NASA scientists have found strong evidence that the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter consists of fragments from a destroyed planet that once existed in the early solar system. The discovery began in 1801 when Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres, the largest asteroid, leading astronomers to believe a planet named Phaeton had been destroyed and its debris formed the belt. However, modern astronomers now support the accretion theory, which proposes that the asteroid belt is leftover material from the protoplanetary disc that never coalesced into a planet due to Jupiter's gravitational forces. This region contains thousands of asteroids, with the four largest (Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea) comprising half the belt's mass, while countless smaller bodies make up the rest.
NASA Found Strong Evidence That a Destroyed Planet Is Still Bombarding Earth
Added:Let's see. There's Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Fyatin, Jupiter. Wait, hold on. What Fyetin am I talking about? Well, let's see. It was the beginning of the 19th century, and the asteroid belt hadn't been discovered yet. In the year 1801, one man named Jeppi Piazi spotted the largest asteroid in the solar system, series. At that time, people believed that there was a planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. And Siri seemed to fit the bill.
But the next year, another astronomer, Hinrich Olers, found one more space following a similar orbit. It was an asteroid, which was later called Palace.
This discovery helped to figure out that these two space objects could be fragments of a planet. The discovery of two more asteroids Vesta and Juno seemed [music] to confirm this theory.
It was believed that the planet which was named Fatin in the 20th century appeared in the early days of the solar system and was later destroyed and its [music] debris formed the asteroid belt.
Ber's idea was called the disruption theory. To astronomers at that time, it seemed obvious that the planet once collided with [music] a large space object, which led to its demise.
The most likely candidate was Nemesis, a hypothetical red or brown dwarf orbiting our sun. Another theory claimed that Fyetin could have gone through an internal cataclysm, which could have broken the planet into pieces. There was one more idea. Fyetin could have come too close to Jupiter and got torn apart by the gas giant's immense gravity.
These days though, astronomers don't believe in the disruption theory anymore. A new idea has replaced it.
It's known as the accretion theory. It claims that the asteroid belt is all that is left of the protolanetary disc.
Supposedly, this disc had been originally orbiting the sun even before the planets formed. Unfortunately, because of Jupiter's gravitational forces, [music] it never managed to coalesce into a planet. But what is this asteroid belt we keep talking about?
This region is located between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Tons of asteroids and even minor planets are found there. Some of them can sometimes migrate or even get thrown out of the asteroid belt to the outer solar system.
The four largest asteroids in that area are series, Vesta, Palace, and Hyia.
They make up half the mass of the entire belt. As for the rest of the mass, countless smaller bodies make up for it.
In loads of sci-fi movies about space, the main character gets into an asteroid belt and has to try hard to get away from countless rocks threatening to smash their spacecraft. Well, it has nothing to do with the real thing. Even though there are thousands of asteroids in this region, they're so widely spaced that the chance of collision is next to nothing. Hey, but it's a movie, right?
Anyway, when the asteroid belt was forming, some objects started to come together and form what we know as protolanets.
But the gravitational pull that was caused by the formation of Jupiter made such collisions too rough. And instead of forming large space bodies like planets, asteroids shuttered.
Astronomers think that as a result of such collisions, more than 99.99% of the original mass of the asteroid belt was lost in the first 100 million years of the history of the solar system.
Only the largest asteroids have enough gravity to get a spherical shape. Small ones are just often piles of rubble loosely held together by gravity. And the tiniest objects in the asteroid belt resemble dust. So small they are. And all these objects, giant and tiny, orbit the sun. There are several types of asteroids depending on their composition and albido, which is the proportion of light or radiation reflected by a surface. The main types are carbon asteroids, which have a very dark surface, silicon ones, you can also call them stone asteroids, and metal ones.
The first two types account for around 75% and 17% of asteroids that we know about.
For the first time, the asteroid belt was crossed by a spacecraft in 1972.
[music] It was the Pioneer 10 space probe. The spaceship managed to refute the theory that the belt was filled with dust that could easily damage all gadgets on board. It didn't happen. And since that time, eight more probes have traveled through the asteroid belt.
And now I'm going to tell you some cool facts about the solar system itself. Try to count how many of these facts you've known before and write your answer down in the comments below. The solar system is a staggering 4.5 billion years old.
Scientists came to this conclusion after studying meteorites, the oldest material they managed to find.
But our solar system isn't the only one in the Milky Way galaxy. The galaxy we live in houses about 100 billion star systems. And if it's just our galaxy alone, what can we say about the whole universe?
Now, our sun is also insanely massive.
Here's the proof. 99.86% 86% of all the mass of the solar system is [music] the mass of the sun, in particular hydrogen and helium that it's made of. The remaining 0.14% is mostly the mass of the solar systems eight [music] planets.
Oh, by the way, contrary to popular misconception, outer space isn't a perfect vacuum. It contains not only stars and planets, but also clouds of interstellar dust, space plasma, and cosmic [music] rays. Those are atom fragments dashing from the outskirts of the solar system.
Now, one phenomenon astronauts should worry about while exploring space is cold welding.
If two pieces of the same kind of metal touch in space, they bond and get permanently stuck together. Kind of like galaxy [music] glue. It doesn't happen on Earth since water and air keep pieces separate.
You can see solar eclipses. Even though the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, it's also [music] 400 times closer to Earth. So, it's perfectly capable of obscuring the star. But in 600 million years, the moon won't be able to block the sun completely [music] because of the satellites changing orbit.
Behind the orbit of Neptune, there [music] is the mysterious Kyper belt filled with massy icy objects. The most curious thing about this space formation [music] though is that the scientists failed to explain the pattern of its movement.
[music] The only explanation they have is that Neptune might be hiding a ginormous planet. This hypothetical planet has already got the name planet 9 and all we have to do is wait until its existence is confirmed or not. [music] The ocean on Jupiter is larger than any body of water on other planets of the solar system. But it's not the ocean you think about. The one on Jupiter isn't made of water. This mesmerizing thing consists of metallic hydrogen and its depth is around 25,000 mi, which is actually almost the same as the circumference of Earth.
Now, people got to know about beautiful Saturn's rings in the 1600s. But now we know that Saturn isn't the [music] only ringed planet. All the giant gas planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Jupiter, have rings of their own, but they're thin and almost impossible to see. As for Mars, Venus, and Earth, they're made of rocky material and have no rings.
At the same time, Saturn's moon Ria might have a ring system consisting of three narrow bands. [music] If astronomers manage to confirm it, it'll be the first time for people to discover rings around a moon.
Oh, and Mars might get a set of rings of its own in the next 70 million years.
The red planet's largest moon, called Phobos, is orbiting closer and closer to the planet. One day, it's likely to get broken apart by the gravitational pole of the red planet and turn into a ring that can last for millions of years.
And another cool fact about Mars, you've probably heard of methane gas, a byproduct of such natural processes as volcanic activity and cow emissions.
Anyways, this gas is not only a part of the Martian atmosphere, but also the thing that confuses astronomers to no end. The thing is that the volume of methane on Mars keeps wavering, and scientists just can't figure out where it might be coming from. Can there be life on Mars? Can there be cows on Mars?
>> 5.
Ah, Saturn. Incredible with its majestic rings and swirling clouds. But what would it be like to dive into it?
NASA's Cassini tried that and it turned out to be a wild trip. NASA's Cassini spacecraft was a probe that [music] spent 13 years orbiting Saturn and gathering some incredible data. One of its major goals was to help us understand how come Saturn's [music] atmosphere is so hot. The upper atmospheres of planets are always heated. Duh. They're directly under the sun. The strange thing about Saturn is that [music] gas giants are too far from the sun to get that kind of warmth. So Cassini didn't just observe the planet from outside.
On September 15th, 2017, it dove deep to the journey that would become the spacecraft's grand finale. Its last moments were spent inside Saturn's upper atmosphere, sending back priceless data as it slowly disintegrated.
Now, these upper layers are no joke. The planet's horrifying magnetic field hums with energy, and powerful winds whip around at thousands of miles hour.
Cassini would pass through thick layers of clouds, hazy, pale gold, and muted, reflecting the sun's faint light.
[music] And these aren't cute, fluffy earthlike clouds made of water vapor.
This is a nightmare cocktail of hydrogen and helium. The probe ventured [music] deeper, passing through the region where Saturn's iconic rings rain material onto the planet. Cassini discovered that this rain was more intense than anyone expected. More than 22,000 lbs of material per second. That's at a rate that Saturn's rings might not last forever. [music] The planet's own gravity could eat them away completely someday, unless the rings get a sudden update. These are all tiny grains of ice and dust caught [music] in the planet's gravity, falling into the atmosphere like a relentless storm. The grains mixed with water, methane, and even chemicals like propane and butane slowly alters Saturn's atmospheric chemistry.
It mixes with the particles in the planet's upper atmosphere, making them heavier and warming Saturn up.
Unfortunately, this was too much for poor little Cassini. It was designed to be tough enough for the outer layers, but it burned up before it could descend into the terrifying deeper regions. In the more intense layers of Saturn's [music] atmosphere, winds reach extreme speeds of over 1,100 mph. The pressure becomes crushing, and the deeper you go, the more [music] overwhelming it becomes. It would feel like entering an ocean of gas, one with no clear surface, where the sky gets darker, thicker, and more hostile as you descend. And at a certain point, complete darkness.
[music] just you and the overwhelming mass of hydrogen gas pressing in from all sides. But Cassini's sacrifice was invaluable [music] to scientists. The key data it sent us before the grand finale allowed scientists to map Saturn's upper atmosphere more completely than ever [music] before.
Cassini tracked bright stars like those in Orion and Kynis Major as they passed behind the planet, measuring how their starlight shifted. This helped scientists to understand how dense and hot the atmosphere was. It left us some final pictures as well, though they're not as impressive as you might think. It was a monochrome shot taken from about 394,000 mi away, showing a dark portion of Saturn's night side, softly illuminated by the reflection of its own rings. NASA also posted a picture made by their own artists of what Cassini [music] could have seen in its last moments. And of course, it gave us the answer to the big mystery of Saturn's heat. It's because of auroras. It turns out that due to the [music] crazy magnetic field, the planet's cloud layers are sparked up by sudden bursts of auroras at the poles.
They're like the northern lights on Earth, but far more intense. The gas giant skies occasionally light up with radiant greens and blues. They're sparked by the interaction between solar winds and the charged particles from Saturn's moons. The hottest areas of [music] Saturn were near these auroras.
These light shows are powerful enough to heat the upper atmosphere, spreading warmth across the planet. Thanks to this added information, [music] we discovered something important, not just about Saturn, but about all gas giants across our solar [music] system and beyond.
Meanwhile, the photos we have of Venus are much more dramatic. Venus is a bit closer to the sun than Earth. It's often been called Earth's twin because of the similarities like in size, mass, and composition. But don't be fooled.
Beneath those thick clouds lies one of the most toxic environments in our solar system. Its surface is a nightmare where temperatures soar to about 900° F, hot enough to melt lead. The pressure on the planet is crushing as well, 92 times that of Earth's. That's like standing [music] 3,000 ft under the ocean.
We just couldn't resist taking some pictures. So, in the 1970s, scientists [music] managed to land probes on this volcanic, unforgiving surface. And these missions were successful. They managed to send back the first photos of Venus and showed us incredible stuff. The first probe lasted only 23 minutes on the surface and then crushed down under this crazy pressure, winds, and heat.
Both first and second probes captured black and white panoramas of a rocky hillside. On both, the second lens failed to eject. The horizon was flat, the ground strewn with jagged rocks, [music] and the oppressive atmosphere pressed down like an invisible force.
After lots of hurdles, we finally managed to look at colorful pictures from Venus in the 1980s. This spacecraft lasted more than 2 hours after extreme conditions. It's incredible that they managed to send us [music] anything at all. Venus is a planet where metals melt and where the atmosphere itself eats away the spacecraft. The photos it took showed that on Venus, the skies [music] aren't blue, but an eerie yellow due to the thick clouds of sulfuric acid. NASA also has some computer simulations of what Venus's surface could look like, but these don't really convey the horror of actually being there. Perhaps it's time we look at Venus once more. There's so much we don't know about this fiery neighbor.
Finally, we also try to enter Jupiter's atmosphere in the '90s, and that's the hardest one on the list. NASA's Galileo missions probe was designed to dive into Jupiter. It was launched in 1989 and traveled millions of miles with a small entry probe on board. This tiny hero would face one of the most intense environments we've ever encountered in space. It was finally released on July 13th, 1995.
At that moment, the spacecraft was still 50 million miles away from Jupiter. So, just to enter the atmosphere, it had to fall for months. And it finally did fall on December 7th, plunging headirst into Jupiter's thick, swirling atmosphere.
The probe slammed into Jupiter's skies at a staggering 106,000 mph. That's fast [music] enough to cross the United States from Los Angeles to New York in 90 seconds. The intense deceleration caused the probe to experience a horrifying gravity, 228 times stronger than the Earth's. It slowed down from supersonic speeds to just 100 mph in minutes. The heat generated by its entry was so extreme that the shock wave ahead of it glowed as brightly as the sun itself. The temperature soared to 28,000° F. And all this time, somehow the probe was collecting data every second and sending it all to us. It gave us some critical information about Jupiter's mysterious atmosphere.
For example, it turned out that Jupiter's upper atmosphere was drier than expected, less water vapor, and fewer organic compounds than scientists thought. The probe also measured fierce winds of up to a half a mile per second.
And surprisingly, it didn't see that much lightning, even though we thought these are never ending on Jupiter. One of the prob's biggest surprises was the discovery that Jupiter's atmosphere contained less helium than we thought.
It also revealed a horrifying radiation belt about 30,000 mi above Jupiter's clouds. It's like intense radiation encircles the planet like a cosmic shield. The poor little guy managed to survive for 58 minutes. It eventually succumbed to immense pressure.
Meanwhile, the Galileo orbiter continued its mission, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter.
>> Have you heard about planet 9? No, not Pluto. We're talking about something lurking on the outskirts of the solar system. A mysterious planet that exists in our solar system that we haven't yet [music] discovered.
We've been looking for it for years, but finally, it seems like scientists found a key to solve this mystery.
Planet 9 is a hypothetical planet.
Astronomers have been on the hunt for it for quite some time now, but it's so elusive that they've only been able to piece together a few details about its potential characteristics.
One thing we do know is [music] that Planet 9 has to be a massive world, possibly up to 10 times the mass of Earth. That's one big planet. It's also thought to be a distant wanderer hanging out somewhere between Neptune and Pluto.
Some scientists think that planet 9 might actually be a mini Neptune with a thick gaseous atmosphere and a rocky core. Others speculate that it could be an icy world with a solid frozen surface and a thick layer of hydrogen and helium gas.
Of course, since we haven't actually found Planet 9 yet, we can't say for sure what it's like. We're not even sure that it even exists. Some say it's just a myth, like the tooth fairy or the Easter Bunny, but others are convinced that it's out there somewhere. And at the end of the day, we're not entirely sure if Planet 9 is even a planet. It might be a special kind of black hole or made entirely of dark matter.
The search for Planet 9 began in the early 21st century when a group of astronomers realized [music] that something wasn't quite right with the outer reaches of our solar system. They noticed [music] that some distant objects known as trans Neptunian objects were behaving in unexpected ways.
Trans Neptunian objects or TNOs are like the cosmic version of those items in the back of your fridge that you forgot about for years. They're small icy bodies that hang out in the Kyper belt beyond Neptune.
So scientists noticed that these guys started behaving weirdly. At first, they thought it might be a fluke. But as they dug deeper, they began to suspect that there was a ninth planet lurking out there. Why haven't we discovered it yet, you ask? Well, it may be because of planet 9's weird orbit.
All the other eight planets orbit the sun in roughly the same plane which is like a flat disc. However, our hypothetical friend's orbit is [music] different. It might be tilted and move in a different direction compared to the other planets. Its orbit might also be stretched out like an oval rather than being nearly circular like usual.
Because of this, Planet 9 might spend most of its time far from the sun like a true introvert. [music] It only comes relatively close to the inner solar system every few thousand years. This would make it super faint and hard to spot. So, the only way we may discover it is by studying the gravitational effects it has on our solar system.
And this isn't the first time astronomers have gone looking for a new planet. Back in the 19th century, there was a similar hunt for a hypothetical planet X.
But this time, they were armed with much better [music] technology and a much better sense of humor. They began calling their elusive quarry Planet 9, which was much catchier than Planet X.
They even came up with a hashtag for the search Pluto Lives.
It was a reference to the fact that Pluto had been kicked from the planet gang and some astronomers were eager to find a new planet to take its place. But the search for Planet 9 has been no easy task. It's like trying to find a lost sock in the laundry basket the size of a football stadium.
It's so far away and so faint that even the most powerful telescopes can't see it. Instead, astronomers have had to rely on indirect [music] evidence, like the strange orbits of TNOs to try to figure out where it might be. Some scientists have even supposeded that it might be a wandering rogue planet, which would explain why it's so hard to find.
But they haven't given up hope. Till this day, they're scouring the skies using all sorts of high-tech telescopes [music] and fancy algorithms to try and spot this elusive planet.
And fear not, dear curious human, because it looks like after so many years of research, we may have finally found the key to solve this mystery.
Astronomer Man Ho Chan from Hong Kong has a theory. He believes [music] that planet 9 could have a bevy of moons.
That's right. Not only is it a giant planet hiding out in the [music] depths of space, but it's also a bit of a hoarder.
Moons are all the rage in the outer solar system. In fact, almost every planet here has at least one moon except for Mercury and Venus. Earth has just one, which is kind of sad if you think about it. Even non-planetary bodies like Pluto [music] have at least a couple of moons. A bit unfair, isn't it?
Anyway, taking this into account, let's go moon picking with planet 9. The region between the rockfilled Kyper Belt and the Rockfilled Orort cloud, where this planet is predicted to be, should be ripe for the picking. Chan made some calculations and determined that it would be stranger if the elusive planet didn't have any satellites. According to his calculations, an object the mass of planet 9 should capture at least 20 TNOs as large as almost 90 m across. It's like our mysterious planet is playing cosmic Pokémon with these guys. So, what if planet 9 has moons? Would that make any difference? Kind of, yes. They could give us some indirect clues to finally locate this mysterious planet.
Now, you might be thinking, "How in the cosmos can we possibly spot these teeny tiny moons? It's not like they're going to wave a giant flag or blast some Beyonce tunes to get our attention."
Well, apparently the key lies in something called tidal heating.
Tidal heating might sound like a new workout trend, but it's a real scientific phenomenon. It happens when two celestial bodies are close together.
You see, tides aren't just about the rise and fall of the ocean. They're also the result of gravity pulling unevenly on a planet or moon. When a planet and a moon are close enough to each other, their gravity pulls on each other, creating a bit of a football shape. And as these celestial bodies move around each other, they shift shape and generate friction inside, which produces heat.
Wow, who knew that planet 9 could have a workout routine? Perhaps we should start calling it gym planet instead.
Anyway, if planet [music] 9 has any moons, the gravitational pull from these moons would cause it to change shape constantly, generating heat in the process. And we might be able to detect this [music] mysterious planet through the heat produced by those moons, even though it gives off no other [music] signals.
Now, before you get too excited, finding them [music] won't be a walk in the park. They're incredibly small and would be very far away from us. But hey, [music] nothing worth discovering ever came easy, right?
Scientists are optimistic that with [music] the right technology, they can spot this telltale sign. It will be easier for us to spot them with fancy instruments like modern telescopes. Talk about cool friends [music] to have, right?
Sure, the process of finding it may be difficult and timeconuming, but the potential payoff is huge. Finding this planet could explain a lot of the strange behavior [music] observed in TNO's, the Kyper belt, and beyond. As we've already mentioned, they've been acting super weird lately, tilting and aligning in suspicious ways. If this planet doesn't actually exist, we have yet to explain what is the reason for this strange behavior.
In any case, the search for Planet 9 [music] is one of the most exciting and intriguing quests in modern astronomy.
It's like a cosmic scavenger hunt, and everyone's invited to join in on the fun. So, grab your telescopes and [music] let's go planet hunting. Who knows, maybe we'll find it sooner than we think.
Look at this fascinating planet. It looks as if it's burning. It must be hotter on its surface than in the middle of Death Valley. The ground is parched, cut by giant cracks. There's not a drop of water in this boiling world. Now, it's the same planet, but it looks like a totally different place. Everything is [clears throat] frozen. The temperatures are so low, there isn't even a tiniest chance that life could survive on this planet.
This bizarre world [music] is called HD20794D and it's located 19.7 lighty years away from Earth in the constellation Aridinus.
This planet is a super Earth. This term means that it is larger than Earth but smaller than such ice giants as Neptune.
What makes this [music] planet especially interesting is its unusual orbit, which moves it in and out of its stars habitable zone, the region where temperatures might allow liquid water to exist.
Now, we haven't seen this unusual planet [music] directly. Astronomers detected it by measuring tiny wobbles in its star [music] using two powerful instruments, Espresso and HARPS, located at telescopes in Chile.
These instruments measure radial velocity, which is the small movement a star makes as a planet's gravity tugs on it. [music] The larger the wobble, the more massive the planet.
Later, astronomers analyzed the [music] data and figured out that the planet in question has a mass around six times greater than Earth's. It orbits a [music] star which is slightly smaller and dimmer than our sun.
What makes this star unique is that it is bright enough to be seen with the unaded eye. Unlike many other stars that host exoplanets, you won't be able to see them without a telescope.
The star system has been observed for over 20 years. Astronomers have long suspected it had multiple planets.
In 2011, scientists discovered two other super Earths orbiting the star every 18.3 and 89.6 and 6 days respectively.
For some time, researchers thought they had found a third planet with an orbital period of 40 days. Later, they realized they had made a mistake.
But recently, [music] after reanalyzing years of data, astronomers have confirmed that the third planet does exist and it's our extreme HD20794D.
A researcher from the University of Oxford [music] played a key role in identifying the planet.
He used a special computer algorithm [music] called Yurara to separate the planet's weak signal from the background noise.
It helped [music] him confirm that the planet truly existed and was pretty unique.
Unlike the planets [music] in our solar system, which have mostly circular orbits, the newly discovered one follows a highly elliptical stretched out orbit.
It takes 647 days to complete one trip around its star. That's just 40 days shorter than Mars' orbit around the sun.
At its furthest point, the planet is twice the Earth's sun distance, [music] which makes it an icy world far outside the habitable zone. At its [music] closest point, it moves inward to 75 AU, where it enters the habitable zone where liquid water might exist.
This [music] extreme movement creates truly bizarre seasons. For some part of its orbit, HD20794D [music] is frozen like an icy wasteland. As it approaches its star, temperatures rise and [music] ice likely melts, forming temporary oceans. The planet [music] then experiences a short, scorching summer. It is so hot that the water on its surface might evaporate into the atmosphere.
Shortly after, the [music] planet moves away again. It triggers a gloomy fall with rains followed by a deep freeze in winter. In other words, the planet switches [music] between extreme cold and intense heat, which makes it a very unpredictable place for life. If any life [music] forms exist there, they certainly need to adapt to dramatic changes in temperature and environment.
Why does the planet follow such a mind-boggling orbit? It might be a leftover effect from events billions of years ago when the planetary system was still forming.
At some point, another large planet may have disturbed the orbit of our extraordinary friend.
Another possible explanation is that a giant planet once existed in the system [music] and its gravity pushed HD20794D into an elongated path. Later, [music] this giant planet may have been ejected from the system, leaving the smaller planet in its current orbit. [music] This theory makes sense because the two other planets in the system, B and C, have more normal circular orbits.
The discovery of this planet is so exciting because [music] it challenges what we know about habitable planets.
Most planets in the habitable zone stay there permanently, [music] but HD20794D only passes through it. Scientists want to know if such a planet [music] could still support life, even briefly. So, future telescopes will study the atmosphere of this planet, looking for signs of water, gases, or even light.
Another [music] super Earth that might have the right conditions for life orbits a star 137 lighty years away. In space terms, this is considered [music] relatively close. A lightyear is around 6 trillion miles. The planet is [music] called toi715b and it's about 1.5 [music] times the size of Earth. Unlike HD20794D, it's permanently located in the habitable zone.
Look, that's what astronomers think [music] the planet might look like.
TOI715b orbits its star very quickly, completing a full orbit in just 19 [music] days.
But even though it's close to its star, it may not be extremely hot. All because its [music] star is a red dwarf.
That's a type of star that is smaller and cooler than our sun. This means TOI715b could have a milder temperature compared to other exoplanets that orbit closer to hotter stars.
NASA discovered the planet using the transiting exoplanet survey satellite.
This space telescope finds planets by watching for small dips in a stars brightness, [music] which happen when a planet passes in front of it. Since red dwarfs are smaller and dimmer than the sun, planets passing in front of them are easier to detect, astronomers are planning to study the planet further using the James Webb Space Telescope. [music] This powerful telescope located 1 million miles away from Earth can analyze the atmospheres of distant [music] planets.
If TOI715B has an atmosphere, JWST [music] could help scientists determine what gases are present in it and whether such conditions could support liquid water or [music] even life.
One more promising world for our search for extraterrestrial life is an extremely [music] dense super Earth in the K2360 system. An international team of researchers from Japan and Europe has discovered this remarkable multilanet system orbiting a sunlike star located 750 light-years away. This system has [music] two planets including one of the densest rocky planets ever found. The K2360b is a rocky super Earth about 1.6 times the size of Earth, but with a [music] mass 7.7 times greater. This makes it as dense as lead.
The planet orbits its star incredibly fast, completing one full orbit in just 21 hours. It's the densest [music] known ultrashort period planet with well-measured properties. As for its sibling, this is a much larger outer planet [music] with at least 15 Earth masses. It takes 9.8 days to orbit its star.
Sadly, since [music] it does not pass in front of its star from our viewpoint, scientists cannot determine its exact size.
The unusually dense planet [music] might be the core of a much larger planet.
Over time, intense radiation from its parent [music] star may have blown away its outer layers, leaving behind only its dense, rocky core. So in fact, this planet could show us what might [music] happen to some planets that are too close to their stars.
Astronomers think that the [music] planet may have moved inward over time due to interactions with its larger companion [music] planet. One possibility is high eccentricity migration, where a planet's [music] orbit becomes highly stretched out due to gravitational interactions before [music] gradually becoming more circular near the star.
Another theory is that the planet's spin and axial tilt can cause its [music] orbit to become more circular.
Such planets are rare, and finding one with a massive [music] outer companion can help scientists refine their theories about how planets form and evolve in extreme environments.
With its [music] help, we might also understand how rocky planets evolve and what [music] happens to planets that get too close to their stars.
Scientists have found an invisible star at the Milky Way center. A star that helped our galaxy be born. 26,000 lighty years away in the galactic center, a massive invisible object started spreading everywhere. And you don't even know that you're breathing it right now.
It all started in the 70s when an astronomer named Vera Rubin was studying the Andromeda galaxy. [music] She decided to check whether stars move in a predictable way.
Now, let's say you're spinning a ball on a string around yourself. The closer the ball is to you, the faster it moves in a tight circle. But if you let the string out longer, the ball moves more slowly in a bigger loop. That's how gravity works. And the same goes for planets.
The closer ones, like Mercury, zoom around quickly, completing their orbits in months. The far ones like Neptune and Saturn take their time, decades, [music] to make one rotation. The stars themselves should orbit the centers [music] of their galaxies the same way.
The closer ones move fast, the farther ones are slower. Right? But when Vera measured the speeds, she saw something [music] impossible. They weren't slowing down. The farway stars were moving just as fast [music] as the ones near the center. By all logic, the galaxy should have torn themselves apart. But they didn't. And that meant something was [music] holding them together. Something undetectable. Some massive invisible object in the galactic center warping reality without ever revealing itself.
So she checked over and over with different galaxies. This wasn't a fluke.
It was happening everywhere. Reuben had accidentally uncovered proof that galaxies were drowning in something far heavier than all the stars, planets, and gas [music] in our entire universe combined. It was holding us with ghostly hands.
Astronomers called it dark matter because it doesn't glow, doesn't reflect light, doesn't seem to interact with anything at all. It's just there. But all the calculations show us that it exists and not merely exists but makes [music] up 85% of all the mass in the universe. We know that it sculpted galaxies. Without it, the world as we know [music] it wouldn't exist. And yet, just like with an invisible star scientists found at the Milky Way center, the only way to detect it was through gravity. So, how do you find something that [music] refuses to be found? Recently, scientists discovered there might be an invisible star at the Milky Way's center. And this fascinating [music] discovery might finally help us understand what dark matter looks like.
They began looking for dark matter's fingerprints, any signs of its presence [music] anywhere. They studied how galaxies moved and smashed particles together in giant machines, hoping to create tiny bits of dark matter in the lab. This didn't really lead to anything. They didn't even know what to look for. Is dark matter even made of particles. There was a theory [music] that suggested that it's made of ghostly particles that barely touch anything or even weirder ones that might [music] flicker in and out of existence in the blink of an eye. There was a problem though. If dark matter really worked like that, then the centers of galaxies should be packed tight. Tons of matter would be crammed into a tiny space. But in our universe, galactic [music] core seems strangely soft, spread out, almost gentle.
A new theory emerged, and it was wild.
What if the dark matter at the heart of galaxies isn't made of heavy particles at all? What if it's made of something so delicate that it behaves more like a strand of hair? These hairs could be made of something incredibly light, lighter than anything we've [music] ever seen, and billions of times smaller than a nutrino, which is already the lightest known [music] particle. They called this idea fuzzy dark matter, and it might change everything we [music] thought we knew about the universe. A team of astrophysicists wanted to test this idea. So, they ran a simulation, creating a simple model of a galaxy with two main ingredients. a whole lot of fuzzy dark matter and a little bit of gas. The same kind of gas that forms the stars we can see. They press start and just [music] let the system evolve by itself. Watching how the two would interact. At first, [music] everything was pure chaos. But then the fuzzy dark matter started to gather. It pulled itself [music] together, forming a massive invisible object near a galactic center. The gas followed, spreading throughout this ghostly [music] mass, mixing with it and glowing faintly. And then it suddenly formed something incredible. Dark stars. Not typical stars like our sun blazing with heat and light. Instead, it's enormous, massive, invisible objects. A hybrid of two different kinds of matter. We've never never seen anything like this before. An object that would stretch across thousands of light years. And yet they'd be almost weightless, more like cosmic puffy clouds than anything else.
Scientists called them firmian bosen stars. Finally, this dark matter thing is starting to make sense. The core of this strange invisible star would have just the right density, not too dense, not too loose, and it looked exactly like what astronomers actually see in real galaxies. If it's confirmed, then it would finally explain how dark matter behaves and works. And if they're right, then every galaxy in the universe could be tied to one of those vast unseen giants. The Milky Way, hidden star, might be one of them, shaping our galaxy in ways we never realized.
What's wild is that this [music] stuff wouldn't behave like normal matter. It wouldn't form anything solid. Instead, it would be more like a complex, [music] ever moving web of filaments or hairs.
This also means that Earth might be completely surrounded by it. Dark matter still follows the rules of gravity. As it moves past planets and stars, gravity pulls it into focus [music] streams, so it's both hugging and passing through our planet, wobbling consistently. If we could see them, they might look like glowing invisible threads [music] everywhere. And they'd pierce right through the planet, stretching far into space. But this [music] is only the beginning. Now scientists need to refine their models, make them [music] even more detailed, and compare their predictions to real galaxies. But this dark star discovery in the galaxy center isn't our only clue. Luckily, the universe has given us [music] a way to look for that fingerprint. Gravitational lensing.
When light from a farway galaxy travels toward us, it sometimes passes by another massive galaxy on the way or other massive objects with crazy gravity. Instead of continuing in a straight stream, light actually gets bent around the massive object because of that gravity. And when it finally reaches us, it creates a distorted and magnified version of the original galaxy. [music] Basically, it's like looking through a piece of curved glass. If dark matter is fuzzy, then it should leave a strange pattern on these distorted images.
Things should be a bit wavy and unclear.
Scientists needed the perfect object to study this, and they found one. A farway galaxy whose light was bent by gravity, creating a strange, stretched out image.
They used super powerful radio telescopes, connected them all over the world, and turned them into one giant telescope as big as the Earth itself.
With this, they could zoom in so much that they could see details of that galaxy as tiny as a grain of sand on the moon. Then they ran a huge experiment.
They created their own fake versions of this picture, simulations with various sizes of fuzzy dark matter particles.
And at a certain point, they found the perfect match. This helped us calculate the exact mass [music] of dark matter particles before we even detected them.
And the clues are leading us right to our own galaxy. It seems like densest [music] parts of these hairs, the roots, might be super close in the cosmic scale, just tens of thousands of miles from Earth. That's close enough for a space probe to reach. Now that scientists have found this invisible star at the Milky Way center, we just need to study it up close, [music] send a mission to one of these roots, and then we might finally crack the greatest space mystery of all.
Scientists think there might be a huge onion chilling somewhere out there in space. Not an actual one, but it's something even crazier. These are stars stacked inside each other, layer upon layer. These fascinating objects called graars could even be cousins of black holes. But most importantly, they might hold the key to understanding some of the most mysterious puzzles in the universe, dark energy, and even other dimensions.
Let's start with gravity. Over a century ago, Albert Einstein helped us understand how gravity works. Turns out it's not just something that pulls things on Earth and makes apples fall on Newton's head. It's much wilder. [music] It's about warping the very fabric of existence itself. Let's say you toss a heavy ball, like a bowling ball, onto the middle of your bed. What happens to the sheets? They dip, don't they?
[music] They stretch and sag around the ball. Now, if you roll a smaller ball, like a marble, across the bed, it doesn't move in a straight line anymore.
Instead, it starts circling the heavy ball, rolling closer and closer [music] as if the heavy ball is pulling it in.
That's gravity. But instead of bed sheets, we're talking about the fabric of space and time itself, or spacetime for short. Heavy objects like planets and [music] stars make dents in spaceime and moons, planets or even light move along these dents. Gravity is the curve that tells them where to go.
In that case, you can guess that black holes are like the ultimate heavy balls, the heaviest, in fact. The gravity is so strong it shrinks them making them smaller and smaller. [music] So tiny they could fit in the palm of your hand.
but with the mass of several suns. Some of them are like holding over 40 billion solar masses in your palm. It's ridiculous, but they basically create a bottomless pit in spaceime with insane gravity. This area around them called the event horizon is [music] the most horrifying thing ever. It's a point of no return. Once something gets [music] there, it can never escape being eaten.
When something falls past the event horizon, it can't climb back out, not even light. Which is why they seem like, well, black holes.
But gravastars, there's something much weirder. Just like black holes, they're probably very compact. But instead of being tiny pits of endless gravity, they might have something wild at their [music] core. Dark energy.
This is one of the universe's biggest mysteries. dark energy. This invisible, mysterious something that seems to be pushing the universe apart faster and faster. It's like a polar opposite of gravity. While gravity tries to pull things together to slow down the expansion of the universe, dark energy is trying its hardest to make our world even bigger. Luckily, dark energy has been winning so far. Otherwise, we'd all be in some deep pit. But if we can explain the gravity with balls, then what exactly is dark energy?
A force, an energy field, something else? We have no idea. Scientists have seen its effects. They know that it's incredibly spread out everywhere.
[music] But they can't tell you what that thing even is.
But if it's trapped inside of grav stars, maybe we'll finally discover the truth.
This name stands for gravitational condensate stars. Grava stars were dreamed up by two physics professors Powell Mazur and Iml Matah in 2006.
They tried to think what else besides black holes could happen when a massive star collapses on itself.
That's how they created this alternative. Think of it this way.
Gravity pulls everything inward, making super heavy objects like stars shrink in size. The more the star shrinks, the denser it gets, and its gravity grows stronger. After some point, it can cross a critical threshold and become a black hole. But what if there was dark energy inside to counteract this? At the core of a gravar, there could be a region filled with false vacuum or dark energy.
This energy would push outward, fighting the gravity. It's like the unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Thanks to this, the star core doesn't collapse into a black hole.
Sounds wacky. We don't know what dark energy even is. So, how can it fill up anything? But luckily, even if scientists can't fully explain dark energy, they still have strong mathematical models to check how it works in our universe.
>> [music] >> So, they decided to test this theory.
Here's where things get even weirder.
The new theory says that gravastars might not be simple lone objects.
[music] Instead, they could be stacked one inside another. Each one is like a layer with its own dark energy bubble inside, surrounded by a thin skin of matter. The outermost shell would hold a smaller gravisar inside it, and that one [music] could hold an even smaller one, and so on. It's like a series of balloons, one inside the other. The air pressure in each one of them is stable, evenly spread out. Thanks to that, [music] none of them deflate. They coexist without one popping or collapsing the others. In the case of grav stars, the air is dark energy, and the rubber is the shell of matter surrounding it. [music] It sounds crazy, but it actually makes this whole idea more realistic. A single graar might have a very thin shell of matter, but the thicker they are, the more likely it is to exist in a stable way.
And finally, the coolest part about them is that they could explain one of the biggest mysteries of our world. How universes are born. When a star collapses into a grav star, the matter could theoretically implode through the center and create a new dimension. This would connect these objects to the big bang itself.
Some scientists even speculate that dark energy could be the energy exchanged between our universe and a child universe that's created from a gravar.
Of course, these are all just speculations for now. But where are all those gravars? And how do we test this?
Well, physicists aren't sure either.
They're more of a what if thing than an actual object that they discovered.
Those two professors just tried to imagine what would happen if gravity and dark energy worked together like this.
For now, the LIGO, a big observatory which detects ripples in spaceime, hasn't found clear evidence of grav.
Another problem is that gravastars would only be stable in specific cases. For example, if they spin too fast or their shell will be too thick, they might start to wobble or break apart eventually, though it could actually take billions of years. Plus, even if we don't see them right now, remember that this is exactly what happened to the black holes themselves.
When Einstein published his groundbreaking theory of general relativity, another scientist, Carl Schwarzchild, [music] took his equations and found a solution to them. And that's when he realized if gravity becomes incredibly strong, the light wouldn't be able to escape and this could create a sort of hole in space. Einstein even thought that this sounds too weird to be true.
It took many years for us to confirm black holes existence and we finally took a photo of one just a couple of years ago.
You might remember that blurry picture that blew up online. It was Sagittarius a star, an incredible super massive black hole in the center of our galaxy, Milky Way. So that's why scientists approach gravis stars so seriously. And since all the math checked out, which means that these objects are actually possible in real life. Now we just need to see if they're somewhere out there.
What's interesting is that they'd probably look like regular black holes.
They could emit high energy radiation as they consume matter. They might even produce something called Hawking radiation, a type of energy that escapes from black holes. In other words, it would be nearly impossible to tell the difference. But gravastars have a small trick up their sleeve. If their shell is transparent to light, they might bend light in a slightly different way than black holes do. So maybe if they check the way light is bent around the mysterious object, they could spot the difference.
And even if it turns out that gravis stars don't exist in our reality, they're still valuable to science. They still taught us more about gravity, black holes, and the limits of relativity.
So how do you feel about cooking? Nah, pasta and burgers are overrated. How about something more exotic, or rather more cosmic? So, the recipe is simple.
Take a team of enthusiastic astronomers and add some old images from the James Web Space Telescope. Stir really well and you'll get a shocking number of tiny asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Yummy. The highlight of this dish is the direction in which some of the asteroids are moving.
Because in their way, there's our poor planet. Are we doomed just because you decided to cook? Now, the asteroids I'm talking about are much smaller than the massive space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs, but they can still cause considerable damage. They range in size from as small as a bus [music] to as big as a stadium. But even those small ones pack quite a punch. Let's look at a recent dramatic example. It happened on February [music] 15th, 2013. A small asteroid just tens of feet wide exploded in an air burst over Chelubanks in Siberia, releasing an insane amount of energy. Many people witnessed and recorded the event, and it gave scientists vital clues. New computer models helped scientists [music] reconstruct the size, speed, and impact of the Chelubinsk meteor. It was likely an asteroid about the size of a five-story building, exploding from 15 to 18 m above Earth's surface with an enormous, incomparable [music] force.
The blast shattered a million windows and hurt over a thousand people.
Fortunately, it wasn't powerful enough to cause too much damage, but it gave us an idea about how dangerous an air burst can be. Now, an air burst occurs when an object explodes high in the atmosphere, never striking the ground, but releasing enough energy to devastate the area. But back to the small asteroids, the most dangerous thing about them is that they hit the Earth far more often than the larger ones, about 10,000 times more frequently. To make matters worse, their small size makes them harder to detect in advance, leaving little time for preparation if one is heading towards Earth. Now, let's travel back in time.
Uh-oh, dinosaurs. Too far back. Ah, there we go. A team of astronomers is working on a special method to find small asteroids and telescope images that were originally taken to study [music] distant stars. Using this method, they've looked through thousands of JWST images of a star system called Trappist 1. It's located 40 lighty years away and is one of the most studied systems outside our solar system. Now, while analyzing these images, they discovered 138 new asteroids in the main asteroid belt, plus eight they already knew about. And guess what? Among the newly found asteroids, six seem to [music] have been pushed into paths that could bring them closer to Earth. Who did it? Well, probably nearby planets.
Are they holding a grudge against Earth?
Interestingly, scientists thought they'd find just a few new asteroids, but the number was much higher than they expected. Yet, it's no wonder. Right now, they're exploring a part of space they didn't know much about before. Now, let's talk about the hero of the day, the James Webb Space Telescope. It's especially good at finding small asteroids because it can detect their heat. These asteroids give off infrared radiation, which is much easier to see than the faint sunlight that reflects off their surfaces. This technology allowed scientists to spot the smallest asteroids ever seen in the main asteroid belt. The asteroids [music] they found are pieces left over from collisions between bigger space rocks. Finding them helps astronomers understand the history of the asteroid belt and improve [music] methods for tracking small asteroids that could threaten Earth. The researchers are planning to use James Web to observe other star systems for at least 500 hours. They expect this work to uncover thousands more small asteroids in the solar system. Other advanced telescopes [music] like the Verac Rubin Observatory in Chile will also help. Starting in 2025, this observatory will use the world's largest [music] digital camera to photograph the southern sky every night for at least 10 years. Each image will cover a huge area of the sky, about 40 times [music] the size of the full moon. The observatory might find up to 2 and 12 million asteroids in just 6 months, almost doubling the number we know about.
Recently, NASA has identified two small asteroids. They were supposed to pass near Earth on December 16th, 2024.
[music] Luckily, neither posed any danger to our planet. The first asteroid was 71 ft wide, about the size of a large airplane, and was traveling at 10,800 mph. The second asteroid was slightly smaller, 56 ft wide. But it traveled faster at 14,700 mph. But hey, even though this time the danger has passed, who knows what the future will bring.
It may sound weird these days, but astronomers didn't really care much about small asteroids for a rather long time. They thought of them as just random space debris that got in the way of observing stars. Some even called them sky parasites. But now, the way we see these little space rocks has completely changed. You see, until recently, we could only spot really big asteroids, those over a mile wide. The smaller ones just blended into the background noise and telescope images.
But then a clever [music] trick appeared where multiple images of the same part of the sky were combined, making those faint small objects finally stand out.
The data from certain telescopes along with the James Web Space Telescope helps us improve planetary defense. But there's more to it than just protecting our planet. Studying these small asteroids also teaches us about how the solar system evolved. There are so many of them because they're fragments from collisions between bigger space rocks.
One researcher has said this is like looking at old data in a new way. These small asteroids, which people used to think of as space junk, are crucial for understanding our solar system and even preparing for whatever the future holds.
Among those hundreds of millions of rocks orbiting the sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, some are especially worrisome. They come close enough to Earth for it to be quite concerning. NASA classifies asteroids that orbit within 30 million miles of our planet as near Earth objects, and those could pose a serious threat if they were to collide with our planet.
Right now, NASA is closely monitoring an asteroid named Bennu. This is a fairly large space rock measuring about 1,600 ft across. It could potentially crash into Earth in 159 years. First, the astronauts spotted it in 1999.
So, currently, experts believe that there's a small chance Bennu could drift into Earth's orbit and collide with our planet by September 24th, 2182.
Would it be bad?
Well, to put it in perspective, Bennu is taller than the Empire State Building.
If it hit Earth, it would generate 1,200 megat tons of energy, an amount so massive that nothing on Earth could generate that. NASA scientists are particularly concerned about a tiny chance that Bennu could pass through a gravitational keyhole during a flyby in the 22nd century. This keyhole is a region in space that could set the asteroid on a path that brings it directly to Earth. Now, Bennu flies by Earth every 6 years and has had three close encounters with us in 1999, 2005, and 2011. Right now, scientists estimate that the chance of Bennu hitting Earth by 2182 is about 1 in 2700, more than five times greater than the chance of being struck by lightning. Although the chances of Bennu colliding with Earth are very low right now, this space rock is still classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid because it might come as close as 4.65 million miles to Earth.
Now, this asteroid is another space rock that we need to keep an eye on. It's a near-Earth object about,00 ft across and it was discovered in 2004. Initially, it was considered one of the most dangerous asteroids ever detected. Apous quickly gained attention because experts believed it could pose a serious threat to Earth because of its close approach to our planet in 2029. However, after further study of its orbit, astronomers determined that there was no risk of a collision for at least a century. Well, we can all breathe easier now, can't we?
In the vast expanse of the universe, there are planets unlike any we've seen before. planets with a treasure trove of diamonds. What mysteries do these sparkling worlds hold? What do they look like? [music] And most importantly, just how much would it all cost? Let's find out.
First of all, let's take a look at diamonds in general. We see them as rare and valuable gems, but did you know that they actually come from something as ordinary as carbon?
That's right. This is the same element that's found in your pencil lead or coal. This is also the key ingredient in a diamond.
But how does [music] a plain old carbon atom turn into a dazzling diamond? Well, it all [music] starts deep beneath the Earth's surface. At depths of around 100 m, carbon is exposed to temperatures of over 2,000° F and pressures of over 825 lb per square in. That's like putting the weight of three elephants on a [music] postage stamp. Under these extreme conditions, the carbon atoms bond together in a unique way. They form the crystal lattice structure that gives [music] diamonds their distinctive shape. This process can take millions or even billions of years as the carbon slowly makes its way closer to the Earth's surface through volcanic activity.
And then finally, the diamond is formed.
After that, it may stay hidden in the earth for thousands of years until it's brought to the surface through volcanic eruptions. From there, the rough diamond is cut and polished into the beautiful gems that we know and love.
So, why are diamonds so valuable? Well, it's partly because of their rarity.
Only a small fraction of the diamonds that are formed actually make it to the surface. But it's also because of their beauty and durability.
Diamonds are the hardest substance known to humans, and they have a unique ability to refract light in a way that makes them sparkle and shine. Diamonds also have a wide [music] range of practical applications. They're used in cutting tools, grinding wheels, and even in the tips of surgical instruments. And thanks to advances in technology, scientists are finding new ways to use diamonds in fields like electronics, energy storage, and medicine. All this goes to show that sometimes the most extraordinary things can come from the most ordinary of elements.
Now that we know this, let's get back to our diamond planet. Can planets like this even exist? Actually, yes, they can. In fact, we come across diamonds in space much more often than on Earth. In space, extreme pressure and temperatures are very common. That's why the universe and even our solar system is actually incredibly wealthy.
Your regular asteroid can cost millions of dollars. Helium, which we can find almost everywhere in space, has a huge energy potential. It's not surprising that humanity has been discussing the possibility of space mining for some time now. As I mentioned earlier, diamonds are formed deep within the earth under conditions of extreme heat and pressure.
Scientists believe that a similar process could occur on a planet that's rich in carbon. There are a few possible ways it could happen. For example, when two planets or asteroids that contain a lot of carbon collide with each other, the collision would create a shock wave that would push the carbon atoms together so tightly that they would form a diamond. The second way it could happen is if this region of space contains a lot of carbon. If the conditions are right, then the carbon atoms would come together and form a planet-sized diamond. It's like if you have a lot of Lego blocks and you put them together to create a big Lego structure. In other words, if two carbonri objects collide [music] with each other, the carbon atoms can be squeezed together so tightly that they form a diamond. And now, surprise, surprise, these planets actually do exist. The planet we're talking about is called 55 Cancree E. It's one of the five planets in a small system in the constellation of Cancer. Its star is actually so bright that you can see it with the naked eye. It's located 40 lighty years away from us, which may be trillions of miles, but on a space scale, it's pretty close. 55 Canree E was first discovered in 2004. However, we didn't learn until 2012 that it was the first known diamond planet. All thanks to the research of scientists from Yale University.
This planet is the super Earth. This is a class of planets that are larger than our Earth, but too small to be considered giants. It's about twice as big as our Earth and about eight times heavier.
The planet rotates around its star really fast. It completes a full turn in just 18 hours. This means that one year on the planet is less than a day on Earth. It's also tidily locked to the star. In other words, one side of this planet is always turned towards the star and therefore is incredibly hot while the other is in eternal darkness just like with our moon.
Also 55 Cancree E is about 25 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun. As a result, the temperatures there are just enormous. On the day side, they're just above 4,000° F. And on the night side, which by the way is considered the cold one, over 2,500° F. Doesn't really sound like a good place to chill out, does it?
Well, it may not be good for us, but for diamonds, it's just perfect. After studying the planet, scientists concluded that it's a rocky world full of carbon. But this carbon isn't contained there in the form of gas.
Instead, it's in the form of graphite.
Yes, the same one found in your pencils.
And of course, diamonds. According to some estimates, diamonds can make up at least a third of 55 can create. It can cost about 27 non-million dollar. There are 30 zeros in this number. Can you imagine that? But the most interesting question is what would such a planet look like?
First of all, the thermal evolution and tectonic processes there are completely different compared to our Earth. In other words, the planet should be full of strange volcanoes and some bizarre volcanic activity, weird mountains and stuff like that. In addition, the planet is probably covered with large clouds of dust and the atmosphere on it is very dense. Oh, and the weather there is definitely crazy.
The researchers are planning to learn about the composition of 55 Canree's atmosphere in the future, but right now it's already pretty clear that this planet can't be called habitable. Well, finding life there is theoretically possible, but it's very unlikely.
Life on a diamond planet could potentially exist deep underground. For example, on Earth, we've already observed bacteria and microbes that can survive under incredibly extreme conditions. These guys are very resilient. They're capable of turning chemicals into energy and surviving basically anywhere. So, on a diamond planet, life could potentially exist in [music] this form. And who knows, extraterrestrial life may also take forms that are completely unknown to us.
Wouldn't it be cool to discover some crystal creatures capable of surviving in the most extreme heat? That would be mindblowing.
And guess what? It's not just 55 Cancree E that's full of diamonds. Other potential diamond hotspots include Pluto's largest moon, Cheron, and a Jupiter style exoplanet rich in carbon found 1,200 light-years from Earth called WASP 12b. Scientists even think that diamonds rain on Saturn and Jupiter regularly. All this was discovered by the researchers from Arizona State University. They claim that diamond planets are not that rare at all.
According to a 2020 scientific report, they form around certain types of stars [music] that have high carbon to oxygen ratios. They went above and beyond to study these space gems. They subjected carbide silicon to insanely extreme pressures above 50 gpa and temperatures as high as 2500° Kelvin to see what would happen. And they discovered that under these wild conditions, carbide silicon transforms into diamond and silica. So if you're looking for some diamond bling, you might not have to go too far. You could go intergalactic and explore some of these diamond planets.
These exoplanets are unlike anything in our solar system. And who knows what other awesome discoveries are out there waiting for us to find them.
Hold on to your telescope, [music] space rat. Scientists have made an astonishing discovery. They've found the ancient heart of the Milky Way galaxy.
But what is this ancient heart? [music] And what does it tell us about the history of our galaxy? Let's find out.
Uh, is that it? [music] Yes. And thank you, Captain Jack. Ah, my pleasure. What can I say? He's a space pirate. Now, the Milky Way isn't just a candy bar, but a majestic spiral galaxy that's home to billions of stars, planets, and other celestial objects. And it's all spread out over a distance of about 100,000 light years. [music] The Milky Way has a distinct shape with a central bulge and spiral arms that extend out from [music] it, kind of like what I look like from the side. The spiral arms are like the suburbs where [music] the stars are more spread out and the neighborhoods are quieter. They're made up of gas, dust, and stars that all [music] move together in a circular pattern around the center.
In between the spiral arms, there are vast [music] regions of empty space known as interstellar space. Here you can find wispy clouds of gas and dust [music] as well as some of the most spectacular sites in the galaxy like massive star forming regions [music] and colorful nebulas. The Milky Way is also surrounded by a huge halo [music] of dark matter, a mysterious substance that we can't see but can feel its gravitational effects on the galaxy.
[music] This halo helps to hold the galaxy together and it extends out much farther than the visible parts of the Milky Way.
And finally, here's the center. [music] Here, the most action happens. In the center of the Milky Way, there's a super massive black hole, which is about 4 million times more massive than our sun, Sagittarius [music] Aar. This black hole is responsible for some of the most energetic events in the galaxy, [music] like the emission of powerful jets of energy. Remember the famous first photo of a black [music] hole that flew across the internet? It was Sagittarius A star.
We managed to capture this black hole because it's the closest one to us. All in all, the center of the Milky Way is full of stars [music] that are tightly packed together, forming a dense cluster. And it was here that astronomers recently made a new epic discovery. The heart of our Milky Way galaxy has been found. And boy oh boy, is it an old-timer. Hey, who are you calling an oldtimer? Now, a team of brilliant scientists have [music] found a cluster of 18,000 stars born right after the Big Bang. Together, they formed the ancient [music] nucleus of our Milky Way. These stars date back to a time when our galaxy was just a wee little baby, a mere collection of proto galaxies huddling together to form a bigger and better thing. The scientists called it the poor old heart of our [music] Milky Way. Can you believe it?
These ancient stars are over 12.5 [music] billion years old. And yeah, maybe they account for a mere 0.2% [music] of our galaxy's total mass. But that doesn't matter. These stars are the building blocks that form the core around which all the [music] other stars and planets took shape. But how exactly did they become this heart of the galaxy? How did they form? And how did we discover all that? To answer these questions, we'll have to plunge into the [music] past. A very, very distant past.
Once upon a time, about 14 billion years ago, [music] there was the Big Bang. Our universe was born. At first, it was incredibly hot.
But as time passed, things started to cool down and tiny pockets of gas began to clump together due to the force of gravity. These were the first [music] galaxies. The Milky Way is one of these galaxies. It also started as a small clump of gas and dust. But over time, it began [music] to take shape. The very first stars, protoars, began to form within the clouds, and their gravitational pole caused more stuff to come together. [music] This process continued for millions of years until the Milky Way was formed. But to learn the history of our galaxy in more detail, we need to find these protostars. [music] And this is far from an easy task.
Researchers have discovered the ancient heart using a neural network to analyze data from the European [music] Space Ay's Gaia mission. The Gaia telescope is a space observatory launched by the European Space Agency in 2013. Its job is to map the position and movement of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. A billion stars. That's like counting every grain of sand on a beach.
It's a huge job, but Gaia is up to the task. So, how do they do it? The telescope has two cameras that take pictures of the sky at the same time.
[music] These cameras are so powerful that they can detect stars that are a million times fainter than those visible to the naked eye. Gaia takes many pictures of each star, and this allows us to track their movements with incredible precision. Thanks to the data collected by Gaia, [music] astronomers are learning more about the structure and history of the Milky Way. They've discovered new details about the stars, [music] including their ages, temperatures, and chemical compositions. Gaia is also helping astronomers search for exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars outside of our solar system. So, for this research, astronomers use Gaia and the most accurate 3D map of the Milky Way ever compiled. They had to analyze around 2 million stars to find the primordial [music] group. One way that astronomers can determine the age of stars is by looking at its brightness and temperature. This way they study a brief phase of stellar evolution known as subgiants. But imagine searching through the huge center of the Milky Way for the tiniest group of stars that are older than 12.5 [music] billion years. This is like searching for a needle in a hay stack. Luckily, they had a trump card up their sleeve.
Metals. You see, in the early universe, the cores of these stars were so hot and dense that they were able to smash atoms together to form heavier elements. These heavier elements are called metals in astronomy, [music] even though they're not really metals like the ones we're used to. The more massive the star, the more metals it can create during its lifetime. When the life of the first stars came to an end, they made a big boom and scattered these metals all around. Metals mix with other gases and join the newborn stars and so on. As time passed and the universe got older, more and more generations of stars formed, each one richer in metals than the last. Can you guess what that means? The older the stars, the less metals they should have. So now it was time for some galactic archaeology. The team taught the AI to find the metal poorest most ancient stars and it succeeded. It found a huge cluster and all of them were within 30,000 lightyear from the center of the Milky Way. Then they separated out the stars that formed the ancient heart from the stars that originated in a dwarf galaxy and finally [music] we were left with the original stars around which the Milky Way grew.
This discovery is incredible. It reveals [music] the remnants of the Milky Way's earliest history. It turns out that simulations of the Milky Way's formation were spoton. The old stars existed [music] just where they were predicted to be. Just imagine the stars that remember our universe [music] as a baby are still hanging out in the center of our galaxy. Isn't that mindboggling? So [music] why is this such a big deal?
Well, by studying these ancient stars, scientists have discovered some incredible things. For example, [music] they've confirmed that the Milky Way's core began its life stationary and only picked up rotational speed as it grew.
In [music] other words, the Milky Way formed from the merging of three or four proto galaxies. And these stars were its initial core. But even after billions [music] of years and multiple mergers, the heart of the Milky Way has remained intact like a sheltered oasis in the midst of cosmic chaos. All in all, the Milky Way is a vast and complex place full of mysteries [music] and wonders waiting to be discovered. It's a true marvel of the universe, and we're lucky to call it our [music] home. But the research isn't over yet. Scientists are eager to learn even more about the formation of the Milky Way [music] and hope to study these ancient stars in even greater detail. Who knows what secrets they might uncover. Maybe they'll [music] even discover what types of supernovas exploded to create the elements we see today. So get ready, space rat. The adventure [music] is just beginning.
Asteroids are a serious, very real danger. Some of them are big enough to cause a lot of trouble if they collide with Earth. One asteroid in particular is making headlines these days. A new study has revealed there's a small chance it could hit our planet during its close flyby in 2029.
But the question is unusual. Will the asteroid survive this encounter? Apous, which got its name from Ap, the Egyptian deity of chaos and disorder, has become one of the most infamous asteroids.
Discovered in 2004, this space object is about,00 ft wide. It's about the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Because of its size and the close flyby predicted for 2029, astronomers classify Apous as a potentially hazardous object. Those are asteroids and other space objects that pass close to Earth and are big enough that we really need to pay attention to them. Right now, scientists say the chances of a collision are slim, less than one in a billion. So, at the moment, we can probably claim that Earth is out of danger. But the same can't be said about the asteroid itself. When Apous passes close to Earth in 2029, our planet's gravity is likely to shake it so violently that it may experience something like an earthquake, a cosmic asteroid quake, if you will. The stress from this gravitational force will probably cause parts of the asteroid surface to crack off and fly into space.
And even though this might not be a full-blown disaster, and the asteroid won't fall apart [music] completely, it's very likely to lose some material during the flyby. Some of this debris might just stick around in orbit, while other bits could fly off into deep space. Over time, this catastrophe could affect Apous's rotation, causing it to spin differently or tilt in a way it hasn't before. And this is a phenomenon scientists are really interested in because it could teach us a lot about how asteroids react when powerful gravity is pulling on them. Now, let's get back to Earth, but we haven't left.
Anyway, even though the asteroid isn't big enough to wipe out the planet, like the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs, it's large enough to cause serious damage to a large city if it ever collided with Earth. It could mess with the climate all over the planet, too. At [music] the moment, it looks like the space rock will sail past Earth at a distance of around 20,000 mi. It's still worryingly close, but far enough to avoid a collision. To put it in perspective, that's less than a tenth of the distance between Earth and the Moon.
So, while Apous likely won't hit us, this flyby could still cause problems for some of the satellites orbiting Earth. They will be much closer to Apous than we are. The key point is that we can't rule out a risk of a collision in a few more years. As Apous gets closer, astronomers will keep a very close eye on its trajectory to make sure it doesn't veer off course due to the influence of Earth's gravity. In fact, this gravitational pull could actually cause some serious changes to the asteroid itself. Now, even though Apous is not likely to cause a global disaster if it were to hit Earth, the consequences would still be pretty severe. The impact could destroy an entire city and the resulting climate changes could mess with food production for years. It wouldn't be an extinction level event, but it would still be a huge deal. Now, Apous is not the only asteroid we need to worry about.
Scientists are constantly on the lookout for other asteroids that [music] could potentially cause harm to our planet.
Thanks to new technology, astronomers can now track dangerous space rocks [music] from way farther out in space.
One cool new method they're using involves studying meteor showers. These showers are actually caused by long period comets that have been orbiting the sun for hundreds or [music] even thousands of years. As these comets pass by, they leave a trail of dust and debris, which can end up creating meteor showers when Earth passes through them.
Scientists analyze the properties of meteor showers like [music] their speed, direction, and where they come from.
This can help them trace the particles back to their parent comet or asteroid.
It's actually a big deal because it means we might be able to spot potentially hazardous asteroids long before they get close to Earth. The upcoming legacy survey of space and time [music] project, which is being run out of the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, is going to help astronomers track these space rocks from even farther away.
Astronomers are going to create a detailed map of the sky and the regions where meteor showers are most likely to occur. It'll help them predict which asteroids might become a problem for Earth in the future, giving us plenty of time to prepare or come up with a plan.
But even now, there are many space rocks that can potentially cause a lot of trouble to our planet. Let's look at some of them. Here's the asteroid Bennu.
Astronomers discovered it in 1999. This carbonrich rock is about 1,600 ft across. It's the height of the Shanghai World Financial Center. Didn't you know that? At the moment, this asteroid is the greatest threat to Earth that we're aware of. But don't panic yet. The collision won't happen for a long time.
In fact, scientists calculate a 0.037% chance, which is about 1 in 2700, of Bennu striking Earth on September 24th, 2182.
I won't be around then. If Bennu does hit our planet, the impact would release so much energy that it would be enough to cause massive destruction in a large region. But luckily, it wouldn't wipe out the entire planet. Still, if Bennu hit a city, the consequences could be catastrophic. NASA's Osiris Rex spacecraft has recently visited Bennu and return with samples. So, scientists are learning more about this asteroid all the time.
The next asteroid is another one to keep an eye on. It was first discovered in 1950, but wasn't seen again until 2000.
Right now, scientists say there's a very slim chance, one in 34,500.
Mhm. That it could hit Earth on March 16th, 2880, 800 years into the future.
So, am I worried? Nah. If it did strike, it would release so much energy, it could lead to a global catastrophe, potentially wiping out humanity or not.
Our next asteroid has been discovered only recently. It was spotted in October 2023. It has a very low chance of striking Earth on October [music] 10th, 2119. Man, they got it down to the day.
Now, if it were to collide with our planet, the impact would release a lot of energy, which would have a devastating effect for large areas. So, while the arrival of this asteroid is a long shot, this asteroid is still worth keeping an eye on. Now, this asteroid is known as a lost asteroid because it hasn't been seen since 2007. No wonder it has a very uncertain orbit and we can't predict its movements. NASA says there's a tiny chance, about 1 in 10 million, that it could strike Earth on March 3rd, 2030. If it did, the energy released would be able to cause huge regional damage. Finally, we've got this space wanderer. On the one hand, it hasn't been seen since 1979.
On the other, scientists believe that there's a very low chance that it could hit Earth on December 14th, 2113. Mark your calendars. If it did, the impact would cause a lot of damage and devastation, but it would not lead to the end of humanity. Now, in any case, even though the chances of an asteroid hitting Earth are low, the consequences of such an event could be huge. That's why scientists are so focused on studying these space rocks and tracking their movements. Thanks to new technologies, [music] we can track dangerous objects from farther away and catch them earlier. It can give us more time to react and come up with some effective [music] solutions.
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