before we set out to explore the cosmos we first have to know everything there is about
our own neighborhoods and yet other than the general position of things and a few
specific details here and there we know surprisingly little about what's going
on in our own solar system especially in its most distant darkest corners
10. the moons of mars in the past few years various missions to mars have given us a very good
idea of what the planet is like its moons however are a different story altogether phobos and amos
17 and 9 miles in diameter respectively and are perhaps the weirdest moons in the solar system
their size and composition make them look more like asteroids than moons although that's really
all we know about them we have no idea where either of them came from though some scientists
do believe they're disintegrated parts of a bigger moon that used to exist a few million years ago
others maintain that based on their composition phobos and deimos are closer to a class of
asteroids found in the asteroid belt suggesting that their origin lies outside the solar system 9.
venus venus is quite similar to earth in some ways like its size and mass though in most other ways
it may as well be a different class of planet altogether its surface is perhaps one of the
most hostile places for life in the solar system with temperatures reaching up to 900 degrees
fahrenheit that's hotter than mercury thanks to a severe greenhouse effect caused by its thick
choking atmosphere it's also one of the most mysterious planets in the solar system despite
its close proximity to earth we don't know why it spins counterclockwise unlike any other planet
except neptune or why the winds in its atmosphere blow at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour
or even what its surface really looks like the most important mystery of venus though
is whether it harbors any kind of life while its surface is definitely too extreme for life
venus's atmosphere could have the right earth-like conditions for rudimentary life-forms in fact
photographs of the planet taken back in 1927 do reveal dark irregular patches in its atmosphere
that absorb about the same amount of ultraviolet light as some bacteria and algae species on earth
number eight the oort cloud the oort cloud is a shell made up of icy objects at the very edge of
our solar system a region so far away from us that we have no equipment to even observe it the sun
is too far for its light to reach here and our only chance of photographing it voyager 2 would
take another 300 years to reach it that begs the question how do we even know it exists it all goes
back to a dutch astronomer in the 1950s jan henrik odd who was trying to understand long period
comets while most comets return within a few hundred years long period comets take thousands
of years to complete in orbit and seem to come from arbitrary directions in the sky instead
of the predictable orbits of short period comets his answer was the old cloud which is now a widely
accepted explanation for long period comets it's a vast boundary of the solar system made up of
icy bodies of all shapes and sizes though that's really all we know about it we don't know how the
oort cloud was formed how thick it is or what its bodies are made of even if it's easily the largest
structure in the solar system that we know of 7. the kuiper belt where long period comets
could be explained by the orc cloud short period comets likely come from another major grouping
of icy bodies in the solar system the kuiper belt named after one of the most influential planetary
scientists of all time gerhard kuiper the kuiper belt is perhaps the largest structure in the solar
system after the york cloud it's also one of the most mysterious as all kyber belt objects or kbos
lie in a distant region of the system making its exploration impossible many of them are made up
of materials right from the earliest days of the formation of the solar system some even have moons
of their own the most enduring mystery of the kuiper belt however is the range of colors that
we see whenever we photograph those objects till now we photographed about a thousand kbos and all
of them seem to emit a range of colors from blues to whites to reds even if they should ideally be a
single pixel of color due to the distance it could be a natural result of volcanoes cosmic rays or a
variety of other possible reasons though it could also be signs of rudimentary forms of life as
organic matter tends to glow red in observations taken from afar 6. saturn's hexagon storm saturn
has been a subject of interest for astronomers for millennia mostly due to its fancy unique
rings even if all of the outer planets have rings of their own far more fascinating and mysterious
though is its surface unlike earth saturn is a gaseous planet made up almost entirely
of hydrogen along with some helium and trace amounts of other gases like methane and ammonia
to say that saturn's surface is active would be an understatement as it's home to many
diverse weather events that we've never been able to fully explain by far the weirdest though is
a hexagon-shaped storm located at its north pole first discovered by the voyager spacecraft in the
early 1980s it's about as wide as two earths though that's really all we know about it we
don't know how it was formed as we've never observed a non-circular polygon-shaped storm
anywhere else in the solar system or even how long it's been active for number 5.
named after the iron word for scout was the first interstellar object we've ever observed in real
time but other than that we know almost nothing about it first spotted by university of hawai'i's
pan stars one telescope back in 2017 the flying body was nothing like any of the other pieces
of rock we've come across before for one omua moa was about 10 times as long as it was wide which is
unusual for other bodies that we've seen flying about in space it was also red in color possibly
from all the radiation it would have been exposed to over the eons its weirdest characteristic
however was its speed or more accurately its acceleration omuamu was speeding up like it
was propelled by an external force other than gravity allowing it to enter and leave the solar
system instead of getting stark orbiting around the sun while comets have been observed to speed
up near the sun due to the sheer gravity and heat omormo didn't have a tail or any other features of
a comet making that kind of natural acceleration impossible number four the coronal heating problem
the coronal heating problem is one of the oldest unsolved mysteries in astrophysics
why is the sun's corona or its atmosphere so much hotter than its surface we know that all of the
sun's heat and energy comes from the powerful nuclear fusion reactions going on in its core
though they managed to heat up the surface by barely 10 000 degrees fahrenheit that's a lot
though it's nowhere near enough to be the energy powerhouse of the solar system that the sun is the
heat is largely produced in its atmosphere or the corona a space where things start to get ionized
into plasma due to the heat as temperatures here can reach as high as 2 million degrees fahrenheit
as you can guess that shouldn't happen it's like feeling warmer the further you are away from
a bonfire this transfer of heat from the sun's surface into its atmosphere has baffled scientists
ever since it was first discovered in the 1940s it's not just one problem either we don't know
how that heat is transferred how it's sustained or even whether it's a continuous event or multiple
small explosions that look like a single event from afar 3. uranus when voyager 2 flew past
uranus back in 1986 it reported nothing of note it seemed to be a planet devoid of any character
or special features just one of the many icy bodies found in the distant reaches of the system
only much bigger as we found out in the years since then though uranus may be the most
fascinating and mysterious planet in the solar system for starters its spinning axis is almost
completely perpendicular to its axis around the sun which means that it's revolving sideways we're
not sure why that is though some scientists think that it's the result of a collision with a large
body during the early years of the solar system more curiously uranus atmosphere is unlike any
other planet we've observed in the solar system in its lower denser regions temperatures can dip as
low as minus 370 degrees fahrenheit which should ideally move up to about -100 degrees fahrenheit
in the upper reaches according to readings taken by voyager crafts in the 1980s though
uranus's outermost atmosphere can get as hot as 1 300 degrees fahrenheit the dramatic shift has
perplexed astronomers and physicists ever since because of its distance no part of uranus should
even get close to as hot as that and it's clear that it's caused by something happening within its
atmosphere what that is however is anyone's guess as we've never observed such a weather phenomena
anywhere else in the solar system number two planet nine the region beyond the orbit of pluto
until the boundary of the oort cloud is sparsely lit and mind-bogglingly vast making it impossible
for even our best equipment to scout it that begs the question are there other large bodies possibly
even planets hiding in the darkness that we've just never seen if a study from 2016 published in
the astronomy journal is to be believed the answer is a definite yes researchers studied various
known kuiper belt objects and found that six of them were going around the sun in weird abnormal
orbits the distortion was towards the same side in all six cases too which suggests that they're
being pulled by the same large object according to their calculations this body is about 10 times
larger than earth even if we've never directly photographed or even observed it since then we've
found at least 30 more kuiper belt objects with similarly distorted orbits 1. the moon the moon
is our nearest and most familiar neighbor in this vast cold expanse called space though till now we
had no clue about where it came from scientists just can't agree on a single unified theory
on the true origins of the moon and it seems that every new study on the topic raises more questions
than it answers the prevailing theory is known as the giant impact hypothesis which states that the
moon was formed as a result of a collision between a young earth and a mars-sized planet called
thea the debris from the collision came together over millions of years to give birth to the moon
which could explain its unusually large size if that were true though the moon
would be completely made out of material francia samples brought from the various apollo missions
directly contradict that however as the moon has since been found to be almost identical in
composition to earth especially its mantle while it rules out the giant impact theory it does seem
to suggest that the moon and earth they formed in the same region of the solar system likely during
its early tumultuous years so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did please
do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching