[news music up and under] Greetings, fellow Earth-dwellers! Bright Side speaking, and
I, its long-time anchor and mammal, present you with our yearly space news digest! In
today’s broadcast, we’ll talk about the Moon being within Earth’s atmosphere, the
biggest space blast since the Big Bang, and much more! Stay tuned!
[music ends] Okay enough of the news tease, let’s get this puppy going!
Galaxies consume each other in space. Larger galaxies eat smaller ones and grow in size.
Recent research has shown that our Milky Way ate at least 5 other galaxies when it was
younger. Such an appetite! The biggest explosion since the Big Bang was
registered last year. This happened in the Ophiuchus cluster, which unites thousands
of galaxies. According to scientists, the blast was equal to 20 billion billion (that’s
18 zeroes) megaton explosions happening once a millisecond for 240 million years. Okay,
no way I can get my head around that. A little footnote: the speed of light is 185,000
miles per second. If we travel at this speed for twelve months, this distance will be equal
to 1 light-year. So, that explosion occurred at a distance of 390 million light-years.
Needless to say, we’re safe. For now. Muwah-ha-ha. The Earth had two satellites for a short while,
the Moon and its little buddy. Unfortunately, you couldn’t see it in the sky without equipment.
The second Moon was a small asteroid about 6-10 feet across. This "baby" had been flying
past Earth and was captured by the gravity of our planet about three years ago. It made
one circle around the Earth in 47 days. It was spotted in February and has now gone.
The Moon is not just an Earth’s satellite; it's almost in the center of the atmosphere
of our planet. It was previously thought the atmosphere ended at an altitude of 62,000
miles. But according to recent research, its radius is almost 390,000 miles. And the Moon
is 230,000 miles away. Well, while Earth had two Moons for some time,
there's a planet with almost a hundred of them. Saturn has a real satellite party with
82 moons floating around it! By the way, Moon doesn't fall on Earth because
of gravity. Technically, it falls but does so endlessly. It's spinning around Earth,
just like the ISS does. Yeah, the International Space Station isn't floating in space, it’s
in constant motion. 2019 was also marked by launching a space
sailboat. An ordinary water sailboat moves with the help of wind, and a space one uses
light. Particles of light collide with the reflecting surface of the space sailboat and
"push" it. This means that sail-driven satellites can transport payloads in space forever. This
is a potential way for us to travel to the stars without using fuel.
The movies didn't lie to us. It's possible to cultivate plants and crops on Mars and
the Moon's surfaces. Scientists recreated Martian and Lunar soil conditions on Earth
and planted 10 different crops. 9 of them sprouted. There were even potatoes among them.
Just don’t run out of Ketchup! Mars was considered an "unliving" planet for
a long time because there was no geological activity on it. But observations from the
last year recorded hundreds of tremors. On the one hand, it opens up new horizons for
exploring the red planet, and on the other, marsquakes aren’t something you’d want
to encounter during colonization. Throughout the entire history of space observation,
only two objects from another star system, or maybe even another galaxy, have entered
our Solar System. The first one was Oumuamua asteroid, discovered in 2017. The second was
Borisov — a comet found in August last year. The cloud of dust that surrounds it allows
scientists to learn more about substances that may have come to us from another galaxy.
Oooh! At a distance of 640 light-years from the
Sun, scientists discovered planet WASP-76 b where it rains iron. The planet is very
close to its sun and always turned to it with the same side. The temperature on the “sunny”
side is so high that metals melt and evaporate there. The other half of the planet is cool
enough so that metals condense again and fall down as rain. How cool is that?
An unusual teardrop-shaped star was found. It has almost twice the mass of the Sun and
looks like a big drop of lava because of the dwarf star hanging out nearby. The little
buddy attracts the energy of its "big brother" and distorts its surface.
At a distance of 110 light-years from us, planet K2-18b (sound like it was named after
a prisoner in jail somewhere) seems to have water. The temperature on it also allows for
the presence of life. It’s twice the size of Earth, but is too far away to launch a
probe. Astronomers and engineers are now working on a new generation of space telescopes, and
soon they’ll be able to study this planet in more detail.
Until recently, we thought our galaxy looked like a circular spiral. But recent research
has shown that it looks more like a Pringles chip. Scientists measured the distances between
the Sun and other stars and created a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way based on this data. It
turned out that our galaxy is slightly curved at the edges and takes an S shape. Understandably,
the Milky Way now has a chip on its shoulder over it.
The Universe is expanding 9% faster than we previously thought. So maybe it’s a little
younger — only 12.5 billion years old. But most interesting of all is that there seem
to be stars older than the Universe. This might be proof that not only the Big Bang
is expanding the Universe. Unusual bacteria live in the ISS. Two new
types of them were found inside the water dispenser. But don't worry, this is not the
beginning of a horror movie. These bacteria are pretty harmless. Except, they’re getting
a free ride on the space station at taxpayer expense.
It was proved that a planet can orbit a black hole as it would a star. The energy from the
hole would feed such a planet. But to survive in such conditions and not be pumped inside
the event horizon, the planet must orbit very quickly, at nearly the speed of light, and
the black hole itself must spin at the same speed. Got that?
There’s a huge chunk of metal under the surface of the Moon. It lies about 180 miles
deep, and is 5 times the size of the Big Island of Hawaii. The reasons for this anomaly are
still being studied. But perhaps a space pineapple plantation on the moon is a possibility. No
not really. Any star will sooner or later turn into a
white dwarf, with our Sun being no exception. First, it will explode, and then cool down.
Normally, nearby planets don't survive such explosions, but still there’s a newfound
planet that orbits a dwarf star. Meanwhile, a space rock that fell to Earth
30 years ago has given an unexpected harvest: a research team has found the first known
extraterrestrial protein in it. We might be able to walk upright because of
supernova explosions. About 2.5 million years ago, a supernova sent cosmic rays to our planet.
They triggered a series of electrical storms in the Earth's atmosphere, which turned into
thunderstorms. Those, in their turn, caused wildfires in northeast Africa, where our earlier
ancestors lived. Fires turned the forest area into a savanna, the atmospheric pressure changed,
and our ancestors had to stand on two legs to survive.
Voyager 2, a spacecraft launched in 1977, finally crossed the border of the Solar System
in 2018. Now it travels in interstellar space. For a long time, it was believed that the
Universe is constantly expanding evenly in all directions. But it turned out that the
expansion stops in some places, and continues in others. Yeah, I know what that feels like.
A comet called Atlas, discovered in December last year, has become very bright because
of approaching the Sun. If it retains its shape and doesn't collapse, it will be visible
to the naked eye by the end of May. It's gonna become so bright that it will glow green.
Mark your calendars! A really huge galaxy dubbed XMM-2599 was found
12 billion light-years away from Earth. The galaxy had quickly gained mass of more than
300 billion suns when our Universe was just 2 billion years old. Interestingly, this galaxy
also quickly "extinguished" for unknown reasons. Maybe it just got too big for it’s britches!