The Most Dangerous Thing in the Whole Universe

[Music] okay forget about alien invasions or giant meteors rushing toward earth there's something much more dangerous lurking in space and it's called strange matter while people don't know much about it experts are sure that under particular conditions this stuff would be able to eat our planet alive but to grasp the concept of strange matter better we first need to understand protons neutrons and neutron stars so look at your hand it's made up of tiny cells if you start to zoom in on these cells you'll see a bunch of molecules keep going and you'll notice that molecules consist of atoms which have protons and neutrons in their nucleus outside of all that you have electrons flying around in small clouds if you could see all this up close you'd find that these particles aren't crammed together in a tiny space in fact there's enough room between them to make you wonder why your hand feels solid at all but when you touch or press your hand all those atoms resist the force and the harder you press the more atoms stop you but what if you push really really hard oh then you'll eventually force the nuclei together and fuse some new elements not that this is possible if it's your hand you squeeze really hard but it can happen with a neutron star imagine this a super powerful and massive star is reaching the end of its life one of the potential scenarios is that it runs out of its nuclear fuel and in a blinding bursts collapses under its own gravity if the star had been massive enough it'll produce a black hole but if it wasn't that big a neutron star will appear in its place at about ten miles across a neutron star is itsy-bitsy when we're talking about stars in general but at the same time this small space is unbelievably dense about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun it means that just one teaspoon of neutron star would weigh a staggering 10 million tonnes scientists say that one day these neutrons can get tired of holding all that weight and the structure keeping the entire thing together will collapse this in turn leads to the appearance of a quark star which is even smaller and denser than a neutron star now let's say the pressure inside a quark star is getting stronger as a result things called strange quarks can appear in its core they've been dubbed strange because well they don't behave like normal quarks I would have gone with quirky quarks but that's just me really simply put if these strange quarks are numerous enough they create strange matter which is unique and unlike any matter you find on earth oh yeah and it could be the most dangerous thing in our universe [Music] hang on I'm getting there but first let's conduct a virtual experiment with something more familiar than a neutron star we'll take an iron atom and start to squeeze it with tremendous force sooner or later the atoms neutrons and protons will blow apart into those quark things add some more pressure and some of these quarks will change become heavier and turn into strange quarks what we have on our hands now isn't an iron atom but something called a strangelet that's a tiny piece of strange matter oh don't you just love science strange matter is much heavier than our matter besides our dear matter is organized and predictable it consists of atoms that are in turn made up of nuclei and electrons and our quarks are neatly squeezed into neutrons and protons where they should be but strange matter whoa that's a bundle of chaos here's where the strange part comes in it's quarks have no boundaries they just totally run amok wherever and however they want yet surprisingly among this particle chaos strange matter remains stable very dense and impossible to destruct but that's where it gets a bit disconcerting strange matter is so stable that it can exist anywhere in the universe even outside a neutron star but the worst thing is that strange matter may be contagious imagine an innocent jar of honey that suddenly goes nuts and decides to consume everything around the table plates your kitchen.you the whole galaxy huh what a sticky mess but that's exactly what may happen if strange matter was left to roam on its own it's like the vampire of particle physics anything it touches can be transformed into strange matter itself oh yeah but this stuff is happening way out in space and neutron stars that are thousands of light-years away well the thing is when two neutron stars collide or when a neutron star crashes into a black hole these strangelets break free and at millions of miles per hour these tiny or not so tiny guys race through space they can keep going for billions of years until they come across something they can consume sadly a strangelet won't care whether the object it's encountered is a star or a planet full of life this space invader would get down to work right away and it would soon convert earth and everything on it into more strange matter so would there be a way to stop all this from happening there is one solution but it seems kind of impossible at the moment you see to get rid of strange matter the only thing we could do is toss it into a black hole but this escape plan raises all kinds of questions itself I mean let's even say that we're at a point where humankind can travel through space star wars style okay but still in order to deposit the dangerous stuff you need to get really close to the black hole let's picture what would happen as you approach it first you'll notice some blackness blotting out the light from surrounding stars that's just how strong the gravity of a black hole is not even light can pass through it hence the name as soon as you get to the black hole's edge aka the event horizon you won't be able to turn back because it's the point of no return even if you were super strong or were traveling at the speed of light you still wouldn't be able to escape the immense gravitational pull plus you wouldn't even be able to reach the event horizon in the first place you'd be spaghetti by that no for real it's actually called spaghettification and it happens when something has stretched paper thin by a black hole's gravitational field everything that approaches a black hole gets broken down into individual atoms and we become long thin pasta not the best way to go I'm afraid yeah it'd be a tough and dangerous feat to transport and throw this strange matter into a black hole by the way how would you transport it there anyway you could probably use some kind of catapult but that raises another question how are you gonna prevent the strange matter from consuming this catapult your spacecraft or you even in this hypothetical sci-fi space travel scenario it still seems impossible in any case at this point strange matter is just a theory that hasn't been confirmed yet interestingly enough physicists have considered creating strange matter in a particle accelerator not unlike the Large Hadron Collider luckily they later came to the conclusion that it's impossible to do since particle accelerators get so hot that they would immediately melt any appearing strangelets whoo what a relief but I'd still like to politely ask them not to try it please well it might be comforting to know that even if scientists managed to create some strange matter it'd be too unstable to live long enough to consume nearby atoms plus the strange matter that would appear as a result of the experiment would most likely be positive we charged such strangelets aren't too dangerous for our world sure they'd be happy to snack on nearby electrons but they probably wouldn't provoke that terrible chain reaction I just told you about probably in any case no strangelets have ever invaded earth and all the billions of years of its existence which means that this strange invasion is highly unlikely to happen at least not anytime soon so don't sweat it and don't worry about that jar of honey sitting on the kitchen counter do you think it's possible for a stray space strangelet to infect our planet can you say stray space strangelet five times real fast let me know if you can and what else you're thinking about down in the comments and if you love all things space related then give this video a lot share with a friend and head over to the bright side for more videos to satisfy all your cosmic needs

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 619,063

Rating: 4.8220482 out of 5

Keywords: outer space, the universe, space, stars, astronomy, astrophysics, recent discoveries, discovery, facts about the Universe, fun science, planets, facts about space, neutron stars, strange quarks, strange matter, black hole, neutrons, galaxy, spaghettification, particle accelerator, gangerous things, dangerous scenario

Id: z0M2G5PAJzo

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2019