Astronomers have discovered UY Scuti, a red supergiant star located approximately 9,500 light-years from Earth that is about 1,700 times larger than our Sun and shines with a brightness of 340,000 times that of our Sun. This discovery challenges existing theories about stellar formation and evolution, as scientists struggle to explain how such a massive star could form and survive. The star's immense size means that if placed at the center of our solar system, its surface would extend past Jupiter's orbit, engulfing all the inner planets. UY Scuti represents one of the most extreme examples of stellar evolution, demonstrating the upper limits of what stars can become before collapsing into neutron stars or black holes.
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The Biggest Star Ever Found SHOCKS Astronomers — It Could TEAR EARTH Apart
Added:Now, see here, astronomers have recently discovered a neutron star, also known as a dead [music] star, spinning at an extraordinary speed of 716 times [music] per second. It makes it one of the fastest spinning stars we've ever found in the universe. And it's not just [music] about its speed. The surface of this neutron star is erupting with super powerful explosions almost non-stop.
But, before we dig deeper into the mystery of this neutron star, let's figure out what these stars really are.
They form from the remnants of massive stars that are at least eight times the mass of the sun. When such stars exhaust their nuclear fuel, they can no longer counteract the force of gravity [music] pulling their matter inward. This leads to the collapse of their cores, triggering a massive supernova explosion that blows away the outer layers of the star.
>> [music] >> What's left behind is an ultra-dense core. That's a neutron star. These stellar remnants are incredibly small, [music] typically just 12 mi wide. At the same time, they pack in more mass [music] than the sun.
The density of neutron stars is also overwhelming. [music] Imagine taking the mass of two suns and squeezing it into a sphere about the size of a city. A single teaspoon of neutron [music] star material would weigh around 10 million tons. That's the same as the combined weight of 85,000 [music] blue whales. Such an extraordinary density is what gives neutron stars their immensely powerful gravitational fields. When matter falls onto a neutron star, it [music] accelerates to speeds of millions of miles per hour before slamming into the surface. The energy released from such impacts is truly [music] astonishing.
Now, despite its name, inside a neutron star, there are not only neutrons. A few protons survived down there, too.
>> [music] >> Now, normally, protons repel each other since they have the same positive charge. But, in a neutron star, that crushing gravity forces them so close together that the strong nuclear force takes over. It pulls them toward the neutrons like they're all part of the same team.
Inside the star, things get stranger the deeper you go. Near the surface, neutrons clump into blobs, kind of like a neutron gnocchi.
A bit further down, these blobs link together into long chains, forming [music] what scientists call the spaghetti layer. I'm getting hungry. At even greater pressures, the spaghetti chains fuse side by side, creating flat sheets. Think neutron lasagna. Keep going any deeper, and the lasagna eventually breaks down [music] into a uniform mass. But even then, the structure isn't smooth. There are gaps, long tube-shaped voids that look a lot like penne pasta. So, inside a neutron star, you've got layers of gnocchi, spaghetti, lasagna, and penne pasta. And each of them represents the mind-bending results of physics under insane pressure. Okay, I'm definitely having Italian for lunch today.
Now, the recently discovered [music] neutron star is part of a binary system, located in a dense star cluster. This cluster is situated near the center [music] of the Milky Way galaxy, approximately 26,000 light-years from Earth, >> [music] >> in the direction of the Sagittarius constellation.
The record-breaking spin of the star is extraordinary. If we take a period of not a second, but a minute, it'll be over [music] 42,000 revolutions per minute. At the same time, the newbie ties with another neutron star which spins at the exact same speed. Such extreme rotation rates are rare and make these stars cosmic outliers in terms of behavior and properties.
Oh, wait. We can't but mention our neutron star's binary partner. It's a white dwarf, a dense remnant of a star similar in size to our sun. This white dwarf [music] is pretty fast, too. It orbits the neutron star once every 11 minutes. This makes the couple a binary with the shortest orbital period ever observed. [music] Imagine a stellar object zipping around its partner faster than the time it takes to prepare a cup of coffee. Yep, that's the kind of speed we're talking about here. [music] This tight rapid orbit shows how powerful gravitational forces are inside the system.
So, you might be wondering what makes neutron [music] stars spin so rapidly.
It's something called the conservation of angular momentum. Let me explain.
>> [music] >> When a massive star collapses into a neutron star, it shrinks dramatically.
Such a rapid compression [music] gives an instant boost to its spin. It's like an ice skater spinning [music] faster when they pull their arms inward.
And the smaller the star gets, the faster [music] it spins, which results in extreme rotation rates.
In binary systems like this one, neutron stars can achieve even [music] faster spin rates. Their trick is to steal matter from their companion stars. This process is called theft. No, accretion.
>> [music] >> The stolen matter carries that very angular momentum, which adds to the neutron star's rotation speed. The accreted [music] material can also build up on the neutron star's surface.
Eventually, it triggers powerful thermonuclear explosions. They release immense amounts of energy, temporarily making the neutron star shine up [music] to 100,000 times brighter than our sun.
It allows astronomers to study the intricate details [music] of these extreme environments.
NASA's X-ray instrument on board the International Space Station, officially called the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer, and [music] thankfully nicknamed NICER, observed 15 thermonuclear explosions on the surface of our neutron star between 2017 and 2021.
>> [music] >> One of those bursts displayed a unique pattern called thermonuclear burst oscillations. Those are highly asymmetric patches of brightness on the burning surface layers of accreting neutron stars. This pattern matched the spin rate of the neutron star and thus confirmed its extreme rotational speed.
But wait, [music] the best part is coming.
While neutron stars are already extreme, [music] there's another class of them that takes things to a whole new level, magnetars. [music] Now, magnetars are neutron stars with unimaginably strong magnetic fields, up to a thousand trillion times stronger than Earth's magnetic field. These fields set them apart from other neutron [music] stars. They can distort atoms in nearby objects, making life impossible anywhere near them. As for the energy density of [music] a magnetar's magnetic field, it's so high that it's 10,000 times greater than the [music] mass density of lead.
Magnetars also produce bursts of X-rays and gamma rays that are so powerful they can temporarily outshine entire [music] galaxies.
These bursts are often triggered by starquakes, violent shifts in the magnetar's crust caused by their own magnetic fields. [music] For example, a gamma ray burst from a magnetar in 2004 was so strong that it disrupted Earth's ionosphere.
It hit Earth and it was so intense that several satellites picked it up. The Swift [music] satellite, built specifically to detect gamma ray bursts from across the universe, didn't just detect the blast. It got hit with so much energy that its sensors got completely overloaded. And Swift wasn't even facing the burst. The energy was so strong it passed through the spacecraft and still overwhelmed its cameras.
If a magnetar was located as close to Earth as the moon, its magnetic field would erase all credit card data on the planet by wiping the magnetic stripes clean. Whoa, that's the level of power we're dealing with here.
Magnetars are extremely active but for a relatively short time. Their intense magnetic fields decay after about 10,000 years. After that, they stop emitting strong X-rays and gamma rays.
Astronomers think that there are at least 30 million inactive magnetars in the Milky Way galaxy alone. These silent cosmic relics are scattered all over the galaxy.
Neutron stars and magnetars serve as laboratories for extreme physics. They allow astronomers to have insights into the behavior of certain matter under conditions you can never replicate on Earth.
The incredible density of these [music] objects helps scientists figure out what happens when protons and electrons get compressed together [music] to form neutrons. This creates states of matter that don't exist anywhere else in the universe.
These violent explosions on neutron stars and magnetars also play a critical role in [music] the formation of heavy elements like gold and platinum. These elements get scattered all over the universe during these energetic events, eventually becoming parts of planets and stars >> [music] >> and you and me.
Oh, by the way, NASA's NICER instrument has played the key role in uncovering the mysteries of neutron stars. Its ability to detect X-rays with high precision allowed astronomers to study the rapid spin of the neutron star we've been talking about and the thermonuclear bursts that occur on its surface.
>> [music] >> So, what could be nicer than that?
>> What would it be like to live on a planet traveling around a star so huge that in comparison to it, our sun looks like a tiny speck of dust?
Well, you could find it out if you managed to visit a planet orbiting WOHG 64.
It's a red [music] supergiant, an enormous star dwelling in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a satellite galaxy located not too far away from our home Milky Way galaxy.
Red supergiants in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds provide an excellent opportunity to observationally test the current stellar evolution theory for massive stars.
WOH G64 is likely the largest star we have found so far.
It's a real heavyweight emitting an incredibly bright light.
To understand the sheer size of this mega star better, let's put it into perspective.
Compared to our star, the radius of WOH G64 is around 1,540 times bigger.
In other words, it's like comparing a tiny grain of sand to a basketball.
If we placed WOH G64 at the center of the solar system, the surface of this star would extend past the orbit of Jupiter, swallowing up Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter itself.
You see, the average radius of Jupiter's orbit is around 1,000 times the radius of the Sun.
As for Saturn, the radius of its orbit is around 2,000 times the radius of the Sun.
That's why WOH G64, with [music] its average radius being 1,500 times the radius of the Sun, fits right [music] in between. Oh, and if you spread out the star's dust envelope, it would cover a distance of about 1 light-year, >> [music] >> or 5.88 trillion miles.
The star is not only ginormous, but also immensely bright.
>> [music] >> In fact, it's one of the most luminous stars we know of.
Luminosity is the total amount of energy a star emits per unit of time.
And the light coming from WOH G64 is around 282,000 times brighter >> [music] >> than the light from our Sun.
But perhaps one of the most amazing features of WOH G64 is the dust envelope surrounding it.
In 2007, astronomers, with the help of the Very Large Telescope, discovered that WOH G64 was surrounded by a torus-shaped cloud.
It's so thick that to some extent it [music] obscures the star.
The dust envelope is made up of the material the star has expelled, and it contains between three to nine times the mass of the Sun.
The star we're talking about was discovered in the 1970s [music] by Bank Westerlund, Olander, and Hayden.
That's where the WOH in the name of the star comes from. It's an abbreviation made up of the first letters of the discoverers' names.
By the way, Westerlund also discovered another remarkable red supergiant, Westerlund 1-26. It was spotted in a massive star cluster called Westerlund 1 in the constellation of Ara.
But back to WOH G64. Scientists have noted that this star lies very close to [music] or even beyond the Hayashi limit. It is a theoretical constraint upon the maximum radius of a star for a given mass, [music] a condition where the inward force of gravity is matched by the outward pressure of the gas.
By now, the star WOH G64 has reached such an evolved state >> [music] >> that it can no longer hold onto its atmosphere because of super low density, high radiation pressure, and [music] relatively opaque products of thermonuclear fusion.
That's why its average mass loss is among the highest known to us so far.
It's unusually high even for a [music] red supergiant.
WOH G64 also shows an unexpected spectrum of nebular emissions.
The hot gas is rich in nitrogen and has a radial velocity [music] more positive than that of the star, which is quite an unusual phenomenon.
The star might have a potential companion, an O-type main sequence star.
If it turns out to be true, then WOH G64 will be classified as a binary star.
At the same time, so far, there have been no confirmations of this theory.
Partly because the intervening dust clouds make the examination of the star very difficult. In any case, OHG64 is [music] absolutely fascinating. Not only because of its huge size, but also because of its unbelievable luminosity and mysterious dust envelope. It's a great [music] example of how unexpected and amazing our universe can get.
Besides, >> [music] >> such outstanding large stars are undoubtedly an important astronomical observation.
The results of studies of such objects [music] correct the restrictions on the properties of stars within the framework of modern models. For testing the applicability of models, the exceptions to the rules are most valuable.
>> Hop on board. Hurry, we don't have much time. We're on [music] a cosmic journey to find the biggest star in the universe.
The first star we pass is our own sun.
By far, not the biggest one out there, but it's still massive. You could fit 1 million Earths inside it. That [music] means if you think of the sun like a basketball, Earth would be half the size of a pencil eraser.
If we [music] put all the planets on one side of a scale and the sun on the other, >> [music] >> the planets wouldn't stand a chance. The sun makes up 99.9% of all the mass in the entire solar system. Mass is basically how much stuff or matter [music] something is made from. And it's what you can thank for stars shining.
You see, the more matter in a star, the thicker and hotter its core becomes.
This starts a chain of chemical reactions. Hydrogen atoms get smashed into each other to form helium, releasing an incredible amount of energy. That's the star's light and heat. So, bigger stars also equal brighter [music] ones.
But with all those reactions going on, this shortens a star's lifespan. When it starts to run out of fuel, the star will enter the giant phase. It'll expand and turn red, which brings us back to the task at hand. The biggest star we'll find is likely to be on the edge of its life.
Switching on our hyperlight engines, we soon arrive at the Lumen 16 system.
Here, we'll find one of the smallest stars out there, a brown dwarf. Small here means about the size of Jupiter, but they're small for stars.
Brown dwarfs are also called failed stars because they don't have enough mass for those chemical reactions. That means they're not as bright, [music] but they're super dense. All the matter in them is packed together so tightly, they [music] weigh 80 times more than Jupiter, even being the same size.
Huh, and if you think that's something, just look [music] at a white dwarf. Even more tightly packed. This one here is Sirius B. It's also about the size of Jupiter, but it would weigh as much as the sun. It emits a dim white light.
Once it runs out of gas, it'll turn red and cool down.
Now let's fly closer to its giant neighbor, Sirius A.
You easily see this star from Earth. No telescope needed. Twice heavier and more than 1 and 1/2 times wider than our sun, it's the brightest star in our night sky.
Now we fly 550 light-years away from Earth to the constellation Cassiopeia.
Almost 100 years ago, a cosmic explosion happened here.
It expanded the atmosphere of the star Gamma Cassiopeia and some gases were thrown into space.
After that, it became the brightest star in the constellation. It's 10 times wider than our sun.
On to the famous North Star. Funny enough, different stars have had this title over the years, and more will take it in the future. That's because Earth's pole star changes every 26,000 years.
Imagine our planet like a spinning top.
The northern pole will shift around in a little circle, pointing at different stars to the true north.
The current one is a supergiant 37 times wider and five times heavier than our sun.
It's easy to find in the night sky. It's on the very tip of the Little Dipper's handle.
Get ready now. We're setting off for the eye of the storm, the center of our Milky Way galaxy. To see the next star, we need to switch to infrared mode. This pistol star is hiding from us in space dust.
>> [music] >> In just 20 seconds, it emits as much light as our home star does in an entire year. And its size is jaw-dropping. It's 420 times wider than the sun, but it's still not the most luminous star known to humanity.
That would be a blue supergiant in the constellation Triangulum. Meet B416.
It's almost 10 million times brighter than the sun.
But the brighter a star, the faster it burns up all its fuel and the shorter its life. Compared with a red dwarf that barely glows and burns fuel much more slowly, its life will be hundreds of thousands of times shorter.
3,400 light-years from Earth, there's one of the rarest celestial bodies in the universe. It's a yellow hypergiant called Rho Cassiopeiae.
Among the countless stars in our galaxy, there are only a couple dozen of these.
And even though this star is extremely far away from our planet, you can still see it in the sky without needing a telescope.
That's because it's 300,000 times brighter than our [music] sun.
It also helps that the thing is 900 times wider than our home star, too. And its color tells us that its fuel reserves will last for a long time.
When Rho Cassiopeia starts to turn red and expand, it'll be one of the biggest stars in the entire universe.
Now, we move to the constellation Orion.
The star is in our sights, Betelgeuse, [music] one of the largest ones visible to the unaided eye. 700 times the size of our sun. If it took our star's place, its surface would touch the asteroid belt.
That's between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. It would engulf the four inner planets, Earth included.
But this star has astronomers very excited. They predict [music] Betelgeuse will explode in a fantastic celestial show in the next 10,000 years. It'll be the greatest astronomical event of all time, because we'll be able to observe a supernova at a close, but safe enough distance.
>> [music] >> The exploding star will shine as bright as a half moon. It'll be visible in the daytime sky for a year, and at night [music] for several more.
Now, we venture to stars that exceed the sun's width 1,000 times. Mu Cephei is a hypergiant boasting the title of the reddest known star.
Its color tells us that the fuel gauge is getting closer and closer to empty.
But it's still so big that it could hold a billion suns in it. And because of its mass, this star will eventually become a supernova or even a black hole.
Let's take a trip of almost 4,000 light-years from home. Here it is, a red supergiant called VY Canis Majoris.
It's one of the biggest and brightest stars of the Milky Way.
It could fit 3 billion suns. [music] And even though it's so huge, this thing is surprisingly light, only 17 weights of the sun. In the context of celestial bodies, you could call this star an inflated [music] balloon.
In the next 100,000 years, VY Canis Majoris will explode in a hypernova.
Gamma radiation will destroy all life in the local part of the universe, but this star is so far from our solar system that it wouldn't mean any harm to us.
If we placed MY Cephei in the center of our solar system, it would bulge all the way out to Saturn's orbit. To remind you just how far away Saturn is, think of it this way. It takes the Sun's light 8 minutes to reach Earth. To get to Saturn, it takes well over an hour.
Compared to this massive star, the Sun is just a grain of sand.
It's one of the most luminous [music] and reddest stars in our universe. The bigger and redder the star, the closer it is to its end. So, we're not looking at just a titan of the universe, but also one of the oldest celestial bodies out there.
The second biggest star in the universe is [music] UY Scuti. It's about 1.5 billion miles wide, 16 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
This is a pulsating [music] variable star. It's brightness changes about every 2 years.
UY Scuti is a record breaker in fuel combustion per year.
Scientists expect it to [music] evolve back to hotter temperatures like a yellow giant.
Our journey [music] is coming to an end.
Before us, we behold Stephenson 2-18.
>> [music] >> It takes 20,000 years for light from this star to reach Earth.
It's hard not to see this red supergiant on our tiny terrestrial home.
It's 2,150 times wider than our Sun.
We'd need 10 billion suns to fill its volume. For comparison, the average beach contains only about 5 billion grains of sand.
It happened long, long ago and far, far away from our planet, all the way across the universe. A powerful burst of gamma radiation lasted a mere half second, but it released an enormous amount of energy. It was more than our sun would produce in 10 billion years.
This brief flash lit up the whole sky.
Afterward, a much softer and more long-lasting glow replaced it.
Watching this fading light, astronomers on Earth noticed a strange infrared signal. It was invisible to the human eye, but could be perceived as heat.
After examining the phenomenon with x-ray, radio, optical, and infrared waves, the astrophysics team made a shocking conclusion. It seemed that people had finally seen a newborn magnetar for the first time ever.
This magnetar was likely formed after two neutron stars had merged. It resulted in a kilonova, one of the brightest and largest stellar blasts.
Its light finally reached our planet on May 22nd, 2020.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself. How about we first figure out what these novas, magnetars, and neutron stars are?
Imagine a massive star, at least five times the mass of our sun, reaching the end of its life. It might be because it's run out of nuclear fuel.
If it happens, the star starts to cool off. The pressure inside drops, and the gravity starts to squeeze inward. And then, more than a million times the mass of our planet collapses within 15 seconds. It happens so fast that an enormous shock wave causes the outer part of the star to blow up. It produces a blinding burst of light. This powerful blast is called a supernova.
What's left behind is an incredibly dense core with a huge cloud of hot gas called a nebula expanding around it.
If the star has been massive enough, more than 10 times the size of the sun, it's likely to turn into a black hole.
By the way, [music] when a star similar in size to our sun runs out of its fuel, it turns into a white dwarf.
It expels most of its outer material and only the star's hot core remains intact.
Such a core usually gets heated up to 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
A white dwarf is just a bit bigger than our planet, but half as massive as the sun.
In other words, these stars [music] are some of the densest objects in the universe. A white dwarf >> [music] >> can be 200,000 times denser than the Earth.
It usually takes a white dwarf over [music] a billion years to cool down.
Under certain conditions, such a star can erupt and this [music] event is called a nova.
It's way less bright than a supernova or even a kilonova, which occurs when two neutron stars or [music] a neutron star and a black hole merge into each other.
Anyway, back to a supernova.
If a star is large, but not massive enough to turn into a black hole, it turns into a neutron star.
It's basically a giant nucleus, the central part of an atom.
These stars are mostly made up of neutrons and are rarely larger than 20 miles across.
For comparison, our sun is almost 865,000 miles across, which is 109 Earths put side to side.
But, don't let this relatively tiny size fool you.
Any neutron star is at least 1 and a half times heavier than our sun and has an intense magnetic field. If you scooped just a teaspoon of this star's insides, this matter would weigh more than a billion tons. That's so dense that it makes neutron stars some of the most extreme objects people know about.
The next stop is the black hole itself.
When two neutron stars merge, they most often create a new, much heavier one.
Within milliseconds or even less, this star collapses into a black hole.
But the astronomers who examined the flash of light recorded [music] in March think there might be another outcome.
They're almost sure they saw something never observed before, the birth of a magnetar.
That's an exotic form of a neutron star with an ultra-strong magnetic field.
It's 1,000 trillion times stronger than our planet's.
This field is also so powerful, it heats the star's surface up to 18 million degrees Fahrenheit.
Neutron stars are weird and scary. Their interior is a never-ending dance of particles [music] in extreme conditions.
It results in unexpected and odd structures.
For example, closer to the surface, hundreds of neutrons [music] form blobs.
Those are not unlike some weird kind of space mochi.
They mold into long chains once you go [music] deeper.
Not that you'd ever be able to explore a neutron star from up close.
These long chains [music] look like a layer of spaghetti.
Underneath, there's a region of [music] even more extreme pressures.
That's where our spaghetti turns into lasagna sheets, since we've started on this pasta comparison.
Finally, under all these layers, even lasagna loses its form and becomes a shapeless mass.
But even in this mass, there are some tube-shaped gaps. And don't they look like ziti?
Another thing about neutron stars, they're spinning non-stop. And this spinning is fast, more than several hundred times per second. The fastest spinning neutron star makes more than 700 turns per second. That's 42,000 times per minute.
Neutron stars also have incredibly strong magnetic fields. That's why if there was life on a neutron star, it would be two-dimensional.
The star's [music] gravity is so powerful, it literally flatten anything on its surface.
And if such a star had an atmosphere, it wouldn't spread up further than a foot or so above the surface.
But if neutron stars are bizarre and spooky, magnetars are too. Perhaps even more so.
Thanks to their incredible magnetic pull, these stars would win in the strongest magnetic field competition, hands down.
To put it simply, magnetars are the most powerful magnets in the universe.
Their magnetic fields can seriously mess with the neighborhood. Atoms unlucky enough to get close to such a star get stretched into pencil-thin lines. If you somehow found yourself several hundred miles away from a magnetar, it would end badly for you.
The magnetic field would first disrupt your bioelectricity.
It means that your nerve impulses wouldn't work anymore. But that's not all. Even your molecules would change under the influence of the star's field.
In the end, you'd kind of vanish.
If a magnetar flew within 100,000 miles from our planet, it wipe out the data on every single credit card in the world.
Astronomers have seen magnetars before, but they've never witnessed one getting born.
After the light was first detected, >> [music] >> scientists understood something didn't add up. They compared different kinds of observations. It turned [music] out that the light spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope was 10 times brighter than predicted.
This information made the scientists think outside [music] the box.
They realized an entirely new phenomenon was going on.
The team had several ideas that could explain the bizarre brightness, but the most probable one was also the most eccentric. [music] Before, scientists thought magnetars only appeared after massive stars exploded and left [music] behind super magnetized neutron stars.
But now, they suppose a small number of magnetars [music] may actually appear in a more peaceful way after two neutron stars merge.
Scientists only know about no more than 10 magnetars in our home Milky Way galaxy.
They don't know for sure what makes these stars so terrifyingly magnetic.
Whatever it is, magnetars don't seem to last long. After 10,000 years or so, they return to a more familiar neutron star state. They're still extremely magnetic, super dense, but not so extreme.
The closest magnetar people know about is 9,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation [music] Carina.
Astronomers think the original star was 30 to 40 times the mass of the Sun, which is a really big one.
Another magnetar is 18,000 light years away from our planet. It suddenly started to burst in 2002.
Around 80 bursts were recorded within a 4-hour window.
After that, the magnetar has never been active again.
By the way, the researchers were also immensely excited [music] about seeing a kilonova. It occurred when the two neutron stars supposedly merged.
A kilonova is [music] more than 1,000 times brighter than a typical nova.
Before, astronomers had only one confirmed and examined event of the kind. But, the kilonova recorded in March looked different, and it might allow scientists to explore the diversity they knew nothing about.
Most of those twinkling dots scattered across the night sky seem unreachable.
But, one of them is Betelgeuse, [music] a star so enormous and nearby that you can see it with the naked eye.
To find it, [music] locate the first three big dots in the Orion's Belt.
A reddish star to the left [music] is Betelgeuse.
It's one of the brightest stars we can see from Earth.
And it's just 640 [music] light-years away. No big deal.
Betelgeuse has a blue-white [music] O-type star, which is one of the hottest types to exist.
Betelgeuse [music] was scorching hot, reaching temperatures of about 90,000° F.
Although that was back in the day. Now, it's an [music] elderly star, and it cooled down to just 5,800°.
You know, vacation weather.
Blue-white stars are absolutely massive and burn incredibly bright [music] because they have loads of hydrogen fuel.
But, they [music] have a price to pay for this glory. They burn through their fuel super quickly. As they age, they transform [music] into red giants.
This is exactly what happened to Betelgeuse.
It burned through its [music] hydrogen and started burning helium instead.
This caused its outer layers to puff up like a balloon, turning it into a red supergiant and making it one of the largest stars out there.
Now, it's stretching over 700 million miles in diameter.
Now, it's about a thousand times bigger than our sun.
If Betelgeuse replaced it, it would swallow up Mercury, Venus, Earth, [music] Mars, even Jupiter. And its atmosphere would almost reach Saturn.
But something strange has been going on.
Betelgeuse is spinning way faster than it should for a star of its size.
Huge stars like Betelgeuse are expected to rotate slowly.
But it suddenly started spinning at a rate of about 3 miles per second.
Thanks [music] to powerful radio telescopes, Betelgeuse's orange-red surface can be seen in detail.
That's how we learned that it often changes its brightness.
>> [music] >> Sometimes, Betelgeuse shines super brightly and then gets very dim.
This happens about every 400 days.
And recently, a telescope called Alma, which is made up of many antennas working together as one, [music] showed that Betelgeuse's surface seems to be moving unevenly.
It's like one side is coming towards us while the other is moving away.
But all of it might be a trick of light.
Betelgeuse isn't as smooth as our sun.
Instead, it's super chunky. Its surface is like a boiling cauldron.
It's bubbling [music] and churning incredibly fiercely.
Imagine giant plumes of hot gas erupting from its core, reaching the surface and then vanishing back inside. And these bubbles are bigger not only than the sun, but Earth's entire orbit around the sun.
These bubbles also rise and fall super quickly, even faster than a spacecraft.
[music] And maybe this tricks our telescopes into seeing it spin faster than it really does.
Some astronomers also think that Betelgeuse could have swallowed up another star, and this gave it a spin boost. But these are all just theories.
Things got even more complicated when Betelgeuse dimmed once again, this time in a pretty unexpected way.
What's interesting, it was discovered using a weather satellite. A regular telescope had a hard time seeing Betelgeuse clearly because of Earth's atmosphere.
So, they used a satellite that normally watches Earth's weather, but can also take pictures of space.
As we mentioned, it usually brightens and dims about every 400 days, but recently it suddenly dimmed by 2.5 times more than ever before.
This event got the name the great dimming.
>> [music] >> The first theory said that Betelgeuse cooled down and sneezed out a bunch of material, creating a massive dust cloud.
This cloud [music] blocked the view of the star, making it look much fainter than usual.
They also noticed something strange [music] happening to that dust. It started behaving differently, which might be a sign that something deep inside the [music] star was causing trouble.
Betelgeuse's brightening and dimming cycle now happens faster [music] in just 200 days instead of 400.
And to add to the mystery, in the spring of 2023, >> [music] >> it started shining even brighter than it normally does at its peak.
Why is this frightening?
>> [music] >> Because Betelgeuse might be preparing for its grand finale, and this wouldn't be very good for Earth.
We might [music] be on the verge of a supernova.
When massive stars like Betelgeuse run out of fuel in [music] their cores, they start burning different elements like carbon, oxygen, and silicon.
Eventually, they end up with iron in their cores. At that moment, everything changes.
Adding helium to iron doesn't produce energy like other reactions do. Instead, it sucks up energy. This [music] causes the star's core to collapse, leading to what's called a core-collapse supernova.
[music] A spectacular, breathtaking show.
Supernovas are so bright that they can outshine entire [music] galaxies.
But a Betelgeuse supernova would be special. Because it's relatively [music] close to us, it would be so bright that we could see it even during the day.
When it happens, Betelgeuse will shine as brightly [music] as a full moon. But all that light will be concentrated in one point.
>> [music] >> For about 2 months, it will be so bright that you could read a book just from the light of the supernova, even if you turned off all the city lights and had [music] a clear sky.
The idea of witnessing Betelgeuse explode as a supernova is truly thrilling.
After all, the last time a star went supernova in our galaxy was way back in the time of Johannes Kepler, more than four centuries ago.
That event, known as the SN 1604 or [music] Kepler supernova, dazzled the sky for weeks. But don't get too excited yet.
We're not sure [music] when exactly it'll happen.
One study says that the star might be in its carbon-burning phase. [music] If we're near the end of that stage, then Betelgeuse might blow up very soon, during the next tens of years.
But it's nearly impossible to determine, because [music] during that last phase, the star barely changes at all.
Even though Betelgeuse is [music] close enough for us to study its surface, we can't peek inside its core to see what's really happening with it.
We might as well be at the beginning of the carbon burning phase, and in that case, we might have to wait a thousand more years before that cool supernova.
Another study [music] says that Betelgeuse might have less than 300 years of fuel left in its core.
They say that Betelgeuse is known to expand and contract [music] regularly, and its pulsation pattern hints that Betelgeuse is much larger than we previously thought.
This would suggest [music] that the star is further along in its life cycle and closer to going supernova.
Other guesses come from observations of similar stars.
For example, a star called VY Canis Majoris in our galaxy is thought to be closer to going supernova than Betelgeuse, and it's been dimming steadily over the past century, unlike the relatively stable Betelgeuse.
If Betelgeuse was about to go supernova, it would dim steadily and very quickly.
Also, historical records suggest that about 2,000 years ago, people saw Betelgeuse as yellow, not red. If that's the case, then we might be in its early last days after all.
In other words, we have no idea whether it will go supernova tomorrow or in a thousand years. We just got to wait and see.
But let's say it goes supernova tomorrow. What happens to us then?
The 1987 supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud showed that the effects from the supernova might [music] be so strong, we can sense it even from very far distances.
The Large Magellanic Cloud is almost 170,000 [music] light years away, and we still detected the radiation.
It's kind of hard to say exactly what the [music] danger zone is. A rough estimate could be around 100 light years.
Luckily, Betelgeuse won't pose [music] any danger to humans. It's hundreds of light years away, and its supernova won't influence us in [music] any way.
We'll be able to enjoy its supernova beauty without any harm.
>> Buckle up, [music] fellow space enthusiasts, because we're about to uncover the celestial secrets that have been unveiled this year.
From giant stars to organic molecules, this year is going great for astronomers. So, let's catch up on all the excitement you [music] might have missed in 2023.
First of all, we've discovered some real astral monsters. [music] Imagine looking up at the night sky and seeing stars that are not just big, but absolutely enormous.
Scientists have been using a special telescope called the James Webb [music] Space Telescope to explore the early days of the universe.
And during their adventure, scientists stumbled upon [music] ancient stars that are 10,000 times bigger than our sun.
Yes, you heard it right, 10,000 times.
These giants of the stellar world were some of the very first stars ever to form in the universe billions of years ago.
Imagine a globular cluster as a massive cosmic crew, where each group consists of a whopping 100,000 to 1 million members.
>> [music] >> These clusters are like giant family gatherings with all the stars being born around the same time.
But what makes these newly discovered monsters so special? Well, their cores, or their central parts, are way hotter than what we see in stars today.
Scientists think that this intense heat might be due to a lot of hydrogen burning at really high temperatures.
It's like they're having a galactic barbecue party.
Something fascinating happens in these globular clusters. The smaller stars crash into the super massive ones and gain extra energy, like a power up.
But here's the twist. Most of these clusters are now getting old, and the supermassive stars disappeared a long time ago.
We can only see hints of their existence in the clusters we observe today.
Scientists study them by just the mysterious traces of their grand presence.
The discovery of these monster stars is incredibly important for our understanding of the universe.
If scientists can gather more evidence to confirm their existence, it would be a major breakthrough. [music] It would help us learn more about globular clusters and how supermassive stars form in general.
But, that was only the first fascinating discovery of 2023.
Although, the next one is kind of sad.
You know those beautiful rings that make Saturn look so fancy?
Well, guess what? They might disappear in the not-so-distant future, astronomically speaking.
NASA's Cassini mission, which explored Saturn from 2004 to 2017, gathered some fascinating data about the rings.
During Cassini's grand finale, when it did some cool maneuvers between Saturn, >> [music] >> scientists noticed something surprising.
The rings were losing a lot of mass every [music] second.
Tons of it. That means this magnificent halo will only stick around for a few hundred million more years, at most.
That may seem like a long time for humans, [music] but in the grand scheme of the universe, it's just a blink of an eye.
The important thing is that we've learned that huge rings like Saturn's don't last forever. They eventually fade away.
Oh, well, at least you and I personally won't catch this moment.
Scientists have a fun theory about what will happen when Saturn's rings disappear.
They think that the other ice and gas giants in our solar system, like Uranus and Jupiter, might have once had massive rings, too.
But, over time, those rings wore down and became more like the thin wispy bands of asteroids like what Uranus has now.
Saturn's rings are mostly made of ice, but they also have a sprinkling of rocky dust.
This dust comes from asteroids and teeny tiny meteoroids crashing into the celestial objects and breaking apart.
It's like a snowstorm of icy particles and space debris.
The research also revealed that Saturn's rings appeared long after the planet itself formed.
They were still forming when dinosaurs roam the Earth.
So, in terms of astronomical age, they're actually quite [music] young, only a few hundred million years old.
This discovery has got scientists all excited because it means something dramatic happened in Saturn's past to create this stunning icy disk.
But, this is a mystery waiting to be solved.
Scientists want to figure [music] out what exactly caused the rings to form and why they have such a breathtaking structure.
Let's hope they'll figure [music] it out.
But, moving on to something more optimistic, we have another exciting space news.
>> [music] >> Recently, scientists have been studying one of the most distant galaxies in the universe and they found something amazing.
Organic molecules.
The galaxy in question has a long name SPT041847.
It's over 12 billion light-years away from our little blue planet.
Can you even imagine that distance?
It's the farthest galaxy ever known where complex organic molecules have been found.
That's why looking at this galaxy is like looking at something from when the universe was just a baby.
We have no idea what this galaxy looks like now.
The light that has reached us is what it looked like when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old.
Imagine being able to see things from so far in the past.
So, what they found is something with a very complicated name. A polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecule or simply PAH molecule.
You might be wondering, what in the world is that? Well, guess what? You can actually find these molecules right here on our planet.
They can be in things like the smoke from car engines or even forest fires.
PAH molecules are made up of chains of carbon atoms. And here's the super cool part. They're considered the basic building blocks for life.
Imagine that. Life's building blocks.
Those tiny carbon chains being discovered in a galaxy that's so far away.
That's like finding a needle in a haystack.
They also found out that gas floating around in that galaxy is filled with heavy elements.
That's a big deal because it suggests that many stars have come and gone there, creating all these amazing elements. This means that this galaxy can be potentially rich in many other elements, too.
This discovery opens up a world of possibilities and raises so many exciting questions.
How did these molecules form in a galaxy so distant? [music] And since we're looking into the past, what could have happened to these organic molecules during this time?
Could they have evolved into life?
We're only scratching the surface of the incredible things waiting to be uncovered.
By the way, if it's so far, how did scientists even manage to discover something like that?
Well, they had the instrument called the James Webb Space Telescope.
This fancy telescope was recently launched and has superpowers when it comes to observing the universe.
So, when the scientists were studying this faraway galaxy, they had a little problem.
The light coming from those distant objects was so faint that it was hard to see or detect.
But guess what? They had a brilliant idea to solve this.
They used something called gravitational lensing, which is like a special power of nature's magnifying glass.
Imagine two galaxies lining up perfectly, just like in a photo shoot.
The light from the faraway galaxy, the background one, travels towards us.
But on its journey, it passes [music] through the foreground galaxy, which is like a giant space lens.
And guess what? The foreground galaxy's gravity bends the light, just like a magnifying glass, making it bigger and brighter.
It's like having a cosmic zoom lens for our telescopes.
This bending of light creates a super cool shape called an Einstein ring.
It's like a halo or a ring of light surrounding the foreground galaxy.
Basically, a nature's way of showing off its magical powers.
With gravitational lensing and these beautiful Einstein rings, scientists can see distant objects more clearly and learn amazing things about the universe.
And thanks to all that, they managed to uncover the hidden chemical interactions from the early galaxies.
Isn't that incredible?
The scientists are beyond excited about this discovery. They never expected to find such complex organic molecules in a galaxy that's incredibly distant.
Who knows? Maybe this is just the beginning of a thrilling cosmic journey.
So, keep your eyes on the stars, fellow space explorers.
The universe is full of surprises, and who knows what other mind-blowing discoveries await us out there?
Let's hope we'll learn even more in the future.
Check out this interstellar showstopper.
Shadows doing a little dance in space have spilled the beans on a mind-boggling secret about our solar system's origins.
There's a star called TW Hydrae that's playing host to some mischievous discs that are out of sync, spinning at slightly wonky angles.
But what's causing this celestial chaos?
Well, it seems like a bunch of baby planets are misbehaving, tugging at the discs with their gravity and throwing everything off balance.
Hold on tight because things are about to get even more interesting. This star is a real newbie in the cosmic neighborhood at just 8 million years old. Yep, that's practically a cosmic toddler compared to the ancient sun, which has been around for a whopping [music] 4.6 billion years.
This new star hasn't even started its hydrogen-burning season yet.
It's still in the process of growing and compacting under its own gravitational pull.
Think of it as the sun's younger doppelganger.
Here's the lowdown on how stars like TW Hydrae get their groove [music] on. They gather cosmic dust and gas from their surroundings, which forms a swirling disc around them. This disc is like a cosmic buffet for planet formation.
[music] Little specs of matter come together, forming bigger and bigger clumps that eventually collide and grow into full-fledged planets.
Since they're born from a flat disc, these planets usually end up orbiting their star in a neat, flat plane.
Now, our new star has struck gold with its unique orientation.
We're lucky enough to have a front-row seat to this cosmic construction site because we can see the disc face-on.
Guess what?
It looks a lot like our solar system.
This gives us a chance to uncover some juicy secrets about our own planetary origins.
Back in 2017, eagle-eyed astronomers noticed a shadow making its way around this new star's disk.
It completed a full rotation every 16 years.
Initially, they thought this shadow might be evidence of a sneaky young planet forming within the disk, causing parts of it to wobble in different directions. Fast forward to 2021, and [music] things took an unexpected twist.
The shadow did something totally unexpected, leaving everyone scratching their heads.
Hold your horses, though.
The savvy team of astronomers didn't give up [music] easily.
They put their thinking caps on and came up with a few possible explanations.
After extensive modeling, they hit the jackpot.
It turns out not just one, >> [music] >> but two wobbly disks were at play, casting shadows on a third outer disk.
This suggests the existence of a second young planet, making it a cosmic double [music] feature.
Imagine these two planets zooming around, one trying to outpace the other like a pair of racing cars.
The data suggests that the first disk [music] is about five to six astronomical units from the star, while the second disk is around six to seven astronomical units away. For reference, our mighty Jupiter orbits the Sun at a distance of 5.2 astronomical units.
So, it's [music] like a cosmic game of tag with the planets influencing each other's orbits. As these planetary misfits go about their orbits, their gravitational interplay causes the disks to tilt slightly with respect to one [music] another.
This creates shadows that dim the outer regions of the disk.
Oh, and by the way, this totally matches our own solar system vibe. Why? Because some of the planets in our own solar system are rebels, too, and have orbital inclinations that vary by up to 7°. I'm looking at you, Mercury. Or a whopping 17° if you count our dear friend Pluto.
Who knows?
>> [music] >> If we continue researching this new star, it might just spill the beans on how our own solar system has got its funky orbital inclinations.
How exactly do we define our solar system, though? It's like a celestial neighborhood with eight funky [music] planets happily orbiting our sun.
In order of proximity to the sun, we have Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, [music] and Neptune. Oh, and we can't forget Pluto, our little dwarf planet friend who used to be part of the planet club. Our solar system is way more than just the sum of its planets. It's like a fantastical [music] mashup of asteroids, comets, stars, moons, and a whole bunch of other spacey stuff that [music] makes our cosmic home truly enchanting.
Contrary to popular belief, the hottest planet isn't the one getting all cozy next to the sun.
Nope.
It's Venus, the second closest planet.
How come, you might ask?
Well, Venus is scorching because it has an ultra-thick atmosphere. It's basically like it's wearing a hundred layers of sweaters. When sunlight pierces through this super-dense atmosphere, it turns Venus into a fiery furnace.
We've also got some rocks on Earth that are like interplanetary tourists from Mars. Can you believe it? Scientists have found these rocks here, and they're chock-full of the same gassy goodness found on the red planet. How did they get here?
The most plausible scenario is that Mars sent a souvenir package through an asteroid crash or volcanic fireworks show.
Our planet is also the ultimate chemistry wiz.
Sure, other planets have bits and pieces of the elements we have, but we've got the whole shebang.
Iron, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, magnesium, sodium, nickel, calcium, aluminum. If you can name it, we most likely have it here somewhere. Other planets are like, "Hey, we're mostly rock with helium and hydrogen." But we're here with our unique blend of interstellar awesomeness.
Jupiter, however, the heavyweight champ of our solar system, has a never-ending party happening in its atmosphere.
It's called the Great Red Spot, and it's been swirling with hurricane-like intensity for more than 300 years.
This stormy event boasts extremely powerful winds, reaching a blazing 270 mph.
Oh, and by the way, this colossal storm is more than twice the size of our entire Earth.
Neptune, on the other hand, knows how to make an entrance.
It's got the fastest wind speeds in the solar system, zipping around at more than 1,200 mph.
Just like Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune actually produces more energy than it gets from the Sun. As it turns out, Neptune's energy comes from its core, and that's [music] what powers its super-duper strong winds on the surface.
Now, you might be wondering, how does Neptune manage to keep all that energy to itself? Well, it's all thanks to a special blanket of methane gas, which acts like a cosmic snuggie.
This snuggie, or rather greenhouse gas, traps the heat and keeps it cozy on the planet. If Neptune were a bit more like Uranus, which is a bit of a slacker in the energy department, all that heat would have gone on a space vacation ages ago.
Despite the chilly temperatures, Neptune doesn't let it bring down its funky style.
It radiates a whopping [music] 2.7 times more heat than it receives from the Sun.
It's like Neptune saying, "Hey Sun, you're cool, but I've got enough heat to make my winds wild and crazy."
Space isn't as far away as you might imagine.
The Karman line, which is approximately 62 miles above Earth, is like the official starting point of space.
If you could drive your car straight up into the sky, you'd actually reach that mark in less than an hour.
That's even quicker than some people's daily commute.
As it turns out, our solar system is actually already halfway through its estimated life cycle.
Scientists estimate that our solar system is around 4.6 billion years old, and it's expected to keep going strong for another 5 billion years. We've still got a lot of time left in this celestial ride.
In the meantime, the Sun, our fiery superstar, will keep trying to pull the planets towards it. Talk about being clingy.
Gravity on the Sun is so powerful that it's constantly exerting its pull. But don't worry, the planets are not just passive participants. [music] They're like determined tug-of-war players, pulling in the opposite direction and keeping a fine balance. As a result, the planets end up kind of floating in the middle.
It's no wonder the Sun has so much power around here. The mass of the Sun is mind-blowingly huge.
In fact, the Sun's mass is around 330,000 times that of our beloved Earth.
And get this, it accounts for over 99% of the total mass in our solar system.
>> Stargazers, come up here cuz I have exciting news.
Astronomers have just completed the full mapping of two pairs of stars outside our Milky Way galaxy that are chowing down on their stellar neighbors.
Not only does it give us a better understanding of stars in general, but it can also help us measure [music] distance in the night sky.
Did you know that more than half of the stars in our Milky Way are paired?
And while it's unlikely that other galaxies have a significant number of binary stars, too, they're usually [music] too faint to see.
But these so-called symbiotic stars, >> [music] >> where one star consumes the other, are extremely bright and easier to observe.
And, according to scientists, measuring the orbits of these symbiotic star [music] systems is an essential step towards learning whether other galaxies create binary stars like those in our Milky Way.
Now, let's get down to the nitty-gritty.
A pair of stars may be born together, but due to their masses, they age differently.
The more massive one burns through its material faster, reaching the end of its lifetime first, and leaves behind a compact white dwarf.
White dwarfs are small and dim, >> [music] >> but can pack the mass of the sun into an object the size of Earth.
If close enough, their gravity can pull material from their companion, creating a signal that astronomers can identify from far away.
Draco C-1 and Lin 358 are the symbiotic stars that have been fully mapped.
The stars [music] in Draco C-1 take roughly three Earth years to orbit one another, while Lin 358's components take just over two.
These are the first full orbital measurements of any symbiotic star system [music] outside the Milky Way.
The new measurements will help astronomers better understand star formations in other galaxies.
In some symbiotic stars, the white dwarf can slurp enough material from its companion that it explodes in a supernova.
These supernovae are incredibly bright and can be seen across the universe.
They all start out with the same brightness for a nearby observer, making them like a sort of standard candle for measuring the universe.
While Draco C-1 and Lin 358 are unlikely to explode as supernovae anytime soon, understanding how they work can provide us with a better understanding [music] of how these standard candles evolve.
If you're here to complete your knowledge of weird stars in the universe, don't be disappointed. We're not finished just yet.
Have you ever wondered about the biggest stars in the universe?
Scientists [music] have recently discovered a gigantic star called UY Scuti.
This bad boy is located about 9,500 [music] light-years away from Earth and is truly out of this world.
It's about [music] 1,700 times larger than our sun, which means if it were in our solar system, it would reach past Jupiter's [music] orbit.
There's more. UY Scuti isn't just massive, it's also super bright.
>> [music] >> It's what scientists call a red supergiant, and it shines with a brightness of about 340,000 times that of our sun.
If you're thinking about getting a tan from [music] this star, think again though. It's way too far away for that.
How does a star like UY Scuti even form, you might wonder. Well, it starts out like any other star. A cloud of gas and dust collapses under its gravity and starts [music] to heat up.
Eventually, the temperature becomes hot enough in the core of the cloud to ignite nuclear fusion, and a star is born.
But, UY Scuti [music] didn't stop there.
It kept devouring more and more gas and dust, growing larger and larger.
This process [music] continued until it became the giant we know today.
As fascinating as UY Scuti is, it's not the only big star out there.
There are others, like [music] VY Canis Majoris, which was once thought to be the biggest star, until UY Scuti stole the show.
VY Canis Majoris is still [music] a force to be reckoned with though. It's about 1,400 times larger than our sun, and located about 5,000 [music] light-years away from us.
But, here's the kicker. Stars like UY Scuti and VY Canis Majoris aren't even [music] the biggest things in the universe, not by a long shot.
There are objects called hypergiants that make these stars look like ants in comparison.
One such hypergiant [music] is Stephenson 2-18, located about 20,000 light-years away. It's about 2,150 times larger than our sun, and shines with the brightness of 7 million suns.
And just when you thought things [music] couldn't get any crazier, there's a mysterious object called the Great Attractor that's pulling everything in our local group of galaxies towards it.
We don't know what it is or what's causing it, but one theory [music] is that it's a massive cluster of hypergiants. We'd be minuscule in comparison. [music] The next star is so metal, it's practically headbanging all the time.
Jokes aside, scientists have discovered a star that's called a heavy metal subdwarf. Now, that's a band name.
It's a type of star that's seriously heavy metal. This star has more metal in its composition than any other star we've seen before. Such stars are said to contain metal elements like iron, nickel, and chromium.
This heavy metal subdwarf has about 10,000 times more iron than our sun.
In their discovery, astronomers used a technique called spectroscopy, which involves analyzing the light that comes from the star to determine what elements it's made of. By looking at the spectrum of light, scientists were able [music] to see that this star had an unusual amount of metal in its composition.
There's more. This heavy metal [music] subdwarf isn't just a regular star with a lot of metal.
It's also really weird in other ways.
For one thing, [music] it's smaller and cooler than our sun. And for another, it's really old. We're talking about a star that's been around for almost as long [music] as the universe itself.
What does this all mean? Well, scientists [music] are hoping that by studying this heavy metal subdwarf, they can learn more about the early universe.
Since this star is so old that it was around when the universe [music] was just beginning to form. It's seen a lot of stuff.
By studying its [music] composition and characteristics, scientists can get a better understanding of what the universe was like in its early days.
This next star is one of the coolest things in outer space. Her name is Vega, [music] and it's one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
Some recognize it as the shiny point of light in the constellation Lyra. And get this, it's [music] only about 25 light-years away from us, which in astronomical terms is practically next door.
Scientists [music] have been studying Vega for a long time, and they've learned some pretty interesting things.
For starters, Vega is a young star, only a few hundred million years old. That might sound like a long time, but compared to our sun, which is around 4.6 billion years old, Vega is practically a newborn.
Vega is also a very hot star with a surface temperature of around 17,000° Fahrenheit.
To put that into perspective, the surface of our sun is only about 10,000° Fahrenheit. So, if you think it's hot outside today, just be glad you're not hanging out on Vega.
Another interesting thing about this star is that it's surrounded by a disk of dust and gas.
This disk is [music] called a debris disk because it's made up of leftover material from when the star formed.
Scientists think that this debris disk [music] is similar to the one that surrounded our solar system when it was young.
Vega is also a [music] source of cosmic rays.
These rays are high-energy particles that zip around space at incredible speeds.
They're made up of protons, [music] electrons, and other particles, and scientists aren't exactly sure where they come from. But they do know that Vega is one of the places where [music] cosmic rays originate.
But wait, there's more.
Vega is also a famous star [music] in pop culture. It's been used in a lot of movies and books as a source of inspiration, mostly because of its brightness and cool features.
>> Imagine a being so powerful it could suck in entire galaxies, so mysterious it's invisible to the naked eye, and so impressive it bends the very fabric of space and time to its will. Yes, meet my mother.
>> [music] >> Nah, just kidding. Actually, meet the ultimate superhero of the universe, the black hole star. What is it and how does it work? Well, let's find out.
The universe is full of marvels, and the black hole star is one of the most impressive ones. It's a super massive force that can bend the laws of physics, and a true enigma for scientists to unravel. No wonder science fiction writers find them so captivating.
A black hole star, also known as a quasi star, is a hypothetical type of extremely massive and luminous star that may have existed early in the history of the galaxy. They're predicted to be as luminous as a small galaxy, but unlike modern stars, they weren't powered by nuclear fusion in their cores.
A quasi star's energy would come from material falling into a black hole at its core. And yes, just like a normal black hole, these stars have the power to suck in anything and everything that gets too close, including stars, dust, and even entire galaxies.
But how is it possible that the star is born from a black hole? And what's more, how do they continue to coexist together? Well, first let's discuss how black holes are born in general. It all starts with a super massive star, one that is at least a few times more massive than our own sun. This giant of a star burns bright and hot, shining with the light of a million suns. But, eventually, it runs out of fuel and its fate is sealed.
As its lifespan comes to an end, it makes one final massive boom. A blast so powerful, it can outshine an entire galaxy. This blast is called supernova.
During this boom, the outer layers of the star fly away, while the core gets squished together by its own gravity.
If the squished core is heavy enough, it can keep squishing until it becomes a black hole. And just like that, a black hole is born. Don't even try to put diapers on this thing. Now, this cosmic monster baby can continue to grow by swallowing up anything that comes too close, including stars, dust, and even entire galaxies. This is basically what's happening now in our universe with supermassive stars. But, what about quasi-stars?
The formation of a quasi-star could only happen early in the development of the universe, before hydrogen and helium were contaminated by heavier elements.
And because of that, quasi-stars have one important feature. They are gigantic, so enormous that it's literally impossible to imagine. They may have been dwarfing even the largest known modern stars, like VY Canis Majoris and Stephenson 2-18. No wonder they're so scary. They were born from protostars, one of the first stars in the universe, the great-great-grandfathers of, you know, everything.
So now, imagine a protostar so massive that its core collapses into a black hole, just like we described before.
But, the key difference is that in a regular supernova, the outer layers of the star are blown away by the energy released during the boom.
Meanwhile, in a quasi-star, these outer layers are massive enough to absorb the energy without being blown away.
What do we get in the end? A star with a black hole in its core that weighs from 1,000 to 10,000 solar masses.
>> [music] >> This quasi-star is about 14,000 times bigger than our sun, which makes them bigger than any star [music] we know today. These celestial titans have some pretty crazy properties.
Once a black hole is formed at the center of a giant protostar, [music] it starts to give off a ton of energy.
This energy helps to balance out the force of gravity, making it kind of a giant fusion-based star. [music] They would be so bright that each one would look like a small galaxy.
Quasi-stars would have a pretty short lifespan, around 7 million years. Just for comparison, our sun is about 4.5 billion years old, and it's only halfway through its lifetime. But, either way, during this short period, the black hole at the center would grow to be about 1,000 to 10,000 times the size of our sun.
Quasi-stars are also thought to be super hot, with temperatures reaching over 17,500°.
But, as a quasi-star gets older, it starts to cool down, and its outer layers become see-through. Eventually, it cools down to a temperature of 6,740°, and at that point, it's curtains for the quasi-star. It can't survive at that temperature, so [music] it just dissipates, leaving behind an intermediate mass black hole.
Unfortunately, right now, there's no observational evidence for the existence of quasi-stars. This is because they're thought to have only existed a very, [music] very long time ago. They may have been very massive population three stars, which are extremely rare and difficult to detect. It's also very unlikely that any of them would still exist today because of their super short lifespan, only 7 million years.
So, why do scientists believe that quasi-stars could have existed? Because they're looking for ways to explain how supermassive black holes form so early in the history of the universe.
They're found at the center of most galaxies. But, how could these monsters have formed so quickly? After all, it takes a really long time for small black holes to grow into supermassive ones.
This is where the idea of quasi-stars come in.
These stars aren't just destructive forces of nature. They're like the black belts in the martial art of gravity.
They can bend and twist anything to its will.
That's why these stars, if they really existed, had to play a crucial role in the evolution of galaxies. They must have been instrumental in shaping the universe as we know it. So, those intermediate-size black holes that they left behind could eventually turned into supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies. But, we're still yet to solve this cosmic mystery. The detection and study of black hole stars is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Only instead of a needle, it's an invisible and mysterious object. And instead of a haystack, it's the vast expanse of space.
But, with the help of some pretty cool technology and a lot of brain power, scientists are getting closer to uncovering the secrets of these celestial giants.
Here are some things that can help us in this research. First of all, gravitational waves. They're like ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by the movement of massive objects. Albert Einstein predicted them way back in the 20th century, but they were finally detected only in 2015. We caught them by observing the collision of two black holes. This discovery confirmed that black holes can merge and that they're a powerful source of gravitational waves.
Scientists think that by studying these waves, they can learn more about how black holes form and grow. We can also try to detect quasi-stars by observing the effects of their gravity on nearby objects. It's like trying to spot a criminal by their fingerprints. For example, if a black hole is located near a star, scientists can observe the star's light being distorted as it's pulled toward the black hole.
And, of course, we can use our technologies, such as X-ray, infrared, and radio telescopes. This allows us to study black holes in various ways and at different stages of their lives.
In other words, scientists are working hard to uncover the secrets of these celestial giants. We develop new telescopes, search for [music] a primordial black holes, and try to understand the connection between black hole stars and dark matter. And, we're making some pretty incredible discoveries, just like with gravitational waves.
All these things will bring us closer to uncovering the secrets of quasi-stars.
And, when we find out the truth about them, it will become a new page in our scientific history.
>> A powerful burst of gamma radiation lasted a mere half second, but it released an enormous amount of energy.
It was more than our sun would produce in 10 billion years. This brief flash lit up the whole sky. Afterward, a much softer and more long-lasting glow replaced it.
Astronomers examined the phenomenon with X-ray, radio, optical, and infrared waves. It turned out that people had finally seen a newborn magnetar for the first time ever.
It was likely formed [music] after two neutron stars had merged. It resulted in a kilonova, one of the brightest and largest stellar blasts. It's light finally reached our planet on May 22nd, 2020.
Imagine a massive star, at least five times the mass of our sun, reaching the end of its life. It might be because it's run out of its nuclear fuel. If it happens, the star starts to cool off.
The pressure inside drops, and the gravity starts to squeeze inward. And then, more than a million times the mass of our planet collapses within 15 seconds. It happens so fast that an enormous shockwave causes the outer part of the star to blow up. It produces a blinding burst of light. This powerful blast is called a supernova. What's left behind is an incredibly dense core with a huge cloud of hot gas called a nebula expanding around it. If the star has been massive enough, more than 10 times the size of the sun, it's likely to turn into a black hole. If not, it turns into a neutron star. It's basically a giant nucleus, the central part of an atom.
These stars are mostly made up of neutrons and are rarely larger than 20 mi across. For comparison, our sun is almost 865,000 mi across, which is 109 Earths put side by side. But don't let this relatively tiny size fool you. Any neutron star is at least 1 and 1/2 times heavier than our sun and has an intense magnetic field. [music] If you scooped just a teaspoon of this star's insides, this matter would weigh more [music] than a billion tons. It's so dense that it makes neutron stars some of the most extreme objects people know about. [music] The next stop is the black hole itself.
When two neutron stars merge, >> [music] >> they most often create a new, much heavier one within milliseconds or even less. This star collapses [music] into a black hole. But the astronomers who examined the flash of light recorded in March think there might [music] be another outcome. They're almost sure they saw something never observed before, the birth of a magnetar. That's a rare form of a neutron star with an ultra-strong magnetic field. It's [music] 1,000 trillion times stronger than our planet's. This field is also so powerful, it heats the star's surface up to 18 million degrees Fahrenheit.
To put it simply, magnetars are the most powerful magnets in the universe. Their magnetic fields can seriously mess with the neighborhood. Atoms unlucky enough to get close to such a star get stretched into pencil-thin lines. If you somehow found yourself several hundred miles away from a magnetar, it would end badly for you.
The magnetic field would first disrupt your bioelectricity. It means that your nerve impulses wouldn't work anymore.
Even your molecules would change under the influence of the star's field. In the end, you'd pretty much vanish.
If a magnetar flew within 100,000 miles from our planet, it would wipe out all the data on every [music] single credit card in the world.
>> Czernikowski star was discovered in the 1960s.
Since then, astronomers have been intrigued by its unique chemical makeup.
The star is suspected to contain ultra-rare elements verging on the almost impossible. Using special equipment on the European Southern Observatory's telescope in Chile, researchers took readings of the star's magnetic field. They discovered that the star's rotation period, which is the time it takes to finish one revolution on its axis, stretches out over almost 200 years, which is super slow.
Of course, there are even more bizarre objects called Ap stars.
They're a chemically interesting category of stars that rotate extremely slowly, with one rotation taking up to 1,000 years.
What makes these stars even more peculiar is a wide range of chemical elements astronomers detect when analyzing their stellar spectrums. But if we look [music] at Czernikowski star, we'll see that it's both similar to and different from other app stars. It contains unusually low amounts of iron and [music] nickel. Our sun has 10 times more and incredibly high amounts of rare, heavy elements.
Those might include strontium, cesium, and neodymium, [music] as well as at least two undiscovered elements. They wouldn't occur through any [music] natural processes we currently understand.
There's a hypothesis that the presence of such heavy elements could be caused by a star's unseen companion, like a neutron star.
Some people go as far as to say that such an incredible chemical [music] makeup could be a sign of an alien technosignature.
Any specialist will tell [music] you that it's the strangest stellar spectrum they've ever observed. Some even claim that there are so many chemical indicator lines you can't immediately understand what you're looking at while observing the star's spectrum.
Tabby's star also contains high levels of radioactive elements that take a few thousand years to decay. And here's where another mystery lies.
>> [music] >> They should have long vanished from the star.
After all, it's almost a billion and a half years old.
Scientists haven't managed to figure out the reason for the presence of these elements yet. Maybe it's the combination of the star's rare qualities. It spins very slowly, it's hot, and it has a strong magnetic field.
This could raise to the surface atoms that would normally be mixed inside the star.
There's another theory that explains the presence of these radioactive elements.
They could be there as if they were themselves decayed forms of ultra-heavy elements that we haven't discovered yet.
So far, no one has been able to prove this theory. Even the discovery of Tabby's star's super slow rotation doesn't bring us closer to the answer.
>> [music] >> It's obvious that there's a lot to learn about the bizarre star. And who knows which secret it still has up its sleeve.
Another not less mysterious star is called Tabby's star.
It's a sun-like orb around 1,500 light-years away from Earth sitting in Cygnus the Swan.
Unlike our sun, this star dims randomly by 5 to 22% and it lasts for days at a time.
The reason could be a giant planet passing in front of the star, but then the eclipses would be more regular and not so random. And if it was a Jupiter-sized planet, it would also need to block around 1% of the star's light, which would make it unique and unlike anything we know.
After American astronomer Tabetha Boyajian discovered the star's massive and irregular fluctuations in 2015, further observations followed. They show that the overall magnitude of the star has been gradually dimming over the years.
Some theories trying to explain this phenomenon are quite believable. For example, some scientists think that these brightness changes are intrinsic to the star.
They could be caused by its magnetism or changes in heat flow in its interior.
Other ideas are more daring, including some kinds of activity of an extraterrestrial civilization.
One of the most [music] plausible theories though is that the dimming is caused by the chunks of an orphaned exomoon.
It could have been pulled away from its parent planet by gravitational interactions with Tabby's [music] star.
As the moon approached the star, it exploded sending dust clouds into stellar orbit. These countless chunks of rock and dust are now moving between Tabby's star and Earth in a giant clumpy cloud.
It could indeed explain why we observe such irregular brightness variations.
Usually, when astronomers spot a spiral arm structure, it turns [music] out to be a galaxy.
But not in this case.
SAO 206462 located 460 light-years away from our home planet, is a young star.
It's surrounded by a circular disc of gas and clearly defined spiral arms.
The bizarre star was spotted during an exoplanet search with the help of the Subaru telescope located in Hawaii.
Instead of finding [music] fully fledged planets around a young star, astronomers discovered planets that were still in formation.
These baby planets are growing out of the disc of gas and [music] dust surrounding the star.
The disc extends out to around 80 astronomical units, [music] which is twice the orbit of Pluto.
At least two of these planets have stretched the disc into its extremely unusual spiral shape.
A different planet [music] is responsible for each arm.
In our home galaxy, there's a giant star that is a real stellar wind machine.
At the moment, [music] this monster is just waiting to burst and send a wave of radiation and hot gas towards Earth. All because it's a Wolf-Rayet, a star which is at that precarious point [music] before it goes supernova. It's core doesn't have any more helium left to burn. Instead, the [music] star is forced to churn through much heavier elements. For example, oxygen.
Unfortunately, it disrupts the careful balance between gravity and fusion, leading to the star shedding its layers.
When the oxygen eventually runs out, the star will go supernova. But this time, the show will be different.
The thing is, WR 104 is 1/2 of a binary pair, which means [music] that two stars are feeding into each other, spinning up their stellar winds.
It will continue until they start going incredibly fast.
Is the potential explosion going to harm Earth?
On the one hand, we're far away enough for even a directed supernova to not hurt our planet.
At the same time, there's a threat of an extremely dangerous gamma-ray burst.
Luckily for us, it takes a very specific and unlikely train of events for a Wolf-Rayet to produce a gamma-ray burst.
Plus, [music] even if it does, the star might be pointed far away enough for the danger to miss us.
Anyway, astronomers are still watching the star, just in case.
A star sitting in the constellation of Centaurus keeps a secret not many know about. At first glance, it looks like a dim white dwarf, but when astronomers analyzed it, it turns out to be incredibly dense.
Take the mass of the sun and cram it into something that is only a third the diameter of Earth. This space wonder is also rather cool. Its core temperature is a mere 11,900° F. For comparison, the sun's core temperature is around 27 million degrees F.
At such low temperatures, stars begin to vibrate. And then, scientists can use these vibrations to sneak a peek inside a star.
And in the case with the star in question, which was later named Lucy, they discovered that its carbon core had crystallized. [music] In other words, it formed a giant diamond 10 billion trillion trillion carats in size.
Since the discovery of Lucy, a few other crystallized stars have been spotted.
Some of them have diamond hearts the size of our planet.
The last bizarre star for today is called Vega, and it's squashed. The star's bulging waistline is caused by an extremely high spin rate. Vega rotates once every 12 and 1/2 hours. This pushes the material around its equator outward.
It also leads to the phenomenon known as gravity darkening, when stellar material further from the center of the star experiences less gravity, which makes it cooler and darker.
So, when Vega faces Earth pole end on, it looks perfectly round.
But the dark halo around its middle is a telltale sign of Vegas oblate shape.
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