space is truly the final frontier while we've only explored a tiny fraction of what's out there
endless opportunities for exploration exist beyond our home planet as astronomers continue to explore
the universe's limitless questions what new mysteries have been unraveled you're watching
matter and today we're taking a look at seven mind-boggling space mysteries that scientists
have solved what caused the earliest galaxies to die astronomers believe that the earliest stars
in galaxies formed not too long after the big bang new data show the earliest stars forming
around 50 to 100 million years after the big bang with galaxies forming not far behind that
while astronomers were studying some of the older galaxies of our universe they noticed something
peculiar many of these old galaxies no longer appeared to be forming new stars they were dead
these dead galaxies were a shocker to astronomers galaxies normally are very active with old stars
dying and new stars being created frequently so the fact that so many of these early galaxies had
ceased to produce them had scientists worried when studied closely using the hubble space telescope
they were finally able to find the reason why these galaxies had stopped birthing new stars
there was simply not enough gas or debris left in the galaxy for any more stars to form they had
used up all of their fuel stars form from cold gas that fills the interstellar regions of galaxies
but in these dead galaxies the space between stars was empty this was the first evidence astronomers
found that showed that galaxies can indeed run out of stellar material and when they do they die
what caused the gamma-ray sky to form during the 1960s a huge amount of new technology and new
discoveries were being made by the leading space organizations but many of these discoveries led to
more questions than answers one of these puzzles that remained a mystery until much more recently
was the detection of super bright gamma rays streaking across the sky gamma rays are the most
energetic and powerful type of radiation produced in the cosmos astronomers at the time
had no concept of what object in the universe could create such a massive amount of energy
so the problem remained unsolved until further information was found today astronomers agree that
there are two main sources of gamma rays in the universe but until recently it was unknown which
one was responsible for these gamma rays these two sources of gamma radiation include supermassive
black holes which give off colossal amounts of radiation while feeding on superheated gas
the other source of gamma radiation and the most likely culprit here
is from massive stars exploding in supernovas a supernova occurs when a star with a sufficient
mass runs out of fuel and reaches the end of its life when it runs out of fuel gravity will
cause the star to start to collapse in on itself which then produces an insanely powerful shockwave
that blasts away the outer layers of a star giving off large amounts of gamma radiation
the mathematical model created to help solve this
issue shows that there are more than enough supernovas within star-forming galaxies to
account for the amount of gamma rays that were detected what caused this blip in hubble's image
when astronomers used the hubble space telescope to get a view of a group of galaxies something odd
around 11 million light years away from earth caught their eye they saw what appeared to be one
galaxy with a perfect mirror of itself attached below pretty quickly astronomers knew that this
anomaly must have been caused by a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing where extreme
gravitational forces warp light which alters its appearance to us but the question still remained
regarding what was generating a gravitational force powerful enough to alter the image this much
nearly 10 years later astronomers finally found their answer they began looking in between this
distant galaxy and earth to see what was there they noticed another galaxy roughly 7 million
light years from earth right along the same path this ripple in space-time is now believed
to be caused by a large cluster of dark matter within that galaxy dark matter is invisible to us
yet it makes up nearly six times more than the universe's mass than ordinary matter and aids
in keeping galaxies and larger galaxy clusters together while we still don't know what it is made
of astronomers are able to see its effects all over the cosmos where is all the missing matter
when the big bang occurred all the mass that exists within the universe was created in an
instant by scientists best estimation the mass of the universe is made up of 68 dark energy 27 dark
matter and only 5 ordinary matter this five percent of ordinary matter makes up all the
galaxies stars planets and gas that we can see in the universe several decades ago astronomers
attempted to find all of this ordinary matter and account for it but after all of their searching
they were only able to find around half of all the matter that scientists know exist in the universe
it wasn't until 2019 that a team from australia discovered something new while they were studying
fast radio bursts or frbs that were detected as they traveled through the cosmos they noticed
that the signals had been slightly disrupted the disturbance was more of a smearing of the signal
the team was able to determine that it was caused by tiny elementary particles like electrons
interfering with the light as it passed through them next they took several frbs from different
regions and calculated how much mass these signals need to have traveled through in order to be in
the state they were in with this data they then extrapolated the information to the rest of the
universe to calculate how much mass all of these particles put together would be the number they
recovered from their calculations was extremely close to equaling the mass of missing matter
how is this unique nebula formed astronomers call this beautiful nebula the blue ring nebula
and it was first discovered in 2004 this is a unique nebula made up of two cones of debris
moving in opposite directions from the star in its center and astronomers have never studied
one like this before and had no ideas about how it was able to form it took 16 years before an
answer was finally put forward after constructing complex models astronomers were able to conclude
that this nebula was the result of two stars colliding and then merging into one while
ejecting much of their mass out to form the blue cloud of gas that our telescopes can see
finding a nebula formed this way that is only a few thousand years old has helped scientists
understand more about interactions between stars and how these fantastic cosmic features form
what is responsible for slowing the creation of stars in galaxies astronomers spend much of their
time looking out and studying the vast universe we all reside in during one of these explorations
astronomers wanted to learn more about the different features of galaxies they noticed
anomalies in the galaxies they were studying there were regions within these galaxies where the rate
of star creation was much lower than the rest what could be disrupting the formation of stars within
galaxies the answer to this question kept eluding scientists for over 20 years with the help of
modern supercomputers a team of scientists were able to build model galaxies and run countless
scenarios of what could be happening within the galaxy after finishing their simulations
the scientists analyzed all of the collected data and found what was to blame from this disturbance
there were supermassive black holes at the center of these galaxies the data they found suggested
that massive energy injections from the black hole and the rings of superheated gas surrounding it
create an environment that is inhospitable to stars forming how are young stars born tmc
1a stars are some of the most common objects in the universe with each galaxy containing
100 billion or more stars but for their prevalence there is still a lot that scientists do not know
about how stars are born and how they were able to feed until they are fully formed they have
never been able to study the birth of a star up close that has recently changed looking towards
the constellation taurus astronomers in japan were able to detect a young star being born from
a large cloud of gas they were able to detect two separate regions within the surrounding gas cloud
the outer region of the circumstellar disk collects and falls toward the star
while the inner region of the disk swirls quickly around the star and feeds it finally seeing a star
actively being formed has allowed astronomers to learn more detail about it than ever before
there are still questions revolving around how these massive circumstellar discs form but this
is one step in that direction planets are also known to form in the disks that surround young
stars so by understanding more about the birth of stars may help scientists understand the
processes that formed our own planet there are many mysteries throughout the universe
and it is a call for celebration whenever one is finally solved but the more astronomers
gaze into the cosmos the more mysteries they seem to find are there any mysteries within
our cosmos that you are interested in do you think science will be able to answer them all
eventually be sure to join us next time when we explore more that our universe has to offer
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