when you think of mysterious phenomena you might conjure up thoughts of eerie
ghost stories or tales of cryptids lurking in the darkness but to find some of the most
truly perplexing mysteries of the unexplained you only need to turn your eyes to the stars
the universe has existed for around 13.8 billion years and holds some of the greatest mysteries
that continue to baffle astronomers to this day the human imagination can run wild dreaming
about what strange and otherworldly phenomena might be out there in the vast expanse of space
but what happens when you don't just imagine something but witness it with your own eyes
in southern california during the year 1950 astronomers at the palomar observatory near
san diego documented something strange their telescope was pointed at a patch of sky one night
taking pictures of the cosmos every couple of minutes after all the pictures were developed
astronomers took a closer look at two of them that were the same patch of sky taken 30 minutes apart
from each other when they had a closer look they noticed that the second picture had less stars in
the first one in fact there were nine stars that showed up in the first picture that did not show
up in the second one how could 9 stars disappear in the span of 30 minutes our night sky today is
drastically different from the one we saw 10 years ago the brilliancy of stars is slowly diminishing
until their vibrant glow vanishes from sight when this anomaly of disappearing stars was
first documented no one seemed too concerned about the disappearance it wasn't until decades later
that this information was looked at closely and understanding these disappearances and
became the focus of a number of astronomers if in this instant the sun just disappeared
what would happen well we would not know anything about that fact for eight minutes and 20 seconds
we would still orbit the sun we would still feel it sunlight because the sun is 8 minutes and 20
light seconds away from us so the moment you remove the sun there's the light still
coming our way and then 8 minutes and 20 seconds later we plunge into depths of cold
one of the first theories has put forth to explain the disappearances claimed that the defects in the
telescopes were to blame for this anomaly while this could have been the case this theories
quickly ruled out upon further investigation of the instruments that gathered the data
seventy years after the first spring stars were documented by astronomers one scientist was so
intrigued by this cosmic mystery that she decided to dedicate her career to trying to shine light
on this problem and understand what was really happening dr beatrice villarreal from the nordic
institute for theoretical physics is leading the team to try and find the answer to this mystery
that has remained unsolved for the past 50 years she heads the team in charge of the vanishing and
appearing sources during a century of observations which is also known as vasco this team works the
data gathered during the last few decades from instruments all around the world with a mission
to find stellar objects that have disappeared over time this project has flagged over two hundred and
fifty thousand objects that have potentially gone missing once this data came back to the vasco team
they combed through this data and were able to discover the reason the object disappeared for the
vast majority of the potential missing ones but there are still many objects that have disappeared
without any concrete reason that astronomers can figure out these disappearances could be the
result of an afterglow effect following gamma ray bursts or fast radio bursts known as frbs while
scientists do not have a complete understanding of what creates these gamma-ray bursts and frbs
they know enough to posit this theory if the telescope was taking snapshots of the cosmos just
after there was a large gamma-ray burst it may pick up that burst as a bright spot on the sky
but when another snapshot in the same location is taken without the gamma-ray burst that bright spot
will be gone when scientists look through these snapshots it may appear like a star that was in
the original photograph had disappeared from the sky but while this theory does make sense and can
explain the disappearance of some stars there is no evidence that this is what caused them
could these stars just be moving in between the two photographs being taken
while many stars are moving through space they move at a pace that astronomers can
usually follow stars do not make big movements throughout the sky this theory may be correct
for some of these objects but there are objects that astronomers know could not have moved in
the time between the recordings so there must be something else causing the disappearances as well
astronomers know that as stars age the amount of light that they produce will vary
this change is thought to only happen very slowly over thousands if not millions of years if the
star's luminosity changes dramatically after it's already been photographed by a telescope the next
time that telescope scans its location it may not be bright enough for the telescope to record it
but astronomers know that they do not have a complete understanding of the universe
if this is the case and the stars are not disappearing only rapidly changing
in their luminosity but astronomers have more to learn about the nature of stars
most of us know that when a massive star reaches the end of its life a giant explosion
known as a supernova takes place the star explodes into one of the largest violentest
events in our universe spewing out its mass into space after the explosion takes place
the matter that used to make up the star's core begins to collapse in on itself forming a ball
this ball becomes denser and denser pulling in more and more matter as a new black hole is born
this is basically how astronomers understand the events leading to the birth of a black hole
but there may be a way that certain black holes can be born from stars while skipping a major step
in the process the star never goes supernova astronomers now believe that between 10 to 30
of black holes are created without a supernova this happens when a star that is roughly 20 solar
masses reaches the end of its life but instead of exploding these stars begin to collapse into
themselves first creating gravitational pull strong enough to overpower the outward force
trying to explode this results in the star becoming a black hole without ever going supernova
it can be very difficult to detect new black holes and finding the remnants of a supernova
is one way that astronomers have helped detect new ones in the past
these events are not nearly as common as typical supernovas but astronomers believe that in the
milky way alone one star collapses to a black hole without going supernova
every 300 years or so one of the more fascinating theories to explain the disappearance of stars
has to do with alien civilizations this is not a far out their theory either even vasco
works in conjunction with seti the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in several areas
includes the possible interference by alien race in its reports regarding these disappearances
the lack of explanation for this mystery has led to some of these theories
there are a number of roles that extraterrestrials have been theorized have played in this
one of the more enthralling theories has to do with a theoretical megastructure
called a dyson spear dyson spheres are giant machines that are built to encompass a star
and harvest a large portion of the star's energy output a civilization advanced enough could have
built structures such as this and are extracting the energy from the star and leaving behind the
empty space that we are seeing now other theories as to what roles an alien civilization may have
played in this include the construction of other massive structures that block a star's light from
reaching us to the civilization removing a star by extinguishing it for a reason we may never know
whether these stars actually disappeared or are just blocked from our view or were never really
stars to begin with astronomers are going to continue to hunt for the answer this is another
of the great mysteries that science has uncovered while exploring the universe that we all live in
and as long as there are mysteries there will be people ready to take up the challenge to
solve them is there a cosmic mystery that you want to know the answer to if you watched all
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