nothing is more amazing than our universe so when we discover something so new and astonishing
it has the power to shift the paradigm of our existence welcome to fact nominal today we'll
dive deep into the mysterious and mind-blowing with 10 amazing space discoveries that changed
everything number 10 actually finding exoplanets has there been an assumption for centuries that
other stars besides our sun have planets of course but astronomers can't say anything with
a hundred percent certainty until it's proven and that first great discovery came in 1992
not one but two worlds were detected orbiting pulsar psr b1257 plus 12 some 2 300 light years
away this wasn't concrete confirmation of planets circling a main sequence star like the sun that
actually came three years later when a graduate student at the university of geneva didier kilo
to mean that these planets are not in the solar systems so these are planets and other stars
stumbled on the first exoplanet detection in history while calibrating his code for planet
finding with a star called 51 pegasi that discovery made it impossible to ever doubt
that planets orbit other stars and swung the doors wide open for thousands more exoplanet
discoveries to follow number nine the big bang left an echo and we found it the cosmic
echo of the big bang still rings through the universe and a pair of american radio astronomers
found it in 1964. they heard buzzing coming in from all parts of the sky all the time
it turned out that there was an additional component of radiation which didn't come
closer than the outer portions of the milky way but it kept in fact we found came further away
that the universe itself beyond the milky way was radiating that was the unexpected result
the process of elimination even included some unlucky pigeons who were relocated from their nest
in the antenna but the astronomers eventually had no choice but to conclude that they had
stumbled onto something big big bang bag what they had discovered we found its spectral shape
is such as to be that of a black body which is unique in the outer space was the cosmic
microwave background radiation left over by the big bang 13.8 billion years ago
modern cosmology changed with their discovery of this fossil radiation echoing through the universe
number eight seeing the unseeable a cosmic object that doesn't allow even light to escape is
understandably difficult to see but astronomers in 2019 found a way and gave humanity its first image
of these invisible monsters deploying the event horizon telescope an international collaboration
of eight ground-based radio telescopes the first direct visual evidence of a super massive
black hole lurking at the center of a galaxy was captured messier 87 a gigantic galaxy in the virgo
galaxy cluster over 55 million light years from earth was the focal point of the global effort
and the reward was priceless a black hole and its shadow number seven the expansion of the universe
is speeding up we've known since the 1920s that the universe is expanding and that the
farther away a galaxy is the faster it's trying to get away from us general relativity screams
that this expansion should slow down at a rate determined by various factors but it's extremely
quiet concerning an accelerating universe well as strange as it seems researchers discovered in 1998
the expansion is indeed speeding up this flew so strongly against our understanding that a
search was quickly launched to find another cause for light from distant supernovae the method of
detection being further away than it should be evidence supporting this acceleration has only
mounted however and since general relativity also allows for energy forms that produce
repulsive gravity a new form has apparently been revealed dark energy and it's roughly 68 of the
universe number six there is water on the moon as humanity readies for the next phase of space
exploration what could be more exciting than bases on the moon and mars but the moon is bone dry
right a barren wasteland before we gallop off to build on mars or any number of earth's neighbors
the moon will unquestionably be first and now we know there is water previous missions have
detected traces of it either from space in 2009 or a lunar sample apollo 15 plugged back in 1971
but in december 2020 china's chang e-5 mission became the first to find water in real time on
the moon's surface and detected nearby boulders with even higher water content than its sample
and with nasa's artemis iii planning to land a crew on the lunar south pole in 2025 the first
humans there since 1972 knowing there's in fact water gives mission planners even more
to study when choosing its exact landing spot number five enceladus is a fascinating world
scientists believe that a world possessing both water and an energy source may also harbor life
which brings us to enceladus saturn's sixth largest moon and an amazingly alive world with
hydrothermal vents and plumes of water shooting out into space not only that but nasa's cassini
spacecraft flew straight through the icy geysers and discovered the ingredients for amino acids aka
the building blocks of life are all there it's easy to see from there why astrobiologists are
beyond excited about this icy marvel traveling to another solar system is mind-numbingly far
into the future without breakthroughs that are nearly unimaginable today but enceladus
is right in our own backyard meaning earth may have a neighbor that also hosts life number
four our first confirmed interstellar visitor talk about discoveries on october 19 2017 university of
hawaii astronomer robert werack spotted a highly unusual object that had been theorized but never
seen until then it was a cigar-shaped tumbling visitor that was just passing through swinging
by before heading back out to parts unknown dubbed omuamua which is hawaiian for a messenger
from afar arriving first it was immediately recognized as a weird interloper unlike anything
we've encountered astronomers were puzzled by the chance appearance of the nomad which
by all predictions of the number of interstellar asteroids should be an insanely rare sight and
perhaps it was since insanely rare things do happen but it's more likely that seeing
this visitor means there are many more out there than our predictions say how big was our wanderer
up to a quarter of a mile long and was much more reflective than a comet one of the first
theories of its origin and researchers at the harvard smithsonian center for astrophysics
have a novel idea it may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to earth vicinity by
an alien civilization number three gravitational waves do exist in 1916 albert einstein predicted
the existence of gravitational waves in his theory of general relativity waves created by
the movement of objects with mass that travel at light speed stretching and squeezing space-time
however these waves are very weak and einstein himself wrote that even if they exist it would be
unlikely that the influence of these waves would ever be measurably detected new technology in 2016
proved that his first supposition was correct gravitational waves not only exist but the
theoretical predictions ended up being remarkably close to reality using a system called advanced
ligo researchers found the waves spreading from the violent collision of a pair of black holes
over a billion light years away the 2017 nobel prize for physics went to three scientists for
the discovery and more gravitational waves have been discovered since also from merging
black holes the space-time warpers have recently been detected from merging neutron stars as well
number two eris is discovered now we're down to eight planets pluto had an admirable 75-year
run as the ninth planet in our solar system but like the solar system and everything we can see
all things come to an end its downfall began when astronomers began finding many small celestial
bodies in the outskirts of our neighborhood and in particular heiress a world three times further out
which at first was thought to also be larger than pluto its discovery in 2005 led the international
astronomical union to examine what until then had not been specific criteria for planetary
status and the following year new rules were laid out that reclassified pluto as a dwarf planet
later observations showed heiress to actually be smaller than pluto but by then the damage was done
and we're down to eight number one back to where it all started there's never been a larger seismic
shift in humanity's understanding of our place in the universe than when galileo turned his early
version of the telescope towards the heavens and recorded what he saw in 1609 the birth of modern
astronomy goes back to the geniuses observations of the moon and its cratered surface the phases
of venus jupiter's moons the apparently countless stars of the milky way and even sunspots imagine
his excitement when he first saw stars orbiting jupiter which he quickly determined to be moons
like our own along with the phases of venus galileo concluded that the earth is not the
center of the universe as was previously thought and shifted that location to the sun
although that was also incorrect his observations laid the cornerstone for every amazing space
discovery sense so what do you think about these amazing space discoveries is there something you
would add to the lineup tell us in the comments and as always thank you for watching fact nominal