*intro*
White Holes
Indirect observations have by now mostly proven the existence of black holes as predicted in Einstein's theory of relativity.
The math behind the theory also, however, provides for the existence of white holes, something that has never been seen before.
White holes are the hypothetical opposites of black ones, and general relativity implies white holes must be somewhere in the universe too.
The problem for astronomers is that no one has been able to find one yet and no one is exactly sure what they are looking for.
White holes are predicted to have properties like mass and charge, meaning they would attract matter just like any space object...
...yet that matter would never reach the center as the energy of the light would increase and act similar to air resistance on Earth.
Certain formulations even suggest that white holes have an event horizon in the past that has a black hole event horizon in the future.
If correct, white holes would be time-reversed black holes from which particles can only escape and never return.
The search for the universe's missing white holes has focused on the possibility they exist as massive explosions like gamma-ray bursts...
...and some cosmologists believe the Big Bang could have been a white hole spitting out information from another universe to our own.
Viking Methane
In 1976, NASA sent the space probes Viking 1 and 2 to the surface of Mars to conduct experiments in the search of extraterrestrial life.
Each probe carried three instruments designed to test for microbe signatures, including one called the Labeled Release [LR] apparatus.
The LR experiment took samples of Martian soil and applied an aqueous nutrient solution to "feed" any life that might be in the soil.
Radioactive tags were added to the solution to allow for the detection of any gases released by reactivated microbes.
Given that the first two instrument suites returned negative, scientists were shocked when the LR returned positive in readings.
Immediately after applying nutrients to the soil, methane gas was detected as evidence that something alive metabolised the solution.
Both probes produced the same results, but NASA scientists resisted the discovery, lacking confirmation from the other instruments.
Tantalising hints, however, suggest Viking may have been on to something, including the later detection of atmospheric methane.
Readings taken by the Mars Express Orbiter in 2003 suggest that there may be a circadian rhythm of gas as life "wakes" and sleeps."
Readings taken by the Mars Express Orbiter in 2003 suggest that there may be a circadian rhythm of gas as life "wakes" and sleeps." *Music Changes*
A 2012 mathematical review of the original Viking results also concluded the robots discovered microbes in 1976.
Kuiper Cliff
Just outside the orbit of Neptune is a massive ring of icy frozen celestial bodies 20 to 200 times as massive as the asteroid belt.
Home to three drawf planets, the zone is called the Kuiper Belt, and it was once thought to be a grave yard of periodic comets.
Scientists now hypothesise that the Kuiper Belt is made of the leftover Solar System fragments that the sun failed to coalesce into planets. *music calms*
More than 100,00 "Kuiper Belt objects" at least 62 miles [100 km] in diameter float in the belt to the edge of a mysterious void.
Astronomers aren't really sure why there is a dramatic fall off of objects into the "Kuiper Cliff" at a distance of 50 AU from the Sun. *Music Changes*
The phenomenon is particularly odd given that theoretical models predicted that there should be an increase in objects beyond the feature.
Such a gap suggests that an unidentified object or gravity may have "cleared out" the debris that would have been in that area...
... and some astronomers believe that its existence is compelling evidence of a never-seen-before world nicknamed Planet 9.
It is theorized that a planet with a mass 10 times larger than the Earth could generate enough force to create the Kuiper Cliff.
Solar System models do not explain how the planet could exist, but it is possible the sun could of captured it from another star.
Pioneer Anomaly
When the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts passed beyond 20 AU on their missions out of the Solar System, a strange deviation was detected.
In that region of space, It appeared that something was slowing their outbound velocity by 0.6 mph [1.0 km/h] over a period of 10 years.
The phenomenon was first noticed in the 1980s, when the radio signals from the probes were not originating from predicted positions...
...and by the 1990s, it was determined that they were nearly 250,000 miles [400,000 km] closer to the sun than they should have been.
Termed the Pioneer Anomaly, the mysterious force appeared to be something that violated our understanding of gravity...
..with some scientists even going as far as calling space-time as described in Einstein's theory of general relativity into question.
Whatever the force was, it continued to act on the Pioneer missions, and actually increased the further out they travelled.
As the anomaly took on new urgency, various solutions were proposed, including the possible interaction with dark matter.
Eventually, the anomaly was deemed to be explained by thermal recoil force due to the uneven loss of heat from the probes...
...yet unconvinced scientists question why the anomaly only began near Saturn and why it appears to rise and fall in periodic variation.
Great Attractor
In the 1970s, astronomers mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background discovered an unusual "warm" side of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The oddity is caused by the galaxy being dragged across space faster than expected at nearly 1.37-million mph [2.2-million km/h]
What causes this motion is a mystery, but scientists have determined that "something" is pulling on our galaxy and others.
Named the Great Attractor, no one is certain what exactly it is, just that it is 150-million light years away in the Zone of Avoidance.
The Zone is an area of the sky that is hidden by a dense layer of stars, gas, and dust thrown off of the Milky Way's spinning disc...
...and the interference has made it nearly impossible for Earth's X-ray telescopes to get a good look at the Great Attractor.
So far, it appears that the Attractor is a gravitational anomaly concentrated at a point in the middle of a super cluster of galaxies.
The volumes of the galaxies are slowly flowing to the central point, where it is uncertain what is happening to their mass.
Even the most massive of black holes would be nowhere near large enough to cause the effect, leaving the possibility of some unknown force.
For better or worse, the Milky Way is never expected to reach the point before dark energy rips it in the opposite direction.
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