The video effectively uses a sensationalist narrative to make complex orbital mechanics accessible, though it leans more toward clickbait entertainment than rigorous scientific analysis. It is a classic example of infotainment that prioritizes mystery over the nuanced reality of space exploration.
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Planet 9 Isn’t Alone — Something Else Just Slipped Into Our Solar SystemAdded:
While we may think of ourselves as advanced after catching [music] a glimpse of the eight planets of our solar system and their 200 moons, we really have little idea of what's out there. So much so that there's speculation that there might be one more planet in our solar system. [music] Scientists call it Planet X or Planet 9.
This undiscovered world could be hidden way out past Neptune. Asteroids and dwarf planets in this area [music] have weirdly unexplained altered orbits and planet X may be the reason.
Tales of this mysterious [music] planet began over a 100 years ago with a man called Persal Lel. Lel had a great love of space and aside from having an impressive mustache, he was also super rich. Oo, that lucky guy. He used his riches to build an observatory in Arizona. He then dedicated it to study the odd motions of Uranus and [music] Neptune. Their gravitational poles are slower than those of all the other planets in our solar system, almost as if there is a giant hidden object pulling them off course. In 1906, Lel theorized that there could be [music] another planet out beyond Neptune. It probably caused those strange cosmic happenings. The man called this potential space body planet X. In 1930, Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombbo at Lel's very own observatory.
It finally looked like people had an explanation for the weird orbital patterns. LOL's team was on cloud9 after the discovery, [music] but their celebrations were short-lived. Soon they found out that Pluto was way too small to be having that much of an effect on [music] the surrounding planets, and it was also too far away from them. So, it was back to the drawing board. Planet X, if it exists, is 10 times the size of Earth and four times [music] its radius.
It would take at least 10,000 years for the planet to orbit the sun, and it would sit over 200 times further out than our home planet.
That's 600 astronomical units from the center of the solar system. FYI, an astronomical unit equals the distance between the Earth and the Sun. But while that sounds super far away, it's [music] actually not. The distance between space bodies is usually measured in light years, and an astronomical unit is a much smaller unit of measurement. For context, the most [music] distant thing detected from Earth is the galaxy GNZ1.
Cute name, huh? It sits a staggering 32 billion lighty years away. Even so, our telescopes can still spot it. And just one lightyear is the same as 63,241 astronomical units. Woo. So, if our tech can detect a galaxy [music] that's so far away, how have we not been able to uncover Planet X?
Well, it's probably down to the fact that it might not even exist. The theory of Planet X was pretty much debunked back in 1989.
It was discovered that the mysterious gravitational poles of Neptune had been a red herring all along. Scientists had massively misjudged just how big Neptune actually was. Voyager 2 visited the planet and discovered its actual size.
This new info explained the odd gravitational poles, [music] meaning they weren't being caused by the so-called Planet X. But that's not where our investigation ends, as the hypothetical ninth planet once again popped up around 10 years ago. While the evidence behind Lel's theory was wrong, his belief in Planet X may not have been. In 2015, astronomers Michael [music] Brown and Constantin Badagen discovered that there were in fact unexplained gravitational forces at play past Neptune. There are satellites that [music] orbit planets perpendicularly, which doesn't happen anywhere else in our solar system. There's also clusters of asteroids that move in very specific ways. So specific that it's basically impossible that it could be random. Even weirder, there are satellites that travel in completely opposite direction to the sun. Unlike most other things in the solar system, a planettoid called Sedna also appears to be being pulled towards something along with six others all going in the same direction.
And Brown and Badagen aren't just any other stargazers. They're both wellrespected scientists at the top of their game. Constantin Badagen has been named in Forbes as one of 30 scientists who are changing the world. and Mike Brown was the man who rebranded Pluto as a dwarf planet. This means that when these guys say something, it's usually pretty legit and you should probably listen. But the only way we can really prove Planet X exists is to actually find it. And this has turned out to be pretty difficult. To locate the planet, we'd need to use a method called transit photometry. This is basically where we monitor a whole bunch of stars for a long time and look out for any dips in the light they give off. These dips would likely be caused by a planet getting in the way. And ta, the existence of planet X could be proved.
But for this method [music] to work, Earth, the new planet, and the sun all have to be perfectly aligned. These circumstances are pretty rare. And if these conditions don't exist, the dip in light won't happen.
Plus, this method would only really work with planets that are closer to the sun than our Earth. That's Venus [music] and Mercury. For anything past Earth, this technique is pretty much useless.
Another technique we [music] could use is to find the potential planet through a good old-fashioned telescope. But, as you can imagine, that's insanely tricky.
The furthest object that we found in our solar system is a planettoid appropriately named Far, Far Out. But that's only 140 AU away from the sun.
That's only like a quarter of the way to planet X.
We can only see an object because of its brightness. The sun is very visible to us because it emits huge amounts of light. And we can see the moon because it reflects the sun's light.
Technically, the moon has no right to appear brighter than everything else in the night sky. It only seems brighter because we're closer to it. The farther away an object is, the less bright it appears to us. The major issue with seeing the theoretical planet X is that all objects in our solar system get their light from the sun. They reflect sunlight and that's why we can see them.
Given how far away from the sun planet X might be. It makes it nearly impossible to see and because of its really dim light. To view it, we would require perfect weather conditions as well as an extremely strong telescope.
But Brown and Badagen have found the perfect one. The Subaru telescope is located at the top of a dormant volcano in Hawaii. It's huge and is capable of capturing even the weakest light from distant [music] space objects.
The issue that we need to figure out is where to point it. Without knowing where Planet X actually is, this basically turns things into a giant guessing game.
There are also only around three nights every year when the conditions are clear enough to see the hypothetical planet X.
It's difficult but not impossible. And still, most astronomers have called it a day and agreed that Planet X [music] doesn't exist, stating that it's just a common myth.
The most widespread explanation for the weird gravitational pools is that there's a tiny black hole in our solar system. It's pulling the planets toward us. But don't worry, they say it's not big enough to actually munch on a planet. So, Earth is all good for now.
The issue with the black hole theory is that once again, it's almost impossible for us to track the thing down. While its mass could be as great as that of Planet X, the hole itself would be squished down to the size of an orange.
Telescopes wouldn't be of any use.
To find it, people would have to look for the gamma rays sent off by objects as they fall into the black hole.
Another way we could find it is to release hundreds of tiny spacecraft.
They would pass close enough to the hypothetical hole and when they got pulled [music] toward it, we could probably detect it. But don't count out Brown and Badagen's theory. It's still being documented by NASA. And until we find unmistakable evidence to prove any theories, Planet X might still be out there.
Some time ago, the James Webb Space Telescope spotted a super bizarre space object flying through our galaxy.
[music] First of all, it's not orbiting any star. It's a rogue object just drifting through space on its own. Even better, [music] this wandering thing apparently has a cake-like atmosphere, and examining it can be crucial in our future exoplanet research. Plus, it can help us understand how gas [music] giants evolve over time, and what might happen to Jupiter in the future.
You may object that Earth has a layered atmosphere, too, with [music] five major and several secondary layers. But on Earth, the air is mostly nitrogen and [music] oxygen. As for other planets, they're different. Take Venus [music] for example, where the atmosphere is super thick and filled with sulfuric acid. There are exoplanets with water vapor clouds, [music] or ones where the clouds are literally made of hot sand.
But what about our rogue object? By the way, I have no clue why it got this reputation, but for some reason, scientists chose to call it simp. Ouch.
Anyway, it seems to have its own unique combo with cloud patches and weird chemical reactions happening high up. It is covered [music] in clouds made of iron and magnesium, and its atmosphere has carbon-based chemicals [music] floating around. Scientists have spotted auroras on it. Yep, [music] like the northern lights we have on Earth, but way out in deep space. It's the very first time researchers have been able to do a sort of weather report on a rogue object like this. The next weirdness, [music] the object doesn't really fit into any box. It's not a regular planet because it doesn't orbit a star, but it's also smaller than a brown dwarf, which [music] is something like a failed star.
So, it's something in between. Not quite a planet, not quite a star. And [music] while it's not dangerous in the we're all doomed kind of way, scientists say rogue objects like this could actually mess things up pretty seriously if they wander too close to a solar system.
Their gravity might throw off the orbits [music] of planets, which could lead to instability or even space collisions. So yeah, while our rogue friend [music] is not a threat right now, it might become one in the future.
>> [music] >> Now, this rogue object has some crazy stuff going on. First off, its day [music] is only 2.4 hours long. Like, imagine the sun rising and setting in that time. [music] That's real fast.
It's also hanging out about 20 light-years away in the Karina Nebula, which isn't super far in space [music] terms. Another thing that makes this guy special is the fact that it's the brightest free floating object of [music] its kind that we can see from the northern hemisphere. And since it's just drifting [music] in space without a nearby star messing with our view, it's been directly [music] photographed by telescopes like NASA's Spitzer. That's actually super rare for [music] stuff this faint and far.
When scientists checked it out in infrared, aka [music] heat vision, they noticed that the atmosphere of this rogue object was acting weird, like it [music] kept changing. Sometimes more heat, sometimes less. Something funky was going on. But what [music] exactly? So, in July 2023, one team of scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope [music] to dig deeper.
They pointed it at SIM and gathered a ton of data, around 6,000 measurements in just a few hours. First, they looked at shortwave radiation, which is [music] kind of like high energy heat, and then they did the same with longer waves [music] a few hours later.
They discovered that the brightness changed differently depending on the wavelength. Some parts of the atmosphere got brighter, some dimmer, and some didn't change at all. It was all over the place, but [music] they noticed a pattern. All the changes fell into three groups. Each group [music] had its own vibe, like its own little signature of what was going on in the atmosphere. And it turned out that the mysterious object wasn't just floating alone in space. It was super dynamic with layers of clouds and gases doing their own thing. It could mean three different things were going on in the atmosphere. To figure out what exactly was behind all this, [music] they built models of the rogue object's atmosphere.
Apparently, the first group of curves likely came from low clouds made of iron. Yeah, iron. [music] Like actual metal clouds. The second group seemed to come from higher clouds made of this mineral called forsterite, which is basically a magnesiumrich crystal. And it [music] looks like these cloud layers aren't smooth, they're patchy. That patchiness [music] could explain why the light coming from them keeps changing so much.
As for the third group of light patterns, [music] they weren't coming from clouds at all. The light seemed to be coming from way above [music] the clouds from what they think are hotspots in the atmosphere. These hotspots [music] are probably connected to radio auroras, kind of like Earth's [music] northern lights, but happening in the radio part of the light spectrum instead of visible light. But even after all that modeling, there were still some mysteries left.
Like the first group of curves was all over the place, more than they expected.
So they [music] think it might be because of carbon-based gases like carbon monoxide floating around. They might absorb certain types of light at random times. In any case, this is the first time we've [music] actually seen this kind of atmospheric chaos directly.
But the few hours the [music] researchers spent watching it weren't enough to fully figure it out. To really get the full picture, they'll need days of data. And they're [music] hoping to use NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope set to launch [music] in 2027 to dive even deeper.
Even though this mysterious [music] object is not a rogue planet, they're definitely worth mentioning. These [music] are basically planets that got kicked out of their home solar system.
Yeah, [music] like straight up evicted.
When a planet forms, it's usually hanging out with a bunch of other planets around a star. But early on, things [music] can get super chaotic.
You know, planets crashing, shifting, getting too close to each [music] other.
And sometimes one gets yeetated right out of the system.
So, [music] since they're not tied to a star, these rogue planets are just cruising through the galaxy totally solo. If they happen to float near something massive like a star or a black hole, that thing's gravity can tug at them. But otherwise, they just keep drifting. Most of them probably got booted when their system was still forming and everything was a mess. But according to a NASA scientist, even mature systems can [music] throw a planet out if the orbit gets too weird or something big knocks into them.
Now, the next planet we got to discuss isn't rogue. It has a parent star in all, but there's another cool thing about it.
It's still a baby [music] in the middle of forming, and it's pretty rare to catch in action. The baby is already about three times the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.
[music] It's part of a system about 400 lighty years away. It's been growing for about 5 million years, munching [music] on gas and dust from the disc around its star, kind of like a cosmic buffet.
But the thing is, when astronomers [music] checked out the chemicals in the planet's atmosphere using a big telescope in Hawaii, things didn't add up. They were specifically looking at carbon monoxide and water, [music] which can help figure out how much carbon and oxygen is floating around in that atmosphere.
Turns out the planet's chemical mix doesn't quite match the stuff [music] in the disc it's forming from. That's a big deal because it goes against what scientists thought they knew about [music] how planets are supposed to form. Basically, it's saying, "Hey, your fancy models might be [music] a bit too simple.
Planets are supposed to form by clumps of gas and dust crashing into each other and sticking [music] together. Over time, they build up into full-blown planets. If that's true, then planets [music] and their surrounding gas should have the same kind of stuff in them.
chemically speaking. But PDS70B [music] is doing its own thing. So the scientists came up with two ideas to explain what was going on. It might be forming from solid stuff like dust and ice, [music] not just the gas in the disc. That solid material has carbon and oxygen trapped inside. So by the time it melts and goes into the planet, it's already [music] changed the chemistry.
or the gas in the disc got more carbon after [music] the planet already formed.
Luckily, there's another planet in the same system, PDS70C, and scientists are hoping that by [music] checking it out, too, they'll be able to figure out the truth.
[music] >> Dark, mysterious, cold space, comets, [music] asteroids, planets, stars, and something that's lurking over there, far beyond Pluto. Yep. This could be the ninth planet of our solar system, the one people have been wondering about for centuries. IRA, which stands for the infrared astronomical satellite, collected interesting data back in 1983.
It could be proof that planet [music] 9 is hiding there. No one knows if it really exists, but this discovery [music] helped to build a model to understand this potential planet better.
And in 2016, [music] scientists found out that some small space objects in the Kyper Belt were orbiting a bit oddly. The [music] Kyper Belt is the outer area of our solar system. It's a ring in the shape of a donut filled with leftovers from the times when our solar system was forming.
You can find this donut beyond Neptune.
The objects in that region of space have weird orbits, almost as if a big body with [music] strong gravity is pushing them away. Knock-knock. Planet 9 again.
The theory says it might be 5 to 10 times the mass of our own planet and up to 20 times further away than Neptune.
The astronomical unit equals the distance between our planet and the sun.
Pluto is approximately 40 astronomical units from the sun. But planet 9, if it exists, is 400 to 800 astronomical units away. It would take 10,000 to 20,000 Earth years for this mysterious planet to make a single circle around the sun.
This makes it harder for us to catch [music] the space body. There's a theory planet 9 may have formed between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune, similar to the rest of the gas giants in our solar system. The gravitational [music] force of one of the two huge planets probably kicked it out of its orbit. Oh no. Then Planet 9 could [music] get ejected further away from the eight planets we know about. It ended up as some sort of icy waste, quite small at the beginning. But as time went [music] by, Planet 9 has cleared its orbit of frozen pieces of rock and dust and finally formed into [music] a real planet. Another theory says that this could be a planet another star lost on its way while it was passing near our solar system. In any case, Planet 9 probably doesn't reflect that much sunlight since [music] it's so far away.
And astronomers aren't sure where exactly they should look for it. Space is dark, mysterious, [music] endless, obviously. But if we do find planet 9, it will be the first solid proof there are more planets in our solar system than we thought. Moving on to an interesting exoplanet located only 90 lighty years away from us. An exoplanet is generally a planet located outside our solar system. This one has an atmosphere with water clouds. [music] One year there lasts 24 Earth days and the planet travels around a red dwarf star [music] which is way dimmer and smaller than our sun. That's why even though the planet is eight times closer to its star than we are to our sun, the temperature there is similar to that on our planet. This exoplanet has a size similar to Neptune. It's also less dense, which means [music] it's mostly made of gas, unlike Earth, which is made of rock. The average temperatures there is 140°, which makes it one of the coolest small exoplanets we've ever discovered. [music] And the cooler the exoplanet is, the bigger the chance we'll find clouds in its atmosphere.
Researchers have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets, but all of them have been found within the Milky Way, at least until now. For the first time, astronomers may have spotted a planet outside our galaxy. They called it M51 ULS1 H. The planet is located in the Whirlpool Galaxy, a distant spiral galaxy 28 million lighty years away [music] from us. There was once a huge but pretty young star that got stuck in a gravitational dance with something that could be a dense neutron star. The collapsed core of a giant star or a black hole. The stars dance partner had incredibly strong gravity. It was feeding on the star, greedily ripping away its plasma. Then something unusual happened. An unknown, maybe even Saturn-sized object passed [music] by and blocked this confrontation from our solar system. Now, no one can see what is going on, but [music] this could potentially be the farthest planet we've ever discovered.
There's a newly discovered planet outside our solar system. As large as Jupiter, it [music] orbits two stars.
And as we can observe it from our planet, it crosses in front of them both. The full circle around these [music] two stars, which means one year, takes approximately 200 Earth days. On the day of the discovery of the previous [music] planet, scientists also found it had an unusual companion. It's [music] an extra hot Jupiter with an ultra tight orbit around its star. The year there lasts only 1.9 Earth days. This planet has a weirdly shaped orbit. Also, it travels in the opposite direction from the rotation of its star. If you could travel 57 lighty years away from our planet, you'd see something pink lurking in the darkness. As you get closer, it becomes bigger and more fascinating.
Yep, [music] it's a magenta colored planet. A few billion miles away from its sun, this sky is one of the youngest planets scientists have discovered. It's only 100 to 200 million years old. It's made of pink gas, similar to our Jupiter. So, if you could fly closer to its surface, this gas would envelop you like a thick fog. You're coming closer and going deeper and the gas is becoming darker, [music] getting a reddish shade. And look at the planet's core. It's super hot. Because of its high temperature of 460° [music] F, this planet is like an oven. The heat is the reason the planet glows so brightly. [music] You'll also notice the sky is hazy pink with clouds made of droplets of frozen water similar to ours. There is another exoplanet half as massive as Earth, which is one [music] of the smallest planets we've ever found outside our solar system. It has a diameter of 5,600 m. For comparison, Earth's diameter is 7,900 mi. The planet in question is mostly made of iron, similar to Mercury. Mercury has a massive iron core and a very thin crust, [music] which makes it an oddball in our solar system. At its early stages, it collided with some space body at least [music] once. That collision pulled its outer layers away, which is why only the firm iron core remained. Maybe this exoplanet participated in a huge space crash, too. That's what probably took away [music] the planet's mantle and left mostly its iron core. Or maybe this is just a [music] remnant of a gaseous planet that used to be the size of Neptune. The atmosphere of the planet could be [music] blown away by, let's say, a huge amount of radiation coming from the star. This planet is only [music] 31 light-years away from us, and the day there is less than 8 Earth hours long. The planet is only a little bit bigger than Mars. People aren't likely [music] to ever settle in that place because of its extreme temperatures that go up to 2,700° [music] F. There might even be molten lava on the side of the planet that faces its star. Such temperatures are high enough to evaporate any atmosphere.
So this planet might have had one in the past. Generally gas giants [music] like Jupiter can't support life because they have extreme weather conditions, temperature, and pressure. [music] And there are no building blocks that might create life. But smaller terrestrial planets such as, I don't know, Earth have more key ingredients like oxygen and liquid water. Plus, they have more temperate weather and other conditions. And still, not all of such planets support life. Of course, it's not easy to find a [music] planet with similar conditions as the ones we have on Earth, or at least the conditions that would allow life to develop [music] there. But meet Kepler 22b, one of our most promising findings. It's 600 light years away [music] from us, twice bigger than our planet, and with temperatures of about 72° F. This is a so-called super Earth. It's a category of planets unlike any we have in the solar system.
[music] They're more massive than Earth, but still lighter than ice giants such as Uranus or Neptune. Super Earths can consist [music] of rock, gas, or a mixture of these two. Kepler 22b is within the habitable zone of [music] its parent star, which is less bright than our sun. The planet probably has a rocky [music] core. It may have an ocean, but it doesn't host any life. At least, we don't know about it yet.
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 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 [music] that they've only been able to piece together a few details about its potential characteristics.
One thing we do know is that [music] 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 [music] 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.
>> [music] >> The search for planet 9 began in the early 21st century when a group of astronomers realized 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. [music] 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 [music] 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. 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 technology and a much better sense of humor. They began calling their elusive quarry [music] 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 evidence, like the strange orbits of TNOs [music] 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 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 that planet 9 could have a bevy of moons. That's right. Not only is it a giant planet hiding out in the 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 [music] just one, which is kind of sad if you think about it. Even non-planetary bodies like Pluto 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, [music] 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 [music] planet instead.
Anyway, if planet 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 mysterious planet through the heat produced [music] by those moons, even though it gives off no other signals.
Now, before [music] you get too excited, finding them won't be a walk in the park. They're incredibly small and would be very far away from us. But hey, nothing worth discovering ever came easy, right?
Scientists [music] are optimistic that with 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 to have, right?
Sure, the process of finding it may be difficult and timeconuming, but the potential payoff is huge. Finding this [music] planet could explain a lot of the strange behavior 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 [music] 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 is one of the most exciting and [music] intriguing quests in modern astronomy.
It's like a cosmic scavenger hunt, and everyone's invited to join in on the fun. So, grab [music] your telescopes and let's go planet hunting. Who knows, maybe we'll find it sooner than we think.
So, we might be getting closer to finding a massive icy planet beyond Neptune's orbit. Yeah, sorry, Pluto.
Still not you. Recently, some universe mapping using data from a telescope in Hawaii eliminated about 78% of the possible locations for this mysterious Waldo from space. Some people call it Planet 9, while others prefer Planet X.
Either way, it's been causing controversy since its existence was first proposed. And that is mainly because no study so far can answer the big question, does it really exist? If discovered, planet 9 would rank as the fifth largest planet in our solar system with a mass 10 times that of Earth. It's also theorized to be gaseous like Uranus.
The initial study on planet 9, dating back to 2016, suggests that this colossal new planet orbits the sun 29 times farther out than Neptune, which sits at about 2.8 billion miles. As a result, the planet 9 would take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete a single orbit around the sun. If confirmed, this yet to be understood world would dominate a region larger than any other known planet in our cosmic neighborhood.
These are all intriguing hypotheses, but without a single piece of evidence or observation to back them up. Before dismissing this as a wild guess, it is important to note that these researchers relied on complex mathematical modeling and computer simulations to speculate about the planet's characteristics cuz that's what they do. The hypothetical presence of this planet would explain various mysterious features located beyond Neptune. We are specifically talking about the Kyper belt, a huge donut-shaped region filled with icy debris left over from the formation of the solar system, including comets and dwarf planets [music] like Pluto. What happens is that the six farthest objects in [music] the Kyper belt exhibit elliptical orbits that are all oriented in a similar direction within physical space and tilted approximately 30° downward relative [music] to the orbital plane of our eight known planets. What's strange here is that [music] despite their distinct orbital velocities around the solar system, they maintain this alignment. The likelihood of such alignment occurring randomly is extremely low, around 0.007%.
So, here comes planet 9, a hypothetical massive celestial body that offers a plausible explanation for this strange phenomenon, potentially exerting gravitational influence to shape these orbits.
The initial theory didn't hold up for long, facing accusations of observational bias and calculation errors. Then in 2017, another study popped up, sparking back the idea that maybe Planet 9 is out there after all.
This time, Spanish astronomers tried a novel approach, focusing on observing extreme trans neptunian objects. These celestial bodies orbit the sun in highly stretched elliptical paths with average distances exceeding 13 billion miles.
The research suggests that the distances between these objects nodes and the sun might provide clues to planet 9's location. You see, these nodes are the points where a celestial body's orbit intersects the solar systems plane. When these objects reach these points, they're more likely to interact with other solar system bodies, potentially causing significant changes in their orbits or even collisions. So, if the trajectory of these extreme trans neptunian objects remains stable, everything's fine. But if it's not, well, that's a sign that something else, something big, is messing with their path. And that's exactly what the research found. There is something unseen out there. throwing these objects off course and that something could be a planet chilling at a distance between 300 to 400 times farther from the sun than Earth. To this day, the study of the extreme trans neptunian objects is the strongest evidence we've got for Planet 9's existence. And if you're still not convinced by this theory, know that strange motions like these have led to planetary discoveries before.
Neptune, for instance, was spotted because Uranus's motion didn't quite agree with the predictions of Newtonian gravity. But the deflection of its orbit could be explained if it was caused by a pull of an undiscovered planet. And just like that, we discovered Neptune.
Now, the year is 2021, and there's all this buzz about Planet 9. Again, after correcting some old guesses, studies are now leaning towards the idea that this mystery world follows an epic loop around the sun every 7,000 years. That is massive news because it means this planet might be closer than we ever thought, making it easier for our telescopes to spot it. The paper also suggests there is a whopping 99% chance that the funky orbits of these distant objects are all because of this unseen planet. not just some cosmic coincidence. Now, the odds of this whole situation being a fluke, are down to a 1 in 250 chance, which is much better than the 1 in 10,000 chance back in 2016.
All these optimistic numbers have brought us to where we are today, keeping our [music] hopes and working on better equipment to continue the mission of spotting planet 9. As mentioned earlier, [music] researchers in Hawaii created some kind of treasure map.
utilizing the panoramic survey telescope and rapid response system to eliminate 78% of its locations. This is great news considering how challenging it is to find a planetized needle in [music] a cosmic haststack. But unfortunately, Planet 9's presence remains a ghost in the dark [music] outer reaches of our solar system. Enthusiasts are still convinced of its existence and believe it is only a matter of time before we celebrate the discovery of Earth's new cosmic cousin. They're putting their hopes on the Ver Rubin Observatory, which is currently under construction in Chile and is scheduled to begin science operations in late 2025. Over the course of 10 years, this observatory will scan the entire southern hemisphere sky every few nights with a 27 ft fast-moving telescope equipped with the largest digital camera in the world. The idea is to catalog everything in the solar system, reaching out to and beyond Neptune and tracking the movements of millions of celestial objects, including space junk, asteroids, comets, and stars. If planet 9 is indeed out there, this next generation telescope could be the one to find it.
The existence of this mysterious planet is far from being universally accepted in the scientific community. That is simply because planet 9 isn't the only explanation for the strange phenomenon occurring beyond Neptune. One theory suggests that a group of distant objects such as dwarf planets, comets, [music] and moons might be collectively influencing the orbits of the extreme trans neptunian objects. Others believe that a black hole is behind all this.
These compressed masses [music] are some of the densest objects in the universe, potentially capable of affecting the orbits of other masses, like how this supposed ghost planet 9 is believed to be doing.
Another bold perspective suggests that our current understanding of the laws of gravity is flawed, actually incomplete.
[music] This theory known as modified Newtonian dynamics proposes that these distant icy objects exhibit [music] strange behavior not due to influence from another planet, but rather because the immense gravitational field of the Milky Way is influencing them. However, even supporters of this theory acknowledge that it is too early to draw firm conclusions and much more extensive research is still required.
While we continue our relentless hunt for planet 9, some astronomers have taken it a step further, suggesting the existence of a hypothetical planet 10.
This world has a mass and size like that of Mars or Earth and is located on the edges of the Kyper belt. But the thing is, if this alleged planet 10 is indeed as small as scientists believe, it might not have enough gravity to clear its orbit of debris. And that is pretty similar to what happens with Pluto, being one of the reasons why it got into trouble back in 2006.
So yeah, it's better not to get too excited. This supposed planet 10 might end up classified [music] as another dwarf planet.
So, planets with two suns, like Tatooine from Star Wars, used to sound like pure fantasy. For decades, scientists believe these systems were too unstable to [music] exist. Two stars tugging at a planet should fling it into space or drop it into one of the suns. [music] Except, it turns out that nature didn't get the memo. Astronomers have found a planet calmly orbiting two stars like it's no [music] big deal. This planet lives closer to its two parent stars than any other directly imaged planet in a binary [music] star system astronomers have ever seen. Now, direct imaging means they saw the planet's [music] light, not just its shadow. The whole system sits about 446 light years away.
So, the [music] light we see from it today left before humans ever built modern cities. This space monster [music] is roughly six times the mass of Jupiter. And even more surprising, the planet is only about 13 million years old. It sounds ancient until you zoom out a little. Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, which [music] makes this planet basically a newborn in cosmic terms. The two sons of this monster orbit each other incredibly fast and complete a full loop in just 18 Earth days. That means their gravity [music] constantly shifts, yanking space around them like a cosmic washing machine. Even so, the planet stays locked in its path.
So, it takes it 300 Earth years to finish a single orbit. So, nobody fully understands how this planet formed in the [music] first place. When two stars orbit each other this closely, their gravity usually tears apart planet forming material before anything big can take shape. Scientists have only found a few dozen planets like this so far, and that's [music] nowhere near enough to piece together the full story. To solve the mystery, they need more data. Now, another cool find [music] that still needs more research is a planet so stretched by gravity that it looks like a lemon, not a sphere. This planet is nothing like the [music] calm blue and green worlds we see in space movies. It orbits a pulsar, which is basically a star's corpse. [music] When a massive star expires, it collapses into an ultra dense object that [music] spins insanely fast and blasts radiation like a cosmic lighthouse. Being near one of those means game over for anything [music] solid. And yet, this planet hangs on barely. The gravity stretches it, pulling harder on the side facing the pulsar than the far side, like cosmic taffy. And here's where it gets extra unsettling. When scientists [music] analyzed this planet's atmosphere, they didn't find water or oxygen. They found helium and pure carbon. [music] No clouds, no oceans, no chance of life.
According to everything we know about planet formation, this world shouldn't exist at all. So, it [music] might not be a planet in the normal sense. It could be the exposed core of a star that got shredded, leaving [music] behind something stuck between planet and stellar corpse. That's a pretty scary [music] trend. The line between planets and stars keeps getting blurry. And speaking of scary, meet this guy. This system lives around [music] two red dwarf stars. These two stars orbit each other at a distance similar to how far Jupiter sits from the [music] sun.
Scientists found two Earth-sized planets and a third possible one squeezed right up next to the stars. One planet completes a full year in just over 2 days. Another takes about 3 and 1/2 days. The candidate planet orbits even faster. To put that in perspective, these planets sit less than 2 million miles from their star. The moon sits about a/4 million miles from Earth. So, yeah, these worlds are [music] close.
When they combine data from space and groundbased telescopes, astronomers realized they were staring at something [music] totally new. Planets that transit or pass in front of both stars.
Most planets in double star [music] systems orbit only one star, and this setup shouldn't last long according to the rules of physics. But these planets exist anyway, calmly breaking the rules.
So, this guide proves that [music] planet formation works in ways we still don't fully understand, and space clearly [music] enjoys messing with our expectations.
Now, let's crank up the horror a notch.
Astronomers made the [music] first ever 3D map of a planet outside our solar system. And not just any [music] planet, this one is so hot it literally tears water molecules apart. As the planet [music] moved behind its star, the James Web watched tiny changes in the stars light at different colors [music] or wavelengths. Some colors get absorbed by water vapor, others don't. By stacking all that info together, scientists [music] figured out temperatures at different heights and locations in the planet's atmosphere. And that's how they learned that parts of its atmosphere heat up to [music] nearly 5,000° F, hotter than molten lava. This super hot planet sits about 400 light-years [music] away and weighs around 10 times as much as Jupiter. It races around its star in just 23 hours. One year there is basically a day. And because it's so close, [music] the temperatures get so high. Winds tried to move heat around, but they totally fail. WASP 18b's atmosphere barely [music] has any water and instead overflows with carbon monoxide. Astronomers once believed water should be common in giant planet atmospheres. This world proves [music] water is optional, not guaranteed.
Now, magma worlds are another perfect proof of that. There's a huge group of planets called sub Neptunes. Planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. For a while, some scientists hope these worlds [music] were hyish planets covered in deep oceans of water or ice wrapped in thick atmospheres.
[music] One famous example was K218. Its atmosphere showed methane and [music] carbon dioxide, but almost no ammonia.
But as it turned out, lava dissolves ammonia, too. So, the missing ammonia doesn't prove water at all. It could [music] just mean the planet has a global ocean of magma instead. The researchers model how these planets heat up, cool down, and evolve over time.
They asked a simple question. Do these planets [music] ever cool enough to stop being lava worlds? And the answer was almost never. When they tested thousands of known sub Neptunes, [music] they say almost all of them are likely lava worlds, not water worlds. In simple terms, these planets don't breathe water vapor. They breathe rock [music] vapor.
Their atmospheres come from magma boiling, not oceans evaporating. And that [music] changes everything. Many worlds we once labeled maybe habitable turn into hellscapes the moment you run the numbers honestly. And that means space isn't hiding Earth clones, but mass-roducing furnaces and other sorts of monsters. [music] Take this bad boy for instance. It sits only about 64 light-years away, which is uncomfortably [music] close in cosmic terms. And it's the nearest hot Jupiter to Earth. From afar, it looks stunning, a smooth, deep blue marble floating [music] peacefully in space. But that color hides something absolutely brutal. On this planet, it rains glass sideways. Winds scream across the atmosphere at around 5,400 mph, fast enough to shred anything instantly. [music] The blue color comes from tiny particles of silicate, the stuff glass is made of, floating in the air. The planet's surface temperature hits about 2400° F, hot enough to melt rock. That heat turns those silicates into microscopic shards of glass that whip around the planet like a worldwide sand blaster. [music] Standing there wouldn't hurt, huh? You wouldn't exist long enough to ever feel it. And then there's the darkest planet ever found.
It reflects less than 1% [music] of the light that hits it. It's darker than coal, darker than black paint. Light just [music] disappears into it. Not all planets even bother with stars at all.
Astronomers have found rogue planets, [music] worlds kicked out of their solar systems. These lonely planets drift through space in total darkness, frozen and untethered with no sunrise ever again. Now, all of this shows us that our universe isn't designed for life.
Life survives despite the universe, not because of it. Earth isn't [music] typical. It's lucky. We're only at the beginning of this discovery era. Every year, new telescopes sharpen the picture. And every year, the picture gets stranger. The more clearly we see the universe, the less it resembles our imagination. And that's [music] the most unsettling truth of all.
Very recently, astronomers have found three potential super Earth planets orbiting a somewhat close orange dwarf star. The term super Earth is used to describe a planet beyond the solar system with a mass higher than that of Earth but below those of the ice giants [music] of the solar system, Uranus and Neptune.
An international team of researchers led by Dr. Schweda Dal from the University of Exor found that the exoplanets were orbiting star HD48498 which is located around 55 light years away from Earth. The planets [music] travel around their star in 7 38 and 151 Earth days respectively. The study describing these findings [music] appeared in the journal Minra on the 24th of June 2024. The coolest thing here is that the outermost [music] exoplanet candidate orbits in the habitable zone of its host star and the conditions there might be comfortable enough for [music] liquid water to exist on the surface without boiling or freezing. Such habitable regions around stars are also known as the Goldilock zone and are believed to be ideal for potentially supporting life. Another reason this discovery [music] is so important is that the orange host star is like our sun, but since it's an orange dwarf, it produces less radiation than our yellow dwarf star. [music] It's also the closest planetary system to host a super Earth in the habitable zone of a sun-like star, which makes this [music] discovery super exciting. It can help us move forward in our quest to locate habitable planets around solar type stars. Who knows, maybe this [music] planet will be our new home one day.
These potential super Earths were detected thanks to the [music] HARPS and rocky planet search program. Throughout a decade, the team taking part in this research has collected [music] nearly 190 high precision measurements using special equipment by analyzing the spectrum of light coming from a [music] star. Astronomers can figure out whether it's moving toward us, this is known as blue shift, or away from us. That's what we call red shift.
And still to make sure their findings were correct, the team used lots of different methods and comparative analysis. Everything [music] confirmed their conclusions. There indeed are three planetary candidates with minimum [music] masses ranging from 5 to 11 times the mass of our home planet. The team also believes that the proximity of the star [music] together with the outermost planet's favorable orbit can make this system a great target for future studies. Hopefully, further research will open doors for our understanding of planetary systems and the potential of life outside our solar system. Scientists have already discovered more than [music] 5,000 exoplanets, which are planets outside the solar system. Since the first [music] such world was confirmed orbiting a sunlike star in 1995, to find those distant planets, astronomers use different equipment like NASA's Kepler Space [music] Telescope, launched in 2009. Its mission was to find as many Earthlike planets dwelling in the Milky Way galaxy as possible.
[music] But it's not the only instrument used for searching exoplanets. Anyway, now let's [music] look at the most exciting and promising of these worlds.
Galiz 667cc is a mere 22 light years from Earth. But even though it seems close, it's still around 129 trillion miles away from us.
The planet itself is around 3.8 8 times as massive as Earth and completes one orbit around its host star within 28 days. In other words, a year on that Earthlike planet is 13 times shorter than a year on our planet. Luckily, the star is a cool red dwarf, so the exoplanet most likely lies in its habitable zone. But there's still a chance that this world might be regularly baked by the flares coming from its parent star, which is not cool on many different levels.
Kepler 22b is way further away than the previous world, [music] more than 600 light-years away from our planet. It was the very first Kepler planet found in the habitable zone of its star. This world is larger than Earth. It's about [music] 2.4 times our planet size.
Sadly, we still don't know whether this planet is rocky, [music] liquid, or gaseous. The orbit of Kepler 22b is similar to Earth's. [music] It takes the planet 290 days to orbit its G-class star, which is kind of like our sun, but this star is smaller and colder than ours.
Another Kepler planet, this time it's Kepler 69C. It lies a whopping 2,700 light years away from us. This world is also almost 70% larger than Earth.
Researchers know [music] nothing about its composition, but they found out that the planet needs 240 days to [music] complete one orbit. This makes its position in its system like that of Venus in our solar system. At the same time, this world might be more habitable than Venus since its host star is a bit less luminous, 80% of our sun.
TOI 733b is a recently discovered world.
It was found in 2023. It's out there 245 lighty years away from Earth and needs just 4.9 Earth days to complete an orbit around its star. But the coolest thing about this planet is that it might have a massive ocean. According to scientists, [music] the planet is likely to be completely covered with water. Does that mean there could be life on the super Earth? Time will tell.
GJ 1214b is located 48 lighty years from Earth. This planet is a super Earth, almost three times bigger in diameter and eight times heavier than our home.
It orbits around its red dwarf [music] star faster than you can binge watch your favorite series, finishing a complete loop every 38 hours. But it's not just the planet's size or orbit that's out of this world. [music] It's pretty hot out there with mindmelting 450° F.
But the coolest thing is that [music] this planet is practically drowning in water. The sizzling temperatures and crazy high pressures on JG1214b create some cool materials like hot ice and super fluid water.
Super fluidity is something that happens in liquid helium when it's almost as cold as it can get. On Earth, water totally missed [music] the memo about being super fluid because it needs ridiculously low temperatures and off-the-chart pressures to pull off that trick. [music] Still, there's not much use in super fluid water. Even if you try it, you'll just get dehydrated.
The super Earth that's closest to us was discovered [music] in 2016 and it's called Proxima Centauri B. It's located a mere 4 light years [music] away from Earth and has a mass remarkably similar to that of our planet. A year on Proxima Centauri B is short. It only takes the planet 11.2 days to complete a circle around its central star. [music] Scientists discovered this world after they noticed that its parent star was slightly wobbling. They hadn't been [music] sure what exactly had been happening there until they realized Proxima Centauri B's gravity probably produced pulls and tugs that caused these wobbles. [music] Although the exoplanet is traveling in the habitable zone of its star Proxima Centuri, [music] it is exposed to extreme ultraviolet radiation. All because it lies very close to its parent [music] star. Also, none of the telescopes that are currently working and exploring exoplanets are positioned well enough to capture the light from the atmosphere of the super Earth. Most things there are still a mystery to us, even though we're talking about a planet that's really close.
Super Earth TOI 715b orbits a red [music] dwarf, a star smaller and cooler than our sun. At the moment, such stars remain prime candidates [music] for finding habitable planets orbiting them.
Those miniature rocky worlds have far closer orbits than those circling around stars [music] like our sun. But since red dwarfs are small and cool, the planets don't risk anything [music] when crowding closer. They're still safely within a stars habitable zone. Experts say [music] that TOI 715b might have once had an atmosphere thicker than that of Neptune, and now [music] the planet could be in a transition state where it's losing its atmosphere. To confirm this suspicion, scientists need to do more research, [music] and they might finally learn whether this planet is a watery terrestrial planet.
As you know, all the planets in our solar system orbit [music] the sun and bring a sense of order to the place. But guess what? There are two planets that could collide [music] with each other and cause a cosmic catastrophe.
Here's Neptune, the most far away planet in our solar system. It's 17 times heavier and four times bigger than the Earth. It's 30 astronomical units from the Sun. 1 AU is the [music] distance between the Sun and the Earth. So, it's 30 times farther away from our star than we are. [music] And Neptune makes a complete circle around the Sun in 164 years in an almost perfectly round orbit. Neptune is cold, calm, and stable. But there's one planet that can ruin this balance. [music] Pluto. It's a dwarf planet covered in rocks and ice.
It's six times lighter and three times smaller than the moon. We're interested in its orbit. If you look at a map of the solar system from above, you can see that it's not round, but elliptical, so it's a slightly flattened circle. At its furthest point, Pluto is 49 Earth sun distances away from the sun. When it moves, it comes closer to the star. At its closest point, Pluto is about 29 1/2 AU from the sun. That's closer than Neptune. So, hypothetically, they could collide. Let's look at this collision from the front row. A little closer, please. Good. Neptune and Pluto [music] are slowly approaching each other. They are both very cold worlds, but they begin to interact with each other [music] gravitationally. Just like two magnets, it warms them up from the inside. Neptune is a gas giant. There's no solid [music] surface there, so there's not much change in it yet. But Pluto has a rocky surface. Because of Neptune's [music] gravitational influence, it's starting to crack. Pluto experiences continuous earthquakes. This causes it to heat up [music] even more.
When Pluto almost touches the gas giant, it begins to crumble from the inside out. [music] Plus, Neptune has a very dense atmosphere. So, the dwarf planet begins to ignite from friction with the gases in the upper atmosphere. Pluto is now very hot on [music] one side and very cold on the other. This causes severe deformation and it begins to crumble. Half of the dwarf planet's fragments remain in Neptune's orbit.
They will collide with each other until they turn into dust and become new rings of the big planet. Other fragments will burn up in Neptune's [music] atmosphere.
And the biggest rocks that remain of Pluto will fall through Neptune until they're completely burned into dust.
Neptune [music] literally ate Pluto and continued its orbit without any change.
All because the gas [music] giant is 20 times larger and much heavier than the dwarf planet. So this collision would do no [music] harm to Pluto. But it couldn't have happened in the first place because their orbits don't actually cross. Let's look at the map of the solar system again. [music] Not from above, but from the side. All nine planets here are on a horizontal line from the sun. The distance between them is great, and their orbits don't cross.
Here's Pluto's orbit. You can see [music] that it's tilted relative to the horizontal line of all the other planets. It starts at the top, then dives under the orbits of [music] the planets and comes back. So, Pluto can never collide with Neptune. Still, planetary collisions have occurred in our solar system before. And thanks [music] to these collisions, life appeared on Earth. Let's go back in time to almost 4 1/2 billion years ago.
This ball of hot lava is Earth. [music] It just formed from a cloud of dust and began to cool. But then a wandering [music] planet the size of Mars appeared on the horizon. It's called Thea. It was inevitably approaching our [music] planet. The collision with Thea happened at a perfect angle. If Thea had hit us headon, both planets would have been smashed to pieces. But it hit us almost at a tangent. Thea knocked some of the matter out of the young earth [music] and crumbled into rubble itself. It could no longer continue its journey because the earth caught it in a gravitational trap. A large fragment of this planet [music] remained in our orbit. Smaller fragments crashed into each other falling to Earth or joining [music] the remains of Thea. The dust settled and we can see the familiar picture, the Earth and the Moon. This is the main theory of how it came to be next to us.
Scientists say that it was this collision that caused life to appear on Earth. [music] Thea brought a lot of ice on it which turned into water on our planet. The new moon stabilized Earth's rotation [music] and conditions on the planet became perfect for the emergence of light. Another collision could create a blast wave that would spread out thousands of light years. Stellar collision. This usually occurs in binary systems with a white dwarf and regular star like our sun. A white dwarf is the remains [music] of a star that has gone out. As the stars get together, they start to move around each other in a spiral-like dance. [music] The white dwarf pulls down the upper layers of the larger star. This hot plasma and stardust form a luminous disc. [music] The two stars get closer and closer. When they finally merge, this causes a chain reaction in the core of the hot star. The mass of matter [music] presses on the stars core too hard. This causes the inards of the combined star [music] to heat up even more and it expands creating a supernova. This is one of the brightest events in the universe. The light from the explosion can be seen hundreds of light years away. [music] Another spectacular view is the collision of a star with a [music] black hole. Black holes are the heaviest objects in the universe and their gravity is incredibly [music] strong. So when a star and a black hole get close, the black hole starts eating [music] the lighter matter of the star. The hot plasma, like spaghetti, heads toward the heart of the black nothingness. For an observer, this plasma seems to settle on the very edge of the black hole. It's called the event horizon. [music] The thing is that time is much slower near such a heavy object. So we think the matter stays on the event horizon, but in fact, it's long gone into the heart of the black hole. [music] As they get even closer, the black hole starts to literally tear the star apart and swallows it whole. At this point, [music] the black hole spits out about half of the stars mass in the form of a beam of energy right out of its black heart. The other half of the stars mass [music] becomes the black beast's food.
We know of many black holes in our universe. The heaviest of them usually [music] lies in the centers of galaxies.
They can be millions of times heavier than the sun. But what would happen if two black holes collided with each [music] other? Our scientists had the opportunity to observe such an event.
Two black holes weighing 66 [music] and 85 solar masses gradually approached each other. They danced together, bending the light passing by them. But then they merged into [music] one enormous black hole weighing 142 solar masses. That same second, the new black hole released gravitational [music] waves into space with an energy of nine solar masses. Scientists were able to catch these waves and observe the merging of the two black holes from the front seat. But this event actually [music] happened about 17 billion years ago. We're only now seeing it [music] because the particles of light and gravitational waves took so long to travel the distance of 17 billion [music] lightyears to Earth. Now consider a galactic scale collision.
Literally, it's a collision of the Milky Way [music] and the Andromeda galaxy.
This event will happen in 4.5 billion years. So stay tuned. The Milky Way has almost [music] 100 billion stars.
Andromeda has about 1 trillion. As the galaxies approach one another, they'll make several circles around each other.
[music] At that time, some stars may be ejected from the galaxies like from a slingshot. Then Milky Way and Andromeda will begin to [music] merge. One scenario here is that our solar system will collide with another star system from Andromeda. In this case, there [music] could be a stellar collision and a supernova afterwards. Our world would be destroyed. Another option is that the sun would [music] be ejected into dark space. In this case, we may not even notice the difference. All we'll see on [music] Earth is a gradually disappearing starry sky. As our solar system will travel through dark space away from the home galaxy. [music] But the most likely scenario is when the galaxies merge, it'll be completely painless for us. In fact, the space [music] is very wide and there's room for all the stars from both galaxies.
The only difference is that [music] we'll see a lot of new stars in the night sky along with flying saucers from Andromeda. Nah, not really. [music] But it's not the collision of galaxies that we should be worried about. It's our sun. In 4 1/2 billion [music] years, it'll become a red giant. It'll expand, swallowing up the nearest planets. Earth will probably be the first planet near the sun. It'll be so hot that all life will simply [music] disappear and no one will be able to watch the galactic collision.
Right now, four tiny Earthlike planets are chilling around one of the closest star systems to us. We're talking second closest. These little rocky worlds are each about 20 to 30% the mass of Earth.
So, not quite Earth 2.0, I know, but still pretty [music] solid. Will one of them become our new home one day? Well, all of them are pretty close, so future humans might actually visit them someday. Not like next year or anything, but we could potentially send missions there. Don't expect any extraterrestrial neighbors, though.
Those planets [music] probably aren't home to life, or at least not anything we'd recognize. Let's take a look at them. The planets are called Bernard B, C, D, and E. How creative, huh? The innermost has a mass of 26% of Earth. The second one is a bit bigger with a mass of 30% of Earth. The third one has 4% more mass than the previous. And the outermost is, no, it's not the biggest. Actually, it's just a baby with a mass of 19% of Earth.
All the planets are likely rocky like the inner planets of our solar system.
They orbit their star very closely.
That's why they only need a few days, under a week, to make a full circle.
Now, what about that star these little guys are circling? It's called Bernard star. Astronomers have always had a hunch there [music] might be at least one planet orbiting it. First off, this star is super close in cosmic terms, of course. Only the Alpha Centuri trio is closer to us.
Bernard star is just under six light years away, which is basically next door. At the same time, it's not like our sun. Bernard's star is a red dwarf, the [music] most common kind of star out there. It's got only about 16th the mass of the sun. But red dwarfs are [music] a gold mine for learning about planets outside our solar system. And studying Bernard star [music] can help scientists figure out what planets around single stars like our sun or this red dwarf are like or what kind of environments red [music] dwarf planets might have. And most importantly, we might finally find the answer to this super [music] important question. Could any of these places actually support life?
For the longest time, scientists thought there might be a big Jupiter-like gas giant hanging out near Bernard's star.
All because the star has a little wobble. It looks as [music] if it shifts towards and away from Earth over time, so something might be tugging on it.
Interestingly, [music] it wasn't a giant planet doing the pulling. According to a study from March 2025, it's actually four smaller rocky planets, each about four times the mass of Mercury.
One day [music] they ganged up and started tugging on the star together.
These planets are incredibly close to [music] their star. So close that they can whip around it in just a few days.
Sadly, because of that, they might be way too hot for anything like life.
Besides, [music] since these four seem to explain all the stars movement, the researchers think there's probably nothing else orbiting the habitable zone.
So, there's no Earth 2.0 0. Orbiting around Bernard's star. Still, it's an awesome find, especially [music] since this star is basically our cosmic neighbor.
Plus, the system might not stay off limits forever [music] with nuclear fusion engines or light sails, futuristic propulsion systems that could make the trip [music] way faster. Way faster. We might probably go there one day. And then we'll finally figure out if these worlds are really lifeless and maybe even colonize them.
>> [music] >> Now, let's see how scientists found the stars hidden planets. Normally, astronomers spot exoplanets when they catch them crossing in front of their stars and blocking some light. But Bernard star is tricky because in our view, it's like we're looking from above the system. So, its planets don't block the light in the usual way. [music] That's why they call it the great white whale of planet hunting.
To get around this, researchers used a super sensitive instrument called Maroon X [music] attached to the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Monaca volcano. Over 112 nights spread out across 3 years, the telescope picked up tiny changes in the stars movement. These shifts let scientists figure out how many planets must be tugging on the star as [music] well as estimate their sizes.
At first they found three planets, but then they used another device deliciously [music] called espresso and located at the very large telescope in Chile.
And only after a shot of this espresso did they find a fourth planet. [music] By combining the data from both instruments, they were able to more or less confidently say their findings were solid, not just random glitches in the data.
Even though red dwarfs like Bernard star are the most common type of star in the universe, [music] most are way too far for us to see planets around them easily.
These new findings suggest that small rocky planets could be pretty common around these stars, and that's [music] huge for future discoveries.
Now, finding new exoplanets is cool and all, but it might be even more exciting to dwell on their birth and evolution.
And a recent study has made the sweetest discovery ever. [music] Newly born exoplanets might actually look like Smarties, that popular British candy, rather than spheres. We've always kind of assumed that baby planets are born ball-shaped, [music] but they might be oblate spheroids instead.
A team of scientists from the University of Central Lancaster in England used computer simulations to build [music] a model of the formation of planets in dense gas discs surrounding young stars.
After that, they compared [music] these models with actual observations and noticed that the young planets took pretty unusual shapes.
The thing is that [music] even though almost 6,000 exoplanets have been discovered so far, [music] astronomers still don't have a clear understanding of the sequence of events marking their birth and early evolution. But this new research might finally shed light on this process.
So [music] the astronomers examined the formation mechanisms of gas giant planets like Jupiter and came to the [music] conclusion that planets built up from their centers. After that, the researchers [music] focused on the initial shapes of such planets. They were also interested in how they could encourage the growth of these planetary seeds. How could they turn into such massive planets, some of them bigger than our solar systems largest giants?
According to [music] the standard theory of the formation of planets, such growth happens gradually and smoothly. First, dust [music] particles start to stick together, turning into larger and larger objects. This process lasts for a very long time and is [music] known as core accretion. It's the model of planet formation scientists favor.
There's another theory according to which planets birth might happen over shorter periods of time.
This data [music] involves a protolanetary disc, a disc of gas which makes up 99% of its mass and dust around 1%.
This disc orbits a newly formed star and hypothetically planets might [music] form from this cloud.
Protolanetary discs are likely to be common byproducts of star formation.
They might range in mass from 0.001 to 0.3 solar masses. Inside [music] such discs, matter slowly moves inward and dust particles grow bigger to the size of pebbles.
At one point, [music] after 2 to three million years, a giant rotating protolanetary disc breaks into pieces and that's [music] how baby planets are born. This theory is known as the disc instability model.
As for the model built by the team, it seems to support this second less [music] favored theory. Rapid planet formation through disc instability.
All because this theory explains [music] how large planets can form relatively quickly at pretty large distances from their host stars. As for the weird flattened shape of these newly formed planets, [music] it might be due to the material falling onto them. Most likely it goes mainly to the poles of new planets.
One of the main conclusions of the research is that the appearance of young exoplanets as we see them from Earth may vary depending on how they're angled. If Earth is directed face on to an exoplanet, it will seem that the latter has a traditional spherical shape, but if seen on edge, a baby exoplanet will look like [music] a real Smarty.
The team is going to continue to investigate the formation of planets with the help of an improved computer model. They believe they can find out the role the environment around a young planet plays in affecting its shape and formation.
This planet is as light as that piece of fluff stuck to your sweater. In the scientific world, it's called WASP 193b, but let's call it the cotton candy planet. It's located around 1,200 light-years away from us. Sure thing we'll never see it with our own eyes, but scientists say the cotton candy planet is pretty much Jupiter's bigger, bouncier cousin. 50% more massive. It has an extremely low density combined with other factors [music] such as high temperatures and the infrared brightness of its host star that make it look special. May I have a closeup here, please? Thank you. See how fluffy it is?
Right now, you understand that it would be impossible to stand on its surface.
Anyways, it's not often that you meet something like Wasp 193b at a planetary party. Such planets might be fluffy because they're getting cooked by their parent stars, puffing up like a marshmallow that's seen too much campfire action. But the thing is, [music] if you're that close to your star and mostly made of a hydrogen helium cocktail, you're not going to keep your puffiness for long. It's like trying to hold on to a balloon during a hurricane.
Exoplanets like this fluffy guy here are pretty rare, but there's also [music] WASP 1007b, and it looks squishy, too. This one kicks [music] back 200 lightyears from us, and it chose the constellation of Virgo as its official residence. From some [music] perspective, you might say that this planet is a copycat of Earth.
It has helium, and its atmosphere contains sulfur dioxide. There's some resemblance for sure, but WASP [music] 107b has the density of a marshmallow.
It means we can snoop through its atmosphere [music] easier than we could with a heavyweight like Jupiter. Scientists were beyond surprised when they peered through their super space goggles, the James Webb [music] Space Telescope's Mirie Cam.
They spotted clouds made of the stuff that builds beaches, silicut, or as you might know it, sand. Imagine sand castles in the sky. Those sound clouds are way up there in the penthouse suite of WASP 107B's atmosphere where the thermostat reads a breezy 932° F. Normally, you'd need 1,832° F to cook up this kind of cloud. So, scientists are scratching their heads.
How did those grainy puffs get all the way up there? Turns out WASP 1007b might be running its own sandy water cycle, [music] but with scorching silicates instead of H2O.
Silicut particles get whooshed up from the sizzling lower levels by some sort of cosmic elevator, and then they cool off, party together as clouds, and sprinkle down a silicut drizzle.
Nobody's packing sunscreen for this kind of sandstorm, though.
Now look at [music] this Kepler planet family located in the Kepler 51 star system. This cosmic threepack hangs around [music] 2400 light-years away.
Looking huge but having the same density as your favorite snack. And it's cotton candy yet again. Scientists have been digging into what these space treats are made of. They now believe these puffball planets [music] are big hydrogen helium gas balloons with a generous smearing of methane haze. It also turns out these planets [music] might be going through a cosmic downsize.
Now, let's talk about a planet called Mascara 5b. Nope, it doesn't look like one of those cosmetic tubes from your mom's drawer. Scientists say it's one of the hottest planets ever discovered.
They call it an ultra hot Jupiter, showing off its impressive size, almost twice as big as our very own Jupiter.
The dayside temperature is around a scorching 4,892° F, while the night side hits 4,172° F. No chance for any sort of life to survive out there. Actually, it's the second hottest nightside temperature ever recorded. To put it in perspective, the temperature of molten lava sits between 1,292° F and 2,282° F. So, the planet is a whole lot hotter than this scorching liquid rock. Its temperatures even surpass the melting [music] point of most metals, which is around 3,632° F.
Scientists mentioned that the insane heat on this planet is comparable to the exhaust of a rocket engine.
Back in 2005, one [music] famous star called Wait, is that a name or a phone number? Whatever. So, turns out this star has a hot sister and [music] they have very similar names. This hot sister has B at the end. Well, this place [music] looks like something from a sci-fi movie as it rocks a memerizing blue marble vibe. According to NASA, such an appearance results from an atmosphere packed with [music] hazy clouds laced with glass. The rain on this planet is glass filled precipitation that likes to fall sideways thanks to fierce winds blowing at a speed of 5400 mph.
And yeah, it's the hot sister for a reason. Scientists have measured the daytime temperatures in this nightmarish world. It's around 1,700° F. So, when it rains on this planet, it's more like molten glass pouring down instead of your typical waterworks.
You may not know it, but space is swarming with wasps. I'm talking about planets called Wasp. Meet WASP 76b.
This sizzling, hot Jupiter-like planet is so out of this world, it rains iron at night there. The daytime side is no less of a fiery nightmare. The temperature there is about 4,300° F.
Wasp 76b may be slightly smaller than Jupiter, but don't underestimate its grandeur. This fireball is located 640 lighty years away from Earth. And its terrifying climate is the result of one seriously extreme orbit. You see, these gas giants are fittingly known as hot Jupiters. They like to keep it hot, so they orbit way too close to their scorching host stars. In this case, WASP 76b is nearly 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun.
That's way too close for comfort, leaving this rebellious planet tidily locked to the star. So, while one side basks in eternal light, the other is trapped in perpetual darkness.
55 Canree E is a total gem. It's the rattest super Earth ever spotted.
Scientists initially believed it [music] was packed with so much carbon that its insides were blinged out with diamonds thanks to insane pressure and sizzling temperatures of [music] 4,892° F. But researchers put a [music] dent in the diamond hype, showing there was actually less carbon than we had originally thought. Well, diamonds [music] aren't actually that rare and expensive after all. They're just well marketed.
The last destination for today is GJ1,214b.
Located 40 lighty years away from Earth, this planet is like a super sized Earth, almost three times bigger in diameter and a whopping 7 times heavier. It orbits around its red dwarf star faster than you can finish a pizza, finishing a complete loop every 38 hours. But it's not just the planet size or orbit that's out of this world. It's pretty hot out there with mind-melting 450° F. But the coolest thing is that this planet is practically drowning in water. The sizzling temperatures and crazy high pressures on GJ1,214b create some super cool materials like hot ice and super fluid water. Super fluidity is something that happens in liquid helium when it's almost as cold as it can get. On Earth, water totally missed the memo on being super fluid because it needs ridiculously low temperatures and off-the-chart pressures to pull off that trick. Still, there's not much use in super fluid water. Even if you try it, you'll just get dehydrated.
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