It often seems like the most mysterious astronomical objects in the Milky Way have a tendency to
be hopelessly distant.
The nearest known black hole for example, and perhaps this is a good thing, is still
three thousand light years away.
And even then, this mysterious object known as A0620-00 is only a candidate for a black
hole.
This black hole candidate is a case study of nature behaving in a creepy way.
What astronomers see in this system is a K type star behaving very oddly.
It’s in a very close orbit of something invisible, taking less than 8 hours to complete
an orbit.
Astronomers have calculated the mass of this object and concluded it is too massive to
be a neutron star.
Thus, it is a candidate for a black hole.
But given how close the star and the black hole are, the black hole would be in a position
of stealing material from the star, forming an accretion disk that emits visible light
and X-rays, and occasionally the X-rays coming from this system flare up to become one of
the brightest X-Ray sources in the sky.
As this suspected black hole sucks the life out of this star, it distorts the star into
an elliptical shape.
This makes the star’s brightness vary as it presents different surface areas to earth
as it orbits.
Given the X-rays, it’s a good thing we’re distant from this system, but other mysterious
systems such as KIC 8462852 at something around 1300 light-years seem hopelessly far away.
We won’t be visiting these places any time soon.
But the good news is that our own immediate environs are actually not well understood
either and any number of local mysteries could be lurking within a mere 20 light-years from
earth.
There could be all sorts of things in the local area we have yet to see, but for this
video I will cover two specific types.
Star systems and rogue planets.
Perhaps surprisingly, astronomers have long suspected that we have not found many of the
closest star systems to earth.
The reason for this is that the most common type of star, Class M red dwarfs, are very
dim and just have not yet been noticed yet in photographic plates.
There could be dozens of these close by awaiting discovery.
And that doesn’t even get into the even harder to spot brown dwarfs.
But we’re in the process of discovering them.
One example at just over 12 light-years away is Teegarden’s star, a red dwarf that was
totally unknown until 2003.
Another is the sub-brown dwarf WISE 0855-0714 at just over 7 light-years that wasn’t known
until 2014.
Any of these known or unknown systems could host planets, and indeed some of the closest
of these stars are suspected of having them.
Life is of course a possibility, even involving the brown dwarfs.
But there is another type of object that could be lurking much closer and it would be very
hard to spot if it is.
This is a rogue planet, which are thought to be common in the galaxy.
This is a planet that at some point was tossed out of its parent star system to wander the
depths of deep space.
If you had a rogue planet that benefitted from geothermal energy, it could have a subsurface
ocean where life might reside, perhaps in complete blackness.
It’s worth noting here that we are on the brink of what is sure to be a flurry of discoveries
over the next decade regarding these close objects.
Currently under construction in Chile is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, set for first
light in 2019.
It might surprise you, but this telescope excites me more than any other upcoming telescope,
even James Webb.
The reason for that is how this unique telescope works.
It’s a wide field sky survey telescope that will image the entire available night sky
once every few days.
Not only will this allow for the discovery of nearby objects both inside the solar system
and close to it, but is wide open for getting lucky and spotting things that we can’t
predict.
The last telescope that worked somewhat like this was Kepler, where it imaged a very small
area of the sky once per half hour.
Kepler was designed to look for exoplanets, but found all manner of astronomical strangeness
entirely by luck.
One such discovery made by Kepler was Tabby’s Star.
The LSST holds similar promise, think of it as a sort of nearly real time monitoring of
a large chunk of the night sky, sort of like a security camera watching a parking lot,
but in this case it’s the cosmos.
I expect that will provide me with no shortage of material to get excited about and make
Youtube videos on.
But it’s just one of many such coming projects in astronomy that are going to revolutionize
our understanding of the universe, but also present to us new mysteries to ponder, some
of them perhaps close by.
Thanks for listening!
I am science fiction author and futurist John Michael Godier and don’t forget, on September
28 comes a long-form collaboration video with Isaac Arthur, Part I will be on his channel,
and part II will be on this one.
We chose the topic of Uplifting, and subsequently came up with all sorts of interesting ideas
and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online book retailer and subscribe
to my channel for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects
of this amazing universe in which we live.