10 Strangest Things Found In Space
Staring up into a starry night sky is one of the most pleasant experiences in the world and it's an occupation that has fascinated
humans for centuries with generations of astronomers spending entire lifetimes looking into their telescopes and discovering what lies beyond the naked eye technology has really helped us see and understand things that lie far far away from us on our tiny planet earth and the true massiveness of the universe is something that we can perhaps never grasp in our short lifetimes given that it can take a beam of light from one corner of the known universe billions of years to reach us here so the sheer number of things that exist out there is mind-boggling and in this episode of top trending we'll share with you the ten most interesting things that we found in outer space.
10-Shooting star
We start our list with a type of shooting star very different from the ones that we look for in the night sky the shooting stars that we are sometimes lucky to see are not actually stars but meteors that are burning up when they make contact with the Earth's atmosphere and outer space though there are real stars sometimes many times the size of our Sun which are shooting through galaxies at speeds hundreds of times faster than the speed of the fastest bullet we have on earth called hypervelocity stars their existence was first predicted by astronomer Jack Hills in 1988 who described a hypothetical encounter between a supermassive black hole in a binary star system when one of these two stars orbiting each other is consumed by the black hole the other is flung out at extremely high speeds his theory was not accepted until 2005 when another astronomer Warren brown observed a star that was leaving the Milky Way galaxy at 853 km/s or over 3 million km/h since then over two dozen such hypervelocity stars have been discovered so the next time you see a shooting star make sure you wish that we never give in the way of a real shooting star.
9- Magnetare
And number nine on our list is one of the most mysterious and terrifying objects in space a magnet are short for magnetic stars these are an extremely dense type of neutron star with an ultra-strong magnetic field up to 1 quadrillion Gauss that's 1,000 trillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field theoretically if you were to go within a thousand kilometers of a magnetar it wouldn't just upset your bioelectricity and nerve impulses it would sort of dissolve the atoms that make up your body these magnetic fields are so powerful that they're known to cause starquakes or earthquakes on stars and sometimes they just erupt and send out blasts of gamma rays such as the explosion caused by a magnetar named SGR 1806-20 in december 2004 which in a fifth of a second released more energy than our Sun gives out in 250,000 years let's thank our stars that this explosion happened over 50,000 light-years away from us because if it were closer than a thousand light years it would have probably triggered a mass extinction event on earth.
8- Water cloud
If you thought that water was a rare commodity in the universe be prepared to be shocked water as you'll see later in this list as well has been found in many places in space in 2011 two teams of astronomers discovered the largest reservoir of water ever found in the universe containing 140 trillion times as much water as is contained in all of Earth's oceans combined it's located over 12 billion light-years away near a black hole that's 20 billion times bigger than the Sun in which emits as much energy as a thousand trillion Suns the water is in liquid though in his present as a cloud of water vapor surrounding the black hole and if you thought you'd seen big clouds your mind will be amazed at the size of this one it's hundreds of light years across which means it would take a beam of light hundreds of years to travel from one end of this cloud to the other.
7- Ethyl alcohol
Somewhere near the center of our galaxy about 26,000 light-years away from us lies a massive dense molecular cloud of gas and dust it weighs about three million times the mass of our Sun and spans a distance of a hundred and fifty lightyears what makes this giant cloud really interesting is what it contains scientists say it will taste like raspberries and smell like rum that's because their spectrographs determined that this cloud is made up of ethyl formate which is the chemical that gives raspberries their taste and Rahmat smell as well as different forms of alcohol a study estimated that this cloud has enough ethyl alcohol to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer enough for every single person on earth to drink three hundred thousand pints of beer every day for the next 1 billion years now that's a challenge worth taking up.
6- Pillars of creation
And number six on our list is one of the best photographs taken by the iconic Hubble Space Telescope located in the Eagle Nebula about 7,000 light-years away from Earth this massive handshake structure reaching out into the space above is one of the most iconic space images of all time it was named the pillars of creation because the cool molecular hydrogen gas and dust that make them up are part of an active star-forming region and hidden in the wispy columns our newborn stars the picture was first taken on April 1st, 1995 and in 2015 a newer larger higher resolution image was released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope.
5-Face on Mars
Next on our list of the most interesting things found in space are two amazing discoveries within our solar system in 1976 NASA's Viking one orbiter was circling Mars on a mission to identify possible landing sites for its sister ship Viking 2 as it was snapping photos and sending them back to earth there was one that took their breath away what appeared to be a humanoid face carved into the surface of the sidonians region of Mars NASA tried to play it down as a rock formation with shadows but that didn't stop rumour mongers and conspiracy theorists from believing that this was evidence of life on Mars since then this face has become a pop icon starring in Hollywood films TV shows comic books magazines radio shows and even grocery store checkout lines new technology however has put an end to this speculation with higher resolution images showing that the face is in fact a rock formation but what about this photograph taken in 2012 by a spacecraft orbiting mercury this arrangement of craters looks exactly like Mickey Mouse so if you include Pluto it's clear that Walt Disney has made an impression across the breadth of the solar system.
4- Blackhole
And number four on our list is a black hole at the center of the galaxy called 3c 303 a mere two billion light years away from us what makes it so interesting is not just the fact that this black hole has a giant jet of matter shooting out of its core but that this jet is accompanied by the strongest electrical current in the universe estimated at 10 raised to the power of 18 amps or 1x amp this current is equivalent to the power of 1 trillion bolts of lightning this galactic scale electric current can surely be a solution to all of our energy needs if only we can figure out a way to get a wire that long.
3-Quasar
A quasar is one of the brightest and most energetic objects in the universe and forms the nucleus of a galaxy in its early days a large quasar group is a collection of quasars and are the largest astronomical structures that are thought to exist in January 2011 British astronomers announced the discovery of a huge large quasar group comprising of a collection of 74 quasars it was the largest structure that had ever been seen and it was estimated that it would take a car traveling at the speed of light over four billion years to just get across it it was so big in fact that its existence was believed impossible by the principles of cosmology and challenges our understanding of the universe on large scales since then however an even larger formation has been discovered the Hercules Corona Borealis great wall which is estimated to be twice as big as the huge large quasar group.
2- The planet55 Cancri E
At number two on this list is a planet that is exquisite in its nature and probably the most expensive thing in the universe 55 Cancri E is about twice the size of the earth and eight times as heavy and is the closest to five planets which orbit a star in the cancer constellation about 40 light-years from us like Earth it's a rocky planet but the similarity ends there because the planet is made largely of carbon and due to the high pressure and temperature of nearly 5000 Fahrenheit that is sustained due to its nearness to the star at least one third of the planet consists of pure diamond you heard that right it's a planet that's made up of diamond heavier than our entire planet now that's going to be one hell of a bright sparkle in the sky.
1-The planet Gliese 436 B
Aand number one on our list of the most interesting things in outer space is the planet Gliese 436 B whose surface is made up of believe-it-or-not burning ice it orbits very close to a red dwarf star so the temperature on its surface is 439 degrees Celsius close to 800 degrees Fahrenheit so how can water exist in a solid form at a temperature over four times its boiling point turns out that the planet has an immense gravitational force which increases with depth which prevents the water vapor from evaporating as it does on earth and instead compresses it so hard that it becomes a solid forming a thick layer of ice all over the planet it's like how the diamond planet was formed only the temperature and pressure on Gliese 436 B turns its water into ice that will burn you if you touch it thus creating what's probably the most fascinating planet that exists.
That's it folks our list of the ten most interesting things in outer space do you agree disagree do you know of any other interesting things in space, you'd like to share with the world let us know in the comments section we love hearing from you .
