10: Space Time Ripples Scientists have detected a record-smashing
tsunami of gravitational waves.
These gravitational waves are essentially ripples in the very fabric of space-time.
According to scientists working at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory,
at least 35 separate gravitational wave events were detected between November of 2019 and
March of 2020.
That's more than a third of all gravitational wave events detected prior to that.
To understand this a bit better, keep in mind that gravitational waves are created when
two wildly dense objects become locked inside a binary orbit and then collide.
For example, hugely dense celestial objects like a neutron star and a black hole.
When these hugely powerful objects orbit one another, both of them accelerate at such blistering
speeds they create waves that undulate space-time.
When two black holes collide, or other similar events happen in space, cosmic ripples travel
at the speed of light through the universe.
So far, research indicates these waves of gravity don't have much of an impact on us.
They simply show us what happened thousands or millions of light-years away when a cataclysmic
event took place.
Scientists say that 32 out of the 35 new detections come from the merging of black holes.
When two black holes spiral into each other, going faster and faster in tighter loops,
they eventually combine into a massive, even more powerful black hole.
Seeing as scientists detected this phenomenon 32 times in just a few months, that must mean
black holes are slamming into each other with some frequency.
9: Black Hole Neutrinos A very high-energy cosmic particle, something
scientists call an electron antineutrino, was observed for the first time on our planet
thanks to an international team of physicists from Penn State.
The anti-neutrino is the twin to the neutrino, only in anti-matter form.
This mysterious and entirely invisible particle approached our planet from outer space a few
years ago, on December 8, in 2016.
It was traveling near the speed of light when it crashed into an ice sheet over the South
Pole and collided with an electron there in the ice.
This produced a heavily charged particle that decayed almost instantly into a shower of
other particles.
And while none of this may make sense, the important thing to know is that the entire
event was captured by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
This observatory uses thousands of sensors stuck in the Antarctic ice to detect neutrinos.
It's a huge telescope that most people don't even know exists.
Its only purpose is to study neutrinos, the sub-atomic particles that perforate every
inch of our universe but that we know very little about.
When these anti-neutrinos interact with normal neutrinos, they create new particles in a
process called Glashow resonance.
But what's really interesting is that these anti-neutrinos are only formed when there
is significant energy to make them.
The amount of energy needed for one of these particles is over 1000 times more than what
the Large Hadron Collider can produce.
Nothing on Earth can make these particles, which is why scientists believe the particle
came from a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 3.7 billion light years
away!
8: UFO in Rome In the city of Rome, Italy, a UFO was seen
by a startling number of people.
One particular family was looking out the window of their house when they saw a bright
light shining on the horizon.
The light looked yellow, it appeared to be a perfectly circular ball, and suddenly it
began to move.
It shot up into the sky, flew into space, and disappeared from view.
Amazingly, the family managed to catch the incident on video.
It's about the clearest evidence that can be presented for a literal UFO sighting on
our planet.
If the light had been falling toward the surface, it would have been a different story.
We could have blamed it on an asteroid, a plane, a falling chunk of frozen whatever
– really anything.
But when a bright yellow ball of light goes the opposite way, back out into space, it
really makes you wonder.
What do you think it was??
Let me know in the comments below!
7: A Mysterious Burst from Space A fast radio burst has been detected near
a small population of ancient stars.
For those who need a refresher, fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are repeating bursts of energy
that come from somewhere out in the universe.
FRBs have been defying all explanations since they were discovered in 2007.
The best guess scientists have is that they come from cosmic objects known as magnetars.
A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extraordinarily powerful magnetic field.
The magnetic field of a magnetar is at least 1000 times stronger that what you get with
a normal neutron star and over 1 trillion times stronger than Earth's own magnetic field.
And for that reason, these types of stars are pretty good at sending out fast radio
bursts.
They're basically giant magnets more powerful than anything you can imagine
Just recently, a fast radio burst was traced back to its origin, to a globular cluster
11.7 million light-years away from us in the spiral galaxy called M81.
Bryan Gaensler with the University of Toronto says the fast radio burst has no business
in M81.
The discovery has been compared to finding a smartphone buried in Stonehenge.
This is because globular clusters are some of the oldest things in the universe, billions
of years old.
These clusters orbit galaxies, and they don't contain magnetars.
So then where did the FRB come from?
Scientists still aren't exactly sure.
They believe the bursts of energy could have come from an evaporating black hole, a white
dwarf, or something else we just haven't discovered the origin of yet.
6: Iapetus Iapetus was discovered 350 years ago in 1671.
If you've never heard of it before, don’t worry – you’re not the only one.
It's a lesser-known celestial object, one of the moons of Saturn that has a name too
complicated for people to remember.
And even though it was discovered hundreds of years ago, it still hasn't been completely
explained by scientists.
We have to go back to Italy, when Giovanni Cassini, who was already well aware that Saturn
possessed at least one giant moon called Titan, discovered Iapetus.
But after he discovered it the first time, he lost it for 30 years until he got an upgraded
telescope and saw it once again.
The little moon was already a mysterious troublemaker.
We know a lot more today than we did back then, like the fact that Saturn is a world
made up of gas.
We also know it has eight moons outside of its rings, with Iapetus being the farthest
away.
But Iapetus has a few other weird features.
It doesn't orbit on the same plane as the other moons, for example.
It orbits the planet at an odd angle.
It also has an abnormally shaped equator and is two different colors.
One of the hemispheres is a reddish-brown color, while the other side is white as snow.
Scientists are still working on figuring out why out of all the moons in our solar system,
Iapetus seems to be the most unusual.
Do you have a favorite moon?
Let me know in the comments below!
And now possibly the first exoplanet in another galaxy!
But first wanted to give a big shout out to Henry and Mari Love!
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5: The Whirlpool Galaxy Astronomers have discovered what could be
the very first exoplanet ever detected in a different galaxy.
This potential exoplanet, M51-ULS-1b, is approximately 28 million light years away from us in the
spiral galaxy M51.
It's also sometimes known as the Whirlpool Galaxy.
According to Rosanne Di Stefano, an astrophysicist at Harvard University involved in the discovery,
scientists are working right now to find as many new worlds as possible.
And to do this, astronomers used the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to look at three separate
galaxies beyond our own.
They looked at a total of 55 systems within the galaxy M51, 64 systems within Messier
101, and 119 systems in Messier 104 (aka the Sombrero Galaxy).
But out of all those systems, they only found this single exoplanet.
And if you're thinking to yourself that we've already found plenty of planets and exoplanets,
it's true, but they have all been inside our own galaxy.
The first exoplanet was found in 1992 and since then, most of them have been discovered
within 3000 light years from ourselves.
This newest one is significantly farther away.
It was only detected by looking at dips in the brightness of X rays.
The exoplanet is roughly the size of Saturn, it orbits a black hole, and humans will never
ever step foot on it.
But still, it's a fascinating discovery and it opens the door for more discoveries like
it in the future.
4: Giant Earth Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
with help from the University of New Mexico, have discovered a new planet much like Earth,
except three times larger.
It's also pretty close to us, only about 90 light-years away.
They're calling the new planet TOI-1231 b, and it’s orbiting a red dwarf.
It's about the size of Neptune, it has an orbit of just 24 days around its star, and
its temperature is almost exactly what it is today on our planet.
This is what really makes the discovery so exciting.
The planet's atmosphere is about 132 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's too hot for us to live, but cool enough for all kinds of other lifeforms to thrive.
It's one of the coolest exoplanets found that scientists are actually able to study because
it's so close.
Scientists say that there could be clouds in its atmosphere, they've discovered trace
evidence of water, and they say the atmosphere itself might be composed of hydrogen-helium.
Scientists do say the new planet is unique, but it's one of the closest that they've ever
found to being a copy of Earth.
And if this discovery was made just 90 light years from us, it means the chances of a planet
even more similar to Earth somewhere else in the galaxy are extremely good.
3: Ghost Stars Scientists are now saying that the cosmos
could be populated by ghost stars completely invisible to all our modern methods of detection.
To understand this a bit better, you need to remember that the only reason we can see
stars in the night sky at all is because they are so bright that their light has traveled
quadrillions of miles to reach us.
But scientists are now saying there could be stars out there that give off no light,
meaning they’re still there, we just can't see them.
They're basically dark rocks giving off no light at all.
These huge hunks of cosmic matter are more like celestial shadows, completely transparent,
invisible, and unseen to us.
And this brings me to another shocking theory that a lot of people might not know.
Astronomers actually believe that most of our universe is invisible.
A lot of this has to do with the discovery of objects at the outer edges of our own solar
system that move so quickly they should technically be flying off into space.
But instead, scientists say these fast-moving objects must be held in place by something
unseen – something that provides massive amounts of gravity.
These unseen somethings could be ghost stars, invisible to us yet still producing enough
gravity to keep our solar system held together.
2: The Dog Bone Asteroid Astronomers recently captured some pretty
impressive images of a 168-mile-long (270 km) asteroid nicknamed the dog bone.
They call it this because – well, it's shaped like a dog bone.
It's one of the strangest objects in the entire solar system, located in the asteroid belt
between Mars and Jupiter.
Not only is it shaped like a bone, but it’s also one of the only asteroids with its own
moons.
It has a remarkably low density for an object made entirely of metal.
Plus, these new images have allowed scientists to discover that the asteroid is spinning
so quickly that it seems to be in danger of ripping itself apart.
In fact, it's spinning so fast that scientists now believe it may have already broken apart
– meaning the two moons that orbit the asteroid could be pieces of itself.
This theory is kind of similar to the one that says the moon is actually a piece of
our own planet that broke off from us and got stuck in our gravitational pull.
1: Moon Hut China’s Yutu 2 rover has spotted a mysterious
hut on the far side of the moon.
The object is cube shaped, it's probably just a rock in reality, but in the images sent
back by the rover it looks a lot like a hermit's hut on the horizon.
The object in question is about 240 feet (73 m) from where the rover is sitting now.
The rover has been on the moon since January of 2019, exploring the darkest part of our
favorite space rock.
And while conspiracy theorists immediately littered the Internet with all kinds of wild
theories, such as the object is an ancient structure left behind by a race of aliens
that once lived or vacationed on the moon, that probably isn't what's actually happening.
It's going to take the rover another few days to reach the hut, so we’re still waiting
for that to happen.
Then we have to wait for the images to get back to Earth.
But in the meantime, scientists are saying the hut-shaped rock is probably just a piece
of the moon that was blasted out by an impact sometime in the past.
If it really is a hut, or some kind of structure, we’re all going to be in for a real big
surprise.
So, what's your favorite weird discovery in space?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and thanks so much for watching the video!
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