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Okay storytime...
What's the scariest space fact/mystery in your opinion?
The sheer distance between things.
It's scary and somewhat depressing.
Astronomer here!
There are a lot of things posted here that are not really likely to happen any time soon
or affect your life on Earth much.
So, if you want something to worry about, may I introduce you to the Carrington Event
of 1859.
Basically Carrington was a scientist who noticed a flash from a huge cluster of sunspots, which
was the biggest coronal mass ejection from the sun ever recorded (aka a ton of material
ejected from the sun at high speeds).
It hit Earthwithin a day- aurora were seen as far south as Hawaii, wires on telephone
poles burst into flame, and telegraph operators even reported contacting each other when not
connected.
If a similar event were to strike Earth today, it would cause billions of dollars in damage,
because blown transformers are super hard to replace and a lot of satellites wouldn’t
be able to handle it (and it goes without saying you’d have a serious radio blackout
for a bit until it ended on a ton of essential frequencies).The crazy thing about the Carrington
event though is we really have no idea how often such events happen.
But we do know that in 2012 there was a Carrington-level solar flare that barely missed Earth...Edit:
for those making “next in 2020” jokes, this is not super likely this year.
We do know these biggest flares happen during solar maximum- the sun has an 11 year cycle
of sunspots and the period with the most is solar maximum.
We are just coming out of a minimum so the next max would be 2025-2026 or so.However
we really don’t know how common these big flares are.
Interestingly data from other stars shows they seem to be much more common around other
stars than our own, with huge implications for life in some cases....
Rogue planets: Planets that do not follow any given orbit.They may have been in an orbit
at one time, but now they refuse to "play by the rules."They were most likely knocked
out of their orbit by another body, and now they are set on doing the same.
Here’s one closer to home.
The Kessler Effect is the theory that a single destructive event in Low earth orbit could
create a cascade where satellites break up into tiny fragments taking out other satellites,
breaking up into smaller fragments and so on, until the earth is completely surrounded
by a massive cloud of tiny flying death shrapnel which would make leaving this planet almost
impossible.
If you look up how much space debris there is already up there and how many satellites
currently orbit, plus the continued growth of the commercial space industry...
I think about it a lot.
Vacuum decay is one of the scariest concepts to me.
We don't know if it exists, and we won't know until it's too late.
The Bootes void.
An area of space where there should be 50,000 or so galaxies (compared to other areas of
the same size)but there's only about 60.
Could just be empty space for some unknown reason, or it could be an ever expanding intergalactic
empire using Dyson spheres.
Also I think it appears to be growing but that could just be galaxies moving away from
the void
Edit: so it turns out it's 2000 and obviously it's not gonna be aliens but the theory is
still cool af
The Great Attractor.A... thing... that affects the motion of galaxies for hundreds of millions
of light years.
This visual that either shows how slow light speed is or how vast space is, depending on
which way you look at it.I've seen videos showing the scale of the universe before,
but this one really hit home for some reason.
The speed of light, the fastest speed possible, looks painfully slow when you look at it in
the context of even a fraction of our solar system.
We're stuck here, aren't we?...
MOBILE
BLACK HOLES
I can't accept the fact that there is no end in space.
But if there is indeed an end, then... what's beyond it?I'm stucked in absurdity.Edit: In
the numerous answers I've received, the one that seems to come back the most is "the universe
is curved, you would end up back where you started".
Seems fair enough.
Then again,that wouldn't mean there is no limit.
On the contrary, that would just mean we are trapped in (or on the surface of) a sphere,
but there is still a limit to this sphere.
So the question remains... what's beyond it?
Gamma Ray Bursts.We could be hit by one of these with very little warning, and if it
was reasonably close (in universal terms anyway) could wipe us out rapidly or cause a ton of
damage.Dark Matter/Dark Energy
The fact that about 95% of the universe is made up of matter we can’t see or detect
is pretty unsettling to think about.Also, while not a fact per-se, I like to think that
perhaps the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that there are billions of advanced alien
life forms out there, but they are physically unable to reach us due to to technological
limitations.
Perhaps interstellar transport is only theoretical, and any aliens capable of reaching us areunable
to do so in an acceptable length of time.
Proxima Centauri May take 25 years for unmanned spacecraft to reach us going 20% the speed
of light, but perhaps it’s impossible to transport actual life at these speeds without
dying, so advanced civilizations have realized the futility of trying to contact other species
and have simply given up.
Voyager 1 will outlive planet earth.EDIT: Wow!
Didn’t expect this post would generate so much interest.
Couple of clarifications.
First, I was referring to Voyager 1 not 2 - so fixed that.
(Which is not to say that Voyager 2 also won’t also outlive planet earth.)
Second, my source mentions that it is “plausible” to imagine that Voyager 1 will outlive our
planet given how incomprehensibly vast space really is.
what was before the big bang?
I think it is just impossible for a human to comprehend pure nothing or infinity.
I myself had a stroke at age nine due to a ruptured vertebral artery and lost a third
of my visual field.
I can confirm that it is not black, a good analogy is it is like what you see behind
your head.
on the other hand, infinity is so large that if you spent your whole life writing a one
then zeros on paper, that insane number would still be 0% of infinity.
I just think there is no way to fully understand the universe and there never will be.
This is why even ancient societies explained things with gods because they didn’t understand
how the reality we live in started and I don’t think we ever will.
On the surface of Mars right now is a Blur CD
God help us if aliens find that first.
Ever gone on a road trip and hit a patch where you're just driving for hours and you don't
see anything exciting?
I've experienced this in Australia, Canada and USA, all very large countries.Imagine
doing that for years traveling to another planet....
I think everything is terrifying about space, and I ducking love it.But one thing it scare
me a lot, it's if space in infinite, imagine what kind of gigantic monster can be in there
Moon's haunted
Since the universe is expanding and stars and galaxies are moving away from each other,
it’s possible that civilizations that spring up in the far future with lonely stars will
see an empty sky.
Their civilizations will grow and learn, but they will never know the universe that once
was.
We live in a spectacular time period where we can actually look back in time and see
the early universe, future civilizations won’t have that luxury.They’ll believe that the
universe is, and always was, dark, dead, and empty, aside from their small island of light.
There is literally no end to the universe.
No matter how long we study it there will always be stuff that we will never know just
because of the vastness of space.
There is no guarantee that the universe won't end in the next 10 seconds.Edit: There are
people who are confused.
I'm just saying that with the uncertainty of it all, it could be possible.
Not saying it will, it could, unlikely, but it isn't impossible
......
The Great Attractor is kinda ominous.There's an exo planet with wind that's many times
the speed of sound and that rains glass.Another exo planet that has spent time inside it's
star.There's a sort of fee er that we aren't alone in the universe.
Chances are anything we meet won't have remotely similar emotional spectrums that we have.Then
there's the horrifying notion that we ARE alone in that infinite blackness.
That we're just a fluke of chemistry that will probably never happen again.Edit: More
people have died on Earth than have died on the sun.
Spook.
1: We are the only intelligent beings in the entire universe
2: We aren't the only intelligent beings in the entire universe
Both are equally terrifying, yet one of them is true... and we don't even know which one
that is.
Heat death.
That one keeps me up at night.
It’s quite possible, likely even, that we’ll never leave this solar system.
Because even getting up to a modest fraction of the speed of light, travel elsewhere just
takes too damn long.Pretty much all science fiction handwaves this with jump drives and
so on, but any kind of device like that would violate causality and is fairly unlikely to
be possible.
Its bigger then anyone could ever hope to comprehend.
Not scary exactly, more unfortunate (?)
if anything, but we’ll probably never be able to properly communicate with alien species.
Given the amount of distance between the planets of our solar system, I’d assume the distance
to other universes and galaxies is too far to think about right now.
If we receive and send a message right now, by the time we hear a reply back, we would
probably be a completely different government and societal system.
We would just be constantly introducing ourselves.
The fact that an asteroid could come at any time, and even though we have the technology
to tell us that an asteroid is about to impact Earth, what can we really do about it?
Nothing.
We can do nothing.
We can just sit here, with the media stations telling us what will happen, telling our friends
and loved ones good-bye, praying, etcetera
It sucks.
Why do we have the technology that tells us our inevitable doom is days, or even moments,
away but no technology to possibly stop it?..
Perhaps this isn't very fitting, as I don't think its necessarily "scary", but you know
the multiverse theory?For those who don't, it essentially says that there's a whole bunch
of universes, some similar, some different.
If there's something that should exist on Earth but doesn't, then it exists in an alternate
universe.
Spiderman is real, in an alt universe.
Etc.But if the universe is infinite, then wouldn't everything possible happen within
this infinite time/space?
Is the universe itself the multiverse?
What if there's another Earth way way way far out there that's entirely made of Legos,
with Lego people?And if the universe is the multiverse, then is science as we know it
unreliable outside of our immediate area?
Do physics work completely differently furtherout?
Work by different formulas?
What if there's living creatures out there that don't have a single cell in their bodies?
Things that exist without a single atom?I mean, aren't black holes themselves kinda
that already?
Who says reality as we know it applies to the entire universe?
What if Thanos is actually real somewhere way out there?
What if dreams are just somehow seeing alternate worlds?
What if that King-Kong sized Buzz Lightyear that kitty napped me in a nightmare I had
when I was really young actually exists?Again, maybe not super scary, but I felt it was at
least somewhat relevant.
Getting sucked into a black hole literally turns you into spaghetti...
Strange matter.
It might not exist at all, but some scientists believe it’s what’s inside neutron stars.
If this is true, neutron stars can collide and send strange matter particles flying through
space.
It’s also theorized that strange matter might turn everything it touches into strange
matter.
If that’s true, any microscopic amount of strange matter that touches our atmosphere
would quickly turn Earth and everything on it into strange matter, destroying all life
and nearly every remnant of civilization, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing we could
do about it.Again, this is all theoretical.
Strange matter might not have such a massive effect, and indeed it might not exist at all.
But there is a non-zero chance that an undetectable, microscopic particle is flying toward Earth
ready to eradicate everyone and everything.
A few people have said this but just the size of space is creepy to me.
That far away.... but what almost depresses me more that unlike in Stargate I will never
be able to travel to any of it.
Would love to see whats out there.
Why am I reading this thread?
It’s scary and depressing haha
If you were to instantly take off your space suit while floating in space, the side of
your body facing the sun would cook while the other would freeze, everything in just
under a couple of seconds.
That the Milky Way galaxy has an estimated 10 million black holes.
A fact from a show I used to like:The main problem is pressure.
There isn't any.
So, don't hold your breath or your lungs will explode.
Blood vessels rupture.
Exposed areas swell.
Fun fact!
The boiling temperature of water is much lower in a vacuum.
Which means that your sweat and your saliva will boil, as will the fluid around your eyes.
You won't notice any of this because fifteen seconds in, you've passed out as oxygen bubbles
formed in your blood.
And ninety seconds in, you're dead.Edit: it’s doctor who.
The show is doctor who
The coldest place in the universe is not the Boomerang Nebula, or even in space.
No, its the inside of a D-wave quantum computer, at 15 mK.
Theres a region of space where the ever present cosmic radiation from the big bang is missing.
The radiation is everywhere is space except this area theres none.
The universe is expanding quicker than lightspeed so galaxies at the edge of our current visible
universe will disappear...
Eventually everything will move out of our visible universe and the sky will be starless
Edit 2: Okay so apparently these maps turned out to be inaccurate, but still kinda cool
to know anyway.
Besides, at least if we do destroy ourselves one day, at least there will be some small
memory of us out there for someone to find.We have sent out maps of how to find the Earth
based on maps that show where our Sun is, relative to pulsars.
If anyone finds our probes, it's likely they will be able to find us.I don't think it's
scary that alien race will find these and come to destroy us.
I think any species with the technology toseek us out would be completely unthreatened by
what we have.
What I fee er is they gift us technology and we use it to destroy ourselves.Edit: If anyone’s
curious, the pulsar map was first sent out in 1972 on the Pioneer 10 Space Probe.
It has been sent out a further 3 times.The 3rd and 4th times were on the Voyager Space
Probes as part of the ‘Voyager Golden Record’ This included lots of images and audio of
the human race.
Carl Sagan wanted to put a Beatles song on it but hilariously EMI declined on copyright
grounds.
The fact that a city hilling asteroid can slip through our detection systems and hill
millions at any moment.
Space is big.
More than people can easily grasp.I absolutely believe other intelligent life exists, I absolutely
believe earth-like planets with orbits in their star's habitable zone and liquid water
exist, and I absolutely believe that with enough time humanity will confirm the existence
of both.
I also believe manned spacecraft will never leave our solar system.
The time and energy required just to reach orbit is massive, the resources necessary
to keep a person alive in space are huge.
Landing people on Mars is already viewed as a one way trip, and at its nearest pass it's
roughly 34 million miles from Earth.Voyager 1 has been traveling for 42 years and 9 months,
it is just shy of 150 AU (astronomical units, or mean distance of the earth from the sun)
from home, or nearly 14 billion miles.
It is just past the heliosphere of our sun, orthe point at which the sun's solar wind
no longer exerts enough influence to cast a "bubble" in the background interstellar
radiation.
This is considered interstellar space.
As a frame of reference, the next star over Proxima Centauri is 268,770 AU from our sun,
or 25 TRILLION miles.Unless some kind of Einstein-Rosen bridge type of wormhole exists that we can
travel, we're not going anywhere.
Aliens 65 millions light years away could theoretically see the dinosaurs on our earth
with a microscope advanced enough
The time/gravity relationship, it freaks me out.
That the earth is way overdue for a civilization/all life ending event.
Meteors and asteroids didn’t just stop hitting earth.
Will it happen in my lifetime, my kids or my grandkids lifetimes.
Or 1000 years from now.
Humans have only been here for a minute amount of time over the course of earths complete
history and many things have happened to completely wipe out almost all life as we know it.
There was a star 20,000 light years away that put out a burst of energy in 2/5 of a second
that was more energy than our own sun produces in 100,000 years.
It was enough to disrupt satellite and GPS signals.
If that star was only half the distance away at 10,000 light-years, it would have stripped
the earth of it's atmosphere and irradiated the earth enough to destroy all life.
The Boltzmann Brain
The most likely ending to our universe will be all stars and black holes exploding and
eventually the universe becomes a completely even soup of neutrons for all eternity.In
this theory, the big bang was actually a cosmic coincidence, in which enough of those neutrons
(literally every neutron that currently exists) collided in the even soup of a PAST universe.
This collision caused the big bang to occur, thrusting into motion the energies that run
our current universe.Such an occurrence in the soup of infinite neutrons is INCREDIBLY
unlikely.
What instead is far more likely is that just enough neutrons came together inthe exact
right way as to create a literal floating brain in the infinite soup that has all of
your memories and experiences up to the current moment.Statistically speaking, it is unfathomably
MORE likely that nothing you've ever perceived exists and, instead you are merely a floating
brain in an endless expanse of nothing, doomed to return to the soup from whence you came,
none the wiser.