Space is an endless void of potential scientific discoveries and we're learning new things about
it on a daily basis over the years scientists and especially astronomers have theorized countless
things about space many of which have turned out to be true very hot under tremendous pressure
so you try to push nature to its extremes in order to make measurements and then make them
very precisely so you can get uh you can get the measurements of nature however perhaps
unsurprisingly giving the infinite complexities of our universe those scientists occasionally get
their theories wrong Pluto had it coming from the beginning it was it was like it was never really
belong Pluto's orbit crosses that of another planet that's no kind of behavior for a planet
in one of the most famous examples Pluto was initially believed to be a planet we believed this
for 75 years however in 2006 it was established that Pluto hasn't cleared the neighborhood around
its orbit meaning it hasn't become gravitationally dominant and doesn't actually fulfill the criteria
to be classified as a planet it was then reclassified as a dwarf planet
but that's far from being the only space discovery that changed the initial theories of astronomers
welcome to Factnomenal and today we'll be taking a look at the most fascinating discoveries that have
challenged the way we view the universe what's behind a black hole for many years it was
believed that any light that made its way into a black hole wouldn't be able to escape from it
in theory that meant we would never be able to see anything that's behind the black hole in question
however in July of 2021 astrophysicists at Stanford university reported the first detection
of light from behind one seeing bright flares around a black hole is very normal for astronomers
but even a basic understanding of the phenomenon tells us that the far side of a black hole is
a very strange place for light to come from Einstein's theory of general relativity did
predict it would be possible to see such a thing one day courtesy of a process known as
gravitational lensing but it was never confirmed and most astronomers disagreed with him until now
that is Stanford's Dan Wilkins explains how this was possible by saying the reason we can see that
is because the black hole is warping space bending light and twisting magnetic fields around itself
the black hole in question was a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 800
million light years away which does make it somewhat different to those observed before it
however it could still completely change our understanding of how they work going forward
alien megastructure in early 2018 the results of a year-long crowdfunded investigation into the star
KIC 8462852 came in and they completely quashed astronomers theories that its strange dimming was
being caused by an alien megastructure that being said the investigation did result in astronomers
being a lot closer to knowing what was causing the star's odd behavior the star which is also
known as Tabby's Star or Boyajian's star is located nearly 1500 light years from earth
and is approximately 50 percent larger than our own sun and almost 1 000 degrees hotter than it
observations made by the Kepler space telescope between 2009 and 2013 informed us that this
otherwise relatively normal star does indeed experience sporadic and intermittent dimming
and a recent historical analysis of it showed that changes to the object's overall brightness
can last for centuries astronomers hadn't seen anything like it which led to a number of theories
including the one about the possibility of it being caused by an alien megastructure
however the results of the aforementioned crowdfunded investigation which were published
in the astrophysical journal letters and explained how astronomers managed to
chronicle four distinct dimming episodes affirmed a less wild theory which proposed that the star
is surrounded by what appears to be nothing more than ordinary space dust Tyler Ellis an
astronomy student at Louisiana State University and a co-author of the new study explained that
the data collected effectively rules out the possibility of an alien megastructure
although he did also admit that it's a tricky issue because we haven't really established
precisely how an alien civilization might build such a thing or the types of materials they would
use ellis told Gizmodo if we can assume that the construction would be done with normal building
materials then we would expect that it would be opaque and absorb light monochromatically
this would result in an overall dimming of the star without selectively absorbing particular
colors this is exactly the opposite of what we are reporting is this the only one of
these stars out there with space being very much unexplored scientists and astronomers are looking
to the James Webb Space Telescope to provide a detailed look into this most mysterious star
in June of 2020 scientists discovered an intriguing astronomical object that had never
been observed by human eyes before it was more massive than collapsed stars which are known as
neutron stars but had less mass than black holes such black neutron stars were not thought possible
but that theory was smashed by this recent discovery and it means the very notion of how
neutron stars and black holes form and evolve is going to require a major rethink from here on out
it was an international team in the united states and Italy who made the groundbreaking discovery
and they did so using the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory in Louisiana
and the virgo interferometer in santos Stefano a Maserata Charlie Hoya PhD student from Cardiff
University in wales who was also involved in the study while working for the Ligo Virgo
scientific collaboration discussed how the exciting new discovery would challenge and
change our understanding of the concept he told BBC news we can't rule out any possibilities
we don't know what it is and this is why it is so exciting because it really does change our field
while Laura Nuttall a gravitational wave expert from the university of Portsmouth's
institute of cosmology and gravitation added the reason these findings are so exciting is
because we've never detected an object with a mass that is firmly inside the theoretical
mass gap between neutron stars and black holes before more cosmic observations and research
will need to be undertaken to establish whether this new object is indeed something that has
never been observed before or whether it may be instead be the lightest black hole ever detected
how planets are formed up until the early 1990s astronomers believed planets were formed in a
neat order starting with small rocky planets near the sun and ending with larger gassy and
icy planets further away from it given that that's how our solar system is structured it was assumed
it would be the same for them all however once we began to discover planets outside our solar system
that theory was proven wrong in 1995 when astronomers identified the first exoplanet
to closely orbit a star similar to our sun they were shocked it was big and gaseous
and it looked more like Jupiter than any of the other planets in our solar system
this resulted in it becoming known as hot Jupiter countless additional exoplanets
have been discovered over the years and they continue to defy previously accepted theories
with their strangeness some appear to be made of water with small rocky cores while others orbit
a set of binary stars you know similar to Luke Skywalker's home planet in the Star Wars movies
exoplanets even sometimes appear to move in the opposite direction to their parent star's rotation
while others make it all the way around their parent star in just four days even more bizarre
are the multi-planet systems where as many as five planets can be so close to each other that
were they in our solar system their orbits would fit inside the small gap between Venus and earth
Dr. David Sing world-renowned exoplanet scientist from the university of Exeter
tells us that these planets bulk densities suggest that they could be made from anything ranging from
styrofoam to lead Didier Queloz professor of astrophysics at University of Cambridge added
there may be as many different planets in the universe as ways to form them
then the question is how rare are we in our solar system that's why we want to look for
the planets that's why we want to understand the formation scenario to answer how rare the earth is
the evolution of the universe in June of 2021 a discovery was made that indicates a deep flaw in
our understanding of the very nature of the universe itself and it could in fact have
a serious impact on scientists understanding and perception of how the universe has evolved
you see astronomers discovered a huge formation in deep space that they called the giant arc of
galaxies because of its unique and exciting shape the arc is made up of a group of nearly
identical sized galaxies at a distance of 9.2 billion light years the whole thing is around
3.3 billion light years wide and is one of the largest structures ever discovered in the cosmos
astronomer Alexia Lopez of the University of Central Lancashire in England
explained the flaw posed by this discovery by saying it is becoming difficult to ignore the
growing number of megastructures beyond what is considered theoretically feasible according to
cosmologists the current theoretical limit of the universe is calculated at about 1.2 billion light
years which makes the giant arc almost three times larger can the standard model of cosmology account
for these huge structures in the universe as just rare flukes or is there more to it than that
the established model of cosmology called the cosmological principle states that on
very large scales the universe is homogeneous or smooth in all directions with each part of
the universe more or less the same as any other part of it with no major inconsistencies or bumps
one or two of these massive structures could be considered a coincidence or flu
but recent data shows more and more of these structures continuing to emerge
with more questions than answers we wait anxiously for the next big discovery are there any other
theories that you would like to know more about or maybe there's one you feel will be proven wrong
tell us in the comments if you enjoyed the video please make sure you leave it a like and subscribe
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