Space Facts Marathon Had Me Staring at the Night Sky for Hours

nuclear pasta if it does exist nuclear pasta is the strongest material in the entire universe formed from the leftovers of extinguished stars this substance gets squeezed into spaghetti-like tangles of material it can break but only if you apply 10 billion times the pressure needed to shatter steel a planet where it rains glass bright blue exoplanet hd189733b peaceful and slightly familiar but this pretty appearance hides the planet's terrifying nature there the winds blow at five thousand four hundred miles per hour seven times the speed of sound but that's not the worst here it is it rains glass sideways in this scorching alien world better duck the black widow pulsar just like its spider namesake this rotating neutron star is munching on its partner a lightweight brown dwarf star pulsar j1311 3430 is infamous for slowly blasting its companion the more material the pulsar consumes the more slowly it spins the energy the neutron star is losing in the process causes the companion star to dwindle an ice planet that's burning far away neptune size exoplanet glass a436b is a paradox it's made of scorching hot ice the planet completes one full orbit around the red dwarf gliese 436 in just two days it means it's traveling remarkably close to its parent star that might be the reason why the planet's temperatures rarely drop below 800 degrees but the strangest thing the planet hosts huge volumes of water ice known as ice x is that like spacex which remains solid despite blistering temperatures a ringed dwarf planet haumea a dwarf planet orbiting in the kuiper belt has a bizarre elongated shape and two moons the day on this planet lasts four hours making it the fastest spinning big object in our solar system but the most mysterious thing about haumea is that the planet has a thin 40 mile wide ring circling it a stellar nursery in centaurus this place might be called nursery but it's anything but peaceful or safe this nursery made up of hydrogen and newborn stars is located in a nebula in the constellation of centaurus around 6 500 light years from earth the intense energy these baby stars emit makes hydrogen clouds glow ominous red this energy is so powerful that it's eating away dark clouds of dust they're disappearing like lumps of butter on a hot frying pan okay i'll stop a diamond planet about 000 light years away from earth there's a planet that seems to be one enormous diamond the planet is denser than any other discovered so far and consists mostly of carbon it's so dense that astronomers think this carbon might be crystalline meaning that at least some part of the planet is diamond infrared stream from space neutron stars are ultra dense collapsed cores of giant stars they usually emit x-rays or radio waves but in 2018 astronomers discovered a weird stream of infrared light it seemed to be coming from a neutron star 800 light years away from our planet the signal was probably generated by a disk of dust surrounding the star but this theory hasn't been proven yet great red spot on jupiter a vast churning red hurricane twice the size of our planet hasn't calmed down on jupiter for at least a century and a half winds are rather calm at the storm center but on its edges they travel at a speed of 270 to 420 miles per hour is more than twice faster than the most powerful hurricanes on earth a saturn windsurfing anyone the eye of sauron the 18th brightest star in the night sky fomo hoat is a terrifying sight it's dubbed the eye of sauron because a ring of dust and debris circling it makes it look like a giant eye staring into your soul the intimidating star is more than twice the mass of our sun and is 25 light years away from earth which isn't that far away considering distances in space oh wait is that gollum over there major look butterfly nebula this butterfly's wingspan is more than three light years and the structure inside the nebula is one of the most complicated ever observed the nebulous central star a white dwarf is heated to an incredible 450 000 degrees it means it was formed from a gargantuan star likely more than five times the size of our sun the white dwarf is surrounded by a thick disk of dust and gas at the equator that's what probably makes the whole structure look like an hourglass or a butterfly eskimo nebula discovered more than 200 years ago this nebula got its name for a reason its double shell formation looks like a person's face hidden in a padded hood of a winter jacket the star at the center of eskimo nebula is not unlike our sun and the bizarre orange streaks in the outer part of the cloud stretch light years away in all directions a supernova this is a single burst of matter and energy that can outshine entire galaxies in the night sky and produce more light and heat than our sun will ever give out a burst like this signals the end of a star's life cycle while the core of the star shrinks the outer layers expand outwards creating a colossal bright and colorful halo hoag's object only about 0.1 percent of all galaxies are shaped like rings and hoag's object is the most bizarre looking of them all it resembles a circle of thinly spread blue stars with a dense cluster of red stars in the center and a vast almost empty area between them astronomers still can't work out why hog's object has this shape saturn's ring system the second largest planet in the solar system has eight distinctive rings around it for centuries astronomers thought that these were solid disks but today we know they're made from various rocks from small pebbles to literal mountains floating in space the rings formed when two moons collided or when one fell into the planet the pillars of creation photos of nebulas are often so colorful because each of their elements is shown in a different hue the pillars of creation are huge columns of gas inside the eagle nebula mostly made of sulfur which is a dark red color the pyramids contrast beautifully with the surrounding blue colored oxygen of the nebula the great red spot a raging storm is mesmerizing here on earth but seeing one churning on the biggest planet in the solar system is on a whole nother level jupiter's red spot is two times as big as the earth itself and its winds travel twice as fast as anything you'll ever see on our planet the cat's eye a star at the center of the cat's eye nebula spat out gas and dust in a series of bursts each of these pulses weighed about as much as all of the planets in the solar system combined they created bubbles of matter around the star which overlapped with each other to form a nebula that looks almost scarily similar to a human eye double quasars a quasar is a super bright core of a galaxy which contains a monstrous black hole eating huge amounts of gas and dust quasars outshine the galaxy surrounding them one quasar which is eight billion light years away looks like two blue dots in the sky despite being a single object this happens when a galaxy which we can't see passes in front of the quasar this galaxy is so heavy that the light from the quasar passing through it bends and splits in two making a c2 instead of one saturn's hexagon a huge six-sided vortex twice as large as earth sits on saturn's north pole over time it changes color from light blue to gold scientists think it's caused by differences in wind speed but no one knows for sure the sun's crown hair-like tendrils of sunlight spread out from the sun in all directions known as the corona the sun's upper atmosphere they're most visible during full solar eclipses when the moon blocks out the sun and it's no longer so blindingly bright to look at despite being far above the sun's surface the corona is actually way hotter than it star is yeah that's a mouthful this gas cloud is one of the most photographed things in the night sky and for good reason it's the closest region of star formation to earth against this gorgeous lazy landscape of bright blue red and pink you can see recently formed stars with thick discs of hot gas surrounding them the dance of colliding galaxies when two galaxies get close gravity makes them pull on each other funnels of stars spread out from each one to the other and then collide the galaxies actually pass through each other with some stars getting thrown off in new directions or crushed into black holes the galaxies lose their distinctive shapes and eventually the two galactic centers merge invisible beauty black holes while fascinating aren't literally beautiful since we can't actually see them instead we see only the things that they consume the super hot streams of gas they slurp up known as the accretion disk even the famous photo of a black hole we now have is an image of its accretion disk still seeing that alone with your own eyes would be an eye-popping sight the earth from space we've yet to find something more beautiful than our home planet it's vast oceans and the green and brown colors of the land look unbelievable from above the atmosphere as far as we know it's unlikely that there's a world similar to the earth anywhere nearby but there must be thousands of others inhabitable and beautiful worlds out there somewhere in the meantime it's wise to take better care of the only planet we know of where we can live year 2236 space exploration is flourishing and astronauts are the most respected professionals in the solar system yet despite all technical advances no sign of extraterrestrial life has been observed or rather wasn't until two years ago the gsa global space agency registered a repeating signal like no other it was coming from a galaxy billions of light years away and moving the decision was made to construct a one-of-a-kind spaceship exceeding the speed of light to explore the signal today it's finally ready and has been given a fitting name hope but there's a problem to reach his full speed it has to be piloted manually and these four individuals are now going on board the ship for the most important mission in history perhaps never to come back the astronauts are in their seats engines are starting ground control begins the countdown five four three two one the hope starts off the ground borne by its rocket carrier the sky is overcast but that's only for the first few seconds and here we are in the clear blue above the clouds our ship is leaving the atmosphere now getting ready for the first of its many ordeals the space debris even today there's still too much of it floating in orbit the pilots are skilled though so there's almost no chance oh no look at that huge chunk of metal coming straight at them who barely made it now that we're through the hope is on its own and its deep space engines turn on the first solid object on our way is of course the moon located 239 000 miles away it's the earth's only satellite and its closest celestial body to get here by airplane you need 17 full days and a lot more air to fly with luckily we're not on a plane gaining more speed the astronauts reach mars the fourth planet from the sun it's home to the tallest mountain in the solar system olympus mods it's so huge that it's visible even from space leaving the red planet behind the hope approaches the second obstacle the asteroid belt oh careful now it's nimble so it easily dodges the space rocks look see that huge thing over there it's not a planet it's ceres the largest near-earth asteroid it's over 600 miles in diameter more than twice the length of the grand canyon oh shucks the pilots must have been lost in admiration at the giant smaller asteroids are closing in on them they're almost hit near miss they're now safely out of the belt and accelerating again next stop is jupiter the largest planet of our system a gas giant its diameter is about 89 000 miles which makes it more than 11 times bigger than earth look at that enormous swirl on its surface see that's a hurricane that's been going on for centuries and it alone is twice the size of our home planet now our pilots were a bit to the side and reach out of saturn's famous rings they're made of ice and stone and span as wide as the moon is from the earth what was that a comet whoa close call those tailed things are essentially huge chunks of ice hurtling through space and one of them has flown inches from our hero spacecraft reaching sub-light speed the ship rolls past the orbit of two other planets now too far and unseen to the first dwarf planet of the solar system pluto not far away you can see cheron the largest of its five moons it's so big that it doesn't only orbit around pluto but makes it kind of dance around cheron too almost at the speed of light now the spacecraft races straight into the kuiper belt the second asteroid belt on its way out of the system chunks of ice float past and the astronauts have to be very careful veering among them careful one of the rogue asteroids has scraped the ship at such speed a more serious impact could have been devastating but even a scrape like this is pretty bad they drop the speed to do some repairs while the two pilots are gingerly leading the hope out of the belt but what's that huge thing blocking the view oh it's aeris another dwarf planet the size of pluto which means we're safely outside and will soon be approaching the limits of the solar system just one last obstacle on the way the oort cloud quiet now the moment has finally come the cloud is too far away to reach it even at the speed of light it will take a year at best so the hope is preparing its state-of-the-art skip drive ready now in the blink of an eye the hope is right at the inner limits of the oort cloud the last asteroid belt there is in the solar system it's not as hazardous as the previous two because asteroids are much farther apart but skipping through them is still not an option so the ship is carefully making its way among the icy rocks shoot another comet and another one two comets at a time both somehow attracted to the spacecraft no huh they're alive oh i see the comets collided with each other just behind the hope and the blast simply pushed it forward boy you guys had me worried you know but now we're finally out of the boundaries of the solar system the greater space begins and it's safe to skip again the hope jumps several light years further ahead and we're now looking at the sun's closest star neighbor the proxima centauri and its two big brothers alpha centauri a and b it's still unknown if there's any life on the planets of this star system the skip drive is getting blue again time for some action now it's making a series of jumps each taking the hope several thousand light years further into the cosmos the scale is getting broader and now we're looking at the milky way galaxy in all its glory while still being within it isn't it beautiful but there's no time to waste with each skip we're making bigger distance still and wait what's wrong why did we stop is that yes we're now being witnesses to the demise of a star that stream of light is its energy and the bright disc that attracts it is called the accretion disk the ring of matter and energy swirling around a supermassive black hole the astronauts are lucky to have stopped in time otherwise they would have been spaghettified adjusting the course setting the skip drive and another series of interstellar jumps takes the hope out of the milky way and into the neighboring galaxy andromeda and here we're at a safe distance watching the incredible the birth of a galaxy cluster thousands of light years away but big enough to be clearly visible from here hundreds upon hundreds of galaxies are being born right now and at the center of it all is another black hole it's the core of a new cluster weakened and thus helping stars to appear and now finally the skip drive is ready to take the astronauts to their point of destination the mysterious signal they've been receiving it ever since leaving the earth and it's growing stronger with each skip now they expect it to be even clearer because the next jump will take them a billion light years ahead we're now in a weird place there are several stars all circling around a small black hole and each having at least a couple of planets orbiting them look one of the stars got too close and a fountain of lights spurted toward the black hole but then the star ripped itself free and continued its slow movement here the signal is stronger but not as strong as expected by far it's moved further much further there's no choice but to skip again and who knows where to

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

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Keywords: facts about space and planets, facts about space and the universe, facts about space and stars, facts about space and the solar system, facts about space bright side, how high you can jump, jump on planets, bright side space facts, outer space, the universe, Milky Way, facts about the Universe, mind blowing facts about space, beautiful facts about space, facts about space in english, nasa, moons, International Space Station, neutron stars

Id: 9eq12EO-o7M

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020