilts toward the sun at first the storm is indeed just a spot and then it starts stretching in length that's because the great white spot is a huge system of thunderstorms but the main mystery puzzling astronomers is where the storm gets its energy from some scientists think it might be powered by the sun others disagree they say the storm's cloud pattern only makes sense if there's an internal heat source that can power the winds rogue planets don't orbit their stars maybe because they don't have any these free-floating space bodies travel across the universe and can end up literally anywhere they're also very hard to find rogue planets don't produce light neither do they emit heat which means they can't be seen in infrared light but not so long ago astronomers spotted the smallest rogue planet in the milky way it's smaller than earth but a bit bigger than mars the moon seems to be shrinking earth's natural satellite is now 150 feet smaller than it used to be hundreds of millions of years ago the reason for this phenomenon might be the cooling of the moon's insides it could also explain the quakes shaking the surface of our planet's natural satellite astronomers have recently found out that mars is seismically active marsquakes occur there on a regular basis any liquid floating in outer space forms itself into a sphere this phenomenon also occurs in low earth orbit not so long ago scientists discovered that one of the most massive stars in the neighborhood just disappeared it was a star 75 million light years away from earth normally it'd be too far away for astronomers to clearly see individual stars but only unless they're huge and the star we're talking about was enormous it was shining 2.5 million times brighter than the sun astronomers saw the star for the last time in 2011. they decided to examine it more closely several years later but it was already too late the star had vanished such massive stars usually go out in an extremely bright supernova but astronomers noticed nothing like that in this case there's a theory that the star collapsed into a black hole without triggering a supernova first it does occur among stars approaching the end of their lives but very very rarely in billions of years the universe is likely to expand so much that we won't be able to see any stars in the sky all planets in the solar system emit radio waves they're especially strong if we talk about jupiter this planet has the biggest and most powerful magnetic field but astronomers couldn't detect any radio waves coming from a planet outside the solar system that is until 2020 the signal scientists recorded came from a gas giant tau booties it's 51 light years away from our planet thanks to this signal astronomers managed to find out a bit about the planet's magnetic field and in the future this will help to learn more about what's happening in the planet's atmosphere dwarf planet haumea is further from earth than neptune it's orbiting in the kuiper belt that's a donut shaped ring of ice objects circling the sun elongated haumea has two moons a day on this dwarf planet lasts four earth hours all in all this space body is rather bizarre it's surrounded by thin rings that likely appeared as the result of an ancient collision a star in the galaxy gsn 069 is likely to turn into a planet the size of jupiter in the next trillion years it might happen because of the star's regular encounters with a black hole first astronomers noticed unusual x-ray bursts that were strangely bright they went off every nine hours after studying this phenomenon for some time the scientists realized it was a star moving in a unique orbit around a black hole the dazzling flashes it was the material getting slurped off the star's surface by the black hole it turned out that over millions of years the black hole had already transformed the red giant into a white dwarf and the process isn't going to stop whatsoever astronomers have found some traces of phosphine in the atmosphere of venus on our planet this gas colorless and flammable is often found where microbes live no wonder a new theory suggests there might be life on venus why is there so much light on earth but almost none once you leave our planet you might think it's light during the day and dark at night because the earth spins on its axis and the sun illuminates either hemisphere well that's part of the reason but it's more complicated than that i mean our star shines on the moon too but the sky above it is always black it comes down to the unique atmosphere surrounding our earth it's full of dust dirt gases and water droplets which all act like tiny mirrors and reflect the sunlight when sunlight bumps into these small particles it diffuses and creates different colors that's why we see a blue sky and all those spectacular shades during sunrise and sunset it's a whole different story elsewhere if you find yourself on the moon where there's no atmosphere the sky will be black you'll be able to see stars even when the sun is blazing on the surface during the lunar day the same is true of space it's filled with lots of different gases but it has no atmosphere with molecules to reflect sunlight in other words space is empty that's why even when the sun is shining space looks like a black void if one day the earth's atmosphere disappeared it'd be just as dark as it is in space or on the moon that one's clear but the sun isn't the only star or source of light in the universe so why don't other stars shine with blazing light at night well you're not the first one to wonder about that an astronomer named thomas diggs researched this question back in the 16th century diggs was sure that the universe had no end and the stars in it could not be counted he tried to answer why all these innumerable stars don't blind us with glaring light but failed his questions were just way far ahead of his time and he didn't have the tools to find the answer in the early 19th century german astronomer wilhelm obers suggested that the reason the sky is dark at night was a dusty veil that hid most of the stars from us this idea also proved to be wrong later the stars shed not only light but huge energy that could heat dust particles so that they would start shining themselves in that case the night sky would still be light because of shining dust and yet the sky gets dark every evening after sunset what's bad about this theory then diggs olbers and other astronomers of the past believe the universe was infinite but modern astronomy knows better the number of stars as countless as they may seem is simply not enough to illuminate the sky at night the sky gets dark because the stars just as the universe itself don't last forever they are finite you see the universe has its own borders and isn't as ancient as scientists used to think sure just shy of 14 billion years is no whipper snapper to us humans but is still surprisingly young in cosmic terms and it's not much for all of the light from the most distant stars to be able to reach the earth in other words thanks to our fancy powerful telescopes we now know that it takes light billions of years to get to us from the farthest stars this means when we look at the sky we glance into a very distant past modern telescopes can show us that the light started its journey to the earth about 10 billion years ago the more powerful telescopes get the further back in time we can see one day we'll be able to see something that existed before stars appeared probably by studying the dark gaps between them but more on that here in a sack okay stars don't illuminate our night sky all that much because they're really old even as we look up at them and they're unimaginably far away if that's the case then why don't less distant stars shine as bright as the sun there should be thousands of stars much closer than those on the outskirts of the universe yeah sure there are plenty let's take a look at our closest space neighbor proxima centauri as an example it's practically in our backyard just over four light years away from us but we can't even see it in the sky without a telescope the thing is it's seven times smaller than our sun and it gives off only a fraction of one percent of the sun's brightness and our close neighbor just four light years down the road is still pretty far away about 25 trillion miles for comparison our own big bright sun is a mere 93 million miles from earth so our star is much bigger and closer other stars might be brighter than the sun but they're much farther from us too but don't all those distant stars give at least some noticeable light on this planet well i'll put it this way it'd be like switching on a ton of tiny halogen light bulbs they're not as bright as one big led bulb but they do give off part of its light so yeah they give us a little bit of something but it's barely noticeable remember space might be empty compared to the earth's atmosphere but there are a lot of gases out there they move around form clouds and serve as a sort of veil hiding most of the light in the milky way that's why we can't see everything that's going on in our galaxy we need special equipment for that but it turns out albers was sort of right only the curtain that covers the light is made of gas and not dust

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 303,267

Keywords: star-like planets, stars devour planets, stars eat planets, space journey, unusual star, recent space discoveries, black hole, white hole, journey to space, core, facts about space, facts about space and planets, facts about space and the universe, facts about space and stars, facts about space bright side, bright side space facts, facts about the Universe, mind blowing facts about space, beautiful facts about space, strangest planets in space

Id: Q9uO74ScoDc

Length: 38min 7sec (2287 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021