The Largest Planet in the Universe + Other Astonishing Space Facts

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00:00:00Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.
00:00:04More than 1,300 Earths could fit inside this gas giant.
00:00:09It's also two and a half times more massive
00:00:12than all the other planets of the solar system combined.
00:00:16But if you think this is mind-boggling,
00:00:19I've got some great news for you.
00:00:21Very recently, a team of astronomers have discovered
00:00:24a much, much bigger planet
00:00:26with the help of the Subaru telescope
00:00:29and the NASA Hubble Space Telescope.
00:00:32It's a Jupiter-like protoplanet orbiting a very young star,
00:00:36A.B. Uragi.
00:00:38The star is probably still forming
00:00:40and is no more than 5 million years old.
00:00:43For comparison, our sun is 4.6 billion years old.
00:00:48The young star is located at around 531 light-years
00:00:52away from Earth in the constellation of Uraga.
00:00:56The star is shrouded in a thick,
00:00:58quickly-moving layer of gas and dust.
00:01:01This disk feeds the growth of the star.
00:01:04Later, what's left of the disk will come together
00:01:07to form the elements of the planetary system.
00:01:10Planets. Dwarf planets.
00:01:12Comets. Asteroids. You name it.
00:01:16But back to the newly-discovered planet.
00:01:18It's a gas giant whose mass equals that of nine Jupiters.
00:01:22Can you imagine this colossus?
00:01:25It takes the planet, named A.B. Uragi b,
00:01:28almost 588 Earth-years to complete just one journey
00:01:32around its parent star.
00:01:35Maybe because it's 93.9 AU,
00:01:38astronomical units, away from it.
00:01:41Now, why is the discovery of this planet so amazing?
00:01:45Because according to astronomers,
00:01:47it's been forming in a very bizarre way.
00:01:49Or should I say, is forming,
00:01:52since this gas giant is still in the process.
00:01:56Anyway, the unusual thing is that A.B. Uragi b
00:02:00is coming together as a result of a top-down
00:02:03gravitational collapse of giant clouds of gas.
00:02:07But scientists say that a much more common model
00:02:10of planetary formation is when dust and rocks
00:02:13gradually accumulate around some kind of core.
00:02:17This proves the idea that there are numerous ways
00:02:20for planets to form.
00:02:22It can also mean that there probably are
00:02:24very diverse planetary systems in our home Milky Way galaxy.
00:02:30But A.B. Uragi b isn't the largest exoplanet ever discovered.
00:02:35In 2005, astronomers spotted a mysterious space body.
00:02:40Later, they called it GQ Lupi b.
00:02:44The thing was orbiting a young star
00:02:46at a distance two and a half times greater
00:02:49than that between the Sun and Pluto.
00:02:52Scientists came to the conclusion
00:02:54that the object was either a planet or a brown dwarf,
00:02:57which is basically a tiny star.
00:03:00If astronomers decide that GQ Lupi b is a planet,
00:03:04it will be the largest ever found,
00:03:07with a radius that is three and a half times that of Jupiter.
00:03:12The biggest star we know about is called UY Scuti.
00:03:16This hypergiant has a radius
00:03:18that is about 1,700 times greater than that of the Sun.
00:03:22If you somehow manage to place UY Scuti
00:03:25in the center of the solar system,
00:03:27its edges would stretch far beyond Jupiter's orbit.
00:03:31As for the dust and gas streaming from the star,
00:03:35all this would extend beyond the orbit of Pluto.
00:03:39That's 400 times the Sun-Earth distance.
00:03:43A black hole is a spot in space
00:03:46where the pull of gravity is so strong
00:03:48that even light can't escape it.
00:03:51But why is gravity so powerful there?
00:03:54Because matter is squeezed into a teeny tiny space.
00:03:58Supermassive black holes,
00:04:00which can be many millions of times the mass of the Sun,
00:04:04tend to lurk in the centers of galaxies.
00:04:07The most massive black hole astronomers have discovered so far
00:04:11is TON 618.
00:04:14Its mass is equal to that of 66 billion Suns!
00:04:20It was the year 2010.
00:04:22With the help of the Fermi telescope,
00:04:24astronomers spotted something ginormous,
00:04:27something entering the Milky Way.
00:04:30Their discovery looked like massive blobs of matter
00:04:33that could only be observed in particular wavelengths of light.
00:04:37They were also about 25,000 light-years tall.
00:04:41Scientists think that the blobs, called Fermi bubbles,
00:04:45could be produced by our galaxy's central black hole.
00:04:49Space seems to be extremely deserted,
00:04:52but some places are even emptier than the rest,
00:04:55like Supervoid in Eratinus.
00:04:58Astronomers noticed this huge region of empty space in 2004.
00:05:03The area stretches 1.8 billion light-years across.
00:05:07It's mysteriously devoid of gas, dust, stars,
00:05:11and even dark matter.
00:05:15A nebula is a massive cloud of gas and dust floating in space.
00:05:20Some nebulae form when a star is nearing the end of its life
00:05:24and throws out loads of gas and dust.
00:05:28Others appear in regions where new stars are forming.
00:05:32The largest nebula we know about is the Tarantula Nebula.
00:05:36In its longest span, it measures over 1,800 light-years.
00:05:41This nebula, also known as 30 Doradus,
00:05:45is located around 170,000 light-years away from Earth.
00:05:50Unlike its namesake, the Tarantula isn't dangerous.
00:05:54Quite the opposite, it's a stellar nursery,
00:05:57which means it's a region where tons of young stars are born.
00:06:02Even cooler, it's the most active star-forming area
00:06:06in our entire galactic neighborhood.
00:06:10In 2021, the biggest ever comet we know about
00:06:14entered our solar system.
00:06:17It was 85 miles across, and its icy nucleus
00:06:21was 50 times greater than the nucleus of the previous record-breaker.
00:06:26The intruder's mass was a whopping 100,000 times bigger
00:06:30than that of the average comet.
00:06:33In fact, C2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein
00:06:39was so large that astronomers first classified it as a minor planet.
00:06:44Is it going to crash into Earth? Nah.
00:06:47It won't get closer than a billion miles to our beautiful green planet,
00:06:51and it won't happen until 2031.
00:06:54But could there be comets even bigger than that?
00:06:57Who knows, but the thought is terrifying.
00:07:03There are loads of bizarre things in the universe,
00:07:07and hypothetical nuclear pasta is one of them.
00:07:11If it does exist, nuclear pasta is the strongest material in the entire universe.
00:07:16It forms from the leftovers of extinguished stars
00:07:20and this substance gets squeezed into spaghetti-like tangles of material.
00:07:24It can theoretically break,
00:07:27but only if you apply 10 billion times the pressure needed to shatter steel.
00:07:34Pulsars are spherical space objects the size of a large city,
00:07:38but they pack more mass than the entire Sun.
00:07:42They radiate two narrow beams of light,
00:07:45sending them in opposite directions.
00:07:48The black widow pulsar, just like its spider namesake,
00:07:51is munching on its partner.
00:07:54It's a lightweight brown dwarf star.
00:07:57The more material the pulsar consumes, the more slowly it spins.
00:08:01The energy the neutron star is losing in the process
00:08:05causes its companion star to dwindle.
00:08:09Haumea is a dwarf planet orbiting the Kuiper belt.
00:08:13It's a donut-shaped ring of objects around the Sun
00:08:16that extends just beyond the orbit of Neptune.
00:08:20The mini-planet has a bizarre elongated shape and two moons.
00:08:25The day on this planet lasts just four hours,
00:08:29which makes it the fastest spinning large object in the solar system.
00:08:33But the most mysterious thing about Haumea
00:08:37is that the planet has a thin, 40-mile-wide ring circling it.
00:08:41What is it? Where did it come from?
00:08:44No one knows.
00:08:46Could be the result of a collision that happened in the distant past.
00:08:50The 18th brightest star in the night sky,
00:08:53Fomalhaut, is a terrifying sight.
00:08:56It's dubbed the Eye of Sauron
00:08:58because it looks like a ring of dust and debris circling it.
00:09:01It makes the star look like a giant eye staring into your soul.
00:09:06The intimidating star is more than twice the mass of the Sun.
00:09:10It's 25 light-years away from Earth,
00:09:13which isn't that far away considering distances in space.
00:09:17Look at this butterfly.
00:09:19Its wingspan is more than three light-years,
00:09:22and the structure inside this nebula is one of the most complicated ever observed.
00:09:27The nebula's central star, a white dwarf,
00:09:31is heated to an incredible 450,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:09:35It means it was formed from another gargantuan star
00:09:39more than five times the size of the Sun.
00:09:42The white dwarf is surrounded by a thick disk of dust and gas at the equator.
00:09:48That's what probably makes the whole structure look like an hourglass,
00:09:52or a butterfly.
00:09:56No one will hear your cry in space, or something like that.
00:10:00We've all heard this famous chilling phrase,
00:10:03and it's actually true.
00:10:05Space, for the most part, consists of a giant nothingness.
00:10:08There's a lot of, you know, space in space.
00:10:11But this doesn't mean there are no sounds in space.
00:10:14In fact, there are plenty of them,
00:10:16and some of them can even make you shiver.
00:10:18Let's take a look at the scariest space sounds.
00:10:21First of all, how are cosmic sounds even recorded?
00:10:25Sound is just the vibration of molecules.
00:10:27When you scream, you make the molecules push each other furiously
00:10:31until they reach the ear of the person you're yelling at.
00:10:34Then these vibrations get transmitted to the brain,
00:10:37and we recognize them as something that you might need to apologize for.
00:10:42In other words, to hear something, we need molecules.
00:10:45And that's where things get complicated.
00:10:47There aren't any of them in space.
00:10:49The entire universe almost completely consists of a vacuum.
00:10:53No, not a hoover. Absolute nothingness.
00:10:56However, the wizards from NASA still record space sounds somehow.
00:11:00So how do they do it?
00:11:02The thing is, there are some types of waves that don't care about molecules.
00:11:06We regular folk can't perceive them without some special devices.
00:11:11These waves include, for example, radio waves.
00:11:14We'll need a radio or something like that to recognize them.
00:11:17And that's exactly what NASA's satellites do.
00:11:20They catch random radio waves.
00:11:22Thanks to their heroism, we can find out how different cosmic bodies sound.
00:11:27These satellites record a variety of waves, fluctuations of plasmas,
00:11:31magnetic fields, and other, you know, stuff.
00:11:34And then scientists from NASA transform all this into normal soundtracks.
00:11:39And some of them sound quite frightening, to put it mildly.
00:11:43Let's take our magnetic field, for example.
00:11:46It surrounds our planet like an invisible shield,
00:11:49protecting us from all sorts of nasties, like radiation and solar winds.
00:11:53At the same time, we can neither see it, feel it, nor hear.
00:11:57Oops. Well, the last one is outdated.
00:12:00Scientists from the Technical University of Denmark
00:12:03took magnetic waves recorded by the ESSA swarm satellite,
00:12:07they converted them into an audio track, and got a pretty creepy result.
00:12:15Now, to be honest, it sounds more like an eerie entity stalking you in the middle of the night.
00:12:20And if you remember the maps of Earth's magnetic field,
00:12:23it starts to feel like a spider crawling nearby.
00:12:27And this isn't the first strange sound that we caught on Earth.
00:12:30Recently, we caught another weird radio emission from space.
00:12:34Scientists found out that the repeating signal came from somewhere very far away,
00:12:38like billions of light-years away from us.
00:12:41Such fast radio bursts usually lasted no longer than a few milliseconds,
00:12:45but this one was unique.
00:12:47It lasted about 3 seconds, basically thousands of times longer than usual.
00:12:52And at the same time, the signal was very precise,
00:12:55so much so that scientists even compared it to a heartbeat.
00:13:00Scientists believe that this signal is caused by pulsars, or neutron stars.
00:13:05One time, Nikola Tesla caught something similar.
00:13:08But unfortunately, at that time, we didn't know about such things as pulsars,
00:13:13so Tesla was sure that he had caught a message from some extraterrestrial life.
00:13:18It's a pity that the truth turned out to be much more boring.
00:13:21But let's move on from the Earth to the Moon.
00:13:24In 1969, the astronauts of the Apollo 10 mission,
00:13:28the spacecraft that made the final test flight to the Moon,
00:13:31flew past its surface.
00:13:33And then they caught some strange signals coming from the dark side of the Moon,
00:13:37the side that we never see because the Moon is tidally locked to us.
00:13:42The sound was so weird that the astronauts weren't even sure whether to report it to NASA.
00:13:47They were afraid they wouldn't be taken seriously,
00:13:49and maybe even not allowed to participate in the next space missions.
00:13:53Here's what it sounded like.
00:13:58But, according to NASA, it's not some creepy extraterrestrial music at all.
00:14:03These may just be some radio waves that affected each other because of their proximity.
00:14:08Although the astronauts who heard it for the first time probably felt a little creeped out.
00:14:13Let's move to the other planets.
00:14:15Now, 40 years ago, scientists actively explored the surface of Venus.
00:14:20They sent as many as 10 probes there,
00:14:22which were supposed to capture audio and video shooting from the surface.
00:14:26Now we know what Venus, which could easily destroy us at any attempt to even get close to it, sounds like.
00:14:36Horrifying.
00:14:37And you wouldn't expect anything else from the most dangerous planet in the Solar System.
00:14:42Unfortunately, Venus is even more toxic than the average Twitter user.
00:14:46Ha!
00:14:47So, these probes didn't last too long.
00:14:49They heroically arrived on a planet and soon broke down.
00:14:53Next one is Jupiter.
00:14:55This space giant, which is 11 times larger than the Earth, never fails to scare us.
00:15:01One of NASA's probes, Juno, flies around Jupiter every few weeks.
00:15:05The probe is moving at a tremendous speed, 130,000 miles per hour.
00:15:10One day, Juno caught one of the strongest invisible signals it had ever encountered.
00:15:16This was the point at which the mad solar wind came into conflict with the magnetic field of Jupiter.
00:15:22It kind of sounded like a cosmic boom.
00:15:25The original sound lasted two hours, but it was compressed to a few seconds.
00:15:30It actually sounds more like a collision of a sea wave and a rock.
00:15:34But here, in terms of horror, Jupiter surprisingly loses to one of its small moons, Ganymede.
00:15:41In 2021, the Galileo space probe flew past Ganymede.
00:15:45And during its flight, it received a rather strange recording.
00:15:54These sounds are satellite radiation.
00:15:56And it's unclear whether it sounds like a cozy sunny day in the jungle
00:16:00or like thousands of bats waiting for you in the night.
00:16:04Next one is Saturn.
00:16:06This signal was caught by the Cassini-Huygens Automatic Interplanetary Station,
00:16:11which was launched into space in 1997.
00:16:14When flying past Saturn, Cassini recorded a pretty scary sound.
00:16:20This terrifying cry of thousands of souls is actually just some radio waves.
00:16:25They aren't too different from what the auroras emit on Earth.
00:16:28A little later, Cassini received another recording.
00:16:31The sounds made by lightning and thunderstorms on Saturn.
00:16:35They sound pretty interesting too.
00:16:40More like popping corn or a Geiger counter, right?
00:16:43But that's just because these lightning strikes have a crazy frequency.
00:16:47Moving on from the solar system to outer space.
00:16:50The famous Voyager 1 was launched back in 1977
00:16:54and continues to send us data even 40 years after its launch.
00:16:59In 2012, it left the solar system and entered interstellar space.
00:17:04And then, while abandoning its home, Voyager 1 detected the sound of plasma waves.
00:17:09The original recording lasted 7 months.
00:17:12But fortunately, scientists felt sorry for us and reduced it to 12 seconds.
00:17:18It isn't really eerie, but it's still kind of unsettling.
00:17:22And although it feels like nothing can beat Saturn's horrors,
00:17:26let's end this tournament with one of the scariest objects in the Universe – a black hole.
00:17:31This sound was recorded by the Chandra Space Telescope.
00:17:34While studying a cluster of galaxies in the constellation Perseus,
00:17:38they discovered something strange.
00:17:41Some undulating movements appear from the center of the cluster.
00:17:45They spread out in all directions, like circles on the water.
00:17:49Scientists have suggested that this was caused by a supermassive black hole.
00:17:54The thing is, black holes don't always devour space objects entirely.
00:17:59Sometimes, they kind of spit them out.
00:18:02This causes vibrations of gases, which we can convert into soundtracks.
00:18:07What's interesting is that the oscillation of each such wave actually lasts about 10 million years.
00:18:13You're just listening to a very accelerated recording.
00:18:17Scientists have reduced the delay between oscillations by about 144 quadrillion times.
00:18:23So, let's check it out.
00:18:26This is probably the eeriest sound from the whole list.
00:18:29Nothing too loud or wild, but there's something dark and disturbing about it.
00:18:34Now, those were the scariest space sounds captured by NASA.
00:18:38To be fair, most of them sounded creepy simply because they're radio waves.
00:18:42But it's still fun to get spooked sometimes.
00:18:45Have you heard about a diamond star that could put all the riches on Earth to shame?
00:18:51How about twinkling stars with surfaces made of solid iron?
00:18:55So, let's take a look at these weird stars and try to unravel their mysteries.
00:19:02There's a star in the Centaurus constellation that was nicknamed Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
00:19:08Yes, it was named after a Beatles song, because it basically is a Beatles song.
00:19:13You see, the star was discovered to have a massive diamond at its core.
00:19:19Now, you may be wondering how big this diamond really is.
00:19:23Well, it's estimated to be about 10 billion trillion trillion carats.
00:19:29That's a 1 followed by 34 zeros.
00:19:32To put that into perspective, the Hope Diamond, which is one of the largest diamonds on Earth,
00:19:38is a measly 45.5 carats in comparison.
00:19:42Can you imagine the size of the ring you could make with this star diamond?
00:19:47And it's about the same mass as our sun.
00:19:52But don't get too excited about the prospect of owning this diamond just yet.
00:19:56Even if you were Jeff Bezos, you wouldn't be able to afford it.
00:20:00According to Ronald Winston, CEO of Harry Winston Inc.,
00:20:04the diamond is so big that it would likely depress the value of the market.
00:20:09So, you'd have to settle for a much smaller diamond engagement ring.
00:20:16One interesting thing about the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds star is that it's incredibly dense.
00:20:22In fact, it has the mass of the sun crammed into an object only a third the diameter of Earth.
00:20:28That's like trying to fit an elephant into a shoebox.
00:20:32And yet, despite its massive size, it's actually quite cool,
00:20:37with a core temperature of only about 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:20:41By comparison, the core temperature of our sun is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.
00:20:49Since the discovery of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,
00:20:52several other crystallized stars have been found,
00:20:55some with diamond hearts the size of Earth.
00:20:58It just goes to show that the universe is full of surprises,
00:21:02and you never know what kind of treasures you might find out there in the vast expanse of space.
00:21:08And this isn't the only weird star we've discovered so far.
00:21:12There are many strange, unexplained things in outer space.
00:21:18For example, let's take Vega.
00:21:21Vega, also known as Alpha Lyrae, is a bright star located in the constellation Lyra.
00:21:27It's one of the brightest stars in the night sky,
00:21:30and is easily visible to the naked eye from most parts of the world.
00:21:35Now, Vega may look like a beautiful, bright star to us Northern Hemisphere folks,
00:21:41but little do we know, it's hiding a secret.
00:21:44It's actually quite squashed.
00:21:48You see, Vega's high spin rate causes it to bulge at the equator,
00:21:53kind of like a cosmic belly.
00:21:55It rotates once every 12.5 hours, which is pretty fast for a star,
00:22:01and it throws material out around its waistline.
00:22:04It's almost like the star is hula-hooping.
00:22:07This material is further from the center of the star,
00:22:10so it experiences less gravity, causing it to cool and darken,
00:22:15leading to a gravity darkening effect.
00:22:20So Vega is basically a cosmic fitness guru's worst nightmare.
00:22:25Although for us stargazers, it still looks round,
00:22:28because we're looking at it from Earth's pole end.
00:22:31However, if we saw it from a different angle, we'd get a very different view,
00:22:36one that might make us wonder if Vega has been sneaking some cosmic donuts behind our backs.
00:22:44But while we might joke about its equatorial waistline,
00:22:48there's no denying that Vega is still one of the brightest and most fascinating stars in our galaxy.
00:22:56But if you want something actually bright, then how about a supernova?
00:23:03Supernovas are giant space booms that occur when stars reach the end of their life cycle.
00:23:10It's like the grand finale of a firework show, but on a cosmic scale.
00:23:14They release more energy in a few seconds than our Sun will produce in its entire lifetime.
00:23:22And this is exactly what happened to the next star of our show,
00:23:27this celestial object with a weird name, IPFT-14HLS.
00:23:33But there's a catch. It isn't your average supernova.
00:23:37Even though this star made a blast in 2014 and started to fade away like usual,
00:23:43recently it made an unexpected comeback and brightened once more.
00:23:48Talk about a dramatic entrance.
00:23:52And if that wasn't enough, this thing continued to fade and brighten at least five times in total,
00:23:58which is a bit like a yo-yo.
00:24:00It's like the star just couldn't make up its mind about whether it wanted to stay bright or fade away into the abyss.
00:24:09Also, when scientists measured the supernova's spectrum,
00:24:12they found that it was evolving ten times slower than other stars.
00:24:17Maybe it's a supernova that just wants to enjoy its golden years.
00:24:23All in all, this object is a real mystery.
00:24:28But this is not the only star suffering from the two-in-one syndrome.
00:24:33At first glance, MY Camelopardalis appears to be a fairly common star.
00:24:39But after a closer look, astronomers concluded it was actually two stars in one.
00:24:47These two stars are orbiting each other at over 600,000 miles per hour.
00:24:52It's a contact binary star system,
00:24:55which means that the stars are so close together that they share a common envelope.
00:25:00In other words, they're so close to each other that they're practically smooching.
00:25:06These celestial Romeo and Juliet are one of the most massive known binary stars out there.
00:25:12Each of them individually weighs in at a whopping 32 and 38 solar masses, respectively.
00:25:21Astronomers also think that they might be on the brink of a stellar merger,
00:25:25which means that one day, they might just combine into one giant superstar.
00:25:31Wow, who knew space could be so romantic?
00:25:35Next, introducing another long name, HD 140283, also known as Methuselah's Star.
00:25:43This little guy in the constellation Libra has been around for a while.
00:25:48And by a while, I mean a really long time.
00:25:51Actually, scientists used to think it was older than the universe itself.
00:25:58Just imagine if it turned out to be true.
00:26:01Imagine if it turned out to be true.
00:26:03But eventually, they figured out that it's actually around 14.8 billion years old,
00:26:09a peer of our universe.
00:26:11That's still pretty impressive, though.
00:26:13This star is so old, it remembers when the Milky Way was just a baby galaxy.
00:26:21But despite all that, this star still has some life left in it.
00:26:25It's just starting to expand into a red giant,
00:26:28which is kind of like when you hit your 30s.
00:26:31Talk about aging well.
00:26:35But if all these things are somewhat comprehensible,
00:26:38then how about a star that was literally named WTF Star by scientists?
00:26:44No, I'm not kidding.
00:26:45At least, it used to be.
00:26:47Now, it's called Tabby's Star.
00:26:50It also has a more scientific name, but that one is a bit of a mouthful.
00:26:55But what's really bizarre about this star is its irregular dimming.
00:27:00For some reason, it doesn't glow like a normal star,
00:27:03but blinks as if someone turned on and off a flashlight.
00:27:07And it's not just a little dip.
00:27:09We're talking up to a 22% drop in light.
00:27:13So it's not because it sometimes gets blocked by a planet or something.
00:27:18Scientists have come up with all sorts of explanations for this strange behavior,
00:27:23from comets to dust to even an extraterrestrial megastructure.
00:27:28That's right.
00:27:29But before your imagination runs too wild,
00:27:32it's important to note that the most likely explanation is just plain old dust.
00:27:37Perhaps the star is surrounded by some kind of dust cloud,
00:27:40and sometimes it prevents us from seeing it clearly.
00:27:45Although this explanation is still not 100% confirmed,
00:27:49there are still plenty of mysteries surrounding Tabby's Star.
00:27:53One thing's for sure, it may be a bit of an oddball,
00:27:56but that's what makes it so fascinating.
00:28:00So, there you have it, folks.
00:28:02We're left in awe of the incredible diversity and strangeness of the cosmos.
00:28:07There's so much more to discover out there.
00:28:11So, let's keep exploring and keep being amazed by the wonders of the universe.
00:28:16When you look at photos taken from spaceships or the International Space Station
00:28:21that show sunlit objects like Earth or the Moon,
00:28:24something seems wrong.
00:28:26Space looks too empty.
00:28:28No magical scenery of a nighttime sky full of stars.
00:28:32It would be incredibly boring to go stargazing in space,
00:28:35since the sky is always dark.
00:28:38During the daytime, the sky on our home planet is blue because of the diffusion of light.
00:28:43It happens when sunlight goes through the atmosphere.
00:28:46But if you were on the Moon or somewhere else in space,
00:28:49there would be no atmosphere to spread this light around.
00:28:52That's why the sky there would always appear black.
00:28:56But it doesn't mean less bright out there.
00:28:59If you were looking out the window of the Space Station,
00:29:01you'd see just as much direct sunlight as you would gazing out of your apartment window
00:29:05during a cloudless day.
00:29:07Maybe even more.
00:29:09When taking a picture on a sunny day,
00:29:11you'll probably use a short exposure,
00:29:13together with the narrow aperture setting on your camera.
00:29:16This way, just a short burst of light will get in.
00:29:19That's similar to how our pupils contract in sunlight
00:29:22so that they don't have to deal with too much light.
00:29:25And since it's just as bright up there in space,
00:29:27the process is the same when you take pictures of sunlit objects there.
00:29:31Using short exposure,
00:29:33you can get good, bright pictures of Earth or the surface of the Moon.
00:29:37But it also means there will be no stars in the picture.
00:29:40Even up there, stars are relatively dim.
00:29:43They don't emit enough light to show up in photos taken with such settings.
00:29:48Our home planet has a blue sky
00:29:50that slowly transforms into a beautiful orange-red palette at dusk and dawn.
00:29:55But if you ever get a chance to watch a sunset on Mars,
00:29:58you should expect the opposite,
00:30:00an orange-brown daytime sky that gets a bluish tint at sunset.
00:30:05First of all, Mars is farther away from the Sun than our planet.
00:30:09So, when you're looking at the Sun from the Martian surface,
00:30:12of course, it looks fainter and smaller.
00:30:14And not just that.
00:30:16The Sun observed from Mars is just a bluish-white dot surrounded by a blue halo.
00:30:21The thin atmosphere of the red planet contains large dust particles.
00:30:25They create an effect called Mie scattering.
00:30:28It occurs when the diameter of particles in the atmosphere
00:30:31is almost the same as the wavelength of the scattered light.
00:30:34This effect filters out the red light from the Sun's rays.
00:30:37So, only the blue light would reach your eyes on Mars.
00:30:42How come Earth doesn't have rings?
00:30:45All gas giants in our solar system,
00:30:47Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, have such rings,
00:30:51whereas the rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars don't.
00:30:56There are two theories about how rings can appear around a planet.
00:31:00They might be just some material left from the times when the planet was forming.
00:31:04Or they may be the remains of a moon that got destroyed by a collision with some space body
00:31:09or torn apart by the strong gravitational pull of its parent planet.
00:31:13The gas giants formed in the outer regions of our solar system,
00:31:16while all the rocky planets are in the inner part.
00:31:19So, maybe the inner planets were more protected from potential collisions
00:31:23that could have formed their rings.
00:31:25There are also more moons in the outer regions of our solar system,
00:31:29which could be another reason why the planets there have rings.
00:31:33Also, bigger planets have stronger gravity.
00:31:36It means that they can keep their rings stable after they form.
00:31:40Some experts believe Earth used to have a ring system a long time ago.
00:31:44A Mars-sized object might have collided with our home planet,
00:31:48which probably created a dense ring of debris around it.
00:31:52Some scientists think that this debris formed not a ring,
00:31:55but what we know today as the moon.
00:31:58There's probably a giant planet lurking at the edge of the solar system,
00:32:03far beyond Neptune.
00:32:05Scientists call this mysterious hypothetical world Planet 9.
00:32:09If it does exist, it's probably similar to Uranus or Neptune
00:32:13and 10 times more massive than our home planet.
00:32:16It's likely to circle around the Sun,
00:32:18but in the outer reaches of the solar system,
00:32:20about 20 times farther than Neptune.
00:32:23Another interesting theory says that Planet 9
00:32:26could actually be a black hole the size of a grapefruit
00:32:29that warps space in a similar way a large planet would.
00:32:35Even though we once thought it was a rare substance in space,
00:32:38water exists all over our solar system.
00:32:41For example, you can often find it in asteroids and comets.
00:32:45It's also in craters on the Moon and Mercury.
00:32:49We still don't know if there's enough water
00:32:51to support potential human colonies if we decide to move there,
00:32:54but some amount of water is definitely present there.
00:32:58Mars has water at its poles too.
00:33:01It's mostly hidden in the layers of ice
00:33:03and probably under the planet's dusty surface.
00:33:06Europa, Jupiter's moon, has some water too.
00:33:09This is the most likely candidate we know about to host life outside Earth.
00:33:14There's probably a whole ocean of liquid water under its frozen surface.
00:33:18It might actually contain twice as much water
00:33:21as all of Earth's oceans combined.
00:33:24Neptune is unexpectedly warm,
00:33:27even though it's 30 times as far from the Sun as our planet
00:33:30and receives less sunlight and heat.
00:33:32But it still radiates way more heat than it gets.
00:33:35It also has way more activity in its atmosphere than you'd suspect,
00:33:39especially if you compare it to its neighbor, Uranus.
00:33:43Both of these planets emit the same amount of heat
00:33:46even though Uranus is much closer to the Sun.
00:33:49No one knows why.
00:33:51Neptune has extremely strong winds
00:33:53that can reach a speed of up to 1,500 mph.
00:33:57Can they produce this heat?
00:33:59Or maybe it's because of the planet's core
00:34:01or its gravitational force?
00:34:04There's a monster black hole
00:34:06hurtling through space at a speed of 5 million mph.
00:34:10Scientists located it with the Hubble Space Telescope.
00:34:13They believe it weighs as much as a billion suns.
00:34:17It was supposed to stay put in the center of its home galaxy,
00:34:20but some gravitational forces are pushing it around.
00:34:23At one point, this black hole is going to break free from its galaxy
00:34:27and continue roaming the universe.
00:34:29Luckily, it's still 8 billion years away from us.
00:34:33Solar storms are so powerful
00:34:35that they could leave us in complete darkness.
00:34:38Back in July 2012,
00:34:40the strongest solar storm in over 150 years
00:34:43narrowly missed Earth.
00:34:46Coronal Mass Ejections, or CMEs,
00:34:49are large bubbles of ionized gas.
00:34:51They tore through our orbit back then.
00:34:54If they had caught our planet in the crosshairs,
00:34:56we would have literally been in the firing line.
00:34:59We'd have faced solar matter hurtling towards Earth,
00:35:02damaging computers and causing power outages
00:35:05that would have lasted for months.
00:35:07A surprise solar storm hit us on June 25, 2022.
00:35:11One photographer even managed to capture stunning bright auroras
00:35:14that flashed across the dawn sky in Calgary, Canada
00:35:18and lasted for 5 minutes.
00:35:20They were caused by the storm.
00:35:23Vampire stars are a real thing.
00:35:26They're part of a binary star,
00:35:28and they can literally drain the life out of the other star in the system.
00:35:31They do it to keep burning for a longer time.
00:35:34It works like this.
00:35:36A smaller star with a lower mass steals its sibling's hydrogen fuel
00:35:40to increase its own mass.
00:35:42This vampire star then becomes hotter.
00:35:45Plus, its color changes to striking blue.
00:35:48This way, it looks much younger.
00:35:50How sneaky!
00:35:52The color of the universe is dubbed Cosmic Latte.
00:35:56The light coming from our galaxies and stars within them,
00:35:59as well as clouds of gas and dust in the observable universe,
00:36:02have a specific color.
00:36:04It's an ivory tint, pretty close to white.
00:36:07The universe is beige
00:36:09because there are a bit more areas that produce green, yellow, and red light
00:36:13than those that emit blue.
00:36:17It's normal for planets to be a bit tilted on the side.
00:36:21The Earth is tilted at a 23-degree angle.
00:36:24That's why we have seasons.
00:36:26It's summer when the part of the world where you are leans closer to the Sun.
00:36:29It works the opposite way, too.
00:36:31It's winter when you lean away from it.
00:36:33But Uranus is tilted more than normal.
00:36:36It lies at a 98-degree angle,
00:36:38which has a huge effect on its seasons.
00:36:40Each season on Uranus takes 21 years to play out.
00:36:44Something to think about the next time we complain that winter lasts forever.
00:36:49Now, here on Earth, we measure distances in minutes and hours,
00:36:52maybe even days.
00:36:54It takes 10 minutes to walk to your best friend's house,
00:36:56or 15 minutes to drive to your favorite cafe.
00:36:59But in space, it's different.
00:37:01It's vast, which means we measure how long it takes to get to a certain point in years,
00:37:06or in most cases, light-years.
00:37:08So, if you want to walk to the Moon one day,
00:37:11that would take you 9 years to span the 239,000 miles.
00:37:15Perhaps you'd like to take a ride to the nearby star, Proxima Centauri.
00:37:20Maybe if you kept the pedal to the metal at a constant speed of 70 mph,
00:37:24you'd get there in about 356 billion hours,
00:37:28or around 40.5 million years.
00:37:31Trust me, after the first 20 million years,
00:37:33you'd be second-guessing yourself as to why go there in the first place.
00:37:37Mars contains the biggest valley, Valles Marineris, we've discovered so far.
00:37:42It's a pretty impressive system of canyons, 2,500 miles long.
00:37:47That's five times longer than the Grand Canyon.
00:37:49Researchers first spotted it back in the 1970s.
00:37:52A bank of volcanoes located on the other side of the canyon ridge
00:37:56probably helped form this valley.
00:37:58We haven't discovered a planet completely made of diamonds yet,
00:38:01but on some planets, it actually rains diamonds.
00:38:05On Jupiter and Saturn, gas giants of our solar system,
00:38:08lightning storms turn abundant methane into soot,
00:38:11which we also know as carbon.
00:38:14The soot falls and transforms into graphite.
00:38:16Further graphite transforms into diamonds
00:38:19with a diameter of about 0.4 inches.
00:38:23Now, before you start figuring out how to book a diamond-collecting field trip,
00:38:27know that these diamonds don't last.
00:38:29After they enter the planet's core, they melt.
00:38:32Ever notice how when you're stargazing two nights in a row at the same time,
00:38:36let's say 9 p.m., the stars stay in the same place, but the Moon doesn't?
00:38:41Well, there are two reasons for that.
00:38:43First, it depends on what time you go stargazing.
00:38:46For instance, if you go outside at 8 p.m.,
00:38:49and tomorrow you look for it at 11 p.m.,
00:38:51you'll see the Moon in two pretty different places.
00:38:54In this case, even the stars take different places in the sky
00:38:57since our planet is spinning.
00:38:59As you know, it takes 24 hours for it to make one full circle.
00:39:03That means, from our point of view,
00:39:05it seems like both the sky and everything up there
00:39:08is just moving around us one time per 24 hours.
00:39:11In the same way, the Sun changes its position,
00:39:14rising and setting every day.
00:39:16So, if you went outside two nights in a row at the same hour,
00:39:20in most cases, you'll have to wait for an extra half hour or more
00:39:24until the Moon gets back to the same position as the night before.
00:39:27The stars are pretty much standing still.
00:39:29It seems like they're moving, but that's because the Earth is spinning.
00:39:33But the Moon is actually moving around our planet
00:39:36and goes through different phases.
00:39:38For example, a new Moon is when it's completely dark in the sky.
00:39:41A full Moon is when its day side is facing the Earth.
00:39:44It takes approximately a month for it to finish one circle around the Earth.
00:39:49Maybe you'd be luckier on a diamond-collecting expedition on this next planet,
00:39:5340 million light-years away from Earth.
00:39:55Scientists used to call it a super-Earth.
00:39:58Now, a super-Earth is generally a planet way bigger than ours.
00:40:02This planet, for example, is double the Earth's size.
00:40:05It's so close to its star that it makes a full circle around it in less than 18 hours,
00:40:10which means a year there is pretty short.
00:40:13Since it's so close to its star,
00:40:15its temperature goes up a whopping 4,900 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:40:19Because of the heat, in combination with the planet's density,
00:40:23scientists have the theory that its core is made of carbon in the form of graphite and diamonds.
00:40:29Over 10 years ago, astronomers discovered a huge water vapor cloud.
00:40:34It was 12 billion light-years from our home planet.
00:40:37That cloud is the biggest source of water we know of.
00:40:40It's also the oldest, dating back to when the Universe was only 1.6 billion years old.
00:40:45Now, it's 13.8 billion years old.
00:40:48Man, if only I had started a savings account 12 billion years ago!
00:40:52With compound interest, I'd have made quite a pile of cash by now.
00:40:56But I wasn't around then.
00:40:58Anyway, this cloud is so large it holds 140 trillion times the amount of water in all the oceans on our planet.
00:41:06This cloud kind of feeds a black hole.
00:41:09It may also contain enough gases, such as carbon monoxide,
00:41:13to encourage the black hole to grow six times bigger than it is at the moment.
00:41:18The average temperature of our planet is about 57 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:41:22And the highest temperature ever measured was 134 degrees.
00:41:26Sound too hot?
00:41:27Well, on Venus, it can go up to 900 degrees,
00:41:30which makes it the hottest planet in our solar system.
00:41:33It's not hot enough to melt steel, though.
00:41:36It would need to be higher by 2,500 degrees to get there.
00:41:39But it's hot enough to melt lead.
00:41:42And it's way too hot to sustain life.
00:41:44At least, not in any form that we know.
00:41:47Venus is not even the closest to the Sun.
00:41:49It's Mercury.
00:41:50But it has a super-thick atmosphere that traps greenhouse gases.
00:41:54It's like you covering yourself with a pretty thick blanket in the middle of the summer.
00:41:58Now, we're used to seeing volcanoes spewing hot molten lava.
00:42:02After all, that's what they mostly do on Earth.
00:42:05But in space, volcanoes tend to spew methane, water, or ammonia.
00:42:10And these materials freeze as they erupt,
00:42:12and eventually transform into frozen vapor and something called volcanic snow.
00:42:17I'm talking about cryovolcanoes here.
00:42:20You can find them on Jupiter's moons, Io and Europa,
00:42:23Saturn's moon, Titan, and Pluto.
00:42:26These volcanoes are especially active on Io, which has hundreds of vents.
00:42:30NASA vehicles have even captured some of these erupting in real time.
00:42:34Plumes of frozen vapor coming out of them extended for about 250 miles.
00:42:39Hey, by the way, they just discovered another moon around Jupiter
00:42:43that might actually be good for farming someday.
00:42:46It's named EIEIO.
00:42:49Now, what exactly happens to the light after it disappears inside of a black hole?
00:42:54Well, photon is a particle of light.
00:42:57The event horizon is the boundary of a black hole.
00:43:00When something, say a photon, crosses the line and enters those boundaries,
00:43:04it can't escape anymore.
00:43:06But it doesn't mean a black hole destroyed it.
00:43:09It pulls the photon in rapidly towards its center,
00:43:12where an enormous mass is packed into an infinitely small space.
00:43:16But we're not sure what happens to photons in such extreme conditions.
00:43:20It's still one of the biggest mysteries.
00:43:22Does a black hole destroy the light or not?
00:43:25Saturn has 82 moons we know about.
00:43:2853 confirmed and 29 more that are still on the waiting list to be confirmed as actual moons
00:43:34before they get their official names.
00:43:36And one of the coolest moons might be a 914-mile-wide hunk of rock called Aeapetus.
00:43:43It's dark on one side and bright on the other.
00:43:46Its lighter half is 20 times more reflective than the other one.
00:43:50As it turned out, the bright side is ice.
00:43:52The dark side is a bit more complicated.
00:43:55One theory says it's dark because of particles coming from another moon, the one named Phoebe.
00:44:01Another theory says it could be because of heat.
00:44:04Since the moon is rotating really slowly, its dark material is absorbing heat,
00:44:09which makes it even darker.
00:44:11Now, how big do you think a black hole can become?
00:44:14In theory, we can't find an upper limit to its mass.
00:44:17But astronomers believe the ultramassive black holes, or UMBHs,
00:44:22located in the cores of certain galaxies, are mostly up to 10 billion solar masses big.
00:44:27Recently, they even discovered these UMBHs physically can't grow much more than this
00:44:32because, in that case, they would start to disrupt the accretion disks that feed them.
00:44:37That way, they would kind of stuff the source of new material.
00:44:41Most people picture the universe as somewhere between aquamarine and pale turquoise.
00:44:46Even some researchers thought that was the case.
00:44:49They managed to determine the cosmic color by combining light from more than 200,000 galaxies
00:44:54within 2 billion light-years of our planet.
00:44:57But the real color is actually closer to beige.
00:45:00Researchers got it all wrong because there was a bug in the software.
00:45:04No, really?
00:45:06It converted the cosmic spectrum into the color our eyes would see if we were exposed to it.
00:45:11The team defined this color as a cosmic latte.
00:45:15Ooh, make that a double-shot low-fat large-to-go, please.
00:45:19Wow, the James Webb Telescope has been fully deployed!
00:45:23If you're interested in astronomy or space, you've got to be excited about the James Webb Space Telescope.
00:45:28Here's why.
00:45:30For starters, it's huge.
00:45:32How huge?
00:45:33The primary mirror of the JWST is over 21 feet wide.
00:45:37The Hubble Space Telescope, the previous largest eye in space, has a mirror of about 7 feet, 10.5 inches.
00:45:44In comparison, if you placed the two telescopes side by side, it'd be like putting a horse next to an elephant.
00:45:50And elephants are enormous.
00:45:52There's a perfect reason why the Webb, as it's affectionately called, is massive.
00:45:57It has to be huge because it's not an optical telescope in the traditional sense that most telescopes are.
00:46:02The JWST is an infrared telescope.
00:46:05It sees heat.
00:46:08Infrared light has a longer wavelength than visible light, so it needs a larger mirror to focus that light.
00:46:14So what do we have here with the James Webb Space Telescope?
00:46:17We have two never-before things going on.
00:46:21We have incredible technology and incredible science missions.
00:46:25Both the missions and the technology are out-of-this-world cutting-edge.
00:46:30The Webb is a classic example of engineering in the service of science.
00:46:34Because of its greater light-gathering power,
00:46:36the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to take images of things that we were never able to see before,
00:46:41but have always wanted to see.
00:46:43Things like exoplanets and the first galaxies in the universe,
00:46:47and stars and planets forming inside nebulae.
00:46:50And you can bet that there'll be plenty of surprises, too.
00:46:54The James Webb Space Telescope has several technological tricks up its sleeve,
00:46:58which promise to provide its greatest scientific discoveries.
00:47:02The Webb has a coronagraph, and a very special coronagraph at that.
00:47:06The coronagraph is the tool that will allow the first real pictures of exoplanets.
00:47:12The coronagraph blocks out the bright pinpoint light of stars,
00:47:16which we already know have planets orbiting around them.
00:47:19Without the coronagraph, the starlight would make things too bright to see these planets,
00:47:23because planets are hundreds of thousands of times dimmer than the star.
00:47:27But with the coronagraph blocking the starlight, the exoplanets come into view.
00:47:32And the JWST coronagraph can block the light from up to a hundred stars at once.
00:47:37We can expect a swarm of exoplanets.
00:47:40This brings us to the next high-tech gadget the JWST has up its sleeve,
00:47:44a no-slit spectrograph.
00:47:47Usually, an ordinary spectrograph will have a slit to allow a sliver of light to enter and be diffracted.
00:47:54Diffraction is the scattering of light to reveal the spectrum of the light's component wavelengths.
00:47:59But the James Webb Space Telescope's work is so sensitive
00:48:03that a sliver of light would overwhelm the optics.
00:48:06So a no-slit spectrograph was installed.
00:48:09The starlight gathered from the big mirror is sent into a fiber-optic cable
00:48:13to send only a single spot of light into the spectroscope.
00:48:17And that's where the grism takes over.
00:48:20Professor Isaac Newton used a prism to discover the spectrum of sunlight.
00:48:24Roy G. Biv, as you may recall.
00:48:27But the Webb uses a grism.
00:48:29That's a compound word, like smog, which is smoke and fog.
00:48:33A grism is a graded prism.
00:48:36That means it has itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny grooves that diffract the spot of light
00:48:40the big mirror sends down the fiber-optic cable and into the spectrograph.
00:48:44The science of reading a spectrum of light is called spectroscopy.
00:48:49By analyzing the spectra of light from the exoplanets,
00:48:52the JWST will determine what gases are in the planet's atmospheres,
00:48:56as well as their density and even their temperature.
00:48:59It's an incredible advance in our knowledge.
00:49:02We'll be able to tell if a planet has oxygen or nitrogen or methane
00:49:06and other gases that may or may not indicate that the planet is habitable.
00:49:11Another Earth, perhaps.
00:49:13Presently, the JWST is parked in its permanent location.
00:49:18Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits the Earth,
00:49:21the James Webb Space Telescope orbits the Sun.
00:49:24It orbits the Sun at one of the gravitational balance points
00:49:27between the Earth-Sun system.
00:49:29It just stays there without having to use much or any fuel to hold its position.
00:49:34So, as the Earth orbits the Sun,
00:49:36the James Webb remains parked at a spot that is also orbiting the Sun.
00:49:41There are five gravitational balance points between the Earth and Sun.
00:49:45They are called Lagrange points,
00:49:47after their discoverer, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, in the 18th century.
00:49:51The Webb is parked at L2, the second of the five Lagrange points,
00:49:55which lies 932,000 miles out into space, way beyond the Moon.
00:50:01All this to observe a spot of infrared light.
00:50:04But first, the engineers must get, or acquire, that spot of light.
00:50:09To get a spot of infrared light,
00:50:11the 18 hexagonal mirrors had to be unfolded from their position
00:50:15inside the Ariane rocket that sent the Webb into space.
00:50:18Once the mirrors have unfolded,
00:50:20their positions must be adjusted to microscopic-level accuracy
00:50:24so that all 18 mirrors produce a single image.
00:50:27Several tiny motors are attached to each mirror segment to make these adjustments.
00:50:31These motors, which must be activated individually,
00:50:34will gradually pull the honeycomb-like mirror segments into alignment.
00:50:39It's a critical part of the mission, and takes months to complete.
00:50:43To align the mirrors to produce a single spot of light,
00:50:46the James Webb Space Telescope can't be jiggling around.
00:50:49The telescope must be kept absolutely motionless,
00:50:52and that requires two other cutting-edge technologies,
00:50:55the sunshield and the cryocooler.
00:50:58In space, direct sunlight is very hot, and shadow is very cold.
00:51:04Therefore, the James Webb Space Telescope brought along its own high-tech sunshield.
00:51:09It's huge, too, as big as a tennis court huge.
00:51:13Comprised of five individual layers of Kapton film only a millimeter thick,
00:51:18each layer of the sunshield has to be remotely deployed individually
00:51:22using a system of eight motors and 139 actuators with thousands of parts.
00:51:27The purpose of the sunshield is to help the JWST stay cold.
00:51:31The colder, the better.
00:51:33Colder is what the cryocooler is for.
00:51:36Temperature can be measured three different ways.
00:51:38In degrees Fahrenheit, where water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212.
00:51:43In degrees Celsius, where water freezes at zero degrees and boils at 100 degrees.
00:51:48But neither of these thermometers have a starting point.
00:51:51So Lord Kelvin, in the 19th century, devised a third temperature scale,
00:51:56the Kelvin scale, which starts at absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible.
00:52:02The onboard cryocooler will cool the JWST to just 7 degrees Kelvin,
00:52:087 degrees above absolute zero.
00:52:11At this temperature, virtually all heat from motors is removed,
00:52:15and the telescope will be able to focus the light to a point without any noise,
00:52:19basically any motion interfering with the quality of the image.
00:52:23Finally, after all this incredible technology functions remotely as planned,
00:52:28we are almost ready to observe the infrared images
00:52:31from the giant multi-segmented mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope.
00:52:35Almost ready.
00:52:37A telescope can collect all the light it wants,
00:52:39but in the end, it must also be able to detect what it's collected.
00:52:44If the light is not detected, it's not truly observed.
00:52:47Enter the piece de resistance, the infrared detectors.
00:52:51The Webb has 15 of them.
00:52:53The specially fabricated semiconductor material
00:52:56produces a slight electrical charge when struck by a photon of infrared light.
00:53:00The Webb's infrared detectors can produce a million pixel high-def image.
00:53:05A few of the detectors can produce a 4 million pixel image.
00:53:09They must be durable enough to last 10 to 20 years without warping or corrupting,
00:53:14all while working at 7 degrees above absolute zero.
00:53:18In themselves, the infrared detectors on the JWST are an engineering marvel.
00:53:23But what are they going to take pictures of?
00:53:26Ah, the missions of the JWST.
00:53:29Well, they're cutting edge too.
00:53:3170 of the first 280 target observations are exoplanets.
00:53:35Is there another Earth?
00:53:37Which exoplanets seem habitable?
00:53:39The Webb Telescope will provide detailed spectroscopic analysis
00:53:43of the atmospheres of thousands of known exoplanets.
00:53:46For the first time, we will see images of exoplanets as they appear in infrared light.
00:53:52Cosmology, the study of the universe, is perhaps the primary mission for the Webb.
00:53:57Galaxies receding away so fast that their light is stretched into the infrared
00:54:01will be a prime target for observation.
00:54:04Hundreds of hours of observations are necessary
00:54:07to collect the faint infrared light from these first galaxies formed after the Big Bang.
00:54:12The JWST will give us a picture of what the infant universe looked like.
00:54:17Astronomers will learn new information about the dark energy
00:54:20that is driving the expansion of the universe and what role, if any,
00:54:24black holes play in the formation of galaxies.
00:54:27Star formation in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies
00:54:30is also part of the mission of the James Webb.
00:54:33By imaging hundreds of solar systems forming around newborn stars,
00:54:37astronomers will establish a definite history of solar system development.
00:54:42Now fact will replace theory,
00:54:44and a big step forward will be taken in our understanding of space.
00:54:49The James Webb Space Telescope is a bold endeavor
00:54:52that will mark an epoch time in scientific history.
00:54:55Venus has exceptionally high temperatures, hot enough to melt lead.
00:54:59It's the hottest planet in our solar system,
00:55:02with a high-pressure environment and super strong winds.
00:55:06The winds there are 50 times faster than the planet's rotation.
00:55:10It's getting stronger over time, and scientists don't know why.
00:55:14But they did find something interesting in the planet's clouds,
00:55:17a potential sign of decaying biological matter.
00:55:21Could there be life then?
00:55:23Not quite, since Venus has a dry, windy atmosphere
00:55:26and doesn't have enough water for life to develop.
00:55:30Rings around other planets are more common than we thought.
00:55:34Saturn's rings are the most famous and spectacular ones.
00:55:37They partially consist of reflective, sparkly water ice,
00:55:41and you can't see anything like that in the rest of our solar system.
00:55:45Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have ring systems too,
00:55:49and those most likely consist of dust and rocky particles.
00:55:52And not just planets.
00:55:54Astronomers found out rings were around one asteroid as well.
00:55:59Speaking of rings, why do you think that Earth doesn't have them?
00:56:03Gas giants have rings, while the rocky ones don't.
00:56:07Two theories explain how rings form.
00:56:10They could be the remains from the times when planets were forming.
00:56:14Or they could be leftover material of an impact that destroyed an unknown moon.
00:56:19Or gravity broke apart this moon of its parent planet.
00:56:23It's not clear why only the gas planets have rings.
00:56:27They formed in the outer area of our solar system,
00:56:30while rocky planets only in its inner circles.
00:56:33Maybe a good clue.
00:56:35Maybe these inner rocky planets had just better protection from strong impacts
00:56:39that could have formed rings.
00:56:41Also, there are more moons in the outer solar system.
00:56:45And there are more rings there.
00:56:47Another thing may be that bigger planets have a bigger volume,
00:56:50so a ring system can remain stable there.
00:56:54Some theories even say that Earth used to have a ring system.
00:56:58A long, long time ago, our planet collided with a Mars-sized object,
00:57:03which most likely resulted in a dense ring of particles and debris.
00:57:07But our story was a bit different than the outer planets.
00:57:10And those rings probably combined and formed the moon.
00:57:16Do we know the shape of the universe?
00:57:18Einstein had a theory of general relativity.
00:57:21It said that the universe could be in one of these three forms.
00:57:25Closed, like a sphere.
00:57:27Open, like a saddle.
00:57:29Or flat, like a piece of paper.
00:57:32Its shape determines whether it's infinite or not,
00:57:35and whether it will expand forever or maybe collapse at some point.
00:57:39The shape of the universe depends on its density and rate of expansion.
00:57:45One of the best ways to determine its shape
00:57:48is to use something called the Cosmic Microwave Background.
00:57:51It's the relic afterglow, something that's left of the Big Bang.
00:57:55Sound waves that were moving through the universe in its early stages
00:57:59produced quite small spatial variations in the temperature of its faint light.
00:58:03The result of these studies show that the universe probably expands in all directions,
00:58:08which means it's flat.
00:58:13How come our sun is hot while the moon is cold?
00:58:16The sun gives off heat because its core is extremely hot.
00:58:20In there, the pressure is pretty high.
00:58:23The hydrogen turns into helium.
00:58:25That's how the sun creates light and heat.
00:58:28The solar light and heat are enough to light up our days on Earth,
00:58:32as well as support life here.
00:58:34Even though the sun is around 93 million miles away from us,
00:58:39the moon is not hot because it doesn't have an atmosphere,
00:58:42so it can't absorb sunlight as our planet does.
00:58:46Its surface gets very hot in the daytime, about 210 degrees Fahrenheit,
00:58:50but since there's no atmosphere,
00:58:52the temperature drops extremely during the night to negative 279 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:58:59The sun is hot, no doubt there, but the space around it is very cold.
00:59:03Heat is the energy objects store inside of it.
00:59:07Temperature is how we measure if something is hot or cold.
00:59:10So when you transfer heat to certain objects, its temperature goes up.
00:59:14Take it away, and the temperature goes down.
00:59:18You can transfer heat in three different ways.
00:59:21Convection, conduction, and radiation.
00:59:26Convection works within gases and liquids, and conduction is for solids.
00:59:31The temperature only affects matter. Space doesn't have enough particles.
00:59:36It's nearly a complete vacuum, which means transferring heat is not effective.
00:59:41The only way to do it is through radiation.
00:59:44When the heat coming from the sun falls on an object in the form of radiation,
00:59:48the atoms that make up that object will absorb energy.
00:59:52This energy moves the atoms and makes them produce heat throughout this process.
00:59:58In space, temperatures of the objects stay the same for a long time.
01:00:02Cold objects stay cold, and hot ones stay hot.
01:00:06If you place anything outside of the Earth's atmosphere and expose it to direct sunlight,
01:00:12the sun will heat it to about 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
01:00:16Objects in outer space that surround our planet and don't receive sunlight directly are at 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
01:00:22The temperature is like this because there are molecules that escape our atmosphere, so the sun heats them.
01:00:30We used to think that water was really rare in space, but now we know there's water ice across our entire solar system.
01:00:38For starters, you can usually find water on asteroids and comets.
01:00:42It's also in craters on Mercury and the Moon that are in permanent shadows.
01:00:47On Mars, you'd find ice at its poles, under the surface dust and in frost.
01:00:52It might not be enough to support human colonies up there, but it's still something.
01:00:58Some other bodies in our solar system also contain ice, like the dwarf planet Ceres and one of Saturn's moons.
01:01:05Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, could be one of the most likely candidates we know about that could contain life.
01:01:11It probably has an entire ocean under its frozen and cracked surface.
01:01:15It could have twice as much water as all oceans on our planet together.
01:01:20Titan, the biggest of Saturn's moons, also has a liquid cycle, but it's not water.
01:01:25Its cycle moves materials between the surface and the atmosphere.
01:01:29At first, it sounds like the water cycle we have on Earth, but immense lakes on Titan are filled with ethane and methane.
01:01:37There's a chance they're over a layer of water.
01:01:40Neptune is about 30 times as far from the Sun as we are.
01:01:44Of course, it gets significantly less light and heat than Earth, but it also radiates way more heat than it's generating.
01:01:51There are more things happening in its atmosphere, especially if you compare it to its neighbor, Uranus.
01:01:58Uranus is closer to the Sun, but it still radiates the same amount of heat as Neptune.
01:02:02The winds on Neptune are insanely strong, 1,500 miles per hour.
01:02:07No one still knows why.
01:02:09It could be a gravitational contraction, energy coming from its core, or the Sun.
01:02:14I hope we'll eventually find out.
01:02:17Can you imagine hot ice?
01:02:20It exists just 33 light-years away from us, on one exoplanet.
01:02:25This planet consists of different water elements, and they form burning ice.
01:02:29The ice there is solid because of pressure, but the surface temperatures are extreme and go up to 570 degrees Fahrenheit.
01:02:37That's how the water stays super hot and comes off as steam.
01:02:41Picture putting ice in your coffee when you want to heat it up.
01:02:46When you stargaze, it's almost like you're looking into the past.
01:02:50Stars are really far away, and it takes longer for their light to reach our planet.
01:02:54So it's possible some of them have already run out of fuel and aren't alive anymore.
01:02:59The pillars of creation are a good example.
01:03:02This is part of a region 7,000 light-years away from us called the Eagle Nebula.
01:03:08These are clouds of gas and dust in the shape of pillars.
01:03:12Scientists first discovered it in 1995, but in reality, a supernova explosion destroyed these pillars that were at least 7,000 light-years away.
01:03:20In reality, a supernova explosion destroyed these pillars that were at least 6,000 light-years away.
01:03:26So the 1995 image shows these pillars from 7,000 light-years away.
01:03:33Mars has the biggest volcano in the solar system that we know of so far.
01:03:38It's bigger than the whole state of Hawaii, and 100 times larger than the biggest volcano on Earth.
01:03:44The Red Planet seems so quiet, but once upon a time, large volcanoes dominated its surface.
01:03:51Volcanoes on the Red Planet can probably grow so big because gravity there is a lot weaker than down on Earth.
01:03:58Also, the crust on our planet is moving all the time, and the Martian crust probably stays still.
01:04:06Venus most likely used to be covered with oceans, from 30 to 1,000 feet deep.
01:04:12Also, some water was locked in the soil of the planet.
01:04:15On top of that, Venus had stable temperatures of 68 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, which, you have to admit, was quite pleasant and not that different from the temperatures on Earth nowadays.
01:04:27So, what I'm getting at is that for 3 billion years, right until something irrevocable happened 700 million years ago, Venus could've been habitable.
01:04:36But now, it's not.
01:04:38The Moon is the second brightest object in our sky.
01:04:42At the same time, among other astronomical bodies, it's one of the dimmest and least reflective.
01:04:48Our natural satellite only seems bright because it's so close to Earth.
01:04:52For comparison, our planet looks much brighter when you look at it from space.
01:04:57It's because clouds, ice, and snow reflect way more light than most types of rock.
01:05:02Triton, Neptune's moon, has all its surface covered with several layers of ice.
01:05:08If this satellite replaced our current moon, the night sky would get 7 times brighter.
01:05:14Neutron stars are some of the smallest, yet most massive objects in space.
01:05:19They're usually about 12 miles in diameter, but are several times heavier than the Sun.
01:05:24Oh, and they also spin about 600 times per second, far faster than your average figure skater.
01:05:32Saturn is the least dense planet in the Solar System.
01:05:36It has one-eighth the average Earth's density.
01:05:39And still, because of its large volume, the planet is 95 times more massive than Earth.
01:05:45A transient lunar phenomenon is one of the most enigmatic things happening on the Moon.
01:05:51It's a short-lived light, color, or some other change on the satellite's surface.
01:05:55Most commonly, it's random flashes of light.
01:05:58Astronomers have been observing this phenomenon since the 1950s.
01:06:02They've noticed that the flashes occur randomly.
01:06:05Sometimes they can happen several times a week.
01:06:08After that, they disappear for several months.
01:06:11Some of them don't last longer than a couple of minutes.
01:06:14But there have been those that continued for hours.
01:06:17The year was 1969, one day before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.
01:06:22One of the mission participants noticed that one part of the lunar surface was more illuminated than the surrounding landscape.
01:06:29It looked as if that area had a kind of fluorescence to it.
01:06:33Unfortunately, it's still unclear if this phenomenon was connected with the mysterious lunar flashes.
01:06:39Trash isn't just a problem in Earth's oceans, cities, and forests.
01:06:43There is a thing called space junk, which is any human-made object that's been left in space and now serves no purpose.
01:06:49There's also natural debris from meteoroids and other cosmic objects.
01:06:54There are currently over 500,000 pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth at speeds high enough to cause significant damage if they were to collide with a spacecraft or satellite.
01:07:05NASA does its best to track every single object to ensure that missions outside Earth can reach their destination safely.
01:07:12Our Sun is insanely massive.
01:07:15Want some proof?
01:07:1699.86% of all the mass in the Solar System is the mass of the Sun.
01:07:23In particular, the hydrogen and helium it's made of.
01:07:26The remaining 0.14% is mostly the mass of the Solar System's eight planets.
01:07:32The Sun's temperature is hotter than the surface of a star.
01:07:36The surface temperature reaches 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but the upper atmosphere heats up to millions of degrees.
01:07:43If someone could dig a tunnel straight into the center of the planet and out the opposite side, and you were adventurous enough to jump into it, it would take you 42 minutes to fall to the other side.
01:07:55You'd speed up as you fell, reaching maximum speed by the time you reached Earth's core.
01:08:01After the halfway point, you would then fall upwards, getting slower and slower.
01:08:06By the time you reached the opposite surface, your speed would be back to zero.
01:08:09Unless you managed to climb out of the hole, you'd immediately start falling again, back down, or up, to the other side of the planet.
01:08:18This trip would go on forever, all thanks to the weird effects of gravity.
01:08:22A might be a fun way to spend an afternoon.
01:08:26There might be more metals, for example, titanium or iron, in lunar craters than astronomers used to think.
01:08:34The main problem with this finding?
01:08:35It contradicts the main theory about how the Moon was formed.
01:08:39That theory says that Earth's natural satellite was spun off from our planet after a collision with a massive space object.
01:08:46But then, why does Earth's metal-poor crust have much less iron oxide than the Moon's?
01:08:53It might mean the Moon was formed from the material lying much deeper inside our planet.
01:08:58Or these metals could've appeared when the molten lunar surface was slowly cooling down.
01:09:03Or maybe, as they've been saying for centuries, it's made of green cheese.
01:09:09Earth could've been purple before it turned blue and green.
01:09:13One scientist has a theory that a substance existed in ancient microbes before chlorophyll, that thing that makes plants green, evolved on Earth.
01:09:22This substance reflected sunlight in red and violet colors, which combined to make purple.
01:09:26If true, the young Earth may have been teeming with strange purple-colored critters before all the green stuff appeared.
01:09:34The highest mountain in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars.
01:09:39It's three times as high as Mount Everest, the Earth's highest mountain above sea level.
01:09:44If you were standing on top of Olympus Mons, you wouldn't understand you were standing on a mountain.
01:09:49Its slopes would be hidden by the planet's curvature.
01:09:53Astronomers have found a massive reservoir of water in space, the largest ever detected.
01:10:00Too bad it's also the farthest, 12 billion light-years away from us.
01:10:04The water vapor cloud holds 140 trillion times as much water as all the Earth's oceans combined.
01:10:11What are we supposed to do with that information?
01:10:14Venus spins at its own unhurried pace.
01:10:16A full rotation takes 243 Earth days, and it takes the planet a bit less than 225 Earth days to go all the way around the Sun.
01:10:26It means a day on Venus is longer than a year.
01:10:29There's very little seismic activity going on inside the moon.
01:10:34Yet many moonquakes, caused by our planet's gravitational pull, sometimes happen several miles below the surface.
01:10:40After that, tiny cracks and fissures appear in the satellite's surface, and gases escape through them.
01:10:47Hey, they sometimes escape from me, too.
01:10:50Mars is the last of the inner planets, which are also called terrestrial since they're made up of rocks and metals.
01:10:58The red planet has a core made mostly of iron, nickel, and sulfur.
01:11:02It's between 900 and 1200 miles across.
01:11:05The core doesn't move.
01:11:06That's why Mars lacks a planet-wide magnetic field.
01:11:10The weak magnetic field it has is just one one-hundredth percent of the Earth's.
01:11:15When the planets in the solar system were just starting to form, Earth didn't have a moon for the longest time.
01:11:23It took 100 million years for our natural satellite to appear.
01:11:27There are several theories as to how the moon came into existence, but the prevailing one is the fission theory.
01:11:33Somebody went fishing and caught the moon? Actually, no.
01:11:38The fission theory proposes that the moon was formed when an object collided with Earth, sending particles flying about.
01:11:46Gravity pulled the particles together, and the moon was created.
01:11:50It eventually settled down on the Earth's ecliptic plane, which is the path that the moon orbits.
01:11:55So, looks like the green cheese is off the table now.
01:11:58The largest single living thing on Earth turns out to be a mushroom in Oregon.
01:12:03This enormous honey mushroom lives in Malheur National Forest and covers an area of 3.7 square miles.
01:12:10It could be as much as 8,500 years old.
01:12:14You could be forgiven for missing it, though, since most of it's hidden underground.
01:12:20When the roots of individual honey mushrooms meet, they can fuse together to become a single fungus,
01:12:25which explains how this one got so big.
01:12:29If you could gather all that mushrooming stuff into one big ball, it could weigh as much as 35,000 tons.
01:12:36That's about as heavy as 200 grey whales.
01:12:40Hey, that's a whale of a mushroom.
01:12:43The largest asteroid in the Solar System is called Vesta, and it's so big that it's sometimes even called a dwarf planet.
01:12:51A trip to the nearest star, apart from the Sun, would take you 5 million years on a commercial airplane.
01:12:58That's what I call a long-haul flight.
01:13:01Space isn't supposed to be black. There are stars everywhere.
01:13:04Shouldn't they light up everything around?
01:13:07Well, you don't see stars wherever you look because some of them haven't existed long enough for their light to reach Earth.
01:13:14A day on Uranus lasts 17 hours, 14 minutes, and 24 seconds.
01:13:18But get this, the planet has a tilt of around 98 degrees, and that makes a season on the gas giant last 21 Earth years.
01:13:28Now, some scientists believe that our planet used to have an additional satellite.
01:13:33According to their research, a small celestial body about 750 miles wide orbited Earth like a second moon.
01:13:41It most likely crashed into our main satellite later on.
01:13:44Such a collision could explain why the two sides of the moon look so different from each other, one being heavily cratered and rough.
01:13:52Or it could be the green cheese.
01:13:56Dust storms on Mars can really go crazy.
01:13:59They hurtle through the red planet's southern hemisphere, especially during the summer.
01:14:04These storms can grow and encompass large areas of the planet, as happened in January 2022.
01:14:09Then, a dust storm covered almost twice the area of the United States.
01:14:14Could it be something like this that caused one of the robots we sent to Mars to go missing?
01:14:19The atmosphere and climate are harsh on Mars.
01:14:23It's mostly a desert with strong winds and average temperatures of minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
01:14:29It drops down to minus 220 at the poles during the winter.
01:14:32A lander needs to be specifically equipped and very sturdy to withstand such conditions.
01:14:37But researchers thought the Beagle 2 could handle the difficult trip to the red planet.
01:14:43June 3, 2003.
01:14:45A team of researchers got one of their pioneering robots they were about to send to space ready.
01:14:50It was a small and compact lander called the Beagle 2.
01:14:54Its mission was to touch down on Mars and search for what the world has been actively looking for for decades now, life on the red planet.
01:15:02Now, the touchdown was due on December 25, but the signal never came.
01:15:08The team tried to contact the spaceship, but at one point, they had to accept they wouldn't be able to reach it.
01:15:14Some thought the landing was too difficult and complex after all.
01:15:18So, the lander crashed.
01:15:20But they couldn't find any technical errors.
01:15:22Others had a theory that the lander may have become entangled in its own parachute and fell down to the surface of Mars.
01:15:28Either way, the Beagle 2 was considered missing.
01:15:32Until 2015, when NASA took pictures of what could be the remains of the lost lander.
01:15:38They weren't just smashed debris.
01:15:40The components actually looked to be intact.
01:15:43The lander's remains were lying with its solar panels partially deployed around three miles away from the site where it was supposed to land.
01:15:51Apparently, the Beagle 2 managed to land successfully, but its radio antenna got blocked.
01:15:56That's why researchers couldn't control it from Earth or communicate with it.
01:16:01But no one knows exactly why it happened.
01:16:04Have you heard of a face on Mars?
01:16:07In the 1970s, one of NASA's spaceships took the iconic images of the Martian surface that showed a face-like formation, as you can see in the upper part of the picture.
01:16:18If you have a rich imagination, you can easily see a nose, two eyes, a mouth, and an unusual hairdo.
01:16:24Some even thought it was a monument built on the Red Planet by another civilization.
01:16:30How about some other unusual things people have found on Mars?
01:16:34Like Happy Face Crater.
01:16:36You can easily see why it has this nickname.
01:16:39Or rocks in different shapes.
01:16:41A pancake, brachiosaurus, or a fish.
01:16:44Mars also has a waffle-shaped island on its surface.
01:16:48It's a 1.2-mile wide feature you can see in the area of lava flows.
01:16:52It might be the result of lava pushing this formation from below.
01:16:57It seems astronomers have also got some images of blue dunes.
01:17:01It's a sea of stunning dark dunes that strong winds sculpted into long lines.
01:17:06They surround the planet's northern polar cap and cover a region as large as Texas.
01:17:11The Red Planet is usually known for its brown sandy dunes, so these ones certainly came as a surprise.
01:17:18In reality, though, they're not really blue.
01:17:20If you could visit Mars right now just to take a look,
01:17:24you'd see that these dunes appear brown and orange like the rest.
01:17:28And the picture is a false color image.
01:17:30Scientists often use false colors to highlight differences in something.
01:17:34For example, here it's the difference in depth.
01:17:37Also, the biggest valley on Mars is so large it could eat our Grand Canyon for breakfast.
01:17:43It's a fascinating system of canyons 2,500 miles long called Valles Marineris.
01:17:51And it's over 10 times as long as the Grand Canyon.
01:17:54Now, if you could stretch this Martian canyon, it would go from coast to coast of the entire United States.
01:18:01Since Mars doesn't have any active plate tectonics, no one knows for sure how this canyon formed.
01:18:07One theory says a chain of volcanoes located on the other side of Mars,
01:18:11the one that includes Olympus Mons, bent the crust from the opposite side of the planet.
01:18:17This powerful force caused cracks in the Martian crust as well as activated enormous amounts of water lying under the surface.
01:18:25This water then emerged and carved the rock away.
01:18:28The force activated glaciers too, and they possibly created new pathways in this gigantic canyon system.
01:18:35Volcanoes on the Martian surface could have erupted about 50,000 years ago,
01:18:39although the most powerful eruptions happened 2 to 3 billion years ago.
01:18:45But the planet doesn't have active volcanoes today.
01:18:48Most of the heat stored in its interior during the planet's formation has been lost.
01:18:53So now, Mars' outer crust is way too thick for the molten rock to reach the surface.
01:18:59But a long time ago, eruptions formed giant volcanoes.
01:19:03And these volcanoes most likely had an important role in melting ice deposits, which released floods of water onto the Martian surface.
01:19:12Now Mars has a thin atmosphere with a volume of gas, mostly carbon dioxide, less than 1% of Earth's.
01:19:19But 4 billion years ago, it was way warmer and wetter than now.
01:19:24Its atmosphere must have been thicker back then too.
01:19:27That's why it could create a powerful greenhouse effect and trap sunlight.
01:19:30Mars also has a powerful magnetic field.
01:19:34Similar to Earth's, it formed because of the currents of molten metals in the planet's core.
01:19:39But unlike our home planet, Mars lost its magnetic field after its core had cooled down.
01:19:45And without it, the planet didn't have any protection from the solar wind, which is a stream of charged particles flowing from the Sun.
01:19:53The solar wind pulled away most of Mars' atmosphere in just a couple of hundred million years, give or take.
01:19:58This is what makes those powerful Martian dust storms even more intense.
01:20:04Mars has a fascinating history.
01:20:06Judging by the planet's glaciers, Mars has probably gone through multiple ice ages, just like Earth.
01:20:12A team of researchers got images of about 60,000 Martian rocks.
01:20:17Rocks were different in size and distributed randomly, which means they probably formed during different ice ages.
01:20:23Glaciers hide their own stories too.
01:20:25Who knows what kinds of gases, rocks, or even microbes could be trapped inside?
01:20:31Now, if you could get into a time machine and stop it 4 billion years ago, on Mars, of course,
01:20:37the chances are you'd see spectacular scenes of flooding.
01:20:41Maybe there would even be some form of life on the planet's surface.
01:20:45A strong meteorite impact that formed the red planet's Gale Crater could be something that triggered that mega-flood.
01:20:51After that collision, the temperatures on the planet got insanely high.
01:20:56This caused the melting of all that ice that was stored on the Martian surface at that time.
01:21:01The flooding was so massive, it changed the geological structure of the planet's surface.
01:21:06It carved out big ripples as well as waves in the sedimentary rock.
01:21:10Now, speaking of water, vapor has been noticed escaping the atmosphere of Mars.
01:21:16Also, researchers have found some evidence of water flowing on the planet's surface.
01:21:21There are dark streaks in the soil.
01:21:23They seem to get bigger in the summer and shrink over the winter.
01:21:27There are numerous dried-out valleys and river channels on the planet.
01:21:31It's possible that liquid water once flowed there.
01:21:34Now, most of it could be locked up in ice caps or even hidden under the surface.
01:21:39More and more things hint that Mars used to be habitable.
01:21:43Mars is the only planet we know about where only robots live.
01:21:47Five rovers make up the Martian population.
01:21:49Those are Perseverance,
01:21:52Opportunity,
01:21:54Spirit,
01:21:56Sojourner,
01:21:58and Curiosity.
01:22:00These robots are there to take pictures and samples of soil and air,
01:22:04and maybe even find life on the Red Planet.
01:22:07And someday, we may reunite with them on Mars.
01:22:10Who knows?
01:22:12Oh, and by the way, if you really could get into a time machine and stop it 4 billion years ago on Mars,
01:22:17then I'd like to buy you lunch and talk about it.
01:22:21My treat!
01:22:26At a distance of 640 light-years from the Sun,
01:22:30scientists discovered planet WASP-76b, where it rains iron.
01:22:35The planet is very close to its sun and always turn to it in the same side.
01:22:40The term is tidally locked.
01:22:42The temperature on the sunny side is so high that metals melt and evaporate there.
01:22:47The other half of the planet is cool enough so that metals condense again and fall down as rain.
01:22:53Speaking of tidal locks, our Moon is the same way.
01:22:57There's no dark side to our satellite.
01:22:59It's just always turned to us with one side.
01:23:02When the Moon happens to be in between the Earth and the Sun,
01:23:05what we call its dark side becomes brightly lit.
01:23:08We just can't see it from our planet.
01:23:10Figures.
01:23:12A recent study claims that the Moon has a tail.
01:23:14And every month, it wraps around our planet like a scarf.
01:23:18A slender tail made up of millions of atoms of sodium follows Earth's natural satellite.
01:23:24And our planet regularly travels directly through it.
01:23:27Meteor strikes blast these sodium atoms out of the Moon's surface and further into space.
01:23:33You won't believe it, but the Moon seems to be shrinking.
01:23:36Earth's natural satellite is now 150 feet smaller than it used to be hundreds of millions of years ago.
01:23:42The reason for this phenomenon might be the cooling of the Moon's insides.
01:23:48It could also explain the quakes shaking the surface of our planet's natural satellite.
01:23:53Astronomers have recently found out that Mars is seismically active.
01:23:57Mars quakes occur there on a regular basis.
01:24:00For several days every month, the Moon remains between the Sun and our planet.
01:24:05That's when Earth's gravity picks up that sodium tail.
01:24:08Our planet drags it into a long stripe that wraps around its atmosphere.
01:24:13This lunar tail is totally harmless.
01:24:16It's also invisible to the human eye, 50 times dimmer than what you can perceive.
01:24:21But on those rare days, high-powered telescopes can spot its faint yellowish glow in the sky.
01:24:28The tail looks like a gleaming spot that's five times the Moon's full diameter.
01:24:32Turns out there are plenty of planets in the Universe, and even in the Milky Way galaxy,
01:24:37that have liquid or frozen water on them.
01:24:40The closest one is within our solar system.
01:24:42It's Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.
01:24:45Scientists are almost sure that underneath its frozen surface, there's an actual ocean of water.
01:24:51But it's too soon to be hyped about possible life on such planets.
01:24:55Liquid water is only one of many things that have to come together for life to appear on a planet.
01:25:00A star in the galaxy GSN 069 is likely to turn into a planet the size of Jupiter in the next trillion years.
01:25:09It might happen because of the stars' regular encounters with a black hole.
01:25:14First, astronomers noticed unusual X-ray bursts that were strangely bright.
01:25:19They went off every nine hours.
01:25:21After studying this phenomenon for some time,
01:25:24the scientists realized it was a star moving in a unique orbit around a black hole.
01:25:28The dazzling flashes?
01:25:30It was the material getting slurped off the star's surface by the black hole.
01:25:35It turned out that over millions of years,
01:25:38the black hole had already transformed the red giant into a white dwarf.
01:25:42And the process isn't going to stop whatsoever.
01:25:45Astronomers have found some traces of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus.
01:25:49On our planet, this gas, colorless and flammable, is often found where microbes live.
01:25:55No wonder a new theory suggests that there might be life on Venus.
01:25:59But even if there was some life on the evening star,
01:26:03it could have only appeared in its atmosphere.
01:26:06Probably no living organism would be able to survive the planet's extreme environment.
01:26:11Venus's surface is extremely dry.
01:26:14There's no liquid water on the planet,
01:26:16and the pressure there is 90 times greater than that on Earth's surface.
01:26:20The temperatures often rise higher than 900 degrees.
01:26:22That's hot enough to melt some metals.
01:26:25As for vacations there, I'll pass.
01:26:28In fact, there's a place millions of light-years away
01:26:31where there's a whole floating space cloud made entirely of water.
01:26:35There's so much of it that we could fill all our oceans 140 trillion times over.
01:26:41Slightly more than what we need.
01:26:43Water on Earth is actually a puzzle shrouded in mystery and covered with riddles.
01:26:47The most popular theory is that it was brought to our planet by icy comets and asteroids
01:26:52that left behind not only mighty craters,
01:26:55but the liquid substance thanks to which we can now thrive.
01:26:59But in space, there's a whole lot of organic matter.
01:27:02And under specific conditions, it could yield so much water,
01:27:06it would be enough to fill our oceans thousands of times over.
01:27:10Researchers conducted an experiment in which they heated this organic matter
01:27:14and obtained clear water and oil.
01:27:17If this is confirmed in future studies,
01:27:20it could mean that even oil appeared on Earth
01:27:23not only thanks to fossilized remains of living beings,
01:27:26but came from outer space as well.
01:27:29And yet, there might just be about 6 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone.
01:27:35The latest data has shown that every fifth sun-like star
01:27:38can have at least one planet in its habitable zone.
01:27:41And not just any planet, mind you.
01:27:43It has a rocky core and surface,
01:27:44and it's of comparable size to the Earth.
01:27:47Being inside the habitable zone of its star,
01:27:50such a planet would have high chances of becoming home to living creatures,
01:27:54microbes at least.
01:27:56And if there are billions of these planets in our galaxy,
01:27:59you could safely say that at least one of them is not only habitable,
01:28:03but inhabited already.
01:28:05And now, multiply this by the number of galaxies in the universe,
01:28:09also considering that many of them are much bigger than the Milky Way.
01:28:12This gives us billions upon billions of sun-like stars and Earth-like planets,
01:28:17and some of them are surely more like ours than others.
01:28:20And get this,
01:28:22we might be able to walk upright because of supernova explosions.
01:28:26About 2.5 million years ago,
01:28:28a supernova sent cosmic rays to our planet.
01:28:31They triggered a series of electrical storms in the Earth's atmosphere,
01:28:35which turned into thunderstorms.
01:28:37Those, in turn, caused wildfires in northeast Africa,
01:28:39where our earlier ancestors lived.
01:28:42Fires turned the forest area into a savanna,
01:28:45the atmospheric pressure changed,
01:28:47and our ancestors had to stand on two legs to survive.
01:28:50The biggest explosion since the Big Bang was registered in 2019.
01:28:54This happened in the Ophiuchus Cluster,
01:28:57which unites thousands of galaxies.
01:28:59According to scientists,
01:29:01the blast was equal to 20 billion billion – that's 18 zeros –
01:29:05megaton explosions happening once a millisecond.
01:29:07For 240 million years.
01:29:09Um, I'll have to trust that.
01:29:11My math is not that good.
01:29:13In 2019,
01:29:15NASA's InSight lander,
01:29:17whose goal was to study the interior of Mars,
01:29:19registered the first Mars quake ever.
01:29:22These quakes were coming fast,
01:29:24about two per day.
01:29:26Most of them were tiny.
01:29:28You wouldn't even feel them if they happened on our planet.
01:29:30So far, more than 300 Mars quakes have been detected.
01:29:33Those are the first quakes on any space body other than Mars.
01:29:37And those are the first quakes on Earth and the Moon.
01:29:39Another mysterious phenomenon discovered by the mission
01:29:42was bizarre magnetic pulses.
01:29:44They occurred every midnight around the lander.
01:29:47It's still unclear what those pulses were.
01:29:49Maybe after midnight,
01:29:51they're going to let it all hang out.
01:29:53Or something.
01:29:55Pluto's atmosphere rises much higher above the surface of the dwarf planet
01:29:58than, let's say, Earth's.
01:30:00It also has more than 20 layers,
01:30:02all of them freezing cold and extremely condensed.
01:30:04Remember the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth?
01:30:08Hey, I wasn't around then.
01:30:10But who could forget?
01:30:12There might have been another space show that ended badly
01:30:14for at least 75% of all life on our planet in the past.
01:30:17Roughly 360 million years ago,
01:30:20a supernova explosion occurred about 65 light-years away from us,
01:30:24and the cosmic rays sent by it
01:30:26swept away the ozone layer of our pretty blue ball.
01:30:30Wow, tough neighborhood.
01:30:33Black holes are some of the most enigmatic and sinister phenomenon in the universe.
01:30:39They can swallow up entire stars and planets,
01:30:42bending the very fabric of space and time.
01:30:45But what if Earth, our home planet,
01:30:48were to be caught in the grip of a black hole's event horizon?
01:30:52What would we see before the inevitable end?
01:30:56Well, let's have a look-see, okie-dokie.
01:30:59So, a black hole is like the bully on the playground.
01:31:02You avoid them at all costs.
01:31:05It's a region of space where gravity is so strong
01:31:08that nothing, not even light, can escape it.
01:31:11It's like Houdini in reverse.
01:31:14As with snowflakes, every black hole is unique.
01:31:17Each one has its own mass, spin, and charge.
01:31:20And they also come in different sizes, sort of like genes.
01:31:24Petite, slim, regular, and husky, or something.
01:31:28Anyway, there are four sizes.
01:31:29The smallest black holes are the stellar mass kind.
01:31:33They're born when the massive star runs out of juice and folds in on itself.
01:31:38They're like the chihuahuas of the black hole world.
01:31:41They may be tiny, but they're feisty.
01:31:44They gobble up nearby matter like a hungry puppy.
01:31:47And even the smallest one is three times more massive than our Sun.
01:31:51Next up, we have the middle children of this cosmic family.
01:31:55Intermediate-mass black holes.
01:31:57They're too big to be born out of collapsed stars.
01:32:01Scientists believe that they may be created when several black holes merge into one.
01:32:06And even though they can't dominate galaxies,
01:32:09at least they can swallow up some nearby stars.
01:32:12Goody for them, huh?
01:32:14But do you know who can dominate a galaxy?
01:32:17The enormous monsters of our Universe.
01:32:20Supermassive black holes.
01:32:22They're the giants with masses ranging from,
01:32:24hmm, millions to billions of times that of our Sun.
01:32:29And they play a crucial role in the growth and formation of their host galaxies.
01:32:34Finally, there are ultramassive black holes.
01:32:38Trust me, you can't even imagine the size and mass of these guys.
01:32:42These cosmic eldritch horrors are extremely rare,
01:32:45but the ones we know can devour entire galaxies like, uh, Pac-Man.
01:32:50So, what happens if you get too close to a black hole?
01:32:54Or like, what would you see in your last moments?
01:32:58Well, first, you reach an event horizon.
01:33:01It's like a point of no return.
01:33:03An invisible boundary that marks the edge of a black hole.
01:33:07And here's where things start to get really weird.
01:33:10For example, time starts to slow down.
01:33:13Not for you, for an outsider watching you from a safe distance.
01:33:17If you were falling into a black hole, you wouldn't feel any different.
01:33:20But if you were watching someone else fall into it,
01:33:24you'd see them slow down and eventually freeze in time.
01:33:28Like in a paused video.
01:33:30As you get even closer, you would start to see some pretty mind-bending things.
01:33:35The gravity would cause the light around you to bend and distort,
01:33:39creating a sort of funhouse mirror effect.
01:33:42You might even see a halo of light around the black hole,
01:33:45known as the photon ring,
01:33:47or jets of high-energy particles spewing out from the black hole's poles.
01:33:52You can actually get pretty close to a black hole without feeling any major effects.
01:33:57It's only when you cross the event horizon that there's no going back.
01:34:02Your goose is cooked.
01:34:04After crossing this boundary, you'd be unable to see anything.
01:34:08For the person watching you from the outside,
01:34:11it would be as if you had suddenly disappeared.
01:34:13Meanwhile, you might start feeling a bit stretched out,
01:34:17like a piece of spaghetti.
01:34:19This is because the gravity is so stark
01:34:22that it's pulling you in different directions at once.
01:34:25There's even a scientific term for it called spaghettification.
01:34:29We'll cover linguinification in another video.
01:34:33Now that you're inside a black hole,
01:34:35you're taking aim at the singularity.
01:34:38It's a point of infinite density in its center,
01:34:40where all matter is crushed down to a single point.
01:34:44It's like trying to fit an elephant into a tiny matchbox.
01:34:48Everything gets squished together
01:34:50until it's as small as it can possibly be.
01:34:53Which means it's time to wave goodbye, I guess.
01:34:56And if all that sounds scary,
01:34:58here's another fun fact.
01:35:00Black holes are not rare at all.
01:35:02Actually, there's one in the center of each galaxy,
01:35:05including our own Milky Way.
01:35:07So, does it mean that we'll eventually be sucked into it?
01:35:11And if so, how exactly would it happen?
01:35:14Well, let's see.
01:35:16Imagine a black hole approaching our Solar System.
01:35:19At first, it appears as nothing more
01:35:22than a tiny speck in the distance.
01:35:24But as it gets closer and closer,
01:35:26its gravitational pull begins to wreak havoc around.
01:35:30Planets start to veer off course,
01:35:32asteroids are flung into oblivion,
01:35:34and comets are shattered into a million pieces.
01:35:38But just like waiting for the sauces
01:35:40to be served in a German restaurant,
01:35:42the worst is yet to come.
01:35:44Yeah, like that joke.
01:35:46Soon, it inevitably reaches the Earth.
01:35:49First, our planet's atmosphere
01:35:51would be pulled toward the black hole,
01:35:53triggering a massive windstorm.
01:35:55And there'd be huge waves on the oceans,
01:35:58the water itself being distorted by gravitational forces.
01:36:01Imagine seeing seas and oceans
01:36:04stretched out.
01:36:06Earth's magnetic field is generated
01:36:08by the motion of molten iron
01:36:10in the planet's core.
01:36:12But now, the extreme tidal forces
01:36:14of the black hole would disrupt this motion,
01:36:17causing the magnetic field
01:36:19to weaken and distort.
01:36:21All this would cause massive earthquakes
01:36:23and volcanic eruptions,
01:36:25as the planet's crust and mantle
01:36:27were pulled apart.
01:36:29All infrastructure and technology
01:36:31would be completely destroyed.
01:36:32Houses, bridges, and roads
01:36:34would be torn apart.
01:36:36Okay, let's hit the pause button.
01:36:38Pretty horrifying, isn't it?
01:36:40Yeah, but don't worry.
01:36:42You wouldn't have even seen that much.
01:36:44Because you would've felt the effects
01:36:46of the black hole much, much earlier.
01:36:48Well, back to the future.
01:36:50We'll lose our magnetic field
01:36:52even before everything started to collapse.
01:36:54And this means
01:36:56not only that the weather and climate
01:36:58will become terrible,
01:36:59but that we'll be exposed
01:37:01to extreme radiation.
01:37:03These gamma rays and the heat
01:37:05from the black hole
01:37:07could drastically change our planet.
01:37:09Say ta-ta to all our beautiful nature.
01:37:11At least, misery loves company.
01:37:13We won't be the only ones
01:37:15affected by a black hole.
01:37:17Which is probably even worse.
01:37:19As this beast engulfed
01:37:21the entire solar system,
01:37:23it would consume about everything.
01:37:25One immediate effect
01:37:27would be the disruption
01:37:29of the planet's surface.
01:37:31The planets would begin
01:37:33to deform and stretch,
01:37:35their surfaces warping
01:37:37like molten metal.
01:37:39The Sun itself would be affected,
01:37:41its surface contorting
01:37:43like a glob of putty.
01:37:45And yeah, all this is scary
01:37:47even to imagine.
01:37:49But now, breathe and relax.
01:37:51Because none of this
01:37:53will ever happen.
01:37:55This is the bright side, remember?
01:37:57Your infinitesimal odds
01:37:59of a black hole to our
01:38:01solar system is called Gaia BH1.
01:38:03Discovered by scientists
01:38:05in 2022,
01:38:07it's found in our own Milky Way galaxy,
01:38:09about 1600 light-years
01:38:11away from Earth.
01:38:13Gaia BH1 is about 10 times
01:38:15the mass of our Sun,
01:38:17which makes it a stellar-mass
01:38:19black hole.
01:38:21It's not very interesting
01:38:23on its own,
01:38:25but its discovery has supplied
01:38:27valuable insights into the
01:38:29universe.
01:38:31The closest known black hole
01:38:33is over 1000 light-years away.
01:38:35They move very slowly,
01:38:37and they'll never get so close
01:38:39to our system to pose
01:38:41some kind of a threat.
01:38:43Hey, but didn't you say
01:38:45there's a black hole in the
01:38:47center of the Milky Way galaxy?
01:38:49Doesn't that mean it's going
01:38:51to eventually hoover up
01:38:53our entire galaxy,
01:38:55you may ask?
01:38:57Maybe not in that voice.
01:38:59But remember it from that
01:39:01viral blurry photo that
01:39:03circled around the Internet
01:39:05a few years ago.
01:39:07This black hole is indeed
01:39:09very massive,
01:39:11and has a strong gravitational
01:39:13pull, like two 8th graders
01:39:15in love.
01:39:17However, it's still a small
01:39:19beam.
01:39:21It only affects objects
01:39:23that are close to it.
01:39:25The objects in the galaxy
01:39:27are all too big and move
01:39:29like black holes.
01:39:31And even though they'll
01:39:33never be dangerous to us,
01:39:35they're still a huge reminder
01:39:37of the incredible power
01:39:39of our universe.
01:39:41Now I think I'll turn my
01:39:43attention to the incredible
01:39:45power of chocolate.
01:39:47Astronomers have been
01:39:49asking one question for
01:39:51decades.
01:39:53Is space really as black
01:39:55as we think it is?
01:39:57Well, NASA's New Horizons
01:39:59confirmed that.
01:40:01This means it's far from
01:40:03all the light pollution we
01:40:05get from sources like the
01:40:07sun and dust particles
01:40:09around our planet.
01:40:11Scientists used the
01:40:13spacecraft's simple camera
01:40:15to take images of what
01:40:17looked like incredibly
01:40:19boring blank space,
01:40:21free of bright stars or
01:40:23anything else that could
01:40:25scatter light back into
01:40:27the camera.
01:40:29But here's the surprising
01:40:31part. They found that there
01:40:33was still plenty of
01:40:35unexplained light. In fact,
01:40:37it was about equal to all
01:40:39the light coming in from
01:40:41the known galaxies. That
01:40:43means there's just as
01:40:45much light outside of
01:40:47galaxies as inside them.
01:40:49So where does all this
01:40:51light come from? Well,
01:40:53it could be coming from
01:40:55sources we haven't yet
01:40:57discovered like small
01:40:59galaxies. If we do a
01:41:01little bit of research,
01:41:03we can say that space
01:41:05isn't as dark as we
01:41:07know it. What if we
01:41:09take all the light from
01:41:11the stars and galaxies
01:41:13out there and throw in
01:41:15some gas and dust
01:41:17clouds? What color do
01:41:19we get? Beige. This
01:41:21leads us to another
01:41:23question. Do we still
01:41:25need the sun if our
01:41:27space is colorful? And
01:41:29the answer is no.
01:41:31The stars we observe,
01:41:33they do not provide the
01:41:35energy life on Earth
01:41:37needs to survive. There
01:41:39you go. Don't expect to
01:41:41see the color of the
01:41:43sky in space. So once
01:41:45they explode, stars aren't
01:41:47supposed to come back to
01:41:49life. But some of the
01:41:51stars somehow have
01:41:53survived the great
01:41:55supernova explosion.
01:41:57Such zombie stars are
01:41:59called white dwarfs.
01:42:01Now, a white dwarf is
01:42:03a star that has burned
01:42:05up all of the hydrogen,
01:42:07and that hydrogen was
01:42:09previously its nuclear
01:42:11fuel. In this case,
01:42:13the final explosion was
01:42:15maybe weaker than it
01:42:17usually is, not powerful
01:42:19enough to destroy the
01:42:21entire star. It's
01:42:23like a star wanted to
01:42:25explode but didn't make
01:42:27it, which is why part
01:42:29of the star, and
01:42:31surprisingly, managed to
01:42:33explode once again. If
01:42:35you manage to go to
01:42:37the moon one day and
01:42:39see fresh footprints,
01:42:41that doesn't mean there's
01:42:43someone else there with
01:42:45you. Footprints or
01:42:47similar marks can last
01:42:49for a million years over
01:42:51there because the moon
01:42:53doesn't have an atmosphere.
01:42:55There are no winds, not
01:42:57even a breeze that can
01:42:59blow them away. It has
01:43:01nothing to do with your
01:43:03strength. You can just
01:43:05press them together with
01:43:07no effort, and that's it.
01:43:09Oxygen in our atmosphere
01:43:11makes a thin layer on
01:43:13the surface of the metal.
01:43:15It's like a barrier,
01:43:17which is why such a
01:43:19trick is impossible on
01:43:21Earth but perfectly
01:43:23logical in outer space.
01:43:25If you ever go to
01:43:27space, don't take off
01:43:29your mask. Be like a
01:43:31balloon, twice your
01:43:33regular size. Good news?
01:43:35The skin is elastic enough
01:43:37to hold you together,
01:43:39which means you
01:43:41wouldn't explode. Small
01:43:43comfort, huh? If you
01:43:45watch a very touching
01:43:47movie in space and
01:43:49start crying, your
01:43:51tears won't run down.
01:43:53They will gather around
01:43:55your eyeballs. Your
01:43:57eyes will get too
01:43:59big to see. You'll
01:44:01get a headache.
01:44:03But it's not
01:44:05just a matter of
01:44:07being in space.
01:44:09Fire can spread when
01:44:11there's a flow of
01:44:13oxygen, and since
01:44:15there's not any in
01:44:17space. If the fire
01:44:19breaks out in a
01:44:21rocket, you can
01:44:23simply turn off
01:44:25the ventilation
01:44:27system, and voila!
01:44:29You can't use sound
01:44:31waves. The bigger the
01:44:33sound intensity, the
01:44:35bigger the flame they
01:44:37can put out. But
01:44:39astronauts might end
01:44:41up deaf if their
01:44:43frequency is too
01:44:45high. A black
01:44:47hole is not like
01:44:49some starving monster
01:44:51that wanders around
01:44:53and has gravity so
01:44:55strong nothing can
01:44:57really escape it.
01:44:59Sometimes nothing can
01:45:01really destroy data,
01:45:03so it's a true paradox.
01:45:05Stephen Hawking was
01:45:07the one with the idea
01:45:09of how black holes
01:45:11don't really have
01:45:13event horizons.
01:45:15Maybe they have
01:45:17apparent horizons.
01:45:19Those trap things
01:45:21for some time only.
01:45:23After that, the
01:45:25trapped energy will
01:45:27somehow get away,
01:45:29and at the same
01:45:31time squeeze it in
01:45:33another, like a
01:45:35pasta paradox.
01:45:37Speaking of, a
01:45:39black hole that's
01:45:41as big as a
01:45:43single atom has
01:45:45the mass of a
01:45:47really big mountain.
01:45:49There's one at the
01:45:51center of the Milky
01:45:53Way called Sagittarius
01:45:55A. It has a mass
01:45:57like 4 billion
01:45:59miles per second,
01:46:01and a speed of
01:46:033,500 miles per
01:46:05hour. And there
01:46:07are 500,000 pieces
01:46:09in general, some of
01:46:11them the size of a
01:46:13marble. Space
01:46:15waste is generally
01:46:17debris made up of
01:46:19natural particles
01:46:21called meteoroids
01:46:23and artificial
01:46:25particles, like
01:46:26things we make on
01:46:27Earth, from
01:46:28satellites to rocket
01:46:29ships. Even the
01:46:30tiniest pieces can
01:46:31damage a spacecraft at
01:46:32such high speeds.
01:46:34Galaxies, planets,
01:46:35comets, asteroids,
01:46:36stars, space bodies
01:46:38are things we can
01:46:39actually see in space,
01:46:40but they make up
01:46:41less than 5% of
01:46:42the total universe.
01:46:44Dark matter, one
01:46:45of the biggest
01:46:46mysteries in space,
01:46:47is the name we
01:46:48use for all the
01:46:49mass in the universe
01:46:50that's still invisible
01:46:51to us.
01:46:53There's a lot of
01:46:54it. It may even
01:46:55make 25% of the
01:46:56universe. Dark
01:46:58energy makes the
01:46:59rest of the 70% of
01:47:00the universe.
01:47:02Scientists don't
01:47:03know much about it,
01:47:04but they think dark
01:47:05energy could be
01:47:06behind the increasing
01:47:07expansion of the
01:47:08entire universe,
01:47:09while dark matter
01:47:10slows it down.
01:47:12Dark matter doesn't
01:47:13interact with us in
01:47:14any way that we know
01:47:15of, nor does it
01:47:16interact with itself.
01:47:18If it did, we
01:47:19might be able to
01:47:20figure out what
01:47:21it is.
01:47:22We might be able to
01:47:23find dark matter
01:47:24galaxies, dark matter
01:47:25planets, or such
01:47:26objects.
01:47:27Now, astronomers
01:47:28have found the
01:47:29largest hole we've
01:47:30ever seen in the
01:47:31universe. It's the
01:47:32giant void that
01:47:33spreads a billion
01:47:34light years across.
01:47:35They found it
01:47:36accidentally. One of
01:47:37the research team
01:47:38members was a little
01:47:39bit bored and wanted
01:47:40to check out how
01:47:41things were going in
01:47:42the direction of the
01:47:43cold spot. That's an
01:47:44anomaly in the
01:47:45Cosmic Microwave
01:47:46Background Map, or
01:47:47in short, CMB.
01:47:49It's a faint glow
01:47:50of light that falls
01:47:51on our planet from
01:47:52different directions
01:47:53and fills the
01:47:54universe. It's been
01:47:55streaming through space
01:47:56for almost 14 billion
01:47:57years as the afterglow
01:47:59that occurred after
01:48:00the Big Bang. But
01:48:01instead of CMB, they
01:48:03realized there's a
01:48:04giant area way colder
01:48:06than they'd expected.
01:48:07The team started
01:48:08tracking radio
01:48:09signals, but there
01:48:10were no radio sources
01:48:11in that whole volume.
01:48:13That means there are
01:48:14no galaxies or
01:48:15clusters, and since
01:48:16it's so cold, there's
01:48:17no dark matter either,
01:48:19or regular matter.
01:48:20So it really doesn't
01:48:21matter. The giant void
01:48:23is empty, and
01:48:24researchers think it
01:48:25could consist of dark
01:48:26energy. Light can still
01:48:27pass through it. It's
01:48:28not the only void in
01:48:29space, but it's the
01:48:31biggest one we've
01:48:32found.
01:48:34The area around a star
01:48:35is habitable when it's
01:48:36not too cold or too hot
01:48:38for liquid water to
01:48:39exist on the planet
01:48:40surrounding it. Let's
01:48:41say our planet was
01:48:42where Pluto is. It's
01:48:44too far from the Sun,
01:48:45which means our ocean
01:48:46and big parts of its
01:48:47atmosphere would freeze
01:48:48But if the Earth was
01:48:49in Mercury's place,
01:48:50we'd be too close to
01:48:51the Sun, and the water
01:48:52on our planet would
01:48:53evaporate. Such
01:48:54habitable area is
01:48:55called the Goldilocks
01:48:56Zone. So you can see
01:48:57where planets are
01:48:58located and assume if
01:48:59they have a chance for
01:49:00life on their surface.
01:49:01But Europa, one of
01:49:02Jupiter's moons,
01:49:03definitely breaks the
01:49:04rule. It's outside of
01:49:05the Goldilocks Zone,
01:49:06but still kept warm.
01:49:07Not from the Sun
01:49:08directly, but Jupiter
01:49:09and its moons that
01:49:10actually pump energy
01:49:11into Europa.
01:49:12So it's not just
01:49:13Jupiter, but Jupiter
01:49:14and its moons that
01:49:15actually pump energy
01:49:16into Europa.
01:49:18Europa changes its
01:49:19shape as it circles
01:49:20around Jupiter. It's
01:49:21similar to tides rising
01:49:22and falling on our
01:49:23planet. Water on the
01:49:24Earth changes its shape
01:49:25as a response to the
01:49:26tidal forces of our
01:49:27moon. When the same
01:49:28happens with a solid
01:49:29object, the object is
01:49:30stressed. That's how
01:49:31you pump energy into
01:49:32that object. It's like
01:49:33you're playing
01:49:34racquetball. You hit
01:49:35the ball around a
01:49:36couple of times before
01:49:37you start playing,
01:49:38like you're warming
01:49:39it up. You kind of
01:49:40distort the ball every
01:49:41time you smack it.
01:49:42The surface of Europa
01:49:43is frozen, but it has
01:49:44cracks in the ice. You
01:49:45can see ridges in the
01:49:46ice where there's a
01:49:47crack. Then those
01:49:48flying chunks shift and
01:49:49re-freeze. You'd see a
01:49:50similar thing if you
01:49:51could fly over the
01:49:52Arctic Ocean in the
01:49:53wintertime. There are
01:49:54ice sheets constantly
01:49:55breaking and re-freezing.
01:49:56So Europa can't
01:49:57completely freeze.
01:49:58Scientists think there
01:49:59could be an ocean of
01:50:00liquid water under the
01:50:01icy surface.
01:50:02But that's not the
01:50:03only thing that's
01:50:04frozen. There's also
01:50:05ice sheets that
01:50:06constantly break and
01:50:07re-freeze.
01:50:08So Europa can't
01:50:09completely freeze.
01:50:10Scientists think there
01:50:11could be an ocean of
01:50:12liquid water under the
01:50:13icy surface.
01:50:14Europa is not the only
01:50:15moon where this is
01:50:16happening. Another of
01:50:17Jupiter's moons, Io, is
01:50:18also warm because of
01:50:19such tidal forces. Io
01:50:20also has volcanoes
01:50:21erupting from within
01:50:22all the time. So it's
01:50:23not only that the Sun
01:50:24warms the space bodies
01:50:25and pumps them with
01:50:26energy.
01:50:27Many experts agree the
01:50:28Universe might come to
01:50:29its end about 3 to 22
01:50:30billion years from now.
01:50:31It's expanding all the
01:50:32time, which means it
01:50:33formed from a compact
01:50:34state. If it has a
01:50:35beginning, it's
01:50:36probably going to
01:50:37collapse.
01:50:39Yeah, I won't be around
01:50:40for that.
01:50:41One of the popular
01:50:42theories says the
01:50:43growth will slow down,
01:50:44and gravity will become
01:50:45the powerful force that
01:50:46will make the Universe
01:50:47shrink. That will lead
01:50:48to complete chaos.
01:50:49Galaxies, stars,
01:50:50planets, space bodies,
01:50:51they will all move,
01:50:52collide, and, you know,
01:50:53destroy one another.
01:50:54It's like the reverse
01:50:55Big Bang. Huge chaos,
01:50:56but this time,
01:50:57everything collapses.
01:50:58Well, on that cheery
01:50:59note, I hope you enjoyed
01:51:00this video. I'll see you
01:51:01next time.
01:51:08Hey, MythBusters!
01:51:09Today we're debunking
01:51:10some classic space
01:51:11myths. Hop on the
01:51:12next space shuttle,
01:51:13and let's get to the
01:51:14bottom of these tales
01:51:15once and for all.
01:51:16Picture this. You're
01:51:17floating weightlessly in
01:51:18space, sipping on a cup
01:51:19of delicious hot
01:51:20chocolate, when a
01:51:21peculiar thought pops
01:51:22into your head. Can you
01:51:23scream in outer space?
01:51:24Can you scream in
01:51:25outer space?
01:51:26Can you scream in
01:51:27outer space?
01:51:28Can you scream in
01:51:29outer space?
01:51:30Can you scream in
01:51:31outer space?
01:51:32Can you scream in
01:51:33outer space?
01:51:34Can you scream in
01:51:35outer space?
01:51:36Can you scream in
01:51:37outer space?
01:51:38And if yes, would
01:51:39anyone hear that
01:51:40scream?
01:51:41If you've watched
01:51:42the movie Alien,
01:51:43then you know the
01:51:44answer to this one.
01:51:45You can't hear sounds
01:51:46in outer space.
01:51:47It's not that sounds
01:51:48don't exist, it's just
01:51:49that you can't hear
01:51:50them.
01:51:51There's no one better
01:51:52to clarify this myth
01:51:53than Chris Hadfield.
01:51:54He's been on a couple
01:51:55of spacewalks during
01:51:56his life as an
01:51:57astronaut. And once
01:51:58you're out there in
01:51:59the darkness of space,
01:52:00you can't hear
01:52:01them.
01:52:02You can't hear
01:52:03them.
01:52:04You can't hear
01:52:05them.
01:52:06And once you're out
01:52:07there in the darkness
01:52:08of space, you can't
01:52:09hear anything.
01:52:10All you hear is
01:52:11silence.
01:52:12Complete silence.
01:52:13But hey, just around
01:52:14the corner is a
01:52:15massive ball of
01:52:16explosion, aka the
01:52:17sun.
01:52:18We just can't hear
01:52:19the explosions
01:52:20happening because
01:52:21there's no medium for
01:52:22sound to travel
01:52:23through.
01:52:24It would be quite
01:52:25uncomfortable for an
01:52:26astronaut though if
01:52:27they could hear all
01:52:28the noises going on
01:52:29in outer space.
01:52:30Now, imagine you're
01:52:31zipping through space,
01:52:32feeling like a
01:52:33futuristic superhero
01:52:34when a shooting star
01:52:35passes by your side.
01:52:36But wait, is it
01:52:37really a star?
01:52:38Unfortunately,
01:52:39shooting stars are
01:52:40not stars at all.
01:52:41They are small
01:52:42space rocks known
01:52:43as meteoroids,
01:52:44entering Earth's
01:52:45atmosphere and
01:52:46creating a stunning
01:52:47light show.
01:52:48Oh, and since we're
01:52:49debunking myths, let's
01:52:50head straight for
01:52:51another one.
01:52:52You've probably heard
01:52:53that meteors only
01:52:54crash into Earth on
01:52:55extremely rare
01:52:56occasions.
01:52:57And that's because
01:52:58meteors are
01:52:59extremely hard to
01:53:00detect.
01:53:01They're also
01:53:02extremely hard to
01:53:03detect on extremely
01:53:04rare occasions.
01:53:05Like once every
01:53:06dinosaur extinguishing
01:53:07apocalypse.
01:53:08That's not true.
01:53:09Scientists estimate
01:53:10that about 48 tons
01:53:11of meteoritic
01:53:12material fall on
01:53:13Earth each day.
01:53:14But almost all of
01:53:15this material is
01:53:16vaporized in Earth's
01:53:17atmosphere.
01:53:18The bright trail we
01:53:19see in the night sky
01:53:20is what we
01:53:21popularly call a
01:53:22shooting star.
01:53:23Next time you make
01:53:24a wish upon a
01:53:25shooting star,
01:53:26remember, you're
01:53:27actually hoping on a
01:53:28tiny piece of space
01:53:29debris.
01:53:30It's not so
01:53:31romantic, but
01:53:32it's not so romantic
01:53:33after all.
01:53:34Can we or can we
01:53:35not fly into the
01:53:36stratosphere on
01:53:37air balloons?
01:53:38Apparently, we
01:53:39can.
01:53:40The Earth's
01:53:41stratosphere starts
01:53:42relatively close to
01:53:43the ground, about
01:53:447 or 8 miles up
01:53:45from the Earth's
01:53:46surface.
01:53:47But it continues a
01:53:48long way up.
01:53:49If you were to
01:53:50fly yourself all the
01:53:51way into the
01:53:52stratosphere with
01:53:53some type of air
01:53:54balloon, just make
01:53:55sure you have really
01:53:56good equipment at
01:53:57hand.
01:53:58You'll need a
01:53:59special suit,
01:54:00and you'll need
01:54:01a special suit,
01:54:02and some breathing
01:54:03devices, because air
01:54:04starts to get pretty
01:54:05thin the higher you
01:54:06get.
01:54:07Of course, if you do
01:54:08go all the way up,
01:54:09you need to get a
01:54:10picture of the
01:54:11Earth's curvature.
01:54:12So take a chest
01:54:13harness with you
01:54:14where you can put a
01:54:15special camera or
01:54:16something like that.
01:54:17And how about you
01:54:18live stream the
01:54:19whole thing?
01:54:20That would be a
01:54:21first!
01:54:22Imagine it's been
01:54:23102 days since you
01:54:24left Earth.
01:54:25You've adapted
01:54:26well to life in
01:54:27outer space, but
01:54:28something weird
01:54:29has happened.
01:54:30You're getting
01:54:31taller.
01:54:32How is that even
01:54:33possible?
01:54:34Don't stress about
01:54:35it, it's completely
01:54:36normal.
01:54:37The truth of the
01:54:38matter is, you're
01:54:39not getting taller.
01:54:40This is what happens
01:54:41to your body when
01:54:42it's not under the
01:54:43effect of gravity.
01:54:44Our body has natural
01:54:45space between
01:54:46vertebrae and
01:54:47joints.
01:54:48On Earth, this
01:54:49space is almost
01:54:50completely squeezed
01:54:51due to the force of
01:54:52gravity.
01:54:53But in space, your
01:54:54body gets some
01:54:55time off of the
01:54:56pushing force of
01:54:57gravity and
01:54:58starts to get
01:54:59more and more
01:55:00stretched.
01:55:01So yes, astronauts
01:55:02can grow up to
01:55:033% taller when
01:55:04they're on long
01:55:05missions.
01:55:06And here's a
01:55:07curiosity, NASA
01:55:08has that all covered
01:55:09when they're
01:55:10tailor-making
01:55:11spacesuits of
01:55:12course.
01:55:13This way, astronauts
01:55:14will always have
01:55:15extra space in
01:55:16their suits.
01:55:17Once astronauts
01:55:18are back on
01:55:19Earth, the
01:55:20anti-gravity effect
01:55:21will wear off.
01:55:22So maybe they'll
01:55:23spend a few days
01:55:24wearing capri pants
01:55:25before it fits
01:55:26perfectly on their
01:55:27bodies again.
01:55:29Never have I
01:55:30ever pictured an
01:55:31airplane door
01:55:32bursting open
01:55:33mid-flight and a
01:55:34bunch of passengers
01:55:35being sucked into
01:55:36the atmosphere like
01:55:37flying feathers.
01:55:38Well, I'm betting
01:55:39most of you have
01:55:40had similar thoughts
01:55:41when getting inside
01:55:42a plane.
01:55:43Now imagine if
01:55:44this were to happen
01:55:45in outer space.
01:55:46Common knowledge
01:55:47says that if an
01:55:48astronaut is sucked
01:55:49out of an airlock,
01:55:50this person would
01:55:51be burnt to a crisp.
01:55:52Brace yourselves,
01:55:53because this is
01:55:54not only true,
01:55:55but the reality of
01:55:56it is way worse.
01:55:58According to
01:55:59astronaut Chris Hadfield,
01:56:00this is what would
01:56:01happen.
01:56:02The part of your
01:56:03body in the shade
01:56:04of the sun would
01:56:05experience temperatures
01:56:06of negative 418
01:56:07degrees Fahrenheit,
01:56:09while the part of
01:56:10you getting sunlight
01:56:11would burn at around
01:56:12480 degrees Fahrenheit.
01:56:15Your lungs would
01:56:16collapse, and your
01:56:17blood would start to
01:56:18boil like tea water.
01:56:20So you would burn,
01:56:22freeze, lose your
01:56:23ability to breathe,
01:56:24and boil.
01:56:25Yikes!
01:56:28How many times
01:56:29have you heard that
01:56:30astronauts have to
01:56:31work out every second
01:56:32of every day,
01:56:33otherwise they'll
01:56:34pass out?
01:56:35This is a complete
01:56:36myth.
01:56:37Remember we talked
01:56:38about gravity earlier?
01:56:39Due to the lack of
01:56:40gravity in outer space,
01:56:41our bodies don't have
01:56:42to do any heavy work,
01:56:44our torsos don't have
01:56:46to sustain the weight
01:56:47of our heads,
01:56:48and we don't have to
01:56:49make any effort to
01:56:50move our legs,
01:56:51because essentially
01:56:52there's no walking
01:56:53in outer space.
01:56:55Now imagine living
01:56:56like that for six
01:56:57months, or even a
01:56:58year of your life.
01:57:00Your muscles could
01:57:01turn into jello.
01:57:03That's why astronauts
01:57:04work out.
01:57:05They'll strap
01:57:06themselves and run
01:57:07on a treadmill,
01:57:08or they'll do some
01:57:09weightlifting in a
01:57:10special machine.
01:57:11This way, their
01:57:12muscles won't feel
01:57:13the lack of gravity
01:57:14too much.
01:57:15They do need to
01:57:16keep hydrated though.
01:57:19You know what?
01:57:20If I was an astronaut,
01:57:21I'd ask NASA if I could
01:57:23take my super soft
01:57:24water flask up into
01:57:25space with me.
01:57:26You've probably heard
01:57:27that space smells
01:57:28like burnt steak
01:57:29or barbecue sauce.
01:57:31Now as much as
01:57:32this sounds absurd,
01:57:33this myth is more
01:57:34true than it is false.
01:57:37Astronauts obviously
01:57:38can't smell space
01:57:39when they're in it
01:57:40because they can't
01:57:41take off their helmets.
01:57:42They usually smell it
01:57:43once a space vehicle
01:57:44docks and they
01:57:45open up a hatch.
01:57:47Apparently, what
01:57:48causes this smell is
01:57:49the presence of
01:57:50hydrocarbons that
01:57:51float around in space.
01:57:53Who would have
01:57:54thought hydrocarbons
01:57:55float around in space?
01:57:56Who would have
01:57:57thought, huh?
01:57:58Hey smart people,
01:57:59let me ask you a
01:58:00question.
01:58:01Do you really think
01:58:02that if astronauts fly
01:58:03at the speed of light,
01:58:04they won't age a
01:58:05single second?
01:58:06I knew you'd say
01:58:07no!
01:58:08Let's get a few
01:58:09things straight.
01:58:10First of all, we
01:58:11haven't figured out
01:58:12how to operate
01:58:13vehicles at the
01:58:14speed of light.
01:58:15This would require
01:58:16an immense amount
01:58:17of energy and we
01:58:18don't have the
01:58:19technology to do
01:58:20that.
01:58:21Second, even if we
01:58:22managed to send a
01:58:23human inside a
01:58:24spacecraft that
01:58:25traveled at the
01:58:26speed of light,
01:58:27this person would
01:58:28still age.
01:58:29They would age
01:58:30differently than the
01:58:31people who remained
01:58:32on Earth, that's a
01:58:33fact, but they would
01:58:34still age.
01:58:35Do you lot really
01:58:36think there's such
01:58:37a thing as
01:58:38immortality?
01:58:39Nah.
01:58:40If you've seen the
01:58:41first Avatar, then
01:58:42you certainly remember
01:58:43that humans only
01:58:44managed to get to
01:58:45Pandora because
01:58:46they traveled in
01:58:47cryosleep.
01:58:48In other words,
01:58:49they froze their
01:58:50bodies, put them in
01:58:51a cryo bed and
01:58:52traveled for years
01:58:53Yes, this sounds
01:58:54amazing, but we
01:58:55still don't have the
01:58:56technology to do
01:58:57that.
01:58:58Our bodies are
01:58:59mainly made out of
01:59:00water, right?
01:59:01And when you
01:59:02freeze water, it
01:59:03expands.
01:59:04That's why you
01:59:05should never leave
01:59:06soda cans unattended
01:59:07in your freezer.
01:59:08Right now, if we
01:59:09froze a person's
01:59:10body, the water
01:59:11inside of it would
01:59:12expand, harming
01:59:13tissues and organs.
01:59:14So no, we can't
01:59:15cryosleep our way
01:59:16into interstellar
01:59:17travel.
01:59:18Not yet at least.
01:59:21Here's a crazy
01:59:22thought.
01:59:23What would happen
01:59:24if an astronaut took
01:59:25a drone with him on
01:59:26one of their
01:59:27spacewalks?
01:59:28Unless it's a NASA
01:59:29designed drone, maybe
01:59:30the thing would freeze
01:59:31and burn like humans
01:59:32would if they went
01:59:33into space without a
01:59:34suit.
01:59:35But hey, a person
01:59:36can dream, can't they?
01:59:39Venus most likely
01:59:40used to be covered
01:59:41with oceans, from
01:59:4230 to 1,000 feet
01:59:43deep.
01:59:45Also, some water
01:59:46was locked in the
01:59:47soil of the planet.
01:59:48On top of that,
01:59:49Venus had stable
01:59:50temperatures of 68
01:59:51to 122 degrees
01:59:52Fahrenheit, which,
01:59:53you have to admit,
01:59:54was quite pleasant,
01:59:55and not that different
01:59:56from the temperatures
01:59:57on Earth nowadays.
01:59:59So what I'm getting
02:00:00at is that for 3
02:00:01billion years, right
02:00:02until something
02:00:03irrevocable happened
02:00:04700 million years ago,
02:00:05Venus could've been
02:00:06habitable.
02:00:08But now it's not.
02:00:11The Moon is the
02:00:12second brightest
02:00:13object in our sky.
02:00:14At the same time,
02:00:15among other astronomical
02:00:16bodies, it's one of the
02:00:17dimmest and least
02:00:18reflective.
02:00:19Our natural satellite
02:00:20only seems bright
02:00:21because it's so
02:00:22close to Earth.
02:00:23For comparison,
02:00:24our planet looks
02:00:25much brighter when
02:00:26you look at it from
02:00:27space.
02:00:28It's because clouds,
02:00:29ice, and snow reflect
02:00:30way more light than
02:00:31most types of rock.
02:00:33Triton, Neptune's
02:00:34Moon, has all its
02:00:35surface covered with
02:00:36several layers of ice.
02:00:38If this satellite
02:00:39replaced our current
02:00:40Moon, the night sky
02:00:41would get 7 times
02:00:42brighter.
02:00:45Neutron stars are
02:00:46some of the smallest
02:00:47objects in our
02:00:48solar system.
02:00:49Neutron stars are
02:00:50some of the smallest
02:00:51yet most massive
02:00:52objects in space.
02:00:53They're usually
02:00:54about 12 miles in
02:00:55diameter, but are
02:00:56several times heavier
02:00:57than the Sun.
02:00:58Oh, and they also
02:00:59spin about 600 times
02:01:00per second, far faster
02:01:01than your average
02:01:02figure skater.
02:01:06Saturn is the least
02:01:07dense planet in the
02:01:08solar system.
02:01:09It has one-eighth
02:01:10the average Earth's
02:01:11density.
02:01:12And still, because of
02:01:13its large volume,
02:01:14the planet is 95 times
02:01:15more massive than
02:01:16Earth.
02:01:18A transient lunar
02:01:19phenomenon is one of
02:01:20the most enigmatic
02:01:21things happening on
02:01:22the Moon.
02:01:23It's a short-lived
02:01:24light, color, or some
02:01:25other change on the
02:01:26satellite's surface.
02:01:28Most commonly, it's
02:01:29random flashes of light.
02:01:31Astronomers have been
02:01:32observing this phenomenon
02:01:33since the 1950s.
02:01:35They've noticed that
02:01:36the flashes occur
02:01:37randomly.
02:01:38Sometimes they can
02:01:39happen several times
02:01:40a week.
02:01:41After that, they
02:01:42disappear for several
02:01:43months.
02:01:44Some of them don't
02:01:45last longer than a
02:01:46couple of minutes.
02:01:47But there have been
02:01:48those that continued
02:01:49for hours.
02:01:50The year was 1969,
02:01:51one day before
02:01:52Apollo 11 landed
02:01:53on the Moon.
02:01:55One of the mission
02:01:56participants noticed
02:01:57that one part of the
02:01:58lunar surface was more
02:01:59illuminated than the
02:02:00surrounding landscape.
02:02:02It looked as if that
02:02:03area had a kind of
02:02:04fluorescence to it.
02:02:06Unfortunately, it's
02:02:07still unclear if this
02:02:08phenomenon was connected
02:02:09with the mysterious
02:02:10lunar flashes.
02:02:12Trash isn't just a
02:02:13problem in Earth's
02:02:14oceans, cities, and
02:02:15forests.
02:02:16There is a thing called
02:02:17space junk, which is
02:02:18any human-made object
02:02:19that's been left in
02:02:20space and now serves
02:02:21no purpose.
02:02:23There's also natural
02:02:24debris from meteoroids
02:02:25and other cosmic objects.
02:02:27There are currently
02:02:28over 500,000 pieces of
02:02:29space debris orbiting
02:02:30the Earth at speeds
02:02:31high enough to cause
02:02:32significant damage if
02:02:33they were to collide
02:02:34with a spacecraft or
02:02:35satellite.
02:02:37NASA does its best to
02:02:38track every single
02:02:39object to ensure that
02:02:40missions outside Earth
02:02:41can reach their
02:02:42destination safely.
02:02:43Our Sun is insanely
02:02:44massive.
02:02:45Want some proof?
02:02:4799.86% of all the mass
02:02:48in the solar system is
02:02:49the mass of the Sun.
02:02:51In particular, the
02:02:52hydrogen and helium
02:02:53it's made of.
02:02:55The remaining 0.14% is
02:02:56mostly the mass of the
02:02:57solar system's eight
02:02:58planets.
02:03:00The Sun's temperature is
02:03:01hotter than the surface
02:03:02of a star.
02:03:04The surface temperature
02:03:05reaches 10,000 degrees
02:03:06Fahrenheit, but the
02:03:07upper atmosphere is
02:03:08much hotter than the
02:03:09surface of a star.
02:03:10The surface temperature
02:03:11reaches 10,000 degrees
02:03:12Fahrenheit, but the
02:03:13upper atmosphere heats
02:03:14up to millions of
02:03:15degrees.
02:03:17If someone could dig a
02:03:18tunnel straight into the
02:03:19center of the planet and
02:03:20out the opposite side,
02:03:21and you were
02:03:22adventurous enough to
02:03:23jump into it, it would
02:03:24take you 42 minutes to
02:03:25fall to the other side.
02:03:27You'd speed up as you
02:03:28fell, reaching maximum
02:03:29speed by the time you
02:03:30reached Earth's core.
02:03:32After the halfway
02:03:33point, you would then
02:03:34fall upwards, getting
02:03:35slower and slower.
02:03:37By the time you reached
02:03:38the opposite side, you
02:03:39reached the opposite
02:03:40surface, your speed would
02:03:41be back to zero.
02:03:43Unless you managed to
02:03:44climb out of the hole,
02:03:45you'd immediately start
02:03:46falling again, back down
02:03:47or up to the other side
02:03:48of the planet.
02:03:50This trip would go on
02:03:51forever, all thanks to
02:03:52the weird effects of
02:03:53gravity.
02:03:55Hey, might be a fun way
02:03:56to spend an afternoon!
02:03:59There might be more
02:04:00metals, for example
02:04:01titanium or iron, in
02:04:02lunar craters than
02:04:03astronomers used to
02:04:04think.
02:04:06The main problem with
02:04:07this finding?
02:04:08It contradicts the main
02:04:09theory about how the
02:04:10Moon was formed.
02:04:12That theory says that
02:04:13Earth's natural satellite
02:04:14was spun off from our
02:04:15planet after a collision
02:04:16with a massive space
02:04:17object.
02:04:19But then, why does
02:04:20Earth's metal-poor crust
02:04:22have much less iron
02:04:23oxide than the Moon's?
02:04:25It might mean the Moon
02:04:26was formed from the
02:04:27material lying much
02:04:28deeper inside our
02:04:29planet.
02:04:31Or these metals could
02:04:32have appeared when the
02:04:33molten lunar surface was
02:04:34slowly cooling down.
02:04:36Or maybe, as they've
02:04:37been saying for
02:04:38centuries, it's made of
02:04:39green cheese.
02:04:42Earth could have been
02:04:43purple before it turned
02:04:44blue and green.
02:04:46One scientist has a
02:04:47theory that a substance
02:04:48existed in ancient
02:04:49microbes before
02:04:50chlorophyll – that
02:04:51thing that makes plants
02:04:52green – evolved on
02:04:53Earth.
02:04:55This substance reflected
02:04:56sunlight in red and
02:04:57violet colors, which
02:04:58combined to make purple.
02:05:00If true, the young
02:05:01Earth may have been
02:05:02teeming with strange
02:05:03purple-colored critters
02:05:04before all the green
02:05:05stuff appeared.
02:05:08The highest mountain in
02:05:09the solar system is
02:05:10Olympus Mons on Mars.
02:05:12It's three times as
02:05:13high as Mount Everest,
02:05:14the Earth's highest
02:05:15mountain above sea level.
02:05:17If you were standing on
02:05:18top of Olympus Mons,
02:05:19you wouldn't understand
02:05:20you were standing on
02:05:21a mountain.
02:05:22Its slopes would be
02:05:23hidden by the planet's
02:05:24curvature.
02:05:27Astronomers have found
02:05:28a massive reservoir of
02:05:29water in space – the
02:05:30largest ever detected.
02:05:32Too bad it's also the
02:05:33farthest – 12 billion
02:05:34light-years away from
02:05:35us.
02:05:37The water vapor cloud
02:05:38holds 140 trillion
02:05:39times as much water
02:05:40as all the Earth's
02:05:41oceans combined.
02:05:43What are we supposed
02:05:44to do with that
02:05:45information?
02:05:47Venus spins at its own
02:05:48unhurried pace.
02:05:50A full rotation takes
02:05:51243 Earth days.
02:05:53And it takes the planet
02:05:54a bit less than 225
02:05:55Earth days to go all
02:05:56the way around the Sun.
02:05:58It means a day on
02:05:59Venus is longer than
02:06:00a year.
02:06:02There's very little
02:06:03seismic activity going
02:06:04on inside the moon.
02:06:05Yet many moonquakes,
02:06:06caused by our planet's
02:06:07gravitational pull,
02:06:08sometimes happen
02:06:09several miles below
02:06:10the surface.
02:06:12After that, tiny cracks
02:06:13and fissures appear in
02:06:14the satellite's surface,
02:06:15and gases escape
02:06:16through them.
02:06:18Hey, they sometimes
02:06:19escape from me, too.
02:06:22Now Mars is the last
02:06:23of the inner planets,
02:06:24which are also called
02:06:25terrestrial since they're
02:06:26made up of rocks and
02:06:27metals.
02:06:29The red planet has a
02:06:30core made mostly of
02:06:31iron, nickel, and sulfur.
02:06:33It's packed with
02:06:34gas and sulfur.
02:06:35It's between 900 and
02:06:361,200 miles across.
02:06:38The core doesn't move.
02:06:40That's why Mars lacks
02:06:41a planet-wide magnetic
02:06:42field.
02:06:44The weak magnetic field
02:06:45it has is just one
02:06:46one-hundredth percent
02:06:47of the Earth's.
02:06:50When the planets in
02:06:51the solar system were
02:06:52just starting to form,
02:06:53Earth didn't have a
02:06:54moon for the longest
02:06:55time.
02:06:57It took 100 million
02:06:58years for our natural
02:06:59satellite to appear.
02:07:01There are several
02:07:02theories as to how the
02:07:03moon came into
02:07:04existence, but the
02:07:05prevailing one is the
02:07:06fission theory.
02:07:09Somebody went fission
02:07:10and caught the moon?
02:07:11Actually, no.
02:07:13The fission theory
02:07:14proposes that the moon
02:07:15was formed when an
02:07:16object collided with
02:07:17Earth, sending particles
02:07:18flying about.
02:07:20Gravity pulled the
02:07:21particles together, and
02:07:22the moon was created.
02:07:24It eventually settled
02:07:25down on the Earth's
02:07:26ecliptic plane, which
02:07:27is the path that the
02:07:28moon orbits.
02:07:29So, looks like the
02:07:30green cheese is off
02:07:31the table now.
02:07:33The largest single
02:07:34living thing on Earth
02:07:35turns out to be a
02:07:36mushroom in Oregon.
02:07:38This enormous honey
02:07:39mushroom lives in
02:07:40Malheur National Forest
02:07:41and covers an area of
02:07:423.7 square miles.
02:07:45It could be as much as
02:07:468,500 years old.
02:07:48You could be forgiven
02:07:49for missing it, though,
02:07:50since most of it's
02:07:51hidden underground.
02:07:54When the roots of
02:07:55individual honey
02:07:56mushrooms meet, they
02:07:57can fuse together to
02:07:58become a single fungus,
02:08:00which explains how
02:08:01this one got so big.
02:08:03If you could gather
02:08:04all that mushroomy
02:08:05stuff into one big
02:08:06ball, it could weigh
02:08:07as much as 35,000 tons.
02:08:10That's about as heavy
02:08:11as 200 gray whales.
02:08:13Hey, that's a whale
02:08:14of a mushroom.
02:08:17The largest asteroid in
02:08:18the Solar System is
02:08:19called Vesta, and it's
02:08:20so big that it's
02:08:21sometimes even called
02:08:22a dwarf planet.
02:08:24A trip to the nearest
02:08:25star, apart from the
02:08:26Sun, would take you
02:08:275 million years on a
02:08:28commercial airplane.
02:08:30That's what I call a
02:08:31long-haul flight.
02:08:33Space isn't supposed
02:08:34to be black.
02:08:35There are stars
02:08:36everywhere.
02:08:37Shouldn't they light up
02:08:38everything around?
02:08:39Well, you don't see
02:08:40stars wherever you look
02:08:41because some of them
02:08:42haven't existed long
02:08:43enough for their light
02:08:44to reach Earth.
02:08:47A day on Uranus
02:08:48lasts 17 hours, 14
02:08:49minutes, and 24 seconds.
02:08:52But get this, the
02:08:53planet has a tilt of
02:08:54around 98 degrees,
02:08:56and that makes a season
02:08:57on the gas giant last
02:08:5821 Earth years.
02:09:01Now, some scientists
02:09:02believe that our planet
02:09:03used to have an
02:09:04additional satellite.
02:09:06According to their
02:09:07research, a small
02:09:08celestial body about
02:09:09750 miles wide orbited
02:09:11Earth like a second
02:09:12moon.
02:09:14It most likely crashed
02:09:15into our main satellite
02:09:16later on.
02:09:18Such a collision could
02:09:19explain why the two
02:09:20sides of the moon look
02:09:21so different from each
02:09:22other, one being heavily
02:09:23cratered and rough.
02:09:25Or it could be the
02:09:26green cheese.
02:09:27That's it for today.
02:09:28So, hey, if you pacified
02:09:29your curiosity, then
02:09:30give the video a like
02:09:31and share it with your
02:09:32friends.
02:09:33Or, if you want more,
02:09:34just click on these
02:09:35videos and stay on
02:09:36the Bright Side!

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