The Sun
At its core the immense pressure and temperatures produce a staggering 15 million degrees Celsius
Here, sunlight is produced enough to bounce around the solar interior for up to two hundred thousand years
It finally reaches the surface to be released into space
At the surface, the sun is a lot cooler but still incredibly hot. It's still around 5,500 degrees or so
Yet here on the surface of the sun we have found-
-water
Not in a liquid state
But in the form of steam
More specifically this water has been found in these darker slightly cooler regions called sunspots
You know when a spacecraft takes off, a huge cloud of smoke is formed, usually covering the entire launch site
This is actually not smoke
Well, some of it is but most of it is actually steam from the pool of water-
-underneath the Spacecraft. The water is used to absorb some of the acoustic shockwaves created during takeoff that could-
-potentially bounce off the platform and basically shake the spacecraft apart
There's a mysterious phenomenon called long delayed echoes
If you're in a large empty room
It's likely that sound will reflect off the surroundings and produce an echo
Radio signals kind of work the same way, so-
For example radio waves that hit the moon bounce back towards the Earth and produce an echo 2.7 seconds later
Now the strange thing is
People have sent radio signals into space and heard echoes up to 40 seconds later
If it were an object in space, it would be way beyond the moon
Right now, no one really knows what's causing the echoes
But the most likely theory is that the signal somehow gets trapped in the atmosphere-
-before bouncing back towards the earth
Or you know it could be some bored aliens playing space pong with us, one of the two
On the morning of September 1st, 1859
Astronomer Richard Carrington was observing the sun and noticed a cluster of enormous sunspots
After a while Carrington spotted a sudden explosion of light erupting out of the sunspots
What he saw was something that is now referred to as a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME for short
The most devastating effect of these solar super storms is that they can wipe out anything electronic
The Earth is basically bombarded with EMPs. Luckily for us-
Society's electrical framework was in its infancy at the time and thus we didn't really experience any significant damage
Still, the event was powerful enough that it costs telegraph's to actually catch fire while
Aurora's could be seen across the globe
Imagine if an event like this struck the Earth today
At a time when everything and everyone so heavily depend on electricity
If the storm is strong enough it could cause an apocalyptic event taking years or even decades to recover from
What's even scarier is that in 2012 this almost happened
A CME equal to or possibly even stronger than the Carrington event went straight through Earth's orbit
Luckily Earth wasn't there this time
It's always hard to imagine the vastness of space
Take the moon for example because it's something we can actually see with the naked eye
It feels like it's not that far away
I mean
We know it is but we just don't have anything to actually compare that distance to but if I put it like this
Between the Earth and the moon we can fit the not one, not two, not three
But all eight planets in the solar system
Side by side with a few thousand kilometers to spare, and that's just between us and the freaking moon
The distances between the planets and beyond is just inconceivable
This is one of those facts where even I as I'm reading this have a hard time believing it's actually real
Another thing that speak for the vastness or maybe I should say the emptiness of space is the fact that the sun contains
99.85 percent of the total matter in our solar system
That leaves us with the insignificantly small amount of-
0.135 percent for all the planets including Earth
And that's just in our solar system
On a galactic scale, let's just say there would be a lot of zeros
Nasa has it's very own radio station called Third Rock radio
Get it, third rock?
Anyway, on this channel they play rock and alternative music along with space news and Nasa mission updates throughout
Rocket launches that take place between 30 to 60 minutes before sunrise or after sunset produce a beautifully colorful effect
Called the Twilight Phenomenon
Basically when the spacecraft rises out of the darkness and into the sunlit area of the still rising or setting sun
Water left in the vapor trail of the launch vehicle
Reacts with a less dense upper atmosphere. The exhaust plume which is suspended against the backdrop of the dark night sky
Behind it is then illuminated by the sun
When we look at things in space almost everything appears to be round
Large bodies are sphere shaped. Orbits are circular or elliptical
Even solar systems and entire galaxies are spinning around and for the most part take the shape of a disk
Then there's Saturn-
Saturn's North Pole is quite bizarre as it goes against the natural roundness of the universe and take the shape of a hexagon
The strange cloud pattern was first discovered in 1981 and while some theories exists, it remains unexplained
And it's possible that Jupiter have similar shapes, but as we've never actually taken a good photo of Jupiter's poles
We just don't know yet. Maybe when the spacecraft Juno arrives in 2016, this mystery can be solved
Lastly I just want to show you something; a simple image of the Andromeda Galaxy
We've all probably seen an image or a photo of it before
After all it's the closest spiral galaxy to our own
It was even a default background on Apple's OSX line so millions have definitely seen it
Nevertheless, this is not just a common photo
At sixty nine thousand, five hundred and thirty six by twenty two thousand, two hundred and thirty
pixels or 1.5 billion pixels in total
This 4.3 gigabyte file is the largest photo of the Andromeda Galaxy ever taken
And it reveals something we have known all along
but it's really something else when you actually get to see it for yourself
As we come closer, it almost looks like there's an extreme amount of grain
But as we advance, individual dots emerge from the chaos
And we begin to realize what one trillion stars
actually looks like
English subtitle by: SulaimanWar