This Star Escaped Black Hole's Grasp + 100 Space Facts

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Transcript

00:00:00 Dark, ever-hungry monsters live all across the Universe.

00:00:06 They're born when massive stars blast into space.

00:00:10 Black holes, as heavy as Earth, are just as large as a ping-pong ball.

00:00:15 They don't have a surface, but their gravity is so strong even light can't escape it.

00:00:21 Black holes don't have physical boundaries like a membrane either.

00:00:25 The event horizon, which is closest to a typical boundary, is a threshold which, after passing,

00:00:31 you can't get out.

00:00:33 For a star, running into a black hole normally ends in a spectacular light show and its destruction.

00:00:40 Just one star that astronomers know of managed to survive an encounter with a black hole

00:00:46 as heavy as 400,000 suns.

00:00:49 It happened in a galaxy about 250 million light-years away from Earth.

00:00:55 Astronomers with really powerful equipment noticed bursts of X-rays that raged in space

00:01:00 every 9 hours.

00:01:03 They thought they must be Mayday signals from a star trapped by a cosmic abyss.

00:01:09 The star was an average red giant when it met its new friend for the first time.

00:01:14 When they got too close to each other, the hungry space monster couldn't resist the

00:01:19 temptation and snacked on its guest.

00:01:22 When it was done with the star's outer hydrogen layers, all that was left was the star's

00:01:28 core.

00:01:29 Eventually, the poor thing turned into a white dwarf.

00:01:33 But for some reason, the giant space monster couldn't finish the meal and trapped it

00:01:37 in its orbit for later instead.

00:01:41 Ever since, the now-white dwarf has been traveling in 9-hour laps.

00:01:46 It stays far enough from the hole so it won't fall in or get swallowed.

00:01:51 Its journey isn't going super smoothly.

00:01:54 Because of gravity, the orbital path is constantly rotating.

00:01:58 After two days, it resembles a spirograph pattern.

00:02:03 As the black hole keeps snacking on it, the star keeps losing its mass and growing in

00:02:08 size.

00:02:09 Its own orbit is becoming more and more circular.

00:02:13 Scientists believe one day it will be able to spiral away from its mean friend and turn

00:02:19 into a planet the size of Jupiter in a trillion years.

00:02:23 That's 70 times longer than the Universe has existed so far, so it might not ever happen.

00:02:30 The Milky Way alone has hundreds of millions of black holes, and there are way more beyond

00:02:36 it.

00:02:37 They might feed on other stars and release them in other galaxies.

00:02:41 The telescopes that exist now might not be strong enough to spot them.

00:02:46 Most galaxies, including our Milky Way, have supermassive black holes at the center.

00:02:52 They can be billions of times heavier than the Sun.

00:02:55 Others of their kind are only 3 times the mass of the Sun.

00:02:59 The nearest black hole to the Earth was spotted 1,000 light-years away, just around the corner

00:03:05 in galactic terms.

00:03:08 It's in a star system you can see with an unaided eye.

00:03:12 Scientists found it when they noticed a star behaving weirdly.

00:03:15 It was a giant, rotating like crazy.

00:03:18 They guessed it must have a powerful gravitational companion.

00:03:23 The hungriest black hole astronomers have spotted so far weighs as much as 34 billion

00:03:29 suns and is about 6 times bigger than the one at the center of the Milky Way.

00:03:35 It eats the equivalent of one sun every day.

00:03:39 Sometimes black holes even devour others of their kind that happen to be too close to

00:03:44 them.

00:03:46 Before you get on a spaceship to escape to some safe, no-black-hole galaxy, here's

00:03:51 some good news.

00:03:52 Even though they're supermassive, they don't have a radius large enough to destroy Earth.

00:03:58 And even the hungriest of them are safe to watch from a distance.

00:04:03 No black hole should come closer to our planet than the Sun for as long as the Universe has

00:04:08 existed multiplied by 10 billion times.

00:04:13 In the unlikely case one of these scary things passes by Neptune, it could affect the Earth's

00:04:18 orbit.

00:04:19 That would be no good.

00:04:22 In theory, anything can turn into a black hole.

00:04:26 The only difference between it and the Sun is the material their centers are made of.

00:04:31 It's incredibly dense in those huge space monsters.

00:04:35 In reality, there's just one known way to make a black hole.

00:04:39 It has to be the gravitational collapse of a supermassive star 20 to 30 times the mass

00:04:45 of the Sun.

00:04:47 So the Sun will never ever become a black hole.

00:04:50 If it happened, though, and the former star retained its mass, it would still have the

00:04:55 same gravitational power.

00:04:57 Earth would still keep going around it and wouldn't get pulled in.

00:05:01 Its orbit would also remain as it is.

00:05:04 The only huge problem would be the lack of sunlight.

00:05:08 In reality, the Sun isn't massive enough for such a transformation and will eventually

00:05:14 become a white dwarf.

00:05:16 A black hole won't ever eat an entire galaxy for lunch.

00:05:20 There are about 400 billion stars inside the Milky Way.

00:05:25 Just around 0.1% of all the stars that will ever form will end up becoming black holes.

00:05:33 The ever-hungry supermassive monster, located right in the middle of a galaxy, has an impressive

00:05:38 gravitational reach.

00:05:40 But even that wouldn't be enough.

00:05:42 It has already eaten most of the stars that were close to it.

00:05:46 It already weighs like a few million Suns, so it can't grow much larger even if it

00:05:51 keeps snacking on Sun-like stars.

00:05:56 Galaxies will keep bumping into each other, and black holes will keep growing and merging.

00:06:01 But because the Universe is already huge and keeps expanding, these collisions and mergers

00:06:07 won't go on forever.

00:06:09 Black holes will travel this huge space like rogue stars.

00:06:13 They won't even be able to eat the dark matter on the outskirts of galaxies.

00:06:17 Eventually, all the black holes will perish, but that would be a long, long time from now.

00:06:25 If you ever become a space explorer and travel far enough to meet a black hole and fall into

00:06:31 one, your life won't instantly end.

00:06:34 Instead, things will be way more complicated.

00:06:38 The way you perceive space and time will change, and your reality will split in two.

00:06:43 In one of them, you'd cease existing.

00:06:46 In the other, you'd live and enter the hole unharmed.

00:06:51 When you go deeper inside the hole, you'll notice space becoming curvier and curvier.

00:06:57 At the center of the hole, it's infinitely curved.

00:07:01 It's called singularity.

00:07:03 Laws of physics based on the ideas of space and time don't have power here.

00:07:09 In a large enough hole, millions of times more massive than the Sun, things would go

00:07:13 perfectly smoothly for you.

00:07:17 And you'd just keep free-falling, feeling no gravity.

00:07:20 You could just keep falling and falling in total emptiness until you reach singularity.

00:07:25 You'd have no chance to move in the opposite direction.

00:07:30 In there, space and time switch roles.

00:07:33 Time is constantly pulling you forward on Earth, but figuratively, and it would be doing

00:07:39 that quite physically inside the hole.

00:07:42 In a smaller hole, the force of gravity would be stronger at your feet than your head.

00:07:48 That's why you would go through spaghettification.

00:07:52 This is how scientists call the process when you compress horizontally and stretch vertically

00:07:57 like spaghetti because of crazy gravity of the black hole.

00:08:03 Speaking of spaghetti, how are black holes like an Italian dinner?

00:08:07 Because once you go pasta the event horizon, you get spaghettified.

00:08:12 And since you're all by yourself, you'd be feeling cannelloni right now.

00:08:16 Wow, now I'm hungry.

00:08:19 Meanwhile, if you had a fellow space traveler who, for some reason, didn't end up in the

00:08:24 black hole, it would look all different to them.

00:08:27 They'd see you stretch and grow, like through a huge magnifying glass.

00:08:32 The closer you'd get to the edge of the hole, the more it would seem like you're

00:08:36 moving in slow motion.

00:08:38 Then you'd freeze, and the flames would surround you.

00:08:41 You'd be in two places at the same time, living different destinies.

00:08:46 But there would still be just one copy of you.

00:08:49 This is how black holes teach us nothing is real.

00:08:52 Reality can be different to different people.

00:08:57 Scientists believe that we're all living inside a huge black hole.

00:09:01 Everything in the Universe started with the Big Bang.

00:09:04 But there's a theory saying there was also something before that.

00:09:09 It was a super-dense seed that had all the mass and energy of the Universe concentrated

00:09:14 in it, about as heavy as a billion suns.

00:09:18 It was a trillion times smaller than any particle humans can observe.

00:09:23 This seed could be born inside a black hole.

00:09:28 If you believe there's more than one Universe, black holes could also serve as doors between

00:09:33 those Universes.

00:09:35 It could be like a root that two trees share.

00:09:39 You can't see a black hole directly because it doesn't give off any light.

00:09:44 Scientists used to be able to only spot them by what they were doing to their surroundings.

00:09:50 When over 200 scientists around the world worked together, they managed to take the

00:09:55 first pictures of that space oddity.

00:09:58 The equipment they used, added together, would be the power of a telescope the size of Earth.

00:10:05 Buckle up, fellow space enthusiasts, because we're about to uncover the celestial secrets

00:10:11 that have been unveiled this year.

00:10:14 From giant stars to organic molecules, this year is going great for astronomers.

00:10:19 So let's catch up on all the excitement you might have missed in 2023.

00:10:26 First of all, we've discovered some real astral monsters.

00:10:29 Imagine looking up at the night sky and seeing stars that are not just big, but absolutely

00:10:34 enormous.

00:10:37 Scientists have been using a special telescope called the James Webb Space Telescope to explore

00:10:41 the early days of the Universe.

00:10:46 And during their adventure, scientists stumbled upon ancient stars that are 10,000 times bigger

00:10:51 than our Sun.

00:10:52 Yes, you heard it right, 10,000 times.

00:10:56 These giants of the stellar world were some of the very first stars ever to form in the

00:11:00 Universe billions of years ago.

00:11:04 Imagine a globular cluster as a massive cosmic crew, where each group consists of a whopping

00:11:10 100,000 to 1 million members.

00:11:13 These clusters are like giant family gatherings, with all the stars being born around the same

00:11:17 time.

00:11:20 But what makes these newly discovered monsters so special?

00:11:23 Well, their cores, or their central parts, are way hotter than what we see in stars today.

00:11:30 Scientists think that this intense heat might be due to a lot of hydrogen burning at really

00:11:34 high temperatures.

00:11:36 It's like they're having a galactic barbecue party.

00:11:41 Something fascinating happens in these globular clusters.

00:11:44 The smaller stars crash into the supermassive ones and gain extra energy, like a power-up.

00:11:51 But here's the twist.

00:11:52 Most of these clusters are now getting old, and the supermassive stars disappeared a long

00:11:57 time ago.

00:11:58 We can only see hints of their existence in the clusters we observe today.

00:12:03 Scientists study them by just the mysterious traces of their grand presence.

00:12:08 The discovery of these monster stars is incredibly important for our understanding of the Universe.

00:12:14 If scientists can gather more evidence to confirm their existence, it would be a major

00:12:18 breakthrough.

00:12:20 It would help us learn more about globular clusters, and how supermassive stars form

00:12:24 in general.

00:12:26 But that was only the first fascinating discovery of 2023.

00:12:30 Although the next one is kind of sad.

00:12:34 You know those beautiful rings that make Saturn look so fancy?

00:12:37 Well, guess what?

00:12:38 They might disappear in the not-so-distant future, astronomically speaking.

00:12:42 NASA's Cassini mission, which explored Saturn from 2004 to 2017, gathered some fascinating

00:12:50 data about the rings.

00:12:51 During Cassini's grand finale, when it did some cool maneuvers between Saturn, scientists

00:12:57 noticed something surprising.

00:12:59 The rings were losing a lot of mass every second.

00:13:02 Tons of it.

00:13:03 That means this magnificent halo will only stick around for a few hundred million more

00:13:06 years at most.

00:13:10 That may seem like a long time for humans, but in the grand scheme of the Universe, it's

00:13:15 just a blink of an eye.

00:13:17 The important thing is that we've learned that huge rings like Saturn's don't last forever.

00:13:22 They eventually fade away.

00:13:24 Oh well, at least you and I personally won't catch this moment.

00:13:30 Scientists have a fun theory about what will happen when Saturn's rings disappear.

00:13:34 They think that the other ice and gas giants in our solar system, like Uranus and Jupiter,

00:13:40 might have once had massive rings too.

00:13:42 But over time, those rings wore down and became more like the thin, wispy bands of asteroids

00:13:48 like what Uranus has now.

00:13:52 Saturn's rings are mostly made of ice, but they also have a sprinkling of rocky dust.

00:13:58 This dust comes from asteroids and teeny tiny meteoroids crashing into the celestial objects

00:14:04 and breaking apart.

00:14:07 It's like a snowstorm of icy particles and space debris.

00:14:11 The research also revealed that Saturn's rings appeared long after the planet itself formed.

00:14:17 They were still forming when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

00:14:21 So, in terms of astronomical age, they're actually quite young, only a few hundred million

00:14:27 years old.

00:14:30 This discovery has got scientists all excited because it means something dramatic happened

00:14:34 in Saturn's past to create this stunning icy disk.

00:14:38 But this is a mystery waiting to be solved.

00:14:43 Scientists want to figure out what exactly caused the rings to form and why they have

00:14:47 such a breathtaking structure.

00:14:48 Let's hope they'll figure it out.

00:14:53 But moving on to something more optimistic, we have another exciting space news.

00:14:58 Recently, scientists have been studying one of the most distant galaxies in the universe

00:15:03 and they've found something amazing.

00:15:06 Organic molecules.

00:15:09 The galaxy in question has a long name SPT 041847.

00:15:15 It's over 12 billion light years away from our little blue planet.

00:15:19 Can you even imagine that distance?

00:15:22 It's the farthest galaxy ever known where complex organic molecules have been found.

00:15:30 That's why looking at this galaxy is like looking at something from when the universe

00:15:33 was just a baby.

00:15:36 We have no idea what this galaxy looks like now.

00:15:39 The light that has reached us is what it looked like when the universe was only 1.5 billion

00:15:44 years old.

00:15:46 Imagine being able to see things from so far in the past.

00:15:51 So what they've found is something with a very complicated name.

00:15:54 A polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecule or simply PAH molecule.

00:16:00 You might be wondering, what in the world is that?

00:16:03 Well guess what?

00:16:04 You can actually find these molecules right here on our planet.

00:16:08 They can be in things like the smoke from car engines or even forest fires.

00:16:12 PAH molecules are made up of chains of carbon atoms.

00:16:17 And here's the super cool part.

00:16:18 They're considered the basic building blocks for life.

00:16:24 Imagine that.

00:16:25 Life's building blocks.

00:16:26 Those tiny carbon chains being discovered in a galaxy that's so far away.

00:16:32 That's like finding a needle in a haystack.

00:16:36 They also found out that gas floating around in that galaxy is filled with heavy elements.

00:16:43 That's a big deal because it suggests that many stars have come and gone there, creating

00:16:46 all these amazing elements.

00:16:49 This means that this galaxy can be potentially rich in many other elements too.

00:16:54 This discovery opens up a world of possibilities and raises so many exciting questions.

00:16:59 How did these molecules form in a galaxy so distant?

00:17:04 And since we're looking into the past, what could have happened to these organic molecules

00:17:08 during this time?

00:17:10 Could they have evolved into life?

00:17:13 We're only scratching the surface of the incredible things waiting to be uncovered.

00:17:19 By the way, if it's so far, how did scientists even manage to discover something like that?

00:17:26 Well, they had the instrument called the James Webb Space Telescope.

00:17:31 This fancy telescope was recently launched and has superpowers when it comes to observing

00:17:35 the universe.

00:17:38 So when the scientists were studying this faraway galaxy, they had a little problem.

00:17:43 The light coming from those distant objects was so faint that it was hard to see or detect.

00:17:50 But guess what?

00:17:51 They had a brilliant idea to solve this.

00:17:54 They used something called gravitational lensing, which is like a special power of nature's

00:17:58 magnifying glass.

00:18:00 Imagine two galaxies lining up perfectly, just like in a photoshoot.

00:18:04 The light from the faraway galaxy, the background one, travels towards us.

00:18:09 But on its journey, it passes through the foreground galaxy, which is like a giant space

00:18:13 lens.

00:18:16 And guess what?

00:18:17 The foreground galaxy's gravity bends the light, just like a magnifying glass, making

00:18:22 it bigger and brighter.

00:18:24 It's like having a cosmic zoom lens for our telescopes.

00:18:29 This bending of light creates a super cool shape called an Einstein ring.

00:18:34 It's like a halo, or a ring of light surrounding the foreground galaxy, basically a nature's

00:18:39 way of showing off its magical powers.

00:18:43 With gravitational lensing and these beautiful Einstein rings, scientists can see distant

00:18:48 objects more clearly and learn amazing things about the universe.

00:18:54 And thanks to all that, they managed to uncover the hidden chemical interactions from the

00:18:58 early galaxies.

00:19:01 Isn't that incredible?

00:19:05 The scientists are beyond excited about this discovery.

00:19:08 They never expected to find such complex organic molecules in a galaxy that's incredibly distant.

00:19:15 Who knows, maybe this is just the beginning of a thrilling cosmic journey.

00:19:21 So keep your eyes on the stars, fellow space explorers.

00:19:25 The universe is full of surprises, and who knows what other mind-blowing discoveries

00:19:29 await us out there.

00:19:32 Let's hope we'll learn even more in the future.

00:19:35 From where we stand, the sun seems so calm and peaceful.

00:19:39 But like humans, and basically the whole living world, the sun has its own phases when it's

00:19:43 more or less active.

00:19:45 It's just that the consequences are way bigger and more chaotic when the sun becomes hyperactive.

00:19:50 Let's zoom in to see what's happening up there.

00:19:52 So one of the ways we measure the activity of our star is by counting sunspots on its

00:19:57 surface.

00:19:58 Sunspots are dark patches that form when the sun's magnetic field gets all tangled up.

00:20:03 It's simple.

00:20:04 The more sunspots, the more active our sun is.

00:20:08 And it seems the sun has been partying like crazy recently.

00:20:12 The number of sunspots scientists have seen is the highest for nearly 21 years.

00:20:16 In June, 163 sunspots appeared on the sun's surface.

00:20:20 The last time we had so many dark patches across the sun was in September 2002, when

00:20:26 there were 187 of them.

00:20:28 Uh oh.

00:20:29 It seems this chaotic party is getting closer to its peak.

00:20:32 And that's something we call solar maximum.

00:20:35 How does all this even happen?

00:20:37 The sun's magnetic field is strong and organized at some point.

00:20:40 But as we said, sometimes comes the time when it kinda ends up tangled.

00:20:44 Sort of like a ball of rubber bands that are wound together very tightly.

00:20:49 This also means plasma is rising from the surface, forming loops, and causing a mess

00:20:53 in the shape of solar flares and something we call coronal mass ejections, CME.

00:20:59 That's when plasma in the sun's upper atmosphere, called the corona, goes crazy and bursts really

00:21:04 strong.

00:21:06 Then at some point this ball snaps and completely flips and turns the South Pole into the North

00:21:11 Pole and vice versa.

00:21:13 All this happens every 11 years or so.

00:21:15 So when the sun comes into this phase when it becomes very active, it shoots out hot

00:21:19 blobs of plasma, gets big dark spots as large as planets, and releases powerful eruptions

00:21:25 of energy and radiation.

00:21:28 Something fascinating happens when the sun becomes more active.

00:21:31 A thing called plasma waterfall or polar crown prominence, PCP.

00:21:36 It's like a mini eruption that starts on the sun.

00:21:39 And it seems like it tries to get away.

00:21:41 But then the sun's magnetic field pulls it back before it can escape into space.

00:21:45 This plasma waterfall is really spectacular.

00:21:48 It goes up to 62,000 miles above the surface.

00:21:52 It's like you stack eight earths on top of each other.

00:21:57 Then there's something called a polar vortex.

00:21:59 It's like a gigantic halo of plasma that rotates around the sun's North Pole really fast.

00:22:05 This vortex happens when a large tentacle of plasma snaps apart and falls back toward

00:22:09 the surface, similar to how a plasma waterfall forms.

00:22:14 Scientists don't know why this plasma stays above the sun's surface for so long.

00:22:18 And one of the cool examples of CMEs was a giant one in the shape of a butterfly in March

00:22:23 this year.

00:22:24 It got such an unusual shape because it exploded on the side of the sun we couldn't see.

00:22:29 So it was impossible to fully measure how strong it was.

00:22:33 Fortunately, that one didn't explode in our direction.

00:22:35 But it might have hit Mercury a little bit.

00:22:38 And it's possible it knocked off some dust and gas since Mercury has a weak magnetic

00:22:41 field.

00:22:43 All this sounds cool in theory, but it's not such good news for us.

00:22:47 Because of all this, we might experience more intense solar storms that can, again, lead

00:22:52 to geomagnetic storms on Earth.

00:22:54 And these don't just sound alarming, they indeed are.

00:22:57 They create chaos and disrupt the magnetic field of our planet.

00:23:01 Geomagnetic storms can create beautiful northern lights, true.

00:23:04 But we'd all rather enjoy such beauties as the Aurora Borealis in regular conditions,

00:23:09 or just watch a good old sunset above the ocean.

00:23:13 It's not that every solar storm will necessarily hit Earth, even if there are more of them.

00:23:18 To reach our planet, they must be pointed in the right direction at the right moment.

00:23:22 But if that happens, the storm can ionize the upper atmosphere and bye-bye our communications.

00:23:27 It can cause temporary blackouts for systems such as GPS and radio.

00:23:32 It isn't necessarily a big problem on its own, but it can be very dangerous if it happens

00:23:36 at the wrong time, like during a tsunami or an earthquake.

00:23:41 The storms can also damage electrical infrastructure, like rail lines and power grids.

00:23:46 If you're on a plane at that time, you might be exposed to higher levels of radiation.

00:23:51 It's still not clear how dangerous that will be for you, but it can be a serious problem

00:23:55 for astronauts in space.

00:23:58 When solar storms mess with the magnetic field, this can affect the migrations of some animals

00:24:03 such as sea turtles, whales, and birds.

00:24:06 Since things in the animal kingdom mostly work in the natural order, who knows how these

00:24:10 animals go through or even survive such changes.

00:24:14 And when the sun is at a maximum of its activity, satellites in space are in trouble too.

00:24:20 We have more satellites in space than ever before.

00:24:24 And when the upper atmosphere becomes denser because of all these changes, this can push

00:24:28 satellites in different directions.

00:24:30 They might crash into one another or some can even fall back to Earth, which again is

00:24:34 only cool in movies with superheroes who can relatively easily deal with this stuff.

00:24:40 Hopefully we'll avoid a massive solar storm like the Carrington event.

00:24:44 The story was similar.

00:24:45 In August 1859, astronomers across the globe watched how the number of sunspots was getting

00:24:50 bigger and bigger.

00:24:52 A man named Richard Carrington was among them.

00:24:54 At the beginning of September, he was sketching the sunspots when, out of a sudden, he was

00:24:59 blinded by a flash of light.

00:25:02 It lasted around five minutes, but it was spectacular.

00:25:06 He later described it as a white light flare.

00:25:09 It was a very strong coronal mass ejection, CME, and in only 17.6 hours, this storm crossed

00:25:16 the long way between the sun and our home planet, 90 million miles, and unleashed its

00:25:20 force on us, even though this usually takes days.

00:25:25 And when this storm started, telegraph machines across the world sparked.

00:25:29 Operators got electric shocks and paper even caught fire.

00:25:33 People were really scared and confused because they had never seen such bright skies before.

00:25:39 Some even thought it was the end of the world.

00:25:42 The next day, telegraph workers still couldn't work properly because Earth's atmosphere was

00:25:46 still charged.

00:25:48 They even managed to send messages using the auroral current instead of regular electricity.

00:25:54 But it brought something incredible, two stunning auroras in the sky.

00:25:58 People in Hawaii and Cuba could see beautiful northern lights, while those as far north

00:26:03 as Chile could see the southern lights.

00:26:06 It's all slowly but steadily escalating.

00:26:08 Take solar flares, for example.

00:26:10 These are powerful bursts of energy from the sun.

00:26:13 In 2022, there were five times more of these flares compared to the previous year.

00:26:17 Plus the strongest ones, X-class flares, have been getting stronger and more common than

00:26:22 before too.

00:26:24 And this might be way more extreme than anyone thought.

00:26:27 Plus it's likely to start a little bit earlier than we predicted.

00:26:31 Scientists first thought the peak would happen in 2025, but it seems it could even occur

00:26:36 by the end of 2023.

00:26:39 We can't completely protect ourselves if a solar storm hits us directly, but we can still

00:26:43 do some things like ground planes, adjust the paths of satellites in space, and try

00:26:48 to make sure vulnerable infrastructure stays safe.

00:26:51 To do all this, we need better solar weather forecasts to help us get ready for the worse.

00:26:57 All this might sound very bad at first, but don't worry, solar flares won't destroy our

00:27:01 planet.

00:27:02 They do send charged solar material toward us at pretty high speeds, but it's not like

00:27:06 we're completely doomed if these things hit us.

00:27:10 Our planet won't leave us unprotected.

00:27:12 We still have the atmosphere and magnetic field that keep us relatively safe.

00:27:17 Our thick atmosphere is like a shield that blocks radiation that might harm us.

00:27:21 So these solar flares can mostly affect technology, but they won't destroy Earth.

00:27:25 I guess we have our own superheroes after all.

00:27:30 If the sun decided to stop producing light, then the animals in the wild would be the

00:27:35 first to notice.

00:27:36 Most animals need daytime to roam from place to place, especially in the large savannas

00:27:41 in Africa.

00:27:42 Zebras, wildebeests, and giraffes all need the day to move to avoid predators.

00:27:49 As soon as the sun goes down, it's their bedtime.

00:27:51 If the sun suddenly went dark, animals wouldn't comprehend what was going on and would simply

00:27:57 become an early lunch for predators.

00:28:00 Nocturnal creatures would be equally confused at the time change.

00:28:04 Birds usually flock during the day, so we wouldn't hear or see any of them.

00:28:09 We have them to thank for eating pests in the sky.

00:28:12 Well, them and bats.

00:28:15 But if you're in an area with no bats, then consider the insects to be the winners here.

00:28:21 Temperatures would start to drop gradually.

00:28:24 Humans would notice the effects as well.

00:28:26 We're used to having the sun shining at the peak of noon, but with the sunshine's disappearance,

00:28:31 we would be living in total darkness.

00:28:34 It'd just be a matter of survival.

00:28:37 If the sun suddenly got dark, then we'd only have around eight minutes to enjoy the rest

00:28:42 of it.

00:28:43 That's because it takes that much time for sunlight to travel thousands of miles across

00:28:47 the solar system.

00:28:49 We would have to use UV lights to grow some crops, but it wouldn't be enough to feed the

00:28:53 whole world, not to mention the dropping temperatures across the world.

00:28:58 Survival would be difficult in the open plain.

00:29:02 Everyone would have to duck inside shelters and warm bunkers.

00:29:06 Plants need photosynthesis to grow.

00:29:08 Without it, we wouldn't have any crops.

00:29:11 Bread wouldn't exist, since it needs wheat.

00:29:13 Even the algae in the oceans need photosynthesis to survive, which is the highest source of

00:29:19 oxygen rather than forests.

00:29:21 This means oxygen levels would start to deplete.

00:29:24 Large bodies of water, like lakes, oceans, and seas, would also start to lack oxygen

00:29:29 to sustain marine life.

00:29:32 One of our main sources of vitamin D is the sun.

00:29:36 There are other ways of getting it, but the sun is the best and most convenient way.

00:29:41 Without crops or vegetation, all the herbivores would have to rummage for the last green grass

00:29:46 on land or a leaf hanging from a tree.

00:29:50 They would soon run out of food, which would also be bad news for us humans, since we need

00:29:54 animals like cows, horses, and sheep for our livelihoods.

00:29:59 This wouldn't happen overnight.

00:30:01 Of course, the oceans would remain warm for some time, but eventually, they would get

00:30:06 cold and freeze.

00:30:09 Earth is still a planet powered by an iron core that produces so much heat.

00:30:14 This would not be enough to keep the planet warm.

00:30:17 Our next step would be finding the right shelter and keeping warm.

00:30:21 If this happened overnight, then chances are there wouldn't be any ready-made bunkers for

00:30:26 a scenario like this, unless you're watching this video and decide to build one after.

00:30:32 They would have to provide heat 24/7 and be capable of growing crops under UV light.

00:30:38 Solar-powered facilities would be a thing of the past.

00:30:41 People would have to wear sustainable suits when venturing out into the open.

00:30:45 Since it would be so dark, we would need strong lights or powerful night-vision goggles to

00:30:50 see anything.

00:30:52 The lands would be desolate.

00:30:54 Nocturnal creatures that can handle freezing temperatures would take it over.

00:30:58 Structures would collapse, since there would be oxygen depletion.

00:31:03 Concrete needs oxygen to remain intact.

00:31:05 The bunkers themselves would have limited oxygen as well.

00:31:08 We would need to uproot many trees and place them under strong UV lights for them to produce

00:31:13 oxygen.

00:31:14 In turn, it would produce its ecosystem in the large underground bunkers.

00:31:20 The oceans on the surface would freeze over eventually.

00:31:23 Gathering any natural resources from the ocean floor, like gas or oil, would be impossible.

00:31:30 The large object, which used to be a bright and sunny star, would still be floating around.

00:31:36 But what would happen if the sun disappeared overnight?

00:31:39 Well, pretty much the same thing, except way worse.

00:31:43 The sun is the largest celestial object in our solar system, which keeps all of our planets

00:31:48 lined up the way they are.

00:31:50 They orbit around the sun, minding their own business.

00:31:54 Without such a large object keeping them steady, the planets would start to float around randomly.

00:31:59 Some might even collide with each other.

00:32:02 In other cases, the planets would just float around and fly off into space eventually,

00:32:07 until they found a new star to orbit around.

00:32:09 Earth might or might not be one of those planets.

00:32:14 Our planet would still be dark.

00:32:16 We would be flying through space at an unusual speed.

00:32:19 The planet wouldn't rotate on itself, and many objects would crash into us.

00:32:24 We'd be in the trajectory line of mass comets waiting to strike us down.

00:32:29 The threat of the cold wouldn't be a major factor anymore.

00:32:33 It would be what's beyond us.

00:32:35 This means we'd have to dig our bunkers deeper.

00:32:38 We wouldn't have an atmosphere anymore to trap any form of heat or anything.

00:32:42 We would be floating for an eternity.

00:32:46 But let's go back to that scenario where the sun just decided to go dark.

00:32:50 Don't worry.

00:32:51 Our planet would still be orbiting the sun along with the other planets.

00:32:55 The temperatures would keep plummeting until nothing could survive on the surface.

00:32:59 It would be total darkness 24/7.

00:33:03 Only bacteria and possibly tardigrades could survive on the surface.

00:33:07 Tardigrades are microscopic critters that can survive just about anything, including

00:33:11 outer space.

00:33:13 Eventually, oxygen would be absent from the Earth's surface, and there wouldn't be anything

00:33:18 up there anymore except for them.

00:33:20 Since they would be the dominant and possibly the only creatures on the surface, they'd

00:33:24 manage to evolve into bigger species and produce many more.

00:33:30 Hundreds of thousands of years into the future, humans would have had to evolve to the conditions

00:33:34 underground.

00:33:36 Our eyes would be much bigger to take up as much light as possible.

00:33:40 Our skin would become whiter since there would be no sun underground.

00:33:44 Our hearing would also be much more sensitive since the underground would create echoing

00:33:49 sounds.

00:33:50 We'd still have the intellect we do now, but our bodies would be ready for the surface.

00:33:54 The main threat would be the giant tardigrades sluggishly dragging themselves around.

00:34:00 Under a microscope, they look kinda cute, but imagine them the size of a polar bear.

00:34:05 People want something like this in your backyard.

00:34:09 They can live anywhere, so they'd infiltrate the bunkers now and then.

00:34:12 They'd get ferocious and come in different sizes and shapes.

00:34:17 At this point, humans would not be the dominant species since they'd have to hide underground.

00:34:22 Some tardigrades from different tribes wouldn't be friendly with each other.

00:34:27 Major cities that used to be bustling with people would be home to giant water bears.

00:34:32 Tardigrades are known as water bears since they kinda look like little bears, but these

00:34:36 beasts with eight legs would be much bigger than them.

00:34:40 Bears and most animals would have been wiped out on the surface.

00:34:43 Under the ice, some deep-sea creatures would thrive and have moved closer to the surface.

00:34:50 These animals were used to living in darkness away from the sun, but over thousands of years

00:34:55 of dominating the waters, they'd have grown to enormous sizes.

00:34:59 Some of these creatures would adapt to crawling out of the mainland.

00:35:03 Even though the surface would be frozen, they'd still find ways to crack through the ice and

00:35:06 make their way.

00:35:08 Humans, meanwhile, would create large underground channels and networks, building cities and

00:35:13 colonies.

00:35:14 We'd dominate the tunnels where our hands and feet would grow to become web-like and

00:35:19 large.

00:35:20 We'd take over everything underground and remain the smartest species on Earth.

00:35:24 We'd manage to keep old art pieces from the surface and important records to stay as human

00:35:29 as possible.

00:35:30 We'd keep on surviving no matter what.

00:35:33 So you fall right into the heart of the black hole and prepare for a sad end.

00:35:38 Well, you don't have to.

00:35:41 Falling into a black hole won't necessarily destroy you or your spaceship.

00:35:45 You have to choose a bigger black hole to survive.

00:35:49 If you fall into a small black hole, its event horizon is too narrow, and the gravity increases

00:35:55 every inch down.

00:35:56 So if you extend your arm forward, the gravity on your fingers is much stronger than on your

00:36:01 elbow.

00:36:02 This will make your hand lengthen, and you'll feel some discomfort.

00:36:06 Rather significant, to be honest.

00:36:08 Things change if you fall into a supermassive black hole, like the ones in the center of

00:36:13 galaxies.

00:36:14 They can be millions of times heavier than our Sun.

00:36:17 Their event horizon is wide, and gravity doesn't change as quickly.

00:36:22 So the force you'll feel at your heels and at the top of your head will be about the

00:36:26 same, and you can go all the way to the heart of the black hole.

00:36:31 This myth is busted.

00:36:33 The next myth claims we can save the Earth from a giant asteroid with a big BAM!

00:36:39 The familiar plot is that a spaceship lands on the surface of an asteroid.

00:36:43 A team of astronauts quickly drills a hole in it, leaves a present there, and flies away.

00:36:50 Then BAM!

00:36:51 As a result, the asteroid may break into several pieces and continue on its way to Earth.

00:36:57 Well, big chunks of the asteroid fall to our surface, causing a lot of damage.

00:37:02 So our mission is failed.

00:37:04 Well, to save Earth, we need a really big BAM!

00:37:08 Not only outside the asteroid, but right above its surface!

00:37:12 When the boom happens, the force of the blast pushes the asteroid slightly downward.

00:37:17 Even a slight change in trajectory would be enough to make the asteroid fly past the Earth

00:37:22 in the future.

00:37:23 Done!

00:37:24 Oh, and if you made a big boom on an asteroid, you'd never be able to hear its loud sound.

00:37:30 Yeah, we often hear the sound of spaceships and battle in space in the movies, but that's

00:37:35 just a myth.

00:37:37 Sound is a wave that spreads because of the vibrations of molecules.

00:37:41 A person claps a few feet away from you.

00:37:44 The sound wave begins to push the first air molecule next to the clap, then the third,

00:37:49 fourth, and so on until the wave reaches your ear.

00:37:52 So to spread sound, we need molecules like air or water.

00:37:57 In our atmosphere, sound waves spread out just fine, but space is a vacuum, so it's

00:38:03 nothing here.

00:38:04 You can clap your hands loudly there, but there just won't be any molecules that can

00:38:08 vibrate and carry that sound.

00:38:11 One more myth about asteroids – we need to fly a little farther than Mars' orbit.

00:38:16 Whoa, we're in an asteroid belt, and we constantly have to dodge giant rocks and blocks

00:38:22 of ice.

00:38:23 We got in some dense asteroid cloud.

00:38:26 Not true.

00:38:28 The fact is that space is huge, and the distances are incredible.

00:38:33 All the rocks and debris in the asteroid belt are only 4% of the weight of the Moon, so

00:38:38 there really aren't that many of them there.

00:38:42 To understand the size of the emptiness in space, look at the collision of two galaxies.

00:38:47 There are billions of stars in each of them.

00:38:50 If we mix them up, it's unlikely there will be any collisions even here.

00:38:56 Another myth is that there's zero gravity in our orbit.

00:39:00 Imagine you're in a huge box 10 miles up in the air.

00:39:03 Now we let go of the box, and it starts to fall.

00:39:07 You're falling simultaneously with the box at the same speed.

00:39:11 And now it's as if you feel zero gravity.

00:39:14 Well, the same thing happens in orbit.

00:39:17 The International Space Station is 250 miles above the Earth, and it's falling continuously,

00:39:24 though not on the surface of the planet, but around it in its orbit.

00:39:28 Its speed at this point is about 4.7 miles per second.

00:39:32 It could cross the United States from the West Coast to the East Coast in just 8 minutes.

00:39:38 So the astronauts there are experiencing the same thing.

00:39:41 They're just falling with the ISS at that speed.

00:39:45 Now let's look at the Moon.

00:39:47 It always looks at us with one side.

00:39:50 This means the Moon has a dark side, and the Sun's rays never get there.

00:39:54 Well, that's a myth.

00:39:56 The whole point is that the Moon is gravitationally locked to the Earth.

00:40:00 There are days and nights there too.

00:40:03 It's just that this rotation is perfectly aligned with the rotation of the Earth.

00:40:07 So whenever you look at the Moon, you only see one side.

00:40:12 Although there are days when the Sun shines there too.

00:40:15 So it's not the dark side, it's the far side.

00:40:19 And we even have pictures of this place.

00:40:22 And there's one of the biggest craters in our entire solar system, the South Pole-Aitken

00:40:27 Basin.

00:40:28 It's as wide as 2 states of Texas.

00:40:31 One myth that turned out to be untrue is that people have never actually been on the Moon.

00:40:36 This is the original space suit of the first astronauts who were there.

00:40:40 Look at the sole of the shoe.

00:40:42 Some people claim there's no way they could've left footprints like this there.

00:40:47 Actually they could.

00:40:48 On the Moon, the astronauts wore extra boots over their suits, and their soles matched

00:40:54 the footprints on the Moon perfectly.

00:40:56 The astronauts didn't grab them when they left the Moon.

00:40:59 They left a lot of stuff there too.

00:41:01 They even ripped out the armrests of the seats of the lunar module to reduce its weight.

00:41:07 Now the total weight of human trash on the Moon is about 187 tons, including several

00:41:13 lunar rovers, spacecraft debris, rocket stages, and lunar probes.

00:41:18 That's like 3 Boeing 737s!

00:41:22 The next myth is about summer.

00:41:24 The hot season comes because the Earth approaches the closest distance to the Sun in a year.

00:41:30 The Sun warms our planet more, and we all have to go to the beach.

00:41:34 Well, not true.

00:41:36 Let's draw an axis through our planet.

00:41:38 It's slightly tilted on one side, and winter comes when our planet's axis is tilted away

00:41:44 from the Sun.

00:41:46 But over time, the axis tilts toward the hot star.

00:41:50 Then its rays shine at such an angle that it gets warmer.

00:41:53 It's true, though, that the Earth happens to be at different distances from the Sun.

00:41:58 This is because our orbit is not a perfect circle, but slightly flattened, an ellipse.

00:42:03 Normally, we think of the distance to our star as about 93 million miles.

00:42:08 But that distance may be longer or shorter than 3 million miles, depending on which point

00:42:14 in our orbit we pass.

00:42:16 Another myth about the Sun is that it's yellow.

00:42:19 Well, let's send you into space for this one.

00:42:22 You look out the window and… it's white!

00:42:25 The Sun only appears yellow to us through the filter of our atmosphere.

00:42:30 The composition of the air and its thickness just distorts the light of the star.

00:42:35 But stars do come in different colors.

00:42:38 Cooler stars have bright orange and red colors.

00:42:41 These are usually very old stars, older than our Sun.

00:42:45 But young and very hot stars are bright blue.

00:42:48 The Sun is about in the middle of the spectrum.

00:42:51 You've also heard about how, if you take your spacesuit off in outer space, you'll

00:42:56 blow up like a balloon?

00:42:58 Well, our bodies are designed to function at atmospheric pressure, like outside.

00:43:03 But space is a vacuum.

00:43:05 Imagine a huge metal barrel, and we sucked all the air out from there.

00:43:10 Add to that a temperature of -455°F, and you have space.

00:43:16 If you could get into those conditions, all the air pockets in our body, like our lungs,

00:43:21 would start to expand.

00:43:23 So you really could blow up like a balloon if it weren't for our elastic tissues.

00:43:28 They stretch and bend, so you keep your body size.

00:43:31 You'll have enough oxygen in your body to last about 20 seconds.

00:43:36 Then your brain will begin to starve, and soon you'll pass out.

00:43:39 So you won't blow up, and you won't even freeze, because you'll be in a vacuum.

00:43:44 It doesn't conduct heat.

00:43:46 For example, water conducts heat very well, and you feel cold from it instantly.

00:43:52 But you feel better in the air of the same temperature.

00:43:55 If you're in the vacuum of space, the super low temperature won't be a problem for you.

00:44:00 Much worse is solar radiation.

00:44:03 On Earth, we have a shield against radiation in the form of the atmosphere.

00:44:07 It blocks the harmful rays.

00:44:09 In outer space, you would be defenseless.

00:44:13 Another myth is related to cell phones.

00:44:16 People think that when you dial your friend's number, your phone sends a signal into space.

00:44:21 There are a bunch of satellites out there that will pick up your signal and reflect

00:44:25 it like a mirror right into your friend's home.

00:44:28 No, not true.

00:44:29 However, there are satellite phones in the world that work that way.

00:44:34 But when you make a cell phone call, your signal is transmitted through a system of

00:44:38 cell towers from one to another until it gets to your friend's phone.

00:44:43 All aboard!

00:44:46 This is the Intergalactic Cruiser.

00:44:49 The destination on your ticket is a tour of the local group of galaxies, featuring the

00:44:54 Large and Small Magellanic Galaxies, the Orion Nebula, the Andromeda and Triangulum Galaxies,

00:45:02 and a few surprises in between.

00:45:04 Tickets please!

00:45:05 Be advised, you may experience a slight tingling sensation as we rev into hyperspace.

00:45:11 The ship, and everything in it, is going through a dimensional phase change.

00:45:15 It's nothing to worry about, the tingling passes quickly.

00:45:20 Now passengers, as we head toward galactic latitude 180 degrees "North", as Terrarians

00:45:26 are accustomed to calling it, our first main item of interest will be an intense star-forming

00:45:33 region known as M42, the Orion Nebula.

00:45:37 But first, a special treat by the captain that's not on the advertised itinerary.

00:45:42 The Horsehead Nebula!

00:45:44 It's off to the port side, that's left for you Aggies.

00:45:48 Its designation is M43.

00:45:50 The newborn star at the top of the horse's head has a strong solar wind that is deforming

00:45:56 the shape of the nebular cloud.

00:45:59 Get a good look at it now, because in a few thousand years, those gases will be completely

00:46:03 blown away by the star-like nebula that made our Sun.

00:46:07 Yep, long gone, except for the nebular gases captured by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

00:46:15 Okay now, one of our junior explorers asks a question.

00:46:18 What is the "M" in M42 and M43?

00:46:22 Well young lady, the "M" stands for Messier.

00:46:25 Pronounce Mess-ee-yay, not Mess-ee-yer, as in, "Is your room messier than mine?"

00:46:31 Charles Messier, I mean Messier to be precise, was a French astronomer in the 18th century.

00:46:37 He published a catalog of 110 fuzzy objects as seen through an early telescope.

00:46:43 The Horsehead Nebula is number 43 on his list.

00:46:46 We'll see more "M"s as we continue our tour.

00:46:50 Heads up, we're coming to the Orion Nebula.

00:46:54 The gases in the nebula may seem less colorful than you expect.

00:46:58 That's because we're accustomed to seeing long-exposure telescopic photos and enhanced

00:47:02 photos designed to highlight the different gases in the nebula.

00:47:06 May I suggest using the pair of tinted glasses that come with your onboarding packet if you

00:47:11 want to heighten your experience.

00:47:14 In we go!

00:47:15 Now, it's a good thing we are in hyperspace.

00:47:18 As we approach the Trapezium star cluster in the center, the bright star, Theta C, sends

00:47:23 out a solar wind at 5 million miles an hour.

00:47:27 This gulps the whole cloud of gas and dust, creating shock waves that compress nearby

00:47:33 stars.

00:47:34 Theta C is a megastar, 200,000 times brighter than the Sun.

00:47:39 It will go supernova in about a million years.

00:47:42 I won't be around then.

00:47:44 Oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur glow in ionized states like a fluorescent light bulb.

00:47:50 Oxygen blue, hydrogen red, some green and sulfur, and dust glow as yellow-orange.

00:47:57 As we pull out of the Orion Nebula and rise high above the galactic plane, the spiral

00:48:03 arms of the Milky Way are visible.

00:48:05 Our Sun, which you cannot distinguish from this height above the galaxy, is in the Orion

00:48:10 spur that lies between the outer Perseus arm and the inner Sagittarius arm.

00:48:16 Notice the center of the Milky Way contains a bright magnetic bar that plays an essential

00:48:21 part in star formation.

00:48:24 Over 70% of nearby galaxies include magnetic bars.

00:48:29 It's a sign of a mature galaxy.

00:48:33 Only 20% of distant galaxies contain magnetic bars in their cores.

00:48:37 Which reminds me, passengers, the juice bar is now open.

00:48:41 Our H1 server will take your orders.

00:48:44 Now that's the Andromeda galaxy far, far out to the port side.

00:48:48 But may I call your attention to the many dwarf galaxies, over 40 of them, that populate

00:48:53 our galactic neighborhood.

00:48:55 We're heading to one now.

00:48:57 The Large Magellanic Cloud, LMC to astronomers, is an irregular dwarf satellite galaxy of

00:49:04 the Milky Way, containing about 30 billion stars with a dynamic star-forming region called

00:49:09 the Tarantula Nebula, which we will be cruising through shortly.

00:49:14 Of course, if there is a large Magellanic Cloud, there must be a small Magellanic Cloud,

00:49:20 SMC.

00:49:21 And there it is, below and to the left of the LMC.

00:49:26 The Milky Way will eventually ingest both dwarf galaxies.

00:49:30 Some prefer the word "accreted", but the result is the same.

00:49:34 If you use your tinted glasses again, you can see that the LMC has stripped away a tremendous

00:49:39 amount of gas from the SMC, as they have interacted gravitationally over millions of years.

00:49:45 Hey, I know all about gas!

00:49:48 Now we're heading out of the Milky Way to a distance of about 50 kiloparsecs.

00:49:53 That's 50,000 parsecs, or about 163,000 light-years.

00:49:59 So what's a parsec?

00:50:00 No, it's not slang for "pair of socks".

00:50:04 A parsec is about 3.26 light-years.

00:50:07 A light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles.

00:50:11 The word "parsec" is a combination of two words, "parallax" and "second".

00:50:17 Parallax is the shift an object seems to make when viewed from two different perspectives.

00:50:22 Looking at an object with your left eye and then your right eye, you'll see the object

00:50:26 appear to shift.

00:50:28 That's parallax.

00:50:30 When an astronomical object is photographed with the Earth on one side of the Sun, and

00:50:34 then again six months later on the other side of the Sun, the shift is measurable in degrees

00:50:40 of arc, or minutes of arc, or seconds of arc, down to milliseconds of arc.

00:50:46 That's a parsec, a parallax of one arc-second, which turns out to be 3.26 light-years.

00:50:52 Hey, what about a jone of arc?

00:50:55 That's how you measure distances in France!

00:50:58 Meanwhile, since you can't measure a light-year with a ruler or a tape measure, parsecs are

00:51:04 the scientific way of telling the distance to a star or intergalactic object.

00:51:09 The greater the parallax, the closer the object is.

00:51:12 The smaller the parallax, the farther away it is.

00:51:16 Now, straight ahead in the heart of the Tarantula Nebula is the R136 star cluster.

00:51:23 Within a distance of one light-year, there are over 40 stars each with a mass over 50

00:51:29 times that of the Sun.

00:51:30 Wow!

00:51:31 Comparatively, there isn't a single other star within four light-years of our home star,

00:51:36 Sol.

00:51:37 And that's a good thing.

00:51:39 You can see Supernova 1987A at about 2 o'clock high.

00:51:44 A blue giant star 100,000 times brighter than the Sun experienced a core implosion, resulting

00:51:51 in a Type II supernova 100 million times brighter than the Sun.

00:51:57 It has left behind a neutron star, clouded in dust and gas and a wildly spectacular display

00:52:03 of fireworks.

00:52:05 Now 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud is the closest supernova to Earth since 1604,

00:52:13 which happened in the Milky Way about 20,000 light-years from Earth.

00:52:17 It was visible in the daytime for about two weeks or so.

00:52:22 After 1987A went supernova because it was a blue giant star, speculation has increased

00:52:29 that the blue giant star Rigel, the foot star of the constellation Orion, might go supernova

00:52:35 in the not-too-distant future, or already has gone supernova.

00:52:40 Rigel is approximately 860 light-years from Earth, so anything that happens to Rigel would

00:52:46 take about 860 years before it would be noticed on Earth.

00:52:51 Supernova 1987A ejected the heavy elements like cobalt, nickel and iron and lighter silicates

00:52:58 into the Tarantula Nebula, where they will form the basic building blocks of stars and

00:53:03 planets.

00:53:04 Our server is now offering space-themed snacks.

00:53:08 May I recommend the Jupiter cotton candy puffs for the children on board?

00:53:11 Awww.

00:53:12 Remember, I know all about gas.

00:53:16 Our next stop is the Andromeda Galaxy and environs.

00:53:20 Notice its halo as we leave the Milky Way and its 300 billion stars behind.

00:53:26 As many as 150 globular clusters reside in the galactic halo.

00:53:32 They orbit down and through the galactic disk and contain some of the oldest stars in the

00:53:37 Universe.

00:53:38 How they got here, in our home galaxy, is a matter of intense study.

00:53:43 You will notice NGC 6822, an irregular dwarf galaxy off to the starboard.

00:53:49 NGC stands for New General Catalog of Astronomical Objects.

00:53:55 Now you'd think there'd have been an old general catalog, but there wasn't.

00:54:00 It was just a new catalog.

00:54:02 There is, however, a revised New General Catalog which astronomers refer to regularly.

00:54:08 Clears that up, huh?

00:54:10 As we pass NGC 6822, you'll notice a magnetic bar beginning to form and bright patches of

00:54:17 new star formation.

00:54:19 This galaxy was discovered in 1884 by E.E.

00:54:23 Barnard, and is also called Barnard's Galaxy.

00:54:27 Mr. Barnard was quite an astronomical observer.

00:54:30 He has a crater on the Moon named for him, one on Mars, an area on Jupiter's moon Ganymede,

00:54:37 a minor planet, number 819 Bernardania, and the star with the fastest movement across

00:54:43 the sky, Barnard's Star.

00:54:46 Now not too many people have their name emblazoned across space as has Edward Emerson Barnard.

00:54:54 Visiting the giant Andromeda galaxy with its trillion stars, we will skirt above its western

00:55:00 edge and visit one of the enormous galaxy's dwarf companion galaxies, M110 or NGC 205.

00:55:07 Yes, it also has two designations.

00:55:10 Hey, take your pick!

00:55:13 The first of its kind, a dwarf spheroidal galaxy of about 3.5 billion solar masses,

00:55:19 M110 or NGC 205 if you wish, has eight globular clusters near its core.

00:55:26 It too will be swallowed, or accreted if you prefer, by the Andromeda galaxy.

00:55:31 It may have already been stripped of much of its stars and gas, a point highlighted

00:55:36 by M110's general lack of star formation.

00:55:40 Everybody having fun yet?

00:55:43 And now our final stop, M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, the third and last spiral galaxy of

00:55:50 our local group.

00:55:52 Located in the small constellation of Triangulum, Latin for "triangle" -- good guess -- M33

00:55:59 is about half the size of the Milky Way.

00:56:02 The Triangulum Galaxy is 2.7 million light years from Earth, but it is much closer to

00:56:08 the Andromeda galaxy, and moving towards it.

00:56:12 If two spiral galaxies collide, it may alter the course of the Andromeda galaxy and prevent

00:56:17 the predicted collision with the Milky Way.

00:56:20 Well, let's hope so!

00:56:22 Now this important message.

00:56:24 We will serve dinner on our return trip to Earth.

00:56:27 There's a choice of chicken or fish.

00:56:29 We hope you have enjoyed the tour.

00:56:31 Hey, if you fill out our survey and give us 5 stars, you can also have dessert!

00:56:36 So, once they explode, stars aren't supposed to come back to life.

00:56:46 But some of the stars somehow have survived the Great Supernova Explosion.

00:56:51 Such zombie stars are pretty rare.

00:56:54 Scientists found a really big one called LP40365.

00:56:58 It's a partially burnt white dwarf.

00:57:03 Now a white dwarf is a star that has burned up all of the hydrogen, and that hydrogen

00:57:07 was previously its nuclear fuel.

00:57:10 In this case, the final explosion was maybe weaker than it usually is, not powerful enough

00:57:15 to destroy the entire star.

00:57:16 It's like a star wanted to explode but didn't make it, which is why part of the matter still

00:57:22 survived.

00:57:23 One of those zombie stars used to be a white dwarf, or just left over from an explosion.

00:57:28 It gobbled up too much from another star and, surprisingly, managed to explode once again.

00:57:37 If you manage to go to the Moon one day and see fresh footprints, that doesn't mean

00:57:42 there's someone else there with you.

00:57:43 Footprints, or similar marks, can last for a million years over there because the Moon

00:57:48 doesn't have an atmosphere.

00:57:50 There are no winds, not even a breeze, that can slowly erase those footprints.

00:57:55 In outer space, you'd be strong enough to weld two pieces of metal together with your

00:57:59 own hands.

00:58:00 Okay, it has nothing to do with your strength.

00:58:03 You could just press them together with no effort, and that's it.

00:58:07 Oxygen in our atmosphere makes a thin layer on the surface of the metal.

00:58:10 It's like a barrier, which is why such a trick is impossible on Earth but perfectly

00:58:15 logical in outer space.

00:58:21 If you ever go to space, don't take off your spacesuit unless you're on a spaceship.

00:58:26 Air in your lungs would expand as well as the oxygen in the rest of your body.

00:58:30 You'd be like a balloon twice your regular size.

00:58:33 Good news, the skin is elastic enough to hold you together, which means you wouldn't explode.

00:58:42 If you watch a very touching movie in space and start crying, your tears won't run down.

00:58:47 They will gather around your eyeballs.

00:58:50 Your eyes will get too dry, so you'll feel like they're burning.

00:58:53 Any exposed liquid on your body will vaporize, including the surfaces of your tongue.

00:58:58 Speaking of burning, there's one thing fire can't do in space.

00:59:02 Fire can spread when there's a flow of oxygen, and since there's not any in space.

00:59:08 If the fire breaks out in a rocket, you can simply turn off the ventilation system and

00:59:12 voila!

00:59:13 It can get more complicated if there's intense smoke, sparking, and material melting in conditions

00:59:19 of reduced gravity.

00:59:21 Regular foam fire extinguishers we use on Earth are useless here because they release

00:59:25 foam randomly.

00:59:27 Researchers are developing a fire extinguisher that will put out fires by using sound waves.

00:59:32 The bigger the sound intensity, the bigger the flame they can put out.

00:59:36 But the astronauts might end up deaf if their frequency is too high.

00:59:44 A black hole is not like some starving monster that wanders around and has gravity so strong

00:59:49 that nothing can really escape it.

00:59:51 When something comes close to the point of no return, which we also call the event horizon,

00:59:56 it disappears.

00:59:57 No way back!

00:59:59 But quantum physics claims nothing can really destroy data, so it's a true paradox.

01:00:06 Stephen Hawking was the one with the idea of how black holes don't really have event

01:00:10 horizons.

01:00:11 Maybe they have apparent horizons.

01:00:13 Those trap things for some time only.

01:00:16 After that, the trapped energy will somehow get away, but in a different form.

01:00:20 When something goes into a black hole, it changes shape and gets stretched out just

01:00:25 like spaghetti.

01:00:26 It happens because gravitational force is trying to stretch an object in one direction

01:00:30 but at the same time squeeze it in another.

01:00:33 Like a pasta paradox.

01:00:35 Speaking of, a black hole that's as big as a single atom has the mass of a really

01:00:40 big mountain.

01:00:42 There's one at the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A. It has a mass like

01:00:48 4 billion Suns, but luckily it's far away from us.

01:00:52 There are more than 23,000 pieces of so-called space junk bigger than a softball floating

01:00:58 above our planet at speeds up to 17,500 mph.

01:01:03 And there are 500,000 pieces in general, some of them the size of a marble.

01:01:08 Space waste is generally debris made up of natural particles called meteoroids and artificial

01:01:14 particles like things we make on the Earth.

01:01:18 Meteoroids orbit the Sun while the majority of human-made debris orbits our planet.

01:01:23 For example, we launched almost 9,000 spacecraft around the world, from satellites to rocket

01:01:30 ships.

01:01:31 Even the tiniest pieces can damage a spacecraft at such high speeds.

01:01:35 Galaxies, planets, comets, asteroids, stars, space bodies are things we can actually see

01:01:41 in space, but they make up less than 5% of the total Universe.

01:01:46 Dark matter, one of the biggest mysteries in space, is the name we use for all the mass

01:01:50 in the Universe that's still invisible to us.

01:01:55 There's a lot of it.

01:01:59 It may even make 25% of the Universe.

01:02:02 Dark energy makes the rest of the 70% of the Universe.

01:02:07 Scientists don't know much about it, but they think dark energy could be behind the

01:02:11 increasing expansion of the entire Universe, while dark matter slows it down.

01:02:16 Dark matter doesn't interact with us in any way that we know of, nor does it interact

01:02:20 with itself.

01:02:21 If it did, we might be able to find dark matter galaxies, dark matter planets, or such objects.

01:02:29 Astronomers have found the largest hole we've ever seen in the Universe.

01:02:32 It's the giant void that spreads a billion light-years across.

01:02:36 They found it accidentally.

01:02:37 One of the research team members was a little bit bored and wanted to check out how things

01:02:42 were going in the direction of the cold spot.

01:02:45 That's an anomaly in the Cosmic Microwave Background Map, or in short, CMB.

01:02:51 It's a faint glow of light that falls on our planet from different directions and fills

01:02:55 the Universe.

01:02:56 It's been streaming through space for almost 14 billion years as the afterglow that occurred

01:03:01 after the Big Bang.

01:03:03 But instead of CMB, they realized there's a giant area way colder than they'd expected.

01:03:09 The team started tracking radio signals, but there were no radio sources in that whole

01:03:14 volume.

01:03:15 That means there are no galaxies or clusters, and since it's so cold, there's no dark

01:03:20 matter either, or regular matter.

01:03:22 So it really doesn't matter.

01:03:24 The giant void is empty, and researchers think it could consist of dark energy.

01:03:29 Light can still pass through it.

01:03:30 It's not the only void in space, but it's the biggest one we've found.

01:03:36 The area around a star is habitable when it's not too cold or too hot for liquid water to

01:03:41 exist on the planet surrounding it.

01:03:43 Let's say our planet was where Pluto is.

01:03:46 It's too far from the Sun, which means our ocean and big parts of its atmosphere would

01:03:50 freeze.

01:03:51 But if the Earth was in Mercury's place, we'd be too close to the Sun, and the water

01:03:56 on our planet would evaporate.

01:03:58 Such habitable area is called the Goldilocks zone.

01:04:01 So you can see where planets are located and assume if they have a chance for life on their

01:04:06 surface.

01:04:07 But Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, definitely breaks the rule.

01:04:11 It's outside of the Goldilocks zone, but still kept warm.

01:04:15 Not from the Sun directly, but Jupiter and its moons that actually pump energy into Europa.

01:04:20 Europa changes its shape as it circles around Jupiter.

01:04:23 It's similar to tides rising and falling on our planet.

01:04:27 Water on the Earth changes its shape as a response to the tidal forces of our Moon.

01:04:32 When the same happens with a solid object, the object is stressed.

01:04:35 That's how you pump energy into that object.

01:04:38 It's like you're playing racquetball.

01:04:40 You hit the ball around a couple of times before you start playing like you're warming

01:04:43 it up.

01:04:44 You kinda distort the ball every time you smack it.

01:04:49 The surface of Europa is frozen, but it has cracks in the ice.

01:04:53 You can see ridges in the ice where there's a crack.

01:04:56 Then those flying chunks shift and refreeze.

01:04:58 You'd see a similar thing if you could fly over the Arctic Ocean in the wintertime.

01:05:03 There are ice sheets constantly breaking and refreezing.

01:05:06 So Europa can't completely freeze.

01:05:09 Scientists think there could be an ocean of liquid water under the icy surface.

01:05:14 Europa is not the only moon where this is happening.

01:05:17 Another of Jupiter's moons, Io, is also warm because of such tidal forces.

01:05:21 Io also has volcanoes erupting from within all the time.

01:05:25 So it's not only that the Sun warms the space bodies and pumps them with energy.

01:05:30 Many experts agree the Universe might come to its end about 3-22 billion years from now.

01:05:36 It's expanding all the time, which means it formed from a compact state.

01:05:40 If it has a beginning, it's probably going to have an end as well.

01:05:44 Yeah, I won't be around for that.

01:05:46 One other popular theory says the growth will slow down, and gravity will become the powerful

01:05:51 force that will make the Universe shrink.

01:05:54 That will lead to complete chaos.

01:05:56 Galaxies, stars, planets, space bodies, they will all move, collide, and, you know, destroy

01:06:02 one another.

01:06:03 It's like the reverse Big Bang.

01:06:05 Huge chaos, but this time, everything collapses.

01:06:09 On that cheery note, always stay on the Bright Side of life!

01:06:18 In space, no one can hear you scream.

01:06:21 Or is that in space, no one can hear I scream?

01:06:24 Well, either way, we know that no supernovas, crashing asteroids, and burning planets make

01:06:29 a sound in space.

01:06:31 Or do they?

01:06:33 What if you actually can hear something out there?

01:06:36 Well, let's see.

01:06:38 Okie dokie, back to middle school.

01:06:41 Sound is a mechanical wave originating from vibration.

01:06:45 What exactly does that mean?

01:06:46 The simplest example is guitar strings.

01:06:49 Let's pluck one of them.

01:06:50 It starts to vibrate.

01:06:52 The atoms inside the metal string begin to push and beat the atoms of the air around

01:06:56 them.

01:06:57 So now, atoms are constantly pushing each other until they reach our ears.

01:07:01 It's like a wave from a pebble thrown into a pond, and it happens very quickly, at a

01:07:06 speed of about 761 miles per hour.

01:07:11 Then our eardrums begin to vibrate at the same frequency.

01:07:15 And the little bones inside our ears transmit this vibration to the brain.

01:07:19 The brain then does its magic, recognizes the pattern, and turns it into sounds.

01:07:26 Great!

01:07:27 Now we know that we need some particles to create sound.

01:07:30 And we can find these particles in gases, liquids, and solid substances.

01:07:36 And what about space?

01:07:37 Nope, it's almost a perfect vacuum.

01:07:40 And you've probably already heard that there's no sound in space because it's a vacuum.

01:07:45 But what does it actually mean?

01:07:47 Well, a vacuum is a perfect void.

01:07:50 It's an area completely devoid of matter.

01:07:53 It means there's nothing there.

01:07:55 Yeah, despite all those celestial bodies in space, there's actually no air in between

01:08:00 them.

01:08:01 No atoms, no particles, nothing.

01:08:03 Nada.

01:08:04 Zippo.

01:08:05 Well, almost.

01:08:06 To be honest, the perfect vacuum doesn't really exist.

01:08:10 We can't get rid of atoms for good.

01:08:12 But space is very close to this notion.

01:08:15 On average, there are 15 to 80 atoms per 1 cubic inch.

01:08:19 This may sound like a big number, but keep in mind that these atoms are tiny, and the

01:08:24 void distance between them is huge.

01:08:27 For comparison, 1 cubic inch of air contains about 16,000 atoms.

01:08:32 So of course, with such a low density, these atoms can't push each other.

01:08:37 Even if the vibration is very strong, like, I don't know, a supernova, they still won't

01:08:42 be able to do that.

01:08:45 So movies have been lying to us!

01:08:48 All these epic space scenes actually take place in an awkward silence.

01:08:52 Who would've guessed?

01:08:55 But don't get upset.

01:08:56 What if I tell you there are, in fact, some ways to hear sound in space?

01:09:02 First of all, there's still sound on other planets.

01:09:05 If there's an atmosphere on a space body, or at least something like gas, water, or

01:09:10 a solid surface, there will be sound.

01:09:13 In our case, the atmosphere becomes completely silent at about 60 miles above the Earth's

01:09:19 surface.

01:09:20 That's where the sky stops being blue and a black starry veil begins.

01:09:26 In any case, we'd have to land on another planet, or at least get close to its atmosphere

01:09:31 to hear something.

01:09:33 But whatever it is, it would sound very different.

01:09:36 Let's take our favorite Venus as an example.

01:09:39 The atmosphere there is very dense.

01:09:42 Scientists jokingly call it a thick chemical soup.

01:09:45 No thanks.

01:09:46 So if you somehow manage to stay alive and speak there, your voice would be very different.

01:09:52 It would become much louder, and it would sound deeper.

01:09:57 So if you want a pleasant baritone, you know what to do.

01:10:02 I wonder what would happen if Earth had a denser atmosphere.

01:10:06 What would we hear then?

01:10:07 Well, you can vaguely imagine that if you've ever been in the water.

01:10:12 Water is very dense.

01:10:14 Sound moves there much faster and better compared to the air, at a speed of almost a mile per

01:10:19 second depending on the water temperature.

01:10:23 So if you sit in an empty room with no sound sources, you won't hear much, right?

01:10:28 Now dip your head in the water and check out how the same silence sounds here.

01:10:33 It's not quiet at all.

01:10:35 Even if you ignore the ever-present sounds of the water itself, you'll immediately notice

01:10:39 how well you can hear your own body, how your blood pulsates in the veins, how your heart

01:10:45 works, the slightest movement of your fingers.

01:10:48 Kinda creepy, isn't it?

01:10:50 This gives us an idea of what would happen to us on a planet with a denser atmosphere.

01:10:55 And that's just crazy.

01:10:56 We would hear everything.

01:10:59 From scurrying animals to the movement of tectonic plates.

01:11:02 "Ah, come on," you'd probably say.

01:11:05 It's obvious that there's sound on other planets.

01:11:07 But didn't you say we can hear something in open space?

01:11:11 Actually yes.

01:11:12 For example, in a cloud of dust.

01:11:14 You can find space dust almost everywhere in space.

01:11:18 It may be the remains of a star or something else.

01:11:21 And in these places, everything is a bit denser than usual.

01:11:25 This means there are probably dust clouds where particles are very close to each other,

01:11:30 which means they can produce sounds.

01:11:32 Of course, those will be very quiet and transmitted over a very short distance.

01:11:38 But it's better than nothing, right?

01:11:41 Plus, we already have one real space sound recorded.

01:11:45 It came from the Perseus galaxy, which is located 250 million light-years away from

01:11:50 us.

01:11:52 NASA recorded it in 2003.

01:11:55 Those of us music geeks will want to know that it's a B-flat, 57 octaves below middle

01:12:00 C on the piano.

01:12:02 And have to add another 660 keys to the left on the keyboard.

01:12:06 But its frequency is so low that the human ear unfortunately can't hear it.

01:12:12 But besides that, we can only hear something inside spaceships.

01:12:16 These are small pockets of air, after all.

01:12:19 In a spacesuit, you would hear sounds very well too, including your breathing or blood

01:12:24 circulation in a spacesuit.

01:12:27 But two astronauts, flying side by side, wouldn't hear each other, even if they got very close

01:12:32 and shouted very loudly.

01:12:34 It's quite funny, if you, being an astronaut, bumped into something, it would be very loud

01:12:39 for you, but your friend wouldn't hear anything.

01:12:42 That's why astronauts use radio devices.

01:12:48 Now purely theoretically, if you could somehow crawl out of your spacesuit and survive, you'd

01:12:55 be able to hear the chatter and noises going on inside the spaceship.

01:12:59 But how?

01:13:00 So, look, we have some air inside the spaceship, and it transmits sound.

01:13:05 It reaches the metal casing and gets through it.

01:13:07 And then, if you leaned against the ship, preferably touching it with your elbow or

01:13:12 knee, the sound would be transmitted to the brain directly through your bones, ignoring

01:13:17 the ears.

01:13:19 Yes, our bones conduct sound.

01:13:21 That's how, for example, deaf people listen to music.

01:13:25 It's called bone conduction.

01:13:26 It's used in some headphones and some other technologies.

01:13:31 You can do a little experiment.

01:13:32 Hold your fingers over your ears.

01:13:35 Shut them properly so that you really don't hear much.

01:13:38 Then try to touch a sound source.

01:13:40 It can be anything vibrating.

01:13:41 For example, a speaker playing music with some part of your body where the bone is close

01:13:46 to the skin.

01:13:48 Now watch the miracle happen.

01:13:50 You can hear the sound not through your ears but directly in your brain.

01:13:54 But please don't repeat this experiment in open space.

01:13:58 You know, ice cream.

01:14:00 Haha.

01:14:01 Now you've probably heard about things like "the sounds of space" where you can listen,

01:14:05 for example, to the sounds made by the Sun or different planets.

01:14:09 How do we record these ones?

01:14:11 Easily.

01:14:12 There is another way to hear sound in space – electromagnetic waves.

01:14:17 In other words, a radio.

01:14:19 Radio is the same form of electromagnetic radiation as light.

01:14:23 These waves can travel in a vacuum without any problems.

01:14:27 Astronauts' transmitters work that way.

01:14:30 An astronaut says something to their friend.

01:14:33 The sound waves turn into radio waves, reach the other person, and are then converted back

01:14:38 into sounds.

01:14:40 And this is how we get so-called "space sounds."

01:14:44 Our planet is actually very loud in that regard.

01:14:47 We're sending a huge amount of radio waves into the Universe, all radio signals we've

01:14:51 ever listened to.

01:14:52 It's a pity that they travel only 110 light-years away from us.

01:14:58 But you know, I think it's good that we don't hear everything that happens in space.

01:15:02 Imagine if sound could easily travel through the Universe?

01:15:06 We would hear everything from solar flares to nearby supernovas.

01:15:11 Horrifying, right?

01:15:12 So maybe we're just lucky.

01:15:14 Hey, remember, in space, you can hear ice cream.

01:15:18 "Chocolate!

01:15:19 Vanilla!"

01:15:22 Our Sun is an average-sized star, and still, it could fit 1,300,000 Earths.

01:15:29 The star is also 333,000 times as heavy as our planet.

01:15:34 NASA has translated radio waves created by planets' atmospheres into audible sounds.

01:15:40 That's how astronomers found out that Neptune sounds like ocean waves, Jupiter like being

01:15:46 underwater, and Saturn's voice resembles background music to a horror movie.

01:15:52 Here on Earth, it's bebop jazz.

01:15:54 Now I made that up.

01:15:57 The Sun's surface is scorching hot, but a bolt of lightning is 5 times hotter.

01:16:03 Earth gets struck by 100 lightning bolts every second, which results in 8 million lightning

01:16:09 strikes a day and around 3 billion a year.

01:16:13 Shocking.

01:16:15 If you manage to go to the Moon one day and see fresh footprints, that doesn't mean

01:16:19 there's someone else there with you.

01:16:22 Footprints or similar marks can last for a million years over there.

01:16:27 Because the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere.

01:16:29 There are no winds, not even a breeze, that can slowly erase those footprints.

01:16:35 Astronomers have found the largest hole we've ever seen in the Universe.

01:16:40 It's the giant void that spreads a billion light-years across.

01:16:44 They found it accidentally.

01:16:46 One of the research team members was a little bored and wanted to check how things are going

01:16:50 in the direction of the cold spot.

01:16:53 That's an anomaly in the Cosmic Microwave Background Map, or CMB for short.

01:16:58 It's a faint glow of light that falls on our planet from different directions and fills

01:17:03 the Universe.

01:17:04 It's been streaming through space for almost 14 billion years as the "afterglow" that

01:17:09 occurred after the Big Bang.

01:17:13 So you fall right into the heart of the black hole and prepare for a sad end.

01:17:17 Well, you don't have to.

01:17:20 Falling into a black hole won't necessarily destroy you or your spaceship.

01:17:24 You have to choose a bigger black hole to survive.

01:17:28 If you fall into a small black hole, its event horizon is too narrow, and the gravity increases

01:17:34 every inch down.

01:17:36 So if you extend your arm forward, the gravity on your fingers is much stronger than on your

01:17:40 elbow.

01:17:41 This will make your hand lengthen, and you'll feel some… discomfort.

01:17:46 Rather significant, to be honest.

01:17:48 Things change if you fall into a supermassive black hole, like the ones in the center of

01:17:52 galaxies.

01:17:54 They can be millions of times heavier than the Sun.

01:17:57 Their event horizon is wide, and the gravity doesn't change as quickly.

01:18:01 So the force you'll feel at your heels and at the top of your head will be about the

01:18:06 same, and you can go all the way to the heart of the black hole.

01:18:10 This myth is busted.

01:18:12 If you watch a very touching movie in space and start crying, your tears won't run down.

01:18:19 They will gather around the eyeballs.

01:18:21 Your eyes will get too dry, so you'll feel like they're burning.

01:18:26 Any exposed liquid on your body will vaporize, including the surfaces of your tongue.

01:18:31 Speaking of burning, that's one thing fire can't do in space.

01:18:35 Fire can spread when there's a flow of oxygen, and since there's not any in space… well…

01:18:42 Once they explode, stars aren't supposed to come back to life.

01:18:46 But some of the stars somehow have survived the great supernova explosion.

01:18:51 Such "zombie" stars are pretty rare.

01:18:54 Scientists found a really big one called LP40365.

01:18:57 It's a partially burnt white dwarf.

01:19:02 A white dwarf is a star that burned up all of the hydrogen, and that hydrogen was previously

01:19:07 its nuclear fuel.

01:19:09 In this case, the final explosion was maybe weaker than it usually is, not powerful enough

01:19:15 to destroy the entire star.

01:19:17 It's like a star wanted to explode but didn't make it, which is why part of the matter still

01:19:23 survived.

01:19:24 If you ever go into space, don't take off your spacesuit unless you're on a spaceship.

01:19:30 Air in your lungs would expand, as well as the oxygen in the rest of your body.

01:19:34 You'd be like a balloon, twice your regular size.

01:19:38 Good news, the skin is elastic enough to hold you together, which means you wouldn't explode.

01:19:44 Small comfort.

01:19:46 When something goes into a black hole, it changes shape and gets stretched out just

01:19:50 like spaghetti.

01:19:52 This happens because gravitational force is trying to stretch an object in one direction

01:19:57 but at the same time squeeze it into another, like a pasta paradox.

01:20:02 Speaking of, a black hole that's as big as a single atom has the mass of a really

01:20:07 big mountain.

01:20:09 There's one at the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A. It has a mass like for

01:20:15 a billion suns, but luckily it's far away from us.

01:20:21 If you made a big boom on an asteroid, you'd never be able to hear its loud sound.

01:20:26 Yes, we often hear the sound of spaceships and battles in space in the movies, but that's

01:20:31 just a myth.

01:20:33 Sound is a wave that spreads because of the vibrations of molecules.

01:20:37 A person claps a few feet away from you, the sound wave begins to push the first air molecule

01:20:42 next to the clap, then the second, third, and so on, until the wave reaches your ear.

01:20:48 So to spread sound, we need molecules like air or water.

01:20:53 In our atmosphere, sound waves spread out just fine, but space is a vacuum, so it's

01:20:59 nothing here.

01:21:00 You can clap your hands loudly there, but there just won't be any molecules that can

01:21:04 vibrate and carry that sound.

01:21:06 So to carry on a conversation, you'd either need a radio or really good lip-reading skills.

01:21:14 Spaceships orbit the Sun, while the majority of human-made debris orbits our planet.

01:21:20 For example, we launched almost 9,000 spacecraft around the world from satellites to rocket

01:21:25 ships.

01:21:27 Even the tiniest pieces can damage a spacecraft at such high speeds.

01:21:31 Galaxies, planets, comets, asteroids, stars, space bodies are things we can actually see

01:21:38 in space.

01:21:39 But they make up less than 5% of the total universe.

01:21:43 Dark matter, one of the biggest mysteries in space, is the name we use for all the mass

01:21:48 in the universe that's still invisible to us.

01:21:51 And there's a lot of it, it may even make 25% of the universe.

01:21:56 Dark energy makes the other 70% of the universe.

01:22:00 That adds up to 100, right?

01:22:03 Now let's look at the Moon.

01:22:05 It always looks at us with one side.

01:22:08 This means the Moon has a dark side, and the Sun's rays never get there.

01:22:12 Well, that's a myth.

01:22:14 The whole point is that the Moon is gravitationally locked to the Earth.

01:22:18 There are days and nights there too.

01:22:20 It's just that this rotation is perfectly aligned with the rotation of the Earth.

01:22:25 So whenever you look at the Moon, you only see one side.

01:22:29 Although there are days when the Sun shines there too, so it's not the dark side, it's

01:22:34 the far side.

01:22:36 And we even have pictures of this place.

01:22:38 And there's one of the biggest craters in our entire solar system.

01:22:42 The South Pole-Aitken Basin.

01:22:44 It's as wide as two states of Texas.

01:22:47 Yeehaw!

01:22:48 One myth that turned out to be untrue is that people have never actually been on the Moon.

01:22:55 This is the original space suit of the first astronauts who were there.

01:22:59 Look at the sole of the shoe.

01:23:01 Some people claim there's no way they could've left footprints like this there.

01:23:05 Actually they could.

01:23:06 On the Moon, the astronauts wore extra boots over their suits, and their soles matched

01:23:11 the footprints on the Moon perfectly.

01:23:14 The astronauts didn't need them when they left the Moon and tossed them when the Moon

01:23:18 walk was over.

01:23:20 They left a lot of stuff there too.

01:23:22 They even tossed the armrests of the seats in the lunar module to reduce the weight.

01:23:26 Now counting all the Apollo lunar missions, the total weight of rubbish on the Moon is

01:23:31 approximately 187 tons, including several lunar rovers, spacecraft debris, 6 lunar modules,

01:23:39 and all the experiments left behind.

01:23:42 That's like 3 Boeing 737s.

01:23:45 Another myth about the Sun is that it's yellow.

01:23:48 Let's send you into space for this one.

01:23:50 You look out the window, and… it's white!

01:23:53 The Sun only appears yellow to us through the filter of our atmosphere.

01:23:57 The composition of the air and its thickness just distorts the light of the star.

01:24:02 But stars do come in different colors.

01:24:05 Cooler stars have bright orange and red colors.

01:24:08 These are usually very old stars, older than our Sun.

01:24:12 But young and very hot stars are bright blue.

01:24:15 The Sun is about in the middle of this spectrum.

01:24:19 One more myth about asteroids.

01:24:21 We need to fly a little farther than Mars' orbit.

01:24:24 Whoa, we're in an asteroid belt, and we constantly have to dodge giant rocks and blocks

01:24:29 of ice.

01:24:30 We got in some dense asteroid clouds.

01:24:34 Not true.

01:24:35 The fact is that space is huge, and the distances are incredible.

01:24:40 All the rocks and debris in the asteroid belt are only 4% of the weight of the Moon.

01:24:45 So there really aren't that many of them there.

01:24:48 To understand the dimension of the emptiness in space, look at the collision of two galaxies.

01:24:54 There are billions of stars in each of them.

01:24:56 If we mix them up, it's unlikely there will be any collisions even here.

01:25:02 No one will hear your cry in space.

01:25:06 We've all heard this famous chilling phrase.

01:25:08 And it's actually true.

01:25:10 Space, for the most part, consists of a giant nothingness.

01:25:13 There's a lot of, you know, space in space.

01:25:16 But this doesn't mean there are no sounds in space.

01:25:19 In fact, there are plenty of them.

01:25:21 And some of them can even make you shiver.

01:25:23 Let's take a look at the scariest space sounds.

01:25:27 First of all, how are cosmic sounds even recorded?

01:25:30 It's just the vibration of molecules.

01:25:33 When you scream, you make the molecules push each other furiously until they reach the

01:25:37 ear of the person you're yelling at.

01:25:39 Then these vibrations get transmitted to the brain, and we recognize them as something that

01:25:45 you might need to apologize for.

01:25:47 In other words, to hear something, we need molecules.

01:25:50 And that's where things get complicated.

01:25:52 There aren't any of them in space.

01:25:54 The entire universe almost completely consists of a vacuum.

01:25:58 No, not a Hoover.

01:26:00 Complete nothingness.

01:26:01 However, the wizards from NASA still record space sounds somehow.

01:26:06 So how do they do it?

01:26:07 The thing is, there are some types of waves that don't care about molecules.

01:26:11 We regular folk can't perceive them without some special devices.

01:26:16 These waves include, for example, radio waves.

01:26:18 We'll need a radio or something like that to recognize them.

01:26:22 And that's exactly what NASA's satellites do.

01:26:25 They catch random radio waves.

01:26:27 Thanks to their heroism, we can find out how different cosmic bodies sound.

01:26:32 These satellites record a variety of waves, fluctuations of plasmas, magnetic fields,

01:26:37 and other, you know, stuff.

01:26:39 And then scientists from NASA transform all this into normal soundtracks.

01:26:44 And some of them sound quite frightening, to put it mildly.

01:26:48 Let's take our magnetic field, for example.

01:26:51 It surrounds our planet like an invisible shield, protecting us from all sorts of nasties,

01:26:56 like radiation and solar winds.

01:26:58 At the same time, we can neither see it, feel it, nor hear.

01:27:02 Oops!

01:27:03 Well, the last one is outdated.

01:27:05 Scientists from the Technical University of Denmark took magnetic waves recorded by the

01:27:10 ESSA Swarm satellite, they converted them into an audio track, and got a pretty creepy

01:27:16 result.

01:27:20 Now to be honest, it sounds more like an eerie entity stalking you in the middle of the night.

01:27:25 And if you remember the maps of Earth's magnetic field, it starts to feel like a spider

01:27:30 crawling nearby.

01:27:32 And this isn't the first strange sound that we caught on Earth.

01:27:35 Recently, we caught another weird radio emission from space.

01:27:39 Scientists found out that the repeating signal came from somewhere very far away, like billions

01:27:44 of light-years away from us.

01:27:46 Such fast radio bursts usually lasted no longer than a few milliseconds, but this one was

01:27:51 unique.

01:27:52 It lasted about 3 seconds, basically thousands of times longer than usual.

01:27:57 And at the same time, the signal was very precise, so much so that scientists even compared

01:28:03 it to a heartbeat.

01:28:06 Scientists believe that this signal is caused by pulsars, or neutron stars.

01:28:10 One time Nikola Tesla caught something similar, but unfortunately, at that time, we didn't

01:28:16 know about such things as pulsars.

01:28:18 So Tesla was sure that he had caught a message from some extraterrestrial life.

01:28:23 It's a pity that the truth turned out to be much more boring.

01:28:27 But let's move on from the Earth to the Moon.

01:28:29 In 1969, the astronauts of the Apollo 10 mission, the spacecraft that made the final test flight

01:28:35 to the Moon, flew past its surface.

01:28:38 And then they caught some strange signals coming from the dark side of the Moon.

01:28:43 The side that we never see because the Moon is tidally locked to us.

01:28:47 The sound was so weird that the astronauts weren't even sure whether to report it to

01:28:51 NASA.

01:28:52 They were afraid they wouldn't be taken seriously, and maybe even not allowed to participate

01:28:57 in the next space missions.

01:28:58 Here's what it sounded like.

01:29:04 But according to NASA, it's not some creepy extraterrestrial music at all.

01:29:08 These may just be some radio waves that affected each other because of their proximity.

01:29:14 Although the astronauts who heard it for the first time probably felt a little creeped

01:29:18 out.

01:29:19 Let's move to the other planets.

01:29:21 40 years ago, scientists actively explored the surface of Venus.

01:29:25 They sent as many as 10 probes there, which were supposed to capture audio and video shooting

01:29:30 from the surface.

01:29:31 Now we know what Venus, which could easily destroy us at any attempt to even get close

01:29:36 to it, sounds like.

01:29:39 Horrifying.

01:29:41 Horrifying.

01:29:42 And you wouldn't expect anything else from the most dangerous planet in the Solar System.

01:29:47 Unfortunately, Venus is even more toxic than the average Twitter user.

01:29:52 So these probes didn't last too long.

01:29:54 They heroically arrived on a planet and soon broke down.

01:29:58 Next one is Jupiter.

01:30:00 This space giant, which is 11 times larger than the Earth, never fails to scare us.

01:30:06 One of NASA's probes, Juno, flies around Jupiter every few weeks.

01:30:10 The probe is moving at a tremendous speed – 130,000 miles per hour.

01:30:15 One day, Juno caught one of the strongest invisible signals it had ever encountered.

01:30:21 This was the point at which the mad solar wind came into conflict with the magnetic

01:30:25 field of Jupiter.

01:30:27 It kind of sounded like a cosmic boom.

01:30:30 The original sound lasted 2 hours, but it was compressed to a few seconds.

01:30:35 It actually sounds more like a collision of a sea wave and a rock.

01:30:39 But here, in terms of horror, Jupiter surprisingly loses to one of its small moons, Ganymede.

01:30:46 In 2021, the Galileo space probe flew past Ganymede, and during its flight, it received

01:30:52 a rather strange recording.

01:30:59 These sounds are satellite radiation, and it's unclear whether it sounds like a cozy

01:31:04 sunny day in the jungle, or like thousands of bats waiting for you in the night.

01:31:10 Next one is Saturn.

01:31:11 This signal was caught by the Cassini-Huygens Automatic Interplanetary Station, which was

01:31:16 launched into space in 1997.

01:31:19 When flying past Saturn, Cassini recorded a pretty scary sound.

01:31:25 This terrifying cry of thousands of souls is actually just some radio waves.

01:31:30 They aren't too different from what the auroras emit on Earth.

01:31:33 A little later, Cassini received another recording.

01:31:36 The sounds made by lightning and thunderstorms on Saturn.

01:31:40 They sound pretty interesting too.

01:31:45 More like popping corn or a Geiger counter, right?

01:31:48 But that's just because these lightning strikes have a crazy frequency.

01:31:52 Moving on from the Solar System to outer space.

01:31:55 The famous Voyager 1 was launched back in 1977, and continues to send us data even 40

01:32:02 years after its launch.

01:32:03 In 2012, it left the Solar System and entered interstellar space.

01:32:09 And then, while abandoning its home, Voyager 1 detected the sound of plasma waves.

01:32:14 The original recording lasted 7 months, but fortunately, scientists felt sorry for us

01:32:20 and reduced it to 12 seconds.

01:32:23 It isn't really eerie, but is still kind of unsettling.

01:32:28 And although it feels like nothing can beat Saturn's horrors, let's end this tournament

01:32:32 with one of the scariest objects in the Universe – a black hole.

01:32:36 This sound was recorded by the Chandra Space Telescope.

01:32:40 While studying a cluster of galaxies in the constellation Perseus, they discovered something

01:32:45 strange.

01:32:46 Some undulating movements appear from the center of the cluster.

01:32:50 They spread out in all directions, like circles on the water.

01:32:55 Scientists have suggested that this was caused by a supermassive black hole.

01:32:59 The thing is, black holes don't always devour space objects entirely.

01:33:04 Sometimes they kind of spit them out.

01:33:07 This causes vibrations of gases, which we can convert into soundtracks.

01:33:11 What's interesting is that the oscillation of each such wave actually lasts about 10

01:33:17 million years.

01:33:18 You're just listening to a very accelerated recording.

01:33:22 Scientists have reduced the delay between oscillations by about 144 quadrillion times.

01:33:28 So let's check it out.

01:33:31 This is probably the eeriest sound from the whole list.

01:33:34 Nothing too loud or wild, but there's something dark and disturbing about it.

01:33:39 Those were the scariest space sounds captured by NASA.

01:33:42 To be fair, most of them sounded creepy simply because they're radio waves, but it's still

01:33:47 fun to get spooked sometimes.

01:33:50 Whoa, the light from outside your window just got brighter!

01:33:54 It's 9.30 in the evening, and you have a huge exam coming up tomorrow.

01:33:58 You peek outside to see if your neighbors used their floodlights again.

01:34:02 But they're outside looking up in the sky.

01:34:04 You stick your head out and notice that the moon got a lot bigger, double in size.

01:34:10 You run outside and ask people what's going on.

01:34:15 But they don't have a clue either.

01:34:16 You take a picture of it and post it on social media.

01:34:19 You view your feed and see that everyone is talking about it.

01:34:23 The dark sky is brighter because the moon has more real estate to reflect light from

01:34:28 the sun, making the light more intense.

01:34:30 You can feel a slight imbalance while walking.

01:34:34 Every time you take a step, it feels like you're walking lighter than usual.

01:34:38 Because the moon became so large, its gravitational pull became stronger, so gravity became weaker.

01:34:45 Suddenly, you look below you and feel your socks are wet.

01:34:49 You run and hop on the top of a car and see that there's water flooding your neighborhood.

01:34:54 Everyone tries to find higher ground or run back to their houses.

01:34:58 This isn't a fire hydrant that busted and is spewing out water.

01:35:01 This is ocean water seeping in.

01:35:04 You're confused and lose your balance.

01:35:06 You slip and fall in the water as it rises.

01:35:09 Some people are in their cars, but they can't drive anywhere because of the water.

01:35:14 You live near the ocean, but there has never been a tsunami or any flood reports in your

01:35:18 whole life.

01:35:20 There are no reported earthquakes around the area, so something strange is happening.

01:35:25 You run back to your house, trying to see if you can get out your old inflatable raft

01:35:29 to help you with the flood.

01:35:31 The only problem is that you need to inflate it but don't have your pump.

01:35:35 You inflate it with your mouth at first, but it'll take forever to pump it up.

01:35:40 You search around your house for an alternative and find your hair dryer.

01:35:43 You plug it in and inflate the raft as much as you can until you use your mouth to do

01:35:48 the rest.

01:35:49 The water level rises by every second and has now entered your house.

01:35:54 You pack up a bag with a good flashlight, some food, and thermal blankets.

01:35:58 You go downstairs and see that the water is now at your knees.

01:36:02 You keep walking until you reach the door.

01:36:04 When you step outside, the water pushes you left and right since the waves are very harsh.

01:36:10 Since gravity has changed, it's not easy to swim around.

01:36:13 You get your raft ready and use it to float yourself down the current in your street.

01:36:17 It doesn't help that the water is freezing, and you're in the middle of February.

01:36:22 After a while, you reach the highway where water is coming directly from the beach.

01:36:27 You manage to get on a high surface and take out your phone.

01:36:30 You kept it in a protective compartment in your bag for safety.

01:36:34 You only have 15% battery left, but you brought your power bank.

01:36:38 You call your family to see what's going on, but they too have no idea.

01:36:43 You venture into the forest and try to spot an old cabin you used to visit as a child

01:36:48 to see if you left your old bicycle there.

01:36:51 After a few minutes, you find it and bike across the mountain to escape the flood.

01:36:55 You can't seem to balance yourself since the gravity is affecting you.

01:37:03 Some scientists sit around with laptops and spreadsheets, attempting to understand what's

01:37:08 happening.

01:37:09 You're probably shouting and throwing out random solutions, but nothing seems to make

01:37:13 sense.

01:37:14 After a while, the head of NASA decides to launch an unmanned rocket to the Moon.

01:37:19 The rocket is ready in a few hours, and everyone is awaiting orders.

01:37:23 3, 2, 1, blast off!

01:37:27 The rocket soars in the air and approaches the Moon.

01:37:30 It exits the Earth's atmosphere and travels at full speed in that direction.

01:37:35 After a day or two, everyone gets live footage of the giant Moon.

01:37:40 According to the studies, the rocket can't be too close to the Moon since it may have

01:37:43 a stronger gravitational pull.

01:37:46 However, the footage shows that tiny particles are floating around it, similar to Saturn's

01:37:51 rings.

01:37:52 These rings look like a giant disc surrounding the large planet, but up close, they're just

01:37:57 particles that are the size of rice grains to the extent of a large bus.

01:38:01 They're orbiting Saturn because of the gravitational pull.

01:38:05 The images show that these particles are big and small, which doesn't make it safe for

01:38:09 the rocket to get any closer.

01:38:12 So it suspends itself nearby to orbit the Moon and unleashes a mini-rocket that looks

01:38:17 like a drone to get closer.

01:38:19 The particles are many miles thick, making it difficult for the mini-rocket to maneuver.

01:38:24 It flies closer, and the particles start crashing on it.

01:38:27 It's a good thing that the mini-rocket is durable for this.

01:38:31 The rocket finally gets past the particles and lands on the Moon.

01:38:35 Gravity has gotten stronger since it inflated in size, which almost broke the rocket.

01:38:40 As soon as it lands, another robot pulls out and starts driving around the surface, trying

01:38:45 to get some clues.

01:38:47 As of now, nothing is happening.

01:38:49 But they're noticing some quivers coming from deep inside the Moon.

01:38:53 The Moon's core is reacting abnormally.

01:38:56 It looks like it's getting bigger and bigger.

01:38:59 Scientists don't know if it will stop growing at a certain point, so the only way to find

01:39:03 out is to drill a hole deep inside to uncover the reason.

01:39:08 You're pedaling away and reach the other side of the mountain.

01:39:11 The ground is shaking, and your balance is getting worse.

01:39:15 You look across the mountain and see that the whole other side of town is flooded.

01:39:20 You get your raft and supplies and make it there.

01:39:22 You find a rowboat and paddle as fast as you can until you reach the lighthouse.

01:39:28 From there, you can try to find the NASA station.

01:39:30 Suddenly, you see a large rocket erupt from the ground and into the sky.

01:39:35 You know for a fact that your brother is there, working.

01:39:38 But cellular networks are down.

01:39:41 You paddle your way there for safety.

01:39:44 The little rocket that landed unleashes a small drill strong enough to go miles to the

01:39:49 center.

01:39:50 It'll take days for it to reach down.

01:39:52 So NASA is already launching another rocket to fly off and bring a bigger drill.

01:39:57 The only problem is that the Moon is getting bigger, so the particles around the Moon also

01:40:02 gather a lot more.

01:40:04 The Moon is reaching the Earth's size, getting bigger by the minute.

01:40:08 The flood could reach several coastal states, and many micro-islands could be submerged,

01:40:13 so it needs to be prevented.

01:40:16 Gravity could affect the structure of most of the buildings, causing them to collapse

01:40:20 one by one.

01:40:21 But the little robot will not let that happen, so he's drilling to figure out what's going

01:40:26 on with the Moon.

01:40:27 Some of the rocks appear to be getting hotter as it digs.

01:40:30 This could be a sign of the Moon expanding, which might ultimately explode.

01:40:35 The scientists in the room are baffled and don't know what to do.

01:40:39 The lead scientist, who is your brother, calls you, but he can't reach you.

01:40:43 Meanwhile, you're still paddling around, trying to get to NASA.

01:40:47 On your way, you head back to the mountains to stay on dry land.

01:40:51 When you arrive back at the old cabin, you see some strange men wearing trench coats

01:40:56 looking for you.

01:40:57 There's a stare-off until they chase you.

01:41:00 They seem odd, like they're not from Earth.

01:41:03 The drill has reached its maximum depth and can't go down any longer.

01:41:07 Also, the control transmission is getting weaker.

01:41:11 Suddenly, a figure pops out of nowhere and flashes its lights on the robot.

01:41:16 The transmission chops and only shows little snippets of the giant figure eyeing the robot.

01:41:22 A little creature descends from the figure and walks toward the robot.

01:41:26 Everyone at NASA is freaking out and recording every single frame.

01:41:30 No one can believe what's going on.

01:41:33 After a while, the creature transmits a signal that NASA can't decipher.

01:41:37 But the creature seems friendly.

01:41:39 The creature gets back into its ship and in an instant disappears into thin air as it

01:41:44 teleports away.

01:41:46 The Moon starts shrinking.

01:41:48 It's getting back to its normal size.

01:41:51 Everyone celebrates in NASA and around the world.

01:41:54 The currents become calmer and retreat to the coast.

01:41:57 It's a good thing everyone reached the higher hills before.

01:42:01 The Sun isn't technically the center of our solar system.

01:42:04 It's in a space called the Barycenter.

01:42:07 It depends on which planet you're standing in.

01:42:09 The Barycenter is usually closest to the object with the greater mass.

01:42:13 So, since we're on Earth, the true center of the solar system is the Sun, but not the

01:42:19 center of it.

01:42:20 With respect to Jupiter, the Barycenter is actually outside the Sun's surface.

01:42:25 Jupiter is 318 times bigger than Earth, so the balance is different.

01:42:31 The planets don't really revolve around the Sun, but around their common center of mass.

01:42:36 Imagine balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger.

01:42:39 You'd have to place it right in the center so that it doesn't tip on each side.

01:42:44 Because the pencil has its mass equally distributed, it's easy to assume that everything balances

01:42:49 its way like that, especially in outer space.

01:42:53 But try balancing a hammer on the tip of your toe.

01:42:56 Chances are you'll walk out of here with a broken toe.

01:43:00 Its true Barycenter is close to the hammerhead, rather than the actual center where you'd

01:43:05 grip it.

01:43:06 Earth and the Sun's Barycenter is like that hammer.

01:43:09 The center of mass is more or less in the center of the object.

01:43:13 Realistically, if the Sun were to rotate around Earth, then our little blue planet would have

01:43:18 to be just as big as the Sun, or bigger.

01:43:22 We can't disregard the other planets in our solar system, which means they all will have

01:43:26 to rotate around us as well.

01:43:29 But in the ancient days, bright minds always thought everything revolved around the Earth.

01:43:34 They called this the geocentric model.

01:43:37 And this made sense to them, because it looked like everything above us was spinning around

01:43:41 us.

01:43:42 The Sun and the Moon played vital roles in human history, and we didn't feel insignificant

01:43:47 in the universe until way later on.

01:43:51 In ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, the big brains used the geocentric model to study

01:43:57 space.

01:43:58 It wasn't until the 16th century that that model changed.

01:44:02 Back in those times, they couldn't even imagine that everything revolved around the Sun, and

01:44:07 they didn't have the knowledge to back any of this up.

01:44:10 The Earth can't be the center of the solar system because it's not large enough for the

01:44:15 job; for the conditions to suit the enormous size, life would have evolved differently.

01:44:21 We'd probably be less dependent on oxygen.

01:44:23 Some animals, like whales and dolphins, can stay for hours without taking a single breath.

01:44:29 They can even sleep underwater.

01:44:31 So the humans of the Sun-sized Earth would have specialized lungs and wouldn't need to

01:44:36 constantly be taking in air.

01:44:39 It means that the plant life would be limited, with just a few shrubs here and there.

01:44:44 There are trillions of trees around the world, but the main contributor to producing oxygen

01:44:49 is the algae in the ocean.

01:44:51 With such vast real estate of oceans and seas, the algae sitting on top are pumping out the

01:44:56 air we breathe.

01:44:58 Oxygen wouldn't be so abundant on this planet, but our breathing mechanisms might rely on

01:45:03 carbon dioxide, another common gas found on other planets.

01:45:07 If the planet is hot, then water will be scarce.

01:45:11 We would only find it on certain parts of the planet, like mountaintops.

01:45:15 The ground would be too scorched for anything to survive in properly.

01:45:20 We can forget about seasons as well.

01:45:22 The Sun is currently just large enough to give us what we need.

01:45:26 But since the Earth would be so large, and the Sun would be another celestial body emanating

01:45:31 heat, we'd always feel like we're inside a microwave.

01:45:35 The days and nights will be different, and not much precipitation will happen.

01:45:39 With so much heat produced in the core, earthquakes and volcanoes would likely erupt all the time.

01:45:46 The surface would practically be a scorching plain of red magma floating around.

01:45:51 This would be the true red planet.

01:45:53 But if we had the same landscape like on Earth, living somewhere near the mountains could

01:45:57 save you.

01:45:59 The mountains would still be embedded in the core, but it would be better than staying

01:46:03 on the ground.

01:46:04 Some of the mountain peaks could even be 100 times taller than Mount Everest.

01:46:09 The canyons could be so deep that the Mariana Trench would feel just like a little rupture.

01:46:15 Animals would also behave and look different.

01:46:18 Cold-blooded animals would have to soak up as little sun as possible so they don't burn.

01:46:23 Animals would have to rely on migration to find water in distant lands.

01:46:27 Birds can fly for hundreds of miles for migration season, so we'd probably see certain sleek-looking

01:46:33 birds speeding through the air.

01:46:35 But because gravity would be so strong on the colossal-sized Earth, the flying animals

01:46:40 would need thinner bones and a thinner core just to take flight.

01:46:44 The real survivors would be the microorganisms.

01:46:48 They can live in extreme temperatures and pressures and can live without oxygen for

01:46:52 a good while.

01:46:53 The nights would be dark since there wouldn't be any moon to reflect the sunlight.

01:46:58 The moon would most probably be on the opposite side of where the sun is shining, so it would

01:47:02 forever be a floating ball in the sky.

01:47:06 The Earth's rotational speed is the fastest at the equator, so if all the planets and

01:47:11 the sun rotated around us, then our rotation wouldn't be so significant.

01:47:16 New weather patterns wouldn't be good for crops.

01:47:19 Humans would have evolved differently from what we are like now.

01:47:23 We'd probably be shorter and stockier since gravity is so strong.

01:47:27 And because of the soaring temperatures, we'd probably live in caves all around the world.

01:47:32 The strongest ones would have migrated to the mountains.

01:47:35 We'd probably have the same evolutionary path as we do now, but other physical features

01:47:40 might be different.

01:47:42 Our pigment would likely look different to combat the heat.

01:47:46 The desert fox has large ears for hearing out predators and for cooling itself down

01:47:51 in the scorching desert heat.

01:47:53 It's possible that we would also have bigger ears than what we have now for the latter

01:47:57 reason.

01:47:58 We'd be a lot stronger than we are, and our bones would be thick and tough to break.

01:48:04 Gravity is one of the key components to developing our bone density and muscle mass.

01:48:09 This means we would unlikely need tools for hunting.

01:48:12 This would have delayed the Bronze Age and modern civilization as we know it.

01:48:17 With little vegetation, standing upright wouldn't be so necessary to find predators around us.

01:48:22 We wouldn't be the fastest runners either, but we'd be strong enough to fight off a pack

01:48:27 of strange-looking wolves.

01:48:29 And if the Earth was supersized, then it's possible that multiple species of humans would

01:48:34 be roaming the land in isolated areas.

01:48:37 Some human species would grow and evolve into the intelligent thinkers of today, but some

01:48:42 would remain the same.

01:48:45 And some creatures from the past would still be around, unchanged.

01:48:49 Sharks would have been around since the dinosaurs era.

01:48:52 They wouldn't have to change their form or adapt because of their dominance.

01:48:56 Other animals would remain the same because of their isolation.

01:49:00 The Galapagos Island hosts some unique animals because they'd been alone for so long.

01:49:05 Without proper predators constantly lurking around them, they don't fear humans.

01:49:10 The new mega-sized Earth would have areas as large as Asia filled with isolated animals

01:49:16 that could remain the exact same as when they first appeared.

01:49:19 The human species of those regions would also remain the same, since they wouldn't have

01:49:23 moved or experimented with anything.

01:49:26 Their diet would remain the same, and they would get used to the climate they're in.

01:49:30 Technology would also have flourished differently in various parts of the planet.

01:49:35 With some areas in complete isolation, they wouldn't have access to new gadgets and inventions.

01:49:40 It would be like living on a planet with different eras in the present day.

01:49:45 Other areas would be so advanced, they might even be flying themselves outside the planet

01:49:49 in search of truth and answers.

01:49:52 Our gravity is good enough for us to live properly and develop life, but if we pumped

01:49:57 up our size to that of Jupiter, then gravity would crush us.

01:50:01 And being the size of the Sun, Earth wouldn't even be a planet, but a brown dwarf, and would

01:50:07 constantly be burning until it became a new Sun.

01:50:11 As of now, Earth is so small in our universe that we're practically like a grain of sand

01:50:16 in the desert.

01:50:17 On a cosmic level, we're an insignificant contribution to this universe.

01:50:23 Shards of fire and smoke fly upward, and the rocket launches.

01:50:27 The Delta IV Heavy is one of the most powerful rockets people have ever made.

01:50:32 Three massive engines burn tons of fuel, helping the spacecraft gain altitude.

01:50:37 The two side boosters undock, leaving the common booster core for further ascent.

01:50:42 When in orbit, the rocket releases its payload.

01:50:45 This is the Parker Solar Probe.

01:50:47 The first spacecraft to touch the Sun, and we'll follow its journey step by step.

01:50:52 The probe was launched on August 12, 2018, and began its journey toward our star.

01:50:58 The Sun is 93 million miles away from Earth.

01:51:01 That's 390 times the Earth-Moon distance and 36,000 times the width of the United States

01:51:07 from coast to coast.

01:51:09 The particles of light that the Sun emits need eight minutes to travel this distance.

01:51:14 For our conventional rockets, that journey would take more than 200 days.

01:51:18 But the Parker Solar Probe covered it faster, using gravitational maneuvers.

01:51:23 On its way from the Earth to the Sun, the probe circled around our neighbor, Venus.

01:51:28 All it had to do was enter the planet's gravitational field and let it attract itself.

01:51:33 At this point, our space probe got an extra boost, and it didn't need to waste any fuel.

01:51:39 After making one orbit, the space probe's engines changed the trajectory, and the probe

01:51:43 left the orbit of Venus.

01:51:45 It got enough acceleration to travel to the Sun.

01:51:49 And on November 5, 2018, the Parker Solar Probe made its first approach to the Sun.

01:51:55 Before touching its surface, the spacecraft had to enter the star's orbit first.

01:51:59 To achieve this, it did even more gravitational maneuvers.

01:52:03 Only after that did it start circling the Sun, the heaviest object in the solar system

01:52:08 with the most powerful gravity.

01:52:10 So it'll give the probe an incredible amount of acceleration with each flyby.

01:52:15 The Parker Solar Probe was constantly moving between two points.

01:52:19 Those were the perihelion and aphelion.

01:52:21 Look, here's the Sun, and here's the probe's orbit in the shape of an ellipse.

01:52:26 The closest point to the Sun is the perihelion.

01:52:30 The Sun was pulling the probe there at an incredible speed.

01:52:33 At this point, the probe began to move away from the star.

01:52:36 It still had a lot of speed and energy, but it was struggling against the gravitational

01:52:40 force of the star.

01:52:42 So it gradually slowed down.

01:52:44 The point where the probe lost all its acceleration is called aphelion.

01:52:49 The star's gravitational force won, and the probe began to move back toward the Sun, picking

01:52:53 up speed again.

01:52:55 The probe made several circles following a stable orbit, but then its orbit intersected

01:53:00 with that of Venus again.

01:53:02 Another gravitational maneuver, and after that, the Parker Solar Probe's trajectory

01:53:06 shifted slightly, and it gained more speed.

01:53:09 The perihelion point of its orbit was now closer to the Sun.

01:53:13 The probe made several more circles following this new orbit.

01:53:17 Then again, it neared Venus.

01:53:19 Another approach to the Sun.

01:53:20 Each encounter with Venus corrected the probe's trajectory and gradually reduced its distance

01:53:25 from our star.

01:53:27 In April 2021, the Parker Solar Probe finally came so close to the Sun that it touched its

01:53:33 corona.

01:53:34 Although the actual distance between the probe and the Sun was 5.3 million miles, that still

01:53:39 counted as a touch.

01:53:41 Let's look at the structure of our star by cutting it in half.

01:53:45 This is the core of the Sun.

01:53:47 It's about a quarter of its width.

01:53:48 The core is 150 times as dense as water.

01:53:52 Because of the intense pressure and high temperature, nuclear reactions occur there.

01:53:57 Hydrogen gets converted into helium, giving off an incredible amount of heat and radiation.

01:54:02 The next layer is the radiation zone.

01:54:05 This is where the heat is transferred from the core to the next layers.

01:54:08 But the photons here don't move in an outward direction.

01:54:11 They can be directed anywhere and re-radiated many times.

01:54:16 Scientists believe that the average time it takes a photon of light to travel from the

01:54:19 core to the next layer of the Sun is about 10,000 to 170,000 years.

01:54:26 Then there's the convection zone.

01:54:28 This is what's considered to be the surface of the Sun.

01:54:30 But it's not a solid surface.

01:54:32 It's an ocean of hot plasma.

01:54:35 It looks like a bee honeycomb.

01:54:37 That's because the heated plasma rises from the lower layers, creating something like

01:54:41 mini geysers.

01:54:42 And while it's still hot in the middle of those geysers, their edges cool down, creating

01:54:47 an amazing pattern on the Sun's surface.

01:54:50 The next layers are the Sun's atmosphere.

01:54:52 First, the photosphere.

01:54:55 This is the layer that gives off light.

01:54:57 And that's exactly what you see when you look at the Sun.

01:54:59 But careful, don't do that.

01:55:02 You need special equipment to look at our star.

01:55:04 The photosphere is up to 250 miles thick.

01:55:07 This is about the height at which the International Space Station moves above Earth.

01:55:12 Then the chromosphere, or the sphere of color.

01:55:15 This layer of the Sun's atmosphere gives the star its reddish hue.

01:55:19 Solar prominences appear here.

01:55:21 Those are powerful emissions of matter leaving the surface of the Sun.

01:55:25 Their speed can reach 430 miles per second.

01:55:29 At some point, they get caught by the star's magnetic field and pulled back.

01:55:33 And then there's the corona, a gaseous envelope of the Sun.

01:55:37 The most powerful ejections take place there.

01:55:40 You can see the corona during eclipses, when the moon covers the solar disk.

01:55:45 Then you can notice some kind of glow around the star.

01:55:48 This is the corona.

01:55:49 It extends for millions of miles around the Sun.

01:55:53 And the Parker Solar Probe touched precisely that area.

01:55:57 That's where solar material and radiation are still tied to the star's gravity and don't

01:56:01 fly off into space.

01:56:03 And all that is beyond that area is the solar wind.

01:56:07 It's the material and radiation that managed to escape the Sun's gravity and set off into

01:56:11 space.

01:56:12 The Parker Solar Probe surprised astronomers by providing more information about this boundary.

01:56:18 It turns out it's not a perfect circular wall like we used to think.

01:56:22 The boundary is broken and uneven.

01:56:25 It looks more like a mountain range.

01:56:27 These bumpy regions have such a shape because of the uneven flow of plasma from the surface

01:56:31 of the Sun.

01:56:32 The larger and more powerful the flow, the farther the boundary is from the star's surface.

01:56:38 But scientists don't know yet what exactly causes this difference.

01:56:42 After making the flyby around the Sun, the Parker Solar Probe continued its journey and

01:56:47 started to move away from the star again.

01:56:50 Researchers are expecting another four approaches in 2022.

01:56:53 In August 2023, the probe will make a flyby around Venus.

01:56:58 It'll gain more speed and approach the Sun at a record close distance.

01:57:02 The next Venus flyby will happen in 2024.

01:57:06 And hopefully, the Parker Solar Probe will be able to withstand the high temperatures

01:57:09 and radiation so close to the Sun.

01:57:12 Luckily, scientists have taken care of that.

01:57:15 The probe has a solar shield.

01:57:17 It's attached to the side of the probe that will face the star.

01:57:20 It's about the size of a house window and about four and a half inches thick.

01:57:25 It's made of a special material that can withstand a temperature of about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

01:57:31 That's almost six times higher than the temperature of a regular kitchen oven.

01:57:35 The body of the probe is made of a white material that reflects sunlight.

01:57:39 All the scientific equipment is placed right in the center of the shadow of this shield.

01:57:44 If the Sun's rays hit the unprotected body of the probe at close range, all the equipment

01:57:49 will be out of action in just a few tenths of a second.

01:57:52 The Parker Solar Probe is equipped with the Electromagnetic Fields Investigation Instrument.

01:57:57 This is a system for measuring electric and magnetic fields, radio waves, temperature,

01:58:02 and plasma density.

01:58:04 The Wide Field Imager for the Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR, is an optical telescope,

01:58:09 the one that took those stunning images of the moving plasma in the Sun's corona.

01:58:14 These streamers are what you see during solar eclipses.

01:58:17 The Solar Wind Electrons, Alphas, and Protons Investigation measures protons, electrons,

01:58:23 and helium ions.

01:58:25 It helps scientists study solar winds.

01:58:27 It often harms our technology.

01:58:29 Unexpected flares on the surface of the Sun can cause severe solar winds.

01:58:34 They can burn chips and satellites orbiting Earth.

01:58:37 Given that we have the ISS, where people work all the time, we need to know more about solar

01:58:41 winds and how to protect ourselves from them.

01:58:44 While the Parker Solar Probe continues its research, it's already set several world records.

01:58:50 It's the closest to the Sun human-made object.

01:58:53 It's also the speed record holder.

01:58:55 During its final approach to the Sun, the probe reached a speed of 101 miles per second.

01:59:01 That means it could cover the distance from New York to Los Angeles in just 24 seconds,

01:59:06 and a trip around Earth would take about 4 minutes.

01:59:08 A journey to the Moon in such a spacecraft would only take 40 minutes.

01:59:13 In 2025, the Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach to the Sun, reaching

01:59:18 a speed of about 430,000 miles per hour.

01:59:21 Even this speed is only 0.064% of the speed of light.

01:59:27 That's it for today!

01:59:28 So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your

01:59:32 friends!

01:59:33 Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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