Bright Side
Bright Side
  • 4 months ago
Animation is created by Bright Side.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/

Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV

Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en

Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit:
http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Category

😹
Fun
Transcript
00:00:00It all started with a minor change on our planet.
00:00:03At first, people noticed the moon had become brighter and a little bigger.
00:00:07But nobody paid attention to this.
00:00:10The moon affected tides all over the world.
00:00:13The water flooded the beaches.
00:00:15But it wasn't a tragedy.
00:00:17A lot of fish came close to the shores.
00:00:19People found giant squid, anglerfish, and other creatures next to the coast.
00:00:24Although they usually live in the dark depths.
00:00:27New, stranger things happen every day.
00:00:30Birds no longer fly to the south in winter.
00:00:33They gather in huge groups, flying around cities with no purpose.
00:00:37The moon used to help them navigate in nature.
00:00:40So they can't figure out which way to fly anymore.
00:00:43In the boundless waters of the world's oceans,
00:00:46ship captains notice that compasses are now unstable.
00:00:50The arrow is pointing in different directions,
00:00:52since the Earth's magnetic poles have changed.
00:00:56People realize the moon has started to approach Earth for an unknown reason.
00:01:01The moon's gravity affects the gravity of our planet.
00:01:04This entails changes in the climate,
00:01:06the behavior of all living beings, and the magnetic field.
00:01:10Now, it rains in the driest places and gets hot in the coldest lands.
00:01:16It's knocking down ecosystems all over the planet.
00:01:20People living near forests hear wolves howling all the time.
00:01:24The moon drives these animals mad.
00:01:27The Earth's natural satellite is growing in size and lights up the night much brighter.
00:01:32Nothing critical has happened yet.
00:01:34People don't panic because they don't want to believe the end is coming.
00:01:38But then, one day, the moon reaches a critical point.
00:01:43You're walking down the street, listening to music.
00:01:46And at that moment, someone pushes you.
00:01:49Okay, maybe that guy is late for work.
00:01:52You keep walking, and a girl coming by hits your shoulder.
00:01:55I'm sorry, she says and goes away.
00:01:58You've noticed the fear in her eyes.
00:02:01You look ahead and see people running towards you.
00:02:04You take off your headphones and hear screams and sirens.
00:02:08People leave their cars and run away.
00:02:10Hundreds of seagulls are flying in the sky.
00:02:13You hear a strange noise among all the sounds of chaos.
00:02:17It seems to be water.
00:02:20How is this possible?
00:02:21You're in the city center, a few miles from the shore.
00:02:24But there's no time to think.
00:02:26You notice a huge wave flooding the streets and heading straight to you.
00:02:31You run into a building and go up to the 10th floor.
00:02:35From here, you're watching the water filling the city.
00:02:38The strong stream blows all cars, one-story buildings, and trees off the road.
00:02:44You notice a shark and other fish in the water.
00:02:47People are hiding in houses and on the roofs.
00:02:50The whole city is quickly plunging into a catastrophe.
00:02:54The TV is working in the building where you're hiding.
00:02:57You learn that floods are occurring all over the world.
00:03:00Massive tsunamis cover coastal cities.
00:03:03In some places, waves reach the height of a 30-story building.
00:03:08Many towns have been washed off the face of the Earth.
00:03:11The moon is too close to Earth, and massive floods are just the beginning.
00:03:16The moon flies around Earth and helps to keep our home on its axis.
00:03:20The moon provides climate stability and helps living organisms develop.
00:03:25But now, this balance is broken.
00:03:28The moon is approaching and changing our planet's gravity.
00:03:31Earth can tilt slightly to the side and provoke massive floods around the world.
00:03:36Imagine that you're holding a round glass of water.
00:03:39Tilt it a little.
00:03:40See how the liquid moves from one side to another?
00:03:43The same thing is happening now with the oceans.
00:03:47But the moon is not just approaching us.
00:03:50It's flying around the planet and getting closer with each circle.
00:03:54It causes natural disasters in different locations on Earth all the time.
00:03:59Now the ocean floods one side, and a few hours later, another.
00:04:04So you see all the water going back from the streets to the shore.
00:04:08The oceans may return to the city again by the end of the day.
00:04:12Wait a minute.
00:04:13It seems the end of the day has already come.
00:04:16You notice that the sky has become dark.
00:04:18It's weird because it's only 3 p.m.
00:04:22The moon changes Earth's rotation speed and makes the day go faster.
00:04:27The moon covers almost the entire sky and brightly illuminates our planet.
00:04:32You see huge lunar craters.
00:04:34It's so close that you can still see it even when the sun shines.
00:04:38In some places, the passing moon obscures the sun.
00:04:43The water is leaving the streets, and everyone goes outside.
00:04:46At this moment, an earthquake begins.
00:04:49The road is cracking, and the houses are collapsing.
00:04:53There are landslides on the street.
00:04:55Tectonic plates are shifting all over the planet.
00:04:58Imagine two magnetic balls that are approaching each other.
00:05:01So one ball is the moon, and the second one is Earth's core.
00:05:06What do you think will happen to what's above the core?
00:05:09That's hundreds of thousands of miles of the Earth's crust.
00:05:13And now it's all moving.
00:05:15Destructive cracks are emerging all over the world.
00:05:18The planet's highest mountains break down and turn into a pile of stones.
00:05:23The seabed cracks and releases magma from the underground depths.
00:05:28Volcanoes wake up and erupt magma.
00:05:31Clouds of volcanic ash cover the sky from the sun and the glowing moon.
00:05:36But the scariest thing is still ahead.
00:05:38A collision is inevitable.
00:05:41The moon flies around the planet like a ball in a round glass with a hole in the center.
00:05:46This force drives clouds all over the planet.
00:05:50Now there's a thunderstorm, but in five minutes, it will be snowing.
00:05:54Then the night comes, and it starts raining.
00:05:57Water droplets consist of mud and volcanic ash.
00:06:00It's difficult for people to breathe without gas masks.
00:06:04Atmospheric pressure is constantly changing.
00:06:07Some people experience severe migraines, and some have sore joints.
00:06:11But there's no time to think about your health.
00:06:13Humanity needs to figure out how to save itself from the collision.
00:06:17A new gravitational order will come when the moon crashes into Earth.
00:06:22Continents will change their shape.
00:06:24They will combine into one giant piece of land or split into a hundred smaller ones.
00:06:29The energy of the collision can burn all the oxygen in the atmosphere
00:06:34and make the planet unsuitable for life.
00:06:36Hiding underground also makes no sense because of deep earthquakes.
00:06:41People decide to spend their last hours with loved ones and their families.
00:06:45The moon is getting closer.
00:06:47It's now at the same distance as the International Space Station.
00:06:51The moon covers the sky.
00:06:53Many cities are in the shadows because of the waves.
00:06:56Tsunamis several miles in height crash down on the ground.
00:07:01Millions of tons of magma collide with the ocean.
00:07:05Billions of gallons of water just evaporate.
00:07:08Moisture rises into the air, mixes with ash, and floods the land in the form of giant cumulus clouds.
00:07:16You've accepted the complete destruction of the planet.
00:07:19But something strange happens to the moon at this moment.
00:07:22You notice giant cracks appear on it.
00:07:25The moon slowly begins to divide into two parts.
00:07:29Both halves crumble into hundreds of large pieces.
00:07:33It's just falling apart.
00:07:35The Earth doesn't have a natural satellite anymore.
00:07:38It's just a pile of giant space rocks.
00:07:41But why is this happening?
00:07:43There's a space around our planet called the Roche Limit.
00:07:47In this place, the gravity of Earth is stronger than that of the moon.
00:07:52This means that the forces holding the moon together are weaker than those that tear it apart.
00:07:58People are cheering.
00:07:59The Roche Limit has saved the planet.
00:08:02The moon won't hit us.
00:08:03It breaks up into millions of fragments and forms a circle around our globe.
00:08:08Now, Earth looks like Saturn.
00:08:10A belt of moonstones surrounds us.
00:08:13Huge chunks destroy everything in their path.
00:08:16All the space debris.
00:08:18The satellites are no longer working.
00:08:20Humanity loses its means of communication and navigation.
00:08:24People will have to use paper maps again.
00:08:26The moon held our planet's orbit at a certain angle before these events.
00:08:31Now the axis is tilted differently.
00:08:33One hemisphere becomes closer to the sun, and the other plunges into shadow.
00:08:38The North Pole and the Arctic may turn into hot deserts.
00:08:41And the equator of the planet may be covered with ice.
00:08:45Winter and summer can last for years.
00:08:47The moon's remnants fly around Earth, but some of them fall on our planet.
00:08:52Lunar meteor showers destroy cities and create giant craters.
00:08:57All these events lead to the massive destruction of life on Earth.
00:09:01It will take hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to the new world.
00:09:06No one will hear your cry in space.
00:09:08Or something like that.
00:09:10We've all heard this famous chilling phrase.
00:09:12And it's actually true.
00:09:14Space, for the most part, consists of a giant nothingness.
00:09:17There's a lot of, you know, space in space.
00:09:20But this doesn't mean there are no sounds in space.
00:09:23In fact, there are plenty of them.
00:09:25And some of them can even make you shiver.
00:09:27Let's take a look at the scariest space sounds.
00:09:31First of all, how are cosmic sounds even recorded?
00:09:34Sound is just the vibration of molecules.
00:09:36When you scream, you make the molecules push each other furiously until they reach the ear
00:09:42of the person you're yelling at.
00:09:43Then these vibrations get transmitted to the brain,
00:09:46and we recognize them as something that you might need to apologize for.
00:09:51In other words, to hear something, we need molecules.
00:09:54And that's where things get complicated.
00:09:56There aren't any of them in space.
00:09:58The entire universe almost completely consists of a vacuum.
00:10:02No, not a hoover.
00:10:04Absolute nothingness.
00:10:05However, the wizards from NASA still record space sounds somehow.
00:10:10So how do they do it?
00:10:11The thing is, there are some types of waves that don't care about molecules.
00:10:15We regular folk can't perceive them without some special devices.
00:10:20These waves include, for example, radio waves.
00:10:23We'll need a radio or something like that to recognize them.
00:10:26And that's exactly what NASA's satellites do.
00:10:29They catch random radio waves.
00:10:31Thanks to their heroism, we can find out how different cosmic bodies sound.
00:10:36These satellites record a variety of waves.
00:10:38Fluctuations of plasmas, magnetic fields, and other, you know, stuff.
00:10:43And then scientists from NASA transform all this into normal soundtracks.
00:10:48And some of them sound quite frightening, to put it mildly.
00:10:52Let's take our magnetic field, for example.
00:10:55It surrounds our planet like an invisible shield,
00:10:57protecting us from all sorts of nasties, like radiation and solar winds.
00:11:02At the same time, we can neither see it, feel it, nor hear.
00:11:06Oops!
00:11:07Well, the last one is outdated.
00:11:09Scientists from the Technical University of Denmark
00:11:12took magnetic waves recorded by the ESSA swarm satellite,
00:11:15they converted them into an audio track, and got a pretty creepy result.
00:11:24Now, to be honest, it sounds more like an eerie entity stalking you in the middle of the night.
00:11:29And if you remember the maps of Earth's magnetic field,
00:11:32it starts to feel like a spider crawling nearby.
00:11:35Eww.
00:11:36And this isn't the first strange sound that we caught on Earth.
00:11:39Recently, we caught another weird radio emission from space.
00:11:43Scientists found out that the repeating signal came from somewhere very far away,
00:11:48like billions of light-years away from us.
00:11:50Such fast radio bursts usually lasted no longer than a few milliseconds,
00:11:54but this one was unique.
00:11:56It lasted about 3 seconds, basically thousands of times longer than usual.
00:12:01And at the same time, the signal was very precise,
00:12:05so much so that scientists even compared it to a heartbeat.
00:12:09Scientists believe that this signal is caused by pulsars, or neutron stars.
00:12:14One time, Nikola Tesla caught something similar.
00:12:17But unfortunately, at that time, we didn't know about such things as pulsars.
00:12:22So, Tesla was sure that he had caught a message from some extraterrestrial life.
00:12:27It's a pity that the truth turned out to be much more boring.
00:12:30But let's move on from the Earth to the Moon.
00:12:33In 1969, the astronauts of the Apollo 10 mission,
00:12:37the spacecraft that made the final test flight to the Moon, flew past its surface.
00:12:42And then they caught some strange signals coming from the dark side of the Moon,
00:12:46the side that we never see because the Moon is tidally locked to us.
00:12:51The sound was so weird that the astronauts weren't even sure whether to report it to NASA.
00:12:56They were afraid they wouldn't be taken seriously,
00:12:58and maybe even not allowed to participate in the next space missions.
00:13:02Here's what it sounded like.
00:13:07But according to NASA, it's not some creepy extraterrestrial music at all.
00:13:12These may just be some radio waves that affected each other because of their proximity.
00:13:18Although the astronauts who heard it for the first time probably felt a little creeped out.
00:13:23Let's move to the other planets.
00:13:25Now, 40 years ago, scientists actively explored the surface of Venus.
00:13:29They sent as many as 10 probes there,
00:13:31which were supposed to capture audio and video shooting from the surface.
00:13:35Now we know what Venus,
00:13:37which could easily destroy us at any attempt to even get close to it, sounds like.
00:13:45Horrifying.
00:13:46And you wouldn't expect anything else from the most dangerous planet in the Solar System.
00:13:51Unfortunately, Venus is even more toxic than the average Twitter user.
00:13:56So, these probes didn't last too long.
00:13:58They heroically arrived on a planet and soon broke down.
00:14:02Next one is Jupiter.
00:14:04This space giant, which is 11 times larger than the Earth, never fails to scare us.
00:14:10One of NASA's probes, Juno, flies around Jupiter every few weeks.
00:14:14The probe is moving at a tremendous speed – 130,000 miles per hour!
00:14:19One day, Juno caught one of the strongest invisible signals it had ever encountered.
00:14:25This was the point at which the mad solar wind came into conflict
00:14:28with the magnetic field of Jupiter.
00:14:31It kind of sounded like a cosmic boom.
00:14:34The original sound lasted 2 hours, but it was compressed to a few seconds.
00:14:39It actually sounds more like a collision of a sea wave and a rock.
00:14:43But here, in terms of horror, Jupiter surprisingly loses to one of its small moons, Ganymede.
00:14:50In 2021, the Galileo space probe flew past Ganymede.
00:14:55During its flight, it received a rather strange recording.
00:15:03These sounds are satellite radiation.
00:15:05And it's unclear whether it sounds like a cozy sunny day in the jungle
00:15:09or like thousands of bats waiting for you in the night.
00:15:14Next one is Saturn.
00:15:15This signal was caught by the Cassini-Huygens Automatic Interplanetary Station,
00:15:20which was launched into space in 1997.
00:15:23When flying past Saturn, Cassini recorded a pretty scary sound.
00:15:29This terrifying cry of thousands of souls is actually just some radio waves.
00:15:34They aren't too different from what the auroras emit on Earth.
00:15:37A little later, Cassini received another recording.
00:15:40The sounds made by lightning and thunderstorms on Saturn.
00:15:44They sound pretty interesting too.
00:15:49More like popping corn or a Geiger counter, right?
00:15:51But that's just because these lightning strikes have a crazy frequency.
00:15:56Moving on from the Solar System to outer space.
00:15:59The famous Voyager 1 was launched back in 1977,
00:16:03and continues to send us data even 40 years after its launch.
00:16:07In 2012, it left the Solar System and entered interstellar space.
00:16:13And then, while abandoning its home, Voyager 1 detected the sound of plasma waves.
00:16:18The original recording lasted 7 months.
00:16:21But fortunately, scientists felt sorry for us and reduced it to 12 seconds.
00:16:27It isn't really eerie, but it's still kind of unsettling.
00:16:31And although it feels like nothing can beat Saturn's horrors,
00:16:35let's end this tournament with one of the scariest objects in the Universe – a black hole.
00:16:40This sound was recorded by the Chandra Space Telescope.
00:16:44While studying a cluster of galaxies in the constellation Perseus,
00:16:48they discovered something strange.
00:16:50Some undulating movements appear from the center of the cluster.
00:16:54They spread out in all directions, like circles on the water.
00:16:59Scientists have suggested that this was caused by a supermassive black hole.
00:17:03The thing is, black holes don't always devour space objects entirely.
00:17:08Sometimes, they kind of spit them out.
00:17:11This causes vibrations of gases, which we can convert into soundtracks.
00:17:16What's interesting is that the oscillation of each such wave actually lasts about 10 million years.
00:17:22You're just listening to a very accelerated recording.
00:17:25Scientists have reduced the delay between oscillations by about 144 quadrillion times.
00:17:32So, let's check it out.
00:17:34This is probably the eeriest sound from the whole list.
00:17:38Nothing too loud or wild, but there's something dark and disturbing about it.
00:17:43Now, those were the scariest space sounds captured by NASA.
00:17:46To be fair, most of them sounded creepy simply because they're radio waves.
00:17:51But it's still fun to get spooked sometimes.
00:18:04On August 20, 1977, the most ambitious space mission took off from Earth.
00:18:10The main goal of Voyager 2 was to study the outer solar system up close.
00:18:15It became possible because of a rare alignment of planets.
00:18:19Voyager 2 was supposed to study all the gas giants of the solar system – Jupiter,
00:18:23Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
00:18:26Astronomers also hoped it would be able to find and explore the edge of the solar system.
00:18:31Since Voyager 2 was built for interstellar travel,
00:18:34the probe was equipped with a large 12-foot-wide antenna.
00:18:37It allowed the spaceship to send the data it gathered back to Earth.
00:18:41During its journey, the space probe discovered a 14th moon of Jupiter.
00:18:45Voyager 2 was the only spaceship to study all 4 giant planets from up close.
00:18:50It was the first human-made object to fly past Uranus,
00:18:54where it found 2 new rings and 10 new moons.
00:18:57Voyager 2 also flew by Neptune and noticed its great dark spot.
00:19:02That's a colossal spinning storm in the planet's southern hemisphere.
00:19:05The storm is the size of Earth and moves at a speed of 1,500 miles per hour.
00:19:11These winds are the strongest ever recorded on any planet of the solar system.
00:19:15In the history of space exploration,
00:19:17only 5 spacecraft have managed to leave the gravitational pull of the solar system.
00:19:22Those were Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and New Horizons.
00:19:28People launch thousands of objects into space.
00:19:31These objects easily overcome Earth's gravity.
00:19:34But the Sun is around 300,000 times as massive as our home planet.
00:19:38That's why its gravitational pull is way more difficult to find.
00:19:42Even more impressively, Voyager 2 is the second human-made object in history
00:19:47to reach the space between stars after passing through the heliosphere.
00:19:52That's a bubble of magnetic fields and particles produced by the Sun
00:19:55and protecting the solar system.
00:19:58Two years after its launch, Voyager 2 started transmitting the first images of Jupiter.
00:20:03The space probe provided scientists with much-needed information about EO and Europa,
00:20:08some of the largest of Jupiter's moons.
00:20:10Then the space mission passed by the gas giant itself.
00:20:14The distance between the spacecraft and the planet was around 400,000 miles.
00:20:18That's when the probe noticed some changes in the shape and color of the great red spot.
00:20:23It's an enormous, long-lived storm system, like a hurricane on Earth, but much, much larger.
00:20:29Two years later, Voyager 2 reached Saturn.
00:20:32It discovered spokes and kinks in some of the planet's rings.
00:20:36While the spacecraft was flying behind and up past the gas giant,
00:20:40it passed through the plane of Saturn's rings.
00:20:42At that time, Voyager's speed was around 8 miles per second.
00:20:46For several minutes, the probe was hit by thousands of micron-sized grains of dust.
00:20:51This kept shifting the probe's direction,
00:20:53and its control jets had to fire many times to stabilize the vehicle.
00:20:58After Voyager 2 explored Uranus and Neptune, it headed out of the solar system.
00:21:03Its instruments were put in low power to save energy.
00:21:06In August 2007, the spacecraft passed the terminal shock.
00:21:11It's the boundary marking the outer limit of the Sun's influence.
00:21:14Here, the solar wind slows down.
00:21:18In the summer of 2013, the probe reached interstellar space.
00:21:22Now, when it comes to sending and receiving signals in space,
00:21:26there are three factors you should keep in mind.
00:21:29Distance, power, and time.
00:21:32The farther away a spacecraft is, the farther a signal has to travel before it reaches it,
00:21:37and the longer it takes for this signal to catch up with the spacecraft.
00:21:41And when it finally gets there, it's extremely weak.
00:21:44Another problem is that once the spacecraft is launched, it can't be upgraded.
00:21:48It's literally stuck with the technology it was outfitted with.
00:21:52Plus, such spaceships as Voyager 2 are powered by radioactive fuel.
00:21:57When special material radioactively decays,
00:22:00it releases heat that gets converted into electricity.
00:22:03Unfortunately, the more material decays away,
00:22:06the less power the spacecraft has for receiving and transmitting radio signals.
00:22:12Despite this issue, we haven't lost the connection with Voyager 1 and 2.
00:22:16That's because new and more powerful technologies appear on Earth.
00:22:20Signals people send can reach much farther than before.
00:22:23That's why it was possible to stay in touch with Voyager 2,
00:22:26which entered interstellar space in 2018
00:22:29and has already traveled almost 12 billion miles away from Earth.
00:22:33But in March 2020, the main piece of equipment that allowed
00:22:37scientists to exchange signals with the spaceship was switched off.
00:22:41After the communication with the spacecraft stopped,
00:22:44NASA spent around 11 months upgrading its deep space network and installing new hardware.
00:22:50The DSN is an international array of huge radio antennas
00:22:54that help astronomers on Earth communicate with interplanetary missions.
00:22:58These antennas are located in California, Madrid, and Canberra.
00:23:02The one used to keep in touch with Voyager 2 is a 230-foot-wide dish in Canberra.
00:23:07This is the only equipment that can send commands that can reach the probe.
00:23:11This antenna, known as DSS-43, started operating in 1972,
00:23:17five years before Voyager 2 and 1 were launched.
00:23:20At that time, it was only 210 feet across.
00:23:23Since then, the dish has received a lot of repairs and upgrades,
00:23:27but these 11 months were the longest the antenna was offline.
00:23:31In October 2020, the antenna was finally ready for a trial after all the upgrades and repairs.
00:23:37The mission operators sent a set of commands to Voyager 2,
00:23:41and after many months of radio silence, the spacecraft returned the signal.
00:23:45The probe confirmed it had heard the call.
00:23:48After that, the spacecraft carried out the commands.
00:23:52While the dish was offline, the mission operators could actually receive
00:23:56scientific data and health updates from Voyager 2.
00:23:59Astronomers kept getting data from interstellar space,
00:24:02the region outside the Sun's heliosphere,
00:24:05but they couldn't send any commands to the probe since it had traveled too far away from Earth.
00:24:10The upgraded antenna received two new radio transmitters, and it was done just in time.
00:24:16One of the transmitters, that was used to communicate with Voyager 2,
00:24:19hadn't been replaced in almost 50 years.
00:24:22The antenna also got new cooling and heating equipment
00:24:25and other electronics necessary to support the advanced transmitters.
00:24:30Now, a curious thing about the Deep Space Network
00:24:32is that its radio antennas are positioned in a very precise way.
00:24:36They're spaced equally around the globe.
00:24:39This way, almost any spacecraft can stay in touch with at least one facility at all times.
00:24:44But Voyager 2 is an exception.
00:24:47In 1989, it made a close flyby of Triton, Neptune's moon.
00:24:52It was the only close encounter people had with the 8th planet of the Solar System and its moon.
00:24:57By the way, Triton is the largest known object that is believed to be born in the Kuiper Belt.
00:25:02That's a donut-shaped ring around the Sun full of icy objects.
00:25:06Voyager 2 discovered Neptune's ring system and its tiny inner moons.
00:25:11The probe also gathered a lot of amazing information about Triton.
00:25:15For example, it became clear that the moon is covered in cryovolcanoes.
00:25:20Instead of spewing molten rock, these volcanoes spit ice consisting of water, ammonia, and methane.
00:25:26When the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto more than 25 years later,
00:25:31it discovered the same phenomenon on the dwarf planet.
00:25:35Anyway, to make this detour, Voyager 2 had to travel over the gas giant's North Pole.
00:25:41But this changed the probe's trajectory, deflecting it southward relative to the planes of the planets.
00:25:46Since then, Voyager 2 has been moving in that direction.
00:25:50And now, the spacecraft is so far away that it's out of reach of the radio antennas in the Northern Hemisphere,
00:25:56those in Madrid and California.
00:25:58This makes DSS-43, which is located in the Southern Hemisphere,
00:26:02the only dish powerful enough in broadcasting just the right frequency to send commands to Voyager 2.
00:26:09Voyager 1, the probe's faster-traveling twin, didn't change its trajectory.
00:26:14After passing by Saturn, it took a different path.
00:26:17That's why now it can easily communicate with the two facilities in the Northern Hemisphere.
00:26:22The upgrade the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex has gone through
00:26:27can also benefit other space missions.
00:26:29For example, the Mars Perseverance rover that landed on the Red Planet on February 18, 2021.
00:26:36The dish will also be crucial for exploring other planets and the Moon.
00:26:43When you look at photos taken from spaceships or the International Space Station
00:26:48that show sunlit objects like Earth or the Moon, something seems wrong.
00:26:52Space looks too empty.
00:26:55No magical scenery of a nighttime sky full of stars.
00:26:58It would be incredibly boring to go stargazing in space since the sky is always dark.
00:27:05During the daytime, the sky on our home planet is blue because of the diffusion of light.
00:27:10It happens when sunlight goes through the atmosphere.
00:27:13But if you were on the Moon or somewhere else in space,
00:27:15there would be no atmosphere to spread this light around.
00:27:18That's why the sky there would always appear black.
00:27:23But it doesn't mean less bright out there.
00:27:25If you were looking out the window of the space station,
00:27:28you'd see just as much direct sunlight as you would
00:27:30gazing out of your apartment window during a cloudless day.
00:27:34Maybe even more.
00:27:36When taking a picture on a sunny day, you'll probably use a short exposure,
00:27:40together with the narrow aperture setting on your camera.
00:27:43This way, just a short burst of light will get in.
00:27:46That's similar to how our pupils contract in sunlight
00:27:49so that they don't have to deal with too much light.
00:27:52And since it's just as bright up there in space,
00:27:54the process is the same when you take pictures of sunlit objects there.
00:27:58Using short exposure, you can get good, bright pictures of Earth
00:28:02or the surface of the Moon.
00:28:04But it also means there will be no stars in the picture.
00:28:07Even up there, stars are relatively dim.
00:28:10They don't emit enough light to show up in photos taken with such settings.
00:28:15Our home planet has a blue sky that slowly transforms
00:28:18into a beautiful orange-red palette at dusk and dawn.
00:28:22But if you ever get a chance to watch a sunset on Mars,
00:28:25you should expect the opposite,
00:28:27an orange-brown daytime sky that gets a bluish tint at sunset.
00:28:32First of all, Mars is farther away from the Sun than our planet.
00:28:36So, when you're looking at the Sun from the Martian surface,
00:28:39of course, it looks fainter and smaller.
00:28:41And not just that.
00:28:42The Sun observed from Mars is just a bluish-white dot surrounded by a blue halo.
00:28:48The thin atmosphere of the red planet contains large dust particles.
00:28:52They create an effect called Mie scattering.
00:28:54It occurs when the diameter of particles in the atmosphere
00:28:57is almost the same as the wavelength of the scattered light.
00:29:00This effect filters out the red light from the Sun's rays.
00:29:04So, only the blue light would reach your eyes on Mars.
00:29:09How come Earth doesn't have rings?
00:29:12All gas giants in our solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune,
00:29:16have such rings.
00:29:18Whereas the rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars don't.
00:29:23There are two theories about how rings can appear around a planet.
00:29:26They might be just some material left from the times when the planet was forming.
00:29:31Or they may be the remains of a moon that got destroyed by a collision with some space body,
00:29:36or torn apart by the strong gravitational pull of its parent planet.
00:29:40The gas giants formed in the outer regions of our solar system,
00:29:43while all the rocky planets are in the inner part.
00:29:46So maybe the inner planets were more protected from potential collisions
00:29:50that could have formed their rings.
00:29:52There are also more moons in the outer regions of our solar system,
00:29:56which could be another reason why the planets there have rings.
00:30:00Also, bigger planets have stronger gravity.
00:30:03It means that they can keep their rings stable after they form.
00:30:07Some experts believe Earth used to have a ring system a long time ago.
00:30:11A Mars-sized object might have collided with our home planet,
00:30:14which probably created a dense ring of debris around it.
00:30:19Some scientists think that this debris formed not a ring,
00:30:22but what we know today as the moon.
00:30:25There's probably a giant planet lurking at the edge of the solar system, far beyond Neptune.
00:30:31Scientists call this mysterious hypothetical world Planet 9.
00:30:36If it does exist, it's probably similar to Uranus or Neptune,
00:30:40and 10 times more massive than our home planet.
00:30:43It's likely to circle around the Sun,
00:30:45but in the outer reaches of the solar system, about 20 times farther than Neptune.
00:30:50Another interesting theory says that Planet 9 could actually be a black hole
00:30:55the size of a grapefruit that warps space in a similar way a large planet would.
00:31:02Even though we once thought it was a rare substance in space,
00:31:05water exists all over our solar system.
00:31:08For example, you can often find it in asteroids and comets.
00:31:12It's also in craters on the Moon and Mercury.
00:31:16We still don't know if there's enough water to support potential human colonies
00:31:19if we decide to move there, but some amount of water is definitely present there.
00:31:25Mars has water at its poles, too.
00:31:28It's mostly hidden in the layers of ice and probably under the planet's dusty surface.
00:31:33Europa, Jupiter's moon, has some water, too.
00:31:36This is the most likely candidate we know about to host life outside Earth.
00:31:40There's probably a whole ocean of liquid water under its frozen surface.
00:31:45It might actually contain twice as much water as all of Earth's oceans combined.
00:31:51Neptune is unexpectedly warm,
00:31:54even though it's 30 times as far from the Sun as our planet and receives less sunlight and heat.
00:31:59But it still radiates way more heat than it gets.
00:32:02It also has way more activity in its atmosphere than you'd suspect,
00:32:06especially if you compare it to its neighbor, Uranus.
00:32:09Both of these planets emit the same amount of heat,
00:32:12even though Uranus is much closer to the Sun.
00:32:15No one knows why.
00:32:17Neptune has extremely strong winds that can reach a speed of up to 1,500 miles per hour.
00:32:23Can they produce this heat?
00:32:25Or maybe it's because of the planet's core or its gravitational force?
00:32:30There's a monster black hole hurtling through space at a speed of 5 million miles per hour.
00:32:35Scientists located it with the Hubble Space Telescope.
00:32:38They believe it weighs as much as a billion suns.
00:32:42It was supposed to stay put in the center of its home galaxy,
00:32:45but some gravitational forces are pushing it around.
00:32:49At one point, this black hole is going to break free from its galaxy
00:32:52and continue roaming the universe.
00:32:54Luckily, it's still 8 billion years away from us.
00:32:58Solar storms are so powerful that they could leave us in complete darkness.
00:33:03Back in July 2012, the strongest solar storm in over 150 years narrowly missed Earth.
00:33:10Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are large bubbles of ionized gas.
00:33:16They tore through our orbit back then.
00:33:19If they had caught our planet in the crosshairs,
00:33:21we would have literally been in the firing line.
00:33:24We'd have faced solar matter hurtling towards Earth,
00:33:27damaging computers and causing power outages that would have lasted for months.
00:33:31A surprise solar storm hit us on June 25, 2022.
00:33:35One photographer even managed to capture stunning bright auroras
00:33:38that flashed across the dawn sky in Calgary, Canada, and lasted for 5 minutes.
00:33:44They were caused by the storm.
00:33:47Vampire stars are a real thing.
00:33:50They're part of a binary star,
00:33:52and they can literally drain the life out of the other star in the system.
00:33:56They do it to keep burning for a longer time.
00:33:58They do it to keep burning for a longer time.
00:34:01It works like this.
00:34:02A smaller star with a lower mass steals its sibling's hydrogen fuel to increase its own mass.
00:34:08This vampire star then becomes hotter.
00:34:11Plus, its color changes to striking blue.
00:34:14This way, it looks much younger.
00:34:16How sneaky.
00:34:18The color of the universe is dubbed Cosmic Latte.
00:34:22The light coming from our galaxies and stars within them,
00:34:25as well as clouds of gas and dust in the observable universe, have a specific color.
00:34:30It's an ivory tint, pretty close to white.
00:34:34The universe is beige because there are a bit more areas that produce green,
00:34:39yellow, and red light than those that emit blue.
00:34:44Now, did you know that there's an astronomical object
00:34:47in which space and time actually swap places?
00:34:50How does that work?
00:34:52And what exactly does swapping space and time mean?
00:34:55Let's figure it out.
00:34:57Imagine that you're on a spacecraft.
00:34:59The vehicle can only move straight.
00:35:01Your path leads to some inevitable point, and you have no idea what lies ahead.
00:35:06You can only hope that it won't be too bad.
00:35:10Meanwhile, everything around you is complete madness.
00:35:13A chaotic collage of many historical events.
00:35:16What do you see?
00:35:17Ancient humans and dinosaurs?
00:35:19The birth of the universe?
00:35:21A future?
00:35:22Who knows?
00:35:23That's what the universe would look like if we swapped time and space.
00:35:28And, theoretically, this is what you would see if you fell into a black hole
00:35:32and somehow were able to survive.
00:35:34But how is something like this even possible?
00:35:38First of all, let's discuss time and space.
00:35:41Imagine drawing a light bulb on a sheet of paper.
00:35:44Then grab one more sheet and draw how it lit up.
00:35:48Right now, it's just a small circle of light.
00:35:50Another sheet, the circle of light is growing.
00:35:53It gets bigger and bigger in size, until finally, it turns into a giant circle.
00:35:59In real life, the bulb lights up in the blink of an eye.
00:36:02That's because the speed of light is the fastest in the universe.
00:36:06But here, on our drawings, we captured the propagation of light frame by frame.
00:36:11We see how, over time, the light has grown from a small dot to a large circle.
00:36:16But if you connect these circles, doesn't it remind you of some shape?
00:36:21For example, a cone?
00:36:23Yes, exactly.
00:36:25This is called a light cone.
00:36:27And time is the central axis of this cone.
00:36:30Why?
00:36:31Because light turns from a small dot into a large circle over time.
00:36:36To remember it, let's draw a time vector, an arrow inside the cone.
00:36:40It goes from the past to the future.
00:36:43Meanwhile, the circles are space.
00:36:45In space, we can move however we want, in any direction.
00:36:49We can move up or down, in zigzags and so on.
00:36:53But no matter what zigzags we draw, along the timeline, we're always moving forward.
00:36:58We can't turn back in time, and we can't stop it.
00:37:01This helps us define time and space.
00:37:05Time is the direction in which the light cone is oriented.
00:37:08This is the direction where all our paths lead, and where our future inevitably lies.
00:37:13And space is the whole variety of directions perpendicular to the timeline.
00:37:19This is a straightforward graph.
00:37:21If it could be applied to the entire universe, then time would flow the same everywhere.
00:37:26However, if you've watched at least some popular sci-fi movies, you know that this isn't the case.
00:37:32In reality, time can be crazy.
00:37:35For example, if you're chilling near a black hole, what will be two hours for you
00:37:40may turn out to be 20 years for your friend on Earth.
00:37:43But why?
00:37:44Well, take a deep breath.
00:37:46Now gravity comes into play.
00:37:48Oh, I know about gravity.
00:37:50It's that thing that helps me to stand on the ground, you may think.
00:37:53But it's much, much more complicated than that.
00:37:57Gravity is one of the basic physical forces in our world, and it's incredibly powerful.
00:38:02In fact, she's such a girl boss that she can distort space and time.
00:38:07She can literally influence the speed of time like an almighty wizard.
00:38:11How?
00:38:12Well, let's take something slightly bigger than a light bulb.
00:38:15For example, a supernova.
00:38:18Somewhere in the universe, a star has just made a boom.
00:38:22How do we know about it?
00:38:24Well, nothing in the universe, no sound, no radio waves, nothing, travels faster than light.
00:38:30So we'll know about the birth of a supernova only when we see it.
00:38:34And this will happen only when its light cone grows enough and reaches our planet.
00:38:39So the light cone grows and grows.
00:38:42So far, everything is fine.
00:38:44And finally, it reaches our planet.
00:38:46But there's a catch.
00:38:48You see, our planet is very massive.
00:38:50Very massive.
00:38:51And it has pretty strong gravity.
00:38:53What happens then?
00:38:55Gravity changes the direction of the light cone.
00:38:58It begins to attract the cone to the center of our planet.
00:39:01And with it, it also attracts our arrow of time.
00:39:05That means it slows the time down.
00:39:07And the closer the light cone is to us, the more the arrow bends, and the slower time goes.
00:39:13What does it mean?
00:39:15Well, for example, the fact that the watch on your ankle will lag behind the watch on your wrist.
00:39:20That your head is aging faster than your legs.
00:39:23And that astronauts in Earth's orbit age a little slower than people on Earth.
00:39:29This is what scientists call general relativity.
00:39:32Right.
00:39:32But how does this relate to our topic?
00:39:35How can we understand what will happen if we swap space and time?
00:39:39Nah, don't worry.
00:39:40We're almost there.
00:39:42Now, imagine a cosmic body with incredibly strong gravity.
00:39:46It bends time and space so much that it feels like they swap.
00:39:50This is a black hole.
00:39:52A black hole attracts absolutely everything to its center.
00:39:55No stars, planets, no light can escape from there.
00:39:59Let's say our light cone is approaching it.
00:40:02First, as usual, time begins to bend toward the center of the black hole, attracted by its gravity.
00:40:08But the gravity is very strong, so it bends more and more.
00:40:12And time goes slower and slower the closer you're to the center.
00:40:17In the end, the light cone crosses the boundary of the black hole, the so-called event horizon.
00:40:23At this point, it gets so distorted that now it's literally pointing downwards.
00:40:28We can say that time has changed its direction.
00:40:31Time is pointing downwards.
00:40:33What kind of nonsense is that, you may ask?
00:40:35It'll be easier to explain in a real example.
00:40:39Imagine you're a crazy astronaut who decided to jump into a black hole.
00:40:43And there's an observer in the spaceship who watches you doing this for some reason.
00:40:48At first, for you, nothing changes.
00:40:50You look at your watch, you see that 5 minutes have passed, and everything's OK.
00:40:55But for the observer?
00:40:57First of all, you'll fall for a very long time.
00:41:00The observer has been sitting there for 50 years, and you're still falling.
00:41:05All because your time has slowed down.
00:41:08Secondly, since space is also distorted near the black hole,
00:41:12the observer will see how you'll begin to stretch like spaghetti.
00:41:16This is a scientific term, by the way.
00:41:18It's called spaghettification.
00:41:21And then, you finally cross the event horizon.
00:41:24The observer doesn't see you anymore.
00:41:27Light cannot escape from a black hole,
00:41:29so your image won't reach the observer even if you're still inside.
00:41:33And what about you?
00:41:35What if you somehow survived?
00:41:37Remember, the time arrow is pointing to the center of the black hole.
00:41:40What does it mean?
00:41:42It means that now, the center of the black hole is your future.
00:41:46It isn't a place, it's a fate that you can't change.
00:41:50And wherever you came from, as well as the rest of the universe, no longer exists for you.
00:41:56Because now, it's not a place, but an event from the past.
00:42:00And since you can't turn back time, you'll never be able to come back.
00:42:05But what is around you?
00:42:07Complete chaos.
00:42:08The rays of light now move in all directions, forward, backward, and so on.
00:42:13The rays depicting the events of the past, the future, the present, all this is moving around you.
00:42:19In reality, space and time didn't swap places.
00:42:22But it feels like they did.
00:42:24Because in space, you can now only move forward, as if along a straight line.
00:42:30And time, reflected in the light rays, surrounds you everywhere and moves in all possible directions.
00:42:36And here we go back to the beginning.
00:42:39This horrifying example helps us imagine what it would feel like if time and space got reversed.
00:42:46Of course, all this is just theories and guesses.
00:42:48The very idea that we're moving in some one direction, the one we haven't chosen,
00:42:53and there's complete time chaos around sounds quite frightening.
00:42:58And yet, it would be a very interesting experience.
00:43:02Sounds dangerous.
00:43:03Why don't you go first?
00:43:06It's normal for planets to be a bit tilted on the side.
00:43:09The Earth is tilted at a 23-degree angle.
00:43:12That's why we have seasons.
00:43:13It's summer when the part of the world where you are leans closer to the Sun.
00:43:17It works the opposite way too.
00:43:19It's winter when you lean away from it.
00:43:21But Uranus is tilted more than normal.
00:43:24It lies at a 98-degree angle, which has a huge effect on its seasons.
00:43:28Each season on Uranus takes 21 years to play out.
00:43:32Something to think about the next time we complain that winter lasts forever.
00:43:37Now, here on Earth, we measure distances in minutes and hours, maybe even days.
00:43:42It takes 10 minutes to walk to your best friend's house,
00:43:44or 15 minutes to drive to your favorite cafe.
00:43:48But in space, it's different.
00:43:49It's vast, which means we measure how long it takes to get to a certain point in years,
00:43:54or in most cases, light-years.
00:43:57So, if you want to walk to the Moon one day,
00:44:00that would take you 9 years to span the 239,000 miles.
00:44:04Perhaps you'd like to take a ride to the nearby star, Proxima Centauri.
00:44:08Maybe if you kept the pedal to the metal at a constant speed of 70 mph,
00:44:12you'd get there in about 356 billion hours, or around 40.5 million years.
00:44:19Trust me, after the first 20 million years,
00:44:21you'd be second-guessing yourself as to why go there in the first place.
00:44:25Now, Mars contains the biggest valley, Valles Marineris, we've discovered so far.
00:44:30It's a pretty impressive system of canyons, 2,500 miles long.
00:44:35It's five times longer than the Grand Canyon.
00:44:38Researchers first spotted it back in the 1970s.
00:44:41A bank of volcanoes located on the other side of the canyon ridge
00:44:44probably helped form this valley.
00:44:47We haven't discovered a planet completely made of diamonds yet,
00:44:50but on some planets, it actually rains diamonds.
00:44:53On Jupiter and Saturn, gas giants of our solar system,
00:44:57lightning storms turn abundant methane into soot, which we also know as carbon.
00:45:02The soot falls and transforms into graphite.
00:45:05Further graphite transforms into diamonds with a diameter of about 0.4 inches.
00:45:11Now, before you start figuring out how to book a diamond-collecting field trip,
00:45:15know that these diamonds don't last.
00:45:17After they enter the planet's core, they melt.
00:45:20Ever notice how when you're stargazing two nights in a row at the same time,
00:45:24let's say 9 p.m., the stars stay in the same place, but the Moon doesn't?
00:45:29Well, there are two reasons for that.
00:45:31First, it depends on what time you go stargazing.
00:45:34For instance, if you go outside at 8 p.m., and tomorrow you look for it at 11 p.m.,
00:45:39you'll see the Moon in two pretty different places.
00:45:42In this case, even the stars take different places in the sky, since our planet is spinning.
00:45:48As you know, it takes 24 hours for it to make one full circle.
00:45:51That means, from our point of view, it seems like both the sky and everything
00:45:55up there is just moving around us one time per 24 hours.
00:45:59In the same way, the Sun changes its position, rising and setting every day.
00:46:04So, if you went outside two nights in a row at the same hour, in most cases,
00:46:09you'll have to wait for an extra half-hour or more until the Moon gets back to the same
00:46:13position as the night before.
00:46:15The stars are pretty much standing still.
00:46:17It seems like they're moving, but that's because the Earth is spinning.
00:46:21But the Moon is actually moving around our planet and goes through different phases.
00:46:26For example, a new Moon is when it's completely dark in the sky.
00:46:29A full Moon is when its day side is facing the Earth.
00:46:32It takes approximately a month for it to finish one circle around the Earth.
00:46:37Maybe you'd be luckier on a diamond-collecting expedition on this next planet,
00:46:4140 million light-years away from Earth.
00:46:44Scientists used to call it a Super-Earth.
00:46:46Now, a Super-Earth is generally a planet way bigger than ours.
00:46:50This planet, for example, is double the Earth's size.
00:46:53It's so close to its star that it makes a full circle around it in less than 18 hours,
00:46:58which means a year there is pretty short.
00:47:01Since it's so close to its star, its temperature goes up a whopping 4,900 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:47:08Because of the heat, in combination with the planet's density,
00:47:11scientists have the theory that its core is made of carbon in the form of graphite and diamonds.
00:47:17Over 10 years ago, astronomers discovered a huge water vapor cloud.
00:47:22It was 12 billion light-years from our home planet.
00:47:25That cloud is the biggest source of water we know of.
00:47:28It's also the oldest, dating back to when the Universe was only 1.6 billion years old.
00:47:33Now it's 13.8 billion years old.
00:47:36Man, if only I had started a savings account 12 billion years ago!
00:47:41With compound interest, I'd have me quite a pile of cash by now.
00:47:45But I wasn't around then.
00:47:46Anyway, this cloud is so large it holds 140 trillion times
00:47:51the amount of water in all the oceans on our planet.
00:47:55This cloud kind of feeds a black hole.
00:47:57It may also contain enough gases, such as carbon monoxide,
00:48:01to encourage the black hole to grow 6 times bigger than it is at the moment.
00:48:06The average temperature of our planet is about 57 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:48:10And the highest temperature ever measured was 134 degrees.
00:48:14Sound too hot?
00:48:15Well, on Venus, it can go up to 900 degrees, which makes it the hottest planet in our solar system.
00:48:21It's not hot enough to melt steel, though.
00:48:24It would need to be higher by 2,500 degrees to get there.
00:48:27But it's hot enough to melt lead.
00:48:30And it's way too hot to sustain life.
00:48:32At least, not in any form that we know.
00:48:35Venus is not even the closest to the Sun.
00:48:37It's Mercury.
00:48:38But it has a super-thick atmosphere that traps greenhouse gases.
00:48:42It's like you covering yourself with a pretty thick blanket in the middle of the summer.
00:48:47Now, we're used to seeing volcanoes spewing hot molten lava.
00:48:50After all, that's what they mostly do on Earth.
00:48:53But in space, volcanoes tend to spew methane, water, or ammonia.
00:48:58And these materials freeze as they erupt and eventually transform into frozen vapor
00:49:03and something called volcanic snow.
00:49:05I'm talking about cryovolcanoes here.
00:49:08You can find them on Jupiter's moons, Io and Europa, Saturn's moon, Titan, and Pluto.
00:49:14These volcanoes are especially active on Io, which has hundreds of vents.
00:49:19NASA vehicles have even captured some of these erupting in real time.
00:49:23Plumes of frozen vapor coming out of them extended for about 250 miles.
00:49:28Hey, by the way, they just discovered another moon around Jupiter
00:49:32that might actually be good for farming someday.
00:49:35It's named EIEIO.
00:49:38Now, what exactly happens to the light after it disappears inside of a black hole?
00:49:43Well, photon is a particle of light.
00:49:45The event horizon is the boundary of a black hole.
00:49:48When something, say, a photon, crosses the line and enters those boundaries,
00:49:53it can't escape anymore.
00:49:55But it doesn't mean a black hole destroyed it.
00:49:57It pulls the photon in rapidly towards its center,
00:50:00where an enormous mass is packed into an infinitely small space.
00:50:04But we're not sure what happens to photons in such extreme conditions.
00:50:09It's still one of the biggest mysteries.
00:50:11Does a black hole destroy the light or not?
00:50:14Saturn has 82 moons we know about.
00:50:1753 confirmed and 29 more that are still on the waiting list to be confirmed as actual moons
00:50:22before they get their official names.
00:50:25And one of the coolest moons might be a 914-mile-wide hunk of rock called Aeapetus.
00:50:32It's dark on one side and bright on the other.
00:50:34Its lighter half is 20 times more reflective than the other one.
00:50:38As it turned out, the bright side is ice.
00:50:41The dark side is a bit more complicated.
00:50:43One theory says it's dark because of particles coming from another moon, the one named Phoebe.
00:50:49Another theory says it could be because of heat.
00:50:52Since the moon is rotating really slowly, its dark material is absorbing heat,
00:50:57which makes it even darker.
00:50:59Now, how big do you think a black hole can become?
00:51:02In theory, we can't find an upper limit to its mass.
00:51:05But astronomers believe the ultramassive black holes, or UMBHs,
00:51:10located in the cores of certain galaxies are mostly up to 10 billion solar masses big.
00:51:15Recently, they even discovered these UMBHs physically can't grow much more than this,
00:51:21because in that case, they would start to disrupt the accretion disks that feed them.
00:51:26That way, they would kind of stuff the source of new material.
00:51:30Most people picture the universe as somewhere between aquamarine and pale turquoise.
00:51:34Even some researchers thought that was the case.
00:51:37They managed to determine the cosmic color by combining light from more than 200,000 galaxies
00:51:42within 2 billion light-years of our planet.
00:51:45But the real color is actually closer to beige.
00:51:49Researchers got it all wrong because there was a bug in the software.
00:51:52No, really?
00:51:54It converted the cosmic spectrum into the color our eyes would see if we were exposed to it.
00:51:59The team defined this color as a cosmic latte.
00:52:03Ooh, make that a double-shot low-fat large to go, please!
00:52:07Venus most likely used to be covered with oceans, from 30 to 1,000 feet deep.
00:52:13Also, some water was locked in the soil of the planet.
00:52:16On top of that, Venus had stable temperatures of 68 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit,
00:52:22which, you have to admit, was quite pleasant and not that different from the temperatures
00:52:26on Earth nowadays.
00:52:28So, what I'm getting at is that for 3 billion years,
00:52:31right until something irrevocable happened 700 million years ago,
00:52:35Venus could've been habitable.
00:52:37But now, it's not.
00:52:40The Moon is the second brightest object in our sky.
00:52:43At the same time, among other astronomical bodies, it's one of the dimmest and least reflective.
00:52:49Our natural satellite only seems bright because it's so close to Earth.
00:52:53For comparison, our planet looks much brighter when you look at it from space.
00:52:58It's because clouds, ice, and snow reflect way more light than most types of rock.
00:53:03Triton, Neptune's moon, has all its surface covered with several layers of ice.
00:53:08If this satellite replaced our current moon, the night sky would get 7 times brighter.
00:53:15Neutron stars are some of the smallest, yet most massive objects in space.
00:53:20They're usually about 12 miles in diameter, but are several times heavier than the Sun.
00:53:25Oh, and they also spin about 600 times per second,
00:53:28far faster than your average figure skater.
00:53:34Saturn is the least dense planet in the Solar System.
00:53:37It has one-eighth the average Earth's density.
00:53:39And still, because of its large volume, the planet is 95 times more massive than Earth.
00:53:46A transient lunar phenomenon is one of the most enigmatic things happening on the Moon.
00:53:51It's a short-lived light, color, or some other change on the satellite's surface.
00:53:56Most commonly, it's random flashes of light.
00:53:59Astronomers have been observing this phenomenon since the 1950s.
00:54:03They've noticed that the flashes occur randomly.
00:54:06Sometimes they can happen several times a week.
00:54:09After that, they disappear for several months.
00:54:12Some of them don't last longer than a couple of minutes,
00:54:14but there have been those that continued for hours.
00:54:18The year was 1969, one day before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.
00:54:23One of the mission participants noticed that one part of the lunar surface
00:54:27was more illuminated than the surrounding landscape.
00:54:30It looked as if that area had a kind of fluorescence to it.
00:54:34Unfortunately, it's still unclear if this phenomenon
00:54:37was connected with the mysterious lunar flashes.
00:54:40Trash isn't just a problem in Earth's oceans, cities, and forests.
00:54:44There is a thing called space junk,
00:54:46which is any human-made object that's been left in space and now serves no purpose.
00:54:51There's also natural debris from meteoroids and other cosmic objects.
00:54:55There are currently over 500,000 pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth
00:55:00at speeds high enough to cause significant damage
00:55:03if they were to collide with a spacecraft or satellite.
00:55:06NASA does its best to track every single object
00:55:09to ensure that missions outside Earth can reach their destination safely.
00:55:14Our Sun is insanely massive.
00:55:16Want some proof?
00:55:1899.86% of all the mass in the Solar System is the mass of the Sun.
00:55:24In particular, the hydrogen and helium it's made of.
00:55:27The remaining 0.14% is mostly the mass of the Solar System's 8 planets.
00:55:33The Sun's temperature is hotter than the surface of a star.
00:55:36The surface temperature reaches 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit,
00:55:40but the upper atmosphere heats up to millions of degrees.
00:55:44If someone could dig a tunnel straight into the center of the planet and out the opposite side,
00:55:49and you were adventurous enough to jump into it,
00:55:52it would take you 42 minutes to fall to the other side.
00:55:56You'd speed up as you fell, reaching maximum speed by the time you reached Earth's core.
00:56:01After the halfway point, you would then fall upwards, getting slower and slower.
00:56:06By the time you reached the opposite surface, your speed would be back to zero.
00:56:11Unless you managed to climb out of the hole, you'd immediately start falling again,
00:56:15back down, or up, to the other side of the planet.
00:56:19This trip would go on forever, all thanks to the weird effects of gravity.
00:56:23Hey, might be a fun way to spend an afternoon!
00:56:27There might be more metals, for example, titanium or iron,
00:56:31in lunar craters than astronomers used to think.
00:56:35The main problem with this finding?
00:56:36It contradicts the main theory about how the Moon was formed.
00:56:40That theory says that Earth's natural satellite was spun off from our planet
00:56:44after a collision with a massive space object.
00:56:47But then, why does Earth's metal-poor crust have much less iron oxide than the Moon's?
00:56:54It might mean the Moon was formed from the material lying much deeper inside our planet.
00:56:59Or these metals could've appeared when the molten lunar surface was slowly cooling down.
00:57:04Or maybe, as they've been saying for centuries, it's made of green cheese.
00:57:11Earth could've been purple before it turned blue and green.
00:57:14One scientist has a theory that a substance existed in ancient microbes before chlorophyll,
00:57:19that thing that makes plants green, evolved on Earth.
00:57:23This substance reflected sunlight in red and violet colors, which combined to make purple.
00:57:28If true, the young Earth may have been teeming with strange,
00:57:31purple-colored critters before all the green stuff appeared.
00:57:35The highest mountain in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars.
00:57:39It's three times as high as Mount Everest, the Earth's highest mountain above sea level.
00:57:44If you were standing on top of Olympus Mons,
00:57:47you wouldn't understand you were standing on a mountain.
00:57:49Its slopes would be hidden by the planet's curvature.
00:57:54Astronomers have found a massive reservoir of water in space, the largest ever detected.
00:58:00Too bad it's also the farthest, 12 billion light-years away from us.
00:58:05The water vapor cloud holds 140 trillion times as much water as all the Earth's oceans combined.
00:58:12What are we supposed to do with that information?
00:58:14Venus spins at its own unhurried pace. A full rotation takes 243 Earth days,
00:58:21and it takes the planet a bit less than 225 Earth days to go all the way around the Sun.
00:58:27It means a day on Venus is longer than a year.
00:58:30There's very little seismic activity going on inside the Moon.
00:58:34Yet many moonquakes, caused by our planet's gravitational pull,
00:58:38sometimes happen several miles below the surface.
00:58:41After that, tiny cracks and fissures appear in the satellite's surface,
00:58:45and gases escape through them. Hey, they sometimes escape from me too.
00:58:51Mars is the last of the inner planets, which are also called terrestrial
00:58:56since they're made up of rocks and metals.
00:58:58The red planet has a core made mostly of iron, nickel, and sulfur.
00:59:03It's between 900 and 1,200 miles across. The core doesn't move. That's why Mars lacks
00:59:09a planet-wide magnetic field. The weak magnetic field it has is just 1,100% of the Earth's.
00:59:18When the planets in the Solar System were just starting to form,
00:59:21Earth didn't have a moon for the longest time.
00:59:24It took 100 million years for our natural satellite to appear.
00:59:28There are several theories as to how the Moon came into existence,
00:59:32but the prevailing one is the fission theory.
00:59:36Somebody went fishing and caught the Moon? Actually, no.
00:59:40The fission theory proposes that the Moon was formed when an object collided with Earth,
00:59:45sending particles flying about. Gravity pulled the particles together,
00:59:50and the Moon was created. It eventually settled down on the Earth's ecliptic plane,
00:59:55which is the path that the Moon orbits. So, looks like the green cheese is off the table now.
01:00:01The largest single living thing on Earth turns out to be a mushroom in Oregon.
01:00:06This enormous honey mushroom lives in Malheur National Forest
01:00:09and covers an area of 3.7 square miles. It could be as much as 8,500 years old.
01:00:16You could be forgiven for missing it, though, since most of it's hidden underground.
01:00:20When the roots of individual honey mushrooms meet, they can fuse together to become a single fungus,
01:00:28which explains how this one got so big. If you could gather all that mushrooming stuff
01:00:33into one big ball, it could weigh as much as 35,000 tons. That's about as heavy as 200 gray
01:00:40whales. Hey, that's a whale of a mushroom! The largest asteroid in the Solar System is
01:00:47Vesta, and it's so big that it's sometimes even called a dwarf planet. A trip to the nearest star,
01:00:54apart from the Sun, would take you 5 million years on a commercial airplane. That's what I call a
01:00:59long-haul flight. Space isn't supposed to be black. There are stars everywhere.
01:01:05Shouldn't they light up everything around? Well, you don't see stars wherever you look
01:01:10because some of them haven't existed long enough for their light to reach Earth.
01:01:14A day on Uranus lasts 17 hours, 14 minutes, and 24 seconds. But get this, the planet has a tilt
01:01:22of around 98 degrees, and that makes a season on the gas giant last 21 Earth years.
01:01:30Some scientists believe that our planet used to have an additional satellite. According to their
01:01:35research, a small celestial body about 750 miles wide orbited Earth like a second moon. It most
01:01:42likely crashed into our main satellite later on. Such a collision could explain why the two sides
01:01:48of the moon look so different from each other, one being heavily cratered and rough. Or it could be
01:01:54the green cheese. Wow, the James Webb Telescope has been fully deployed! If you're interested in
01:02:02astronomy or space, you've got to be excited about the James Webb Space Telescope. Here's why.
01:02:08For starters, it's huge. How huge? The primary mirror of the JWST is over 21 feet wide. The
01:02:15Hubble Space Telescope, the previous largest eye in space, has a mirror of about 7 feet,
01:02:2010 and a half inches. By comparison, if you place the two telescopes side by side, it'd be like
01:02:26putting a horse next to an elephant. And elephants are enormous. There's a perfect reason why the
01:02:31Webb, as it's affectionately called, is massive. It has to be huge because it's not an optical
01:02:37telescope in the traditional sense that most telescopes are. The JWST is an infrared telescope.
01:02:43It sees heat. Infrared light has a longer wavelength than visible light, so it needs a larger
01:02:50mirror to focus that light. So what do we have here with the James Webb Space Telescope? We have two
01:02:56never-before things going on. We have incredible technology and incredible science missions. Both
01:03:03the missions and the technology are out of this world cutting edge. The Webb is a classic example
01:03:09of engineering in the service of science. Because of its greater light-gathering power, the James
01:03:15Webb Space Telescope will be able to take images of things that we were never able to see before,
01:03:20but have always wanted to see. Things like exoplanets and the first galaxies in the universe,
01:03:25and stars and planets forming inside nebulae. And you can bet that there will be plenty of
01:03:30surprises too. The James Webb Space Telescope has several technological tricks up its sleeve,
01:03:37which promise to provide its greatest scientific discoveries. The Webb has a coronagraph, and a very
01:03:43special coronagraph at that. The coronagraph is the tool that will allow the first real pictures
01:03:49of exoplanets. The coronagraph blocks out the bright pinpoint light of stars, which we already
01:03:55know have planets orbiting around them. Without the coronagraph, the starlight would make things
01:04:00too bright to see these planets, because planets are hundreds of thousands of times dimmer than the
01:04:05star. But with the coronagraph blocking the starlight, the exoplanets come into view. And the JWST
01:04:12coronagraph can block the light from up to a hundred stars at once. We can expect a swarm of
01:04:17exoplanets. This brings us to the next high-tech gadget the JWST has up its sleeve, a no-slit
01:04:24spectrograph. Usually, an ordinary spectrograph will have a slit to allow a sliver of light to
01:04:30enter and be diffracted. Diffraction is the scattering of light to reveal the spectrum of
01:04:35the light's component wavelengths. But the James Webb Space Telescope's work is so sensitive that
01:04:41a sliver of light would overwhelm the optics. So a no-slit spectrograph was installed. The starlight
01:04:48gathered from the big mirror is sent into a fiber-optic cable to send only a single spot of
01:04:53light into the spectroscope. And that's where the grism takes over. Sir Isaac Newton used a prism to
01:05:00discover the spectrum of sunlight. Roy G. Biv, as you may recall. But the Webb uses a grism. That's a
01:05:07compound word, like smog, which is smoke and fog. A grism is a graded prism. That means it has itsy
01:05:15bitsy teeny tiny grooves that diffract the spot of light the big mirror sends down the fiber-optic
01:05:20cable and into the spectrograph. The science of reading a spectrum of light is called spectroscopy.
01:05:27By analyzing the spectra of light from the exoplanets, the JWST will determine what gases
01:05:33are in the planet's atmospheres, as well as their density and even their temperature. It's an
01:05:38incredible advance in our knowledge. We'll be able to tell if a planet has oxygen or nitrogen or
01:05:44methane and other gases that may or may not indicate that the planet is habitable. Another
01:05:50Earth, perhaps. Presently, the JWST is parked in its permanent location. Unlike the Hubble Space
01:05:57Telescope, which orbits the Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope orbits the Sun. It orbits the Sun
01:06:03at one of the gravitational balance points between the Earth-Sun system. It just stays there without
01:06:09having to use much or any fuel to hold its position. So, as the Earth orbits the Sun, the
01:06:14James Webb remains parked at a spot that is also orbiting the Sun. There are five gravitational
01:06:20balance points between the Earth and Sun. They are called Lagrange points after their discoverer
01:06:26Joseph-Louis Lagrange in the 18th century. The Webb is parked at L2, the second of the five
01:06:33Lagrange points, which lies 932,000 miles out into space, way beyond the Moon. All this to observe a
01:06:40spot of infrared light. But first, the engineers must get or acquire that spot of light. To get a
01:06:48spot of infrared light, the 18 hexagonal mirrors had to be unfolded from their position inside the
01:06:54Ariane rocket that sent the Webb into space. Once the mirrors have unfolded, their positions must be
01:07:00adjusted to microscopic level accuracy so that all 18 mirrors produce a single image. Several tiny
01:07:06motors are attached to each mirror segment to make these adjustments. These motors, which must be
01:07:11activated individually, will gradually pull the honeycomb-like mirror segments into alignment.
01:07:17It's a critical part of the mission and takes months to complete. To align the mirrors to produce
01:07:22a single spot of light, the James Webb Space Telescope can't be jiggling around. The telescope
01:07:28must be kept absolutely motionless, and that requires two other cutting-edge technologies,
01:07:33the sunshield and the cryocooler. In space, direct sunlight is very hot and shadow is very cold.
01:07:42Therefore, the James Webb Space Telescope brought along its own high-tech sunshield. It's huge, too,
01:07:48as big as a tennis court huge. Comprised of five individual layers of Kapton film only a millimeter
01:07:55thick, each layer of the sunshield has to be remotely deployed individually using a system
01:08:00of eight motors and 139 actuators with thousands of parts. The purpose of the sunshield is to help
01:08:07the JWST stay cold. The colder, the better. And colder is what the cryocooler is for. Temperature
01:08:14can be measured three different ways. In degrees Fahrenheit, where water freezes at 32 degrees and
01:08:20boils at 212. In degrees Celsius, where water freezes at zero degrees and boils at 100 degrees.
01:08:26But neither of these thermometers have a starting point. So Lord Kelvin in the 19th century devised
01:08:33a third temperature scale, the Kelvin scale, which starts at absolute zero, the coldest
01:08:39temperature possible. The onboard cryocooler will cool the JWST to just seven degrees Kelvin,
01:08:46seven degrees above absolute zero. At this temperature, virtually all heat from motors
01:08:52is removed and the telescope will be able to focus the light to a point without any noise,
01:08:57basically any motion interfering with the quality of the image. Finally, after all this incredible
01:09:03technology functions remotely as planned, we are almost ready to observe the infrared images from
01:09:09the giant multi-segmented mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope. Almost ready. A telescope
01:09:15can collect all the light it wants, but in the end it must also be able to detect what it's
01:09:20collected. If the light is not detected, it's not truly observed. Enter the piece de resistance,
01:09:27the infrared detectors. The Webb has 15 of them. The specially fabricated semiconductor material
01:09:34produces a slight electrical charge when struck by a photon of infrared light. The Webb's infrared
01:09:39detectors can produce a million pixel high def image. A few of the detectors can produce a 4
01:09:45million pixel image. They must be durable enough to last 10 to 20 years without warping or corrupting,
01:09:52all while working at seven degrees above absolute zero. In themselves, the infrared detectors on
01:09:58the JWST are an engineering marvel. But what are they going to take pictures of?
01:10:04Ah, the missions of the JWST. Well, they're cutting edge too. 70 of the first 280 target
01:10:11observations are exoplanets. Is there another Earth? Which exoplanets seem habitable? The
01:10:17Webb Telescope will provide detailed spectroscopic analysis of the atmospheres of thousands of known
01:10:23exoplanets. For the first time, we will see images of exoplanets as they appear in infrared light.
01:10:30Cosmology, the study of the universe, is perhaps the primary mission for the Webb.
01:10:35Galaxies receding away so fast that their light is stretched into the infrared will be a prime
01:10:40target for observation. Hundreds of hours of observations are necessary to collect the faint
01:10:46infrared light from these first galaxies formed after the Big Bang. The JWST will give us a
01:10:52picture of what the infant universe looked like. Astronomers will learn new information about the
01:10:58dark energy that is driving the expansion of the universe and what role, if any, black holes play
01:11:04in the formation of galaxies. Star formation in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies is also part
01:11:10of the mission of the James Webb. By imaging hundreds of solar systems forming around newborn
01:11:15stars, astronomers will establish a definite history of solar system development. Now,
01:11:21fact will replace theory and a big step forward will be taken in our understanding of space.
01:11:27The James Webb Space Telescope is a bold endeavor that will mark an epoch time in scientific
01:11:33history. People stop their cars on the highway, get out of them, and lift their heads in wonder.
01:11:39In the cities, everyone takes to the streets. Balconies and rooftops of houses are full of
01:11:44people staring at the moon in shock. It's red. Some people scream that it's the end of the world.
01:11:51Some seek shelter. Indeed, the usual white moon now looks like it's been doused in red paint.
01:11:58There's no need to be afraid if you see such a thing. On the contrary, enjoy the view because
01:12:03you have witnessed a rare astronomical phenomenon. This is a total lunar eclipse. Here's the sun.
01:12:11It's in the center of our solar system. Mercury, Venus, and here's Earth and the moon. The Earth
01:12:17takes 365 days to orbit around the star. At the same time, the moon revolves around the Earth and
01:12:24completely orbits our planet in 27 days. The Earth creates a shadow zone and sometimes the moon
01:12:31passes through it. The shadow is cone-shaped and gradually narrows. The moon is 238,000 miles away.
01:12:39That's like nine lengths of the equator. At this distance, the width of the shadow is about 2.6
01:12:45times the width of the moon. When the moon is in this zone, direct sunlight doesn't reach it.
01:12:51That is, it should have disappeared. But instead, it becomes red. All because the sun's rays pass
01:12:59through the Earth's atmosphere. They scatter and most of the blue light disappears. But the red
01:13:05and orange rays continue and hit the surface of the moon. Voila! You see a phenomenon called
01:13:11the blood moon. By the way, this curvature of light occurs at sunsets and dawns. The atmosphere
01:13:18scatters the blue light and you see a red and orange sky. If you were standing on the surface
01:13:24of the moon during a total lunar eclipse, planet Earth would be exactly between you and the sun.
01:13:30So, you would be able to observe the solar eclipse. The surface of the Earth would become
01:13:35entirely dark for you. All you'd see would be the sun's corona illuminating the edges of the planet.
01:13:42The Earth from the surface of the moon is almost the same size as the moon from the surface of the
01:13:47Earth. Such a red eclipse of the moon is rare because several factors must coincide. One of
01:13:54them is that the moon must be full. Usually, you can see two total lunar eclipses a year. In 2038,
01:14:02you'll be able to see four such eclipses. And the eclipse itself can last up to 108 minutes.
01:14:08But this is rare, and the last time such a long blood moon was seen was in 2000. Many years ago,
01:14:15people didn't know so many facts about our satellite, and the sight of a red moon frightened
01:14:20them. It was a bad sign and a harbinger of trouble. People who knew the schedule of eclipses
01:14:27could take advantage of it. For example, Christopher Columbus had an astronomical almanac
01:14:32and knew when the next lunar eclipse would occur. He frightened the inhabitants of the
01:14:37Caribbean islands when he predicted the red moon. Once upon a time, the moon used to be a red ball
01:14:45of lava. This was way back in time, 4.5 billion years ago. Now this is our solar system. It's
01:14:52full of dust and asteroids. They're constantly bumping into each other, playing space billiards.
01:14:58This is Earth. It's just beginning to cool off from the constant asteroid and comet impacts.
01:15:03But then, Theia appears on the horizon, a planet the size of Mars. It had a chaotic orbit and was
01:15:10approaching Earth in a spiral. A collision was inevitable, and at one point, one of the biggest
01:15:17crashes in our solar system occurred. Theia struck the Earth at an angle. It ripped out part of the
01:15:22Earth's crust and threw it into space. The Earth, in turn, absorbed part of the planet that rammed
01:15:28it. The debris from the collision circled the Earth for a long time. They were a kind of ring,
01:15:34almost like Saturn's. Debris in orbit collided and piled up around a common center of gravity.
01:15:41And that's how the Earth got the moon. There's a theory that this collision helped give birth
01:15:46to life on our planet. Theia hit the Earth at a perfect angle. If the crash had been head-on,
01:15:52both planets would likely have been destroyed in a massive explosion. If the impact had been
01:15:58tangential, then there wouldn't have been enough debris in Earth's orbit to form the moon.
01:16:03But we got the lucky ticket. The moon stabilized the Earth's rotation. The collision shattered the
01:16:09planet's solid crust and allowed oceans to form. Remember, water is the basis of life. When the
01:16:16cores of Earth and Theia merged, we got a powerful magnetosphere. This protects all living organisms
01:16:23from solar radiation. The moon, along with the sun, controls the tides. Its gravity seems to draw
01:16:30water to it from the Earth's surface. The sun does the same thing. That is, if we imagine the Earth as
01:16:36a ball of water, there would be two mountains, one on the moon's side and one on the sun's side.
01:16:42And as the moon moves around the Earth, this mountain of water moves with it. If you were in
01:16:48the open ocean with a tape measure, you would see that the moon is attracting water to itself by
01:16:53about four to six inches. The moon is gravitationally locked with the Earth. That's why it's always
01:17:00turned to us with one side, like Mercury and the sun. But the moon doesn't stand still. It's
01:17:06gradually moving away from our planet, about 1.5 inches a year. Not quickly, but in about 600
01:17:13million years, it will have shrunk in our sky so much that we won't be able to see lunar eclipses
01:17:18anymore. Do you see this crater? It's Tycho. It's visible during a full moon because of these bright
01:17:25rays that extend thousands of miles from its epicenter. This is the youngest crater on the
01:17:30moon. Scientists say it appeared there due to a meteorite impact about 109 million years ago.
01:17:36At that time, dinosaurs were roaming the surface of our planet, and they may have seen the impact.
01:17:42It was most likely accompanied by a big explosion and looked like a salute in the night sky.
01:17:49Humanity loves to explore the moon. We've sent a bunch of missions there. A total of 12 people
01:17:55have set foot on the surface of the moon. The gravitational force there is six times less than
01:18:00on Earth. So if the average person on our planet weighed about 180 pounds, on the surface of the
01:18:06moon, the scales would only show 30 pounds, like the weight of an average dog. That's why the
01:18:12astronauts moved, jumped, and fell so strangely there. And you would be six times stronger on
01:18:19the surface of the moon. Here on Earth, the average person could lift about 130 pounds,
01:18:24but on the moon, you could raise a big motorcycle or a grizzly bear.
01:18:30The surface of the moon is covered with regolith. This is the lunar dust that covers the solid
01:18:35ground. Such dust is good at preserving footprints. Here's the most famous footprint,
01:18:40which gave birth to many crazy theories. Here's the footprint, and here's the shoe that left it.
01:18:47But the shoe is completely flat. This is explained simply. The astronauts wore extra boots for
01:18:53walking on the lunar surface. They have exactly the kind of soul that left these marks. In
01:18:59addition to the footprints, we left many fascinating objects on the moon. Several lunar rovers, a golf
01:19:05ball, flags, and human waste. There's also a lot of broken satellites and rocket parts. All in all,
01:19:12about 413,000 pounds of human-made objects are there. That's the weight of three passenger
01:19:18planes or 31 adult elephants. In the future, we plan to resume missions to the moon. New landers
01:19:25will explore the surface of our satellite to find natural resources there. It's also a great place
01:19:31to test new rovers. We're even going to build something like the International Space Station
01:19:36in the moon's orbit, the Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway. It'll be a convenient platform for
01:19:42exploring our satellite and launching spacecraft into distant space. If you start from here,
01:19:47the spacecraft won't need to spend almost all its fuel to overcome the force of Earth's gravity.
01:19:52So, such a station would save fuel and money. Scientists hope that we'll be able to mine water
01:19:59from the moon's surface. It's been proven that there's ice there, mostly at the bottom of craters
01:20:04where the sunlight doesn't reach. Perhaps we'll send a rover there that can drill down a few feet
01:20:09into the surface, searching for water. Humanity already has the technology to build a full-fledged
01:20:15colony there. It would take up to three days to get there. We just need to get enough solar panels
01:20:21and building materials to the moon. There's no atmosphere on the moon, so potential lunar
01:20:26inhabitants would be defenseless against solar radiation. We would have to build houses underground
01:20:32to provide protection. Modern 3D printers will help make construction easy and fast. However,
01:20:38food and water supplies can only be maintained by constant supplies from Earth. The same goes for
01:20:44oxygen. Each rocket launch costs millions of dollars, so for now, colonization of the moon
01:20:50is in question. The moon could also become an object for space tourism. Imagine a spaceship
01:20:56launches from Earth. Three days on the road and you're orbiting the moon. The lunar module undocks
01:21:03and you land on the surface. You ride the rover, explore the craters, then return to the lander.
01:21:09The engines start. The lander returns you to orbit.
01:21:12You dock with the ship and return to Earth. Sounds like some pretty great plans for a week's vacation.
01:21:19Our sun is an average-sized star, and still, it could fit 1,300,000 Earths.
01:21:26The star is also 333,000 times as heavy as our planet. NASA has translated radio waves created
01:21:34by planets' atmospheres into audible sounds. That's how astronomers found out that Neptune
01:21:40sounds like ocean waves, Jupiter like being underwater, and Saturn's voice resembles
01:21:47background music to a horror movie. Here on Earth, it's bebop jazz. Now I made that up.
01:21:55The Sun's surface is scorching hot, but a bolt of lightning is five times hotter.
01:22:00Earth gets struck by 100 lightning bolts every second,
01:22:04which results in 8 million lightning strikes a day and around 3 billion a year. Shocking!
01:22:12If you manage to go to the Moon one day and see fresh footprints, that doesn't mean there's
01:22:16someone else there with you. Footprints or similar marks can last for a million years over there.
01:22:24Because the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere. There are no winds, not even a breeze,
01:22:29that can slowly erase those footprints. Astronomers have found the largest hole
01:22:35we've ever seen in the Universe. It's the giant void that spreads a billion light-years across.
01:22:42They found it accidentally. One of the research team members was a little bored and wanted to
01:22:47check how things are going in the direction of the cold spot. That's an anomaly in the Cosmic
01:22:53Microwave Background Map, or CMB for short. It's a faint glow of light that falls on our planet
01:22:59from different directions and fills the Universe. It's been streaming through space for almost 14
01:23:04billion years as the afterglow that occurred after the Big Bang. So you fall right into the
01:23:12heart of the black hole and prepare for a sad end. Well, you don't have to. Falling into a black hole
01:23:18won't necessarily destroy you or your spaceship. You have to choose a bigger black hole to survive.
01:23:26If you fall into a small black hole, its event horizon is too narrow, and the gravity increases
01:23:32every inch down. So if you extend your arm forward, the gravity on your fingers is much
01:23:37stronger than on your elbow. This will make your hand lengthen, and you'll feel some discomfort.
01:23:43Rather significant, to be honest. Things change if you fall into a supermassive black hole,
01:23:49like the ones in the center of galaxies. They can be millions of times heavier than the Sun.
01:23:55Their event horizon is wide, and the gravity doesn't change as quickly. So the force you'll
01:24:00feel at your heels and at the top of your head will be about the same. And you can go all the
01:24:05way to the heart of the black hole. This myth is busted. If you watch a very touching movie
01:24:12in space and start crying, your tears won't run down. They will gather around the eyeballs.
01:24:19Your eyes will get too dry, so you'll feel like they're burning. Any exposed liquid on your body
01:24:25will vaporize, including the surfaces of your tongue. Speaking of burning, that's one thing
01:24:31fire can't do in space. Fire can spread when there's a flow of oxygen, and since there's not
01:24:36any in space, well… Once they explode, stars aren't supposed to come back to life.
01:24:44But some of the stars somehow have survived the great supernova explosion.
01:24:49Such zombie stars are pretty rare. Scientists found a really big one called LP40365.
01:24:56It's a partially burnt white dwarf. A white dwarf is a star that burned up all of the hydrogen,
01:25:03and that hydrogen was previously its nuclear fuel. In this case, the final explosion was
01:25:09maybe weaker than it usually is, not powerful enough to destroy the entire star. It's like
01:25:16a star wanted to explode but didn't make it, which is why part of the matter still survived.
01:25:22If you ever go into space, don't take off your spacesuit unless you're on a spaceship. Air in
01:25:28your lungs would expand, as well as the oxygen in the rest of your body. You'd be like a balloon,
01:25:34twice your regular size. Good news, the skin is elastic enough to hold you together,
01:25:39which means you wouldn't explode. When something goes into a black hole, it changes shape and gets
01:25:47stretched out just like spaghetti. This happens because gravitational force is trying to stretch
01:25:53an object in one direction but at the same time squeeze it into another, like a pasta paradox.
01:26:00Speaking of, a black hole that's as big as a single atom has the mass of a really big mountain.
01:26:07There's one at the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A.
01:26:11It has a mass like for a billion suns, but luckily, it's far away from us.
01:26:16If you made a big boom on an asteroid, you'd never be able to hear its loud sound. Yes,
01:26:22we often hear the sound of spaceships and battles in space in the movies, but that's just a myth.
01:26:28Sound is a wave that spreads because of the vibrations of molecules. A person claps a few
01:26:35feet away from you, the sound wave begins to push the first air molecule next to the clap,
01:26:40then the second, third, and so on, until the wave reaches your ear. So, if you're in a black hole,
01:26:47to spread sound, we need molecules like air or water. In our atmosphere, sound waves spread out
01:26:53just fine, but space is a vacuum, so it's nothing here. You can clap your hands loudly there,
01:27:00but there just won't be any molecules that can vibrate and carry that sound.
01:27:04So, to carry on a conversation, you'd either need a radio or really good lip-reading skills.
01:27:11Meteoroids orbit the Sun, while the majority of human-made debris orbits our planet. For example,
01:27:18we launched almost 9,000 spacecraft around the world from satellites to rocket ships.
01:27:24Even the tiniest pieces can damage a spacecraft at such high speeds.
01:27:29Galaxies, planets, comets, asteroids, stars, space bodies are things we can actually see in space,
01:27:37but they make up less than 5% of the total universe. Dark matter, one of the biggest
01:27:43mysteries in space, is the name we use for all the mass in the universe that's still invisible to us.
01:27:49And there's a lot of it, it may even make 25% of the universe. Dark energy makes the other
01:27:5570% of the universe. Hmm, that adds up to 100, right?
01:28:00Now, let's look at the Moon. It always looks at us with one side. This means the Moon has a dark
01:28:07side, and the Sun's rays never get there. Well, that's a myth. The whole point is that the Moon
01:28:14is gravitationally locked to the Earth. There are days and nights there too. It's just that this
01:28:19rotation is perfectly aligned with the rotation of the Earth. So, whenever you look at the Moon,
01:28:25you only see one side. Although there are days when the Sun shines there too,
01:28:30so it's not the dark side, it's the far side. And we even have pictures of this place. And there's
01:28:36one of the biggest craters in our entire solar system, the South Pole-Aitken Basin. It's as wide
01:28:43as two states of Texas. Yeehaw! One myth that turned out to be untrue is that people have never
01:28:50actually been on the Moon. This is the original spacesuit of the first astronauts who were there.
01:28:57Look at the sole of the shoe. Some people claim there's no way they could've left footprints like
01:29:02this there. Actually, they could. On the Moon, the astronauts wore extra boots over their suits,
01:29:08and their soles matched the footprints on the Moon perfectly. Now, the astronauts didn't
01:29:13need them when they left the Moon and tossed them when the Moonwalk was over.
01:29:18They left a lot of stuff there too. They even tossed the armrests of the seats in the lunar
01:29:22module to reduce the weight. Now, counting all the Apollo lunar missions, the total weight of
01:29:28rubbish on the Moon is approximately 187 tons, including several lunar rovers, spacecraft debris,
01:29:36six lunar modules, and all the experiments left behind. That's like three Boeing 737s.
01:29:43Another myth about the Sun is that it's yellow. Let's send you into space for this one. You look
01:29:48out the window, and… it's white! The Sun only appears yellow to us through the filter of our
01:29:54atmosphere. The composition of the air and its thickness just distorts the light of the star.
01:30:00But stars do come in different colors. Cooler stars have bright orange and red colors.
01:30:05These are usually very old stars, older than our Sun. But young and very hot stars are bright blue.
01:30:12The Sun is about in the middle of this spectrum.
01:30:16Oh, one more myth about asteroids. We need to fly a little farther than Mars' orbit.
01:30:22Whoa, we're in an asteroid belt, and we constantly have to dodge giant rocks and blocks of ice.
01:30:28We got in some dense asteroid clouds. Not true.
01:30:33The fact is that space is huge, and the distances are incredible. All the rocks and debris in the
01:30:39asteroid belt are only 4% of the weight of the Moon, so there really aren't that many of them
01:30:45there. To understand the dimension of the emptiness in space, look at the collision of two galaxies.
01:30:52There are billions of stars in each of them. If we mix them up,
01:30:55it's unlikely there will be any collisions even here.
01:31:03Many people would like to fly into space. Zero gravity, a stunning view of Earth from one side,
01:31:09and the boundlessly frightening black area from the other. Yeah, it's all cool. But don't forget
01:31:14that this journey can turn into a nightmare. Lack of oxygen, floating in outer space,
01:31:20and staying in a spaceship for a long time without understanding when you can return home.
01:31:25This last thing happened to a Russian cosmonaut. His stay in space is one of the longest in the
01:31:32world. 33-year-old flight engineer Sergei Krikalev spent 311 days in zero gravity on the Mir space
01:31:39station. But that's not the most interesting part of this story. Sergei's long journey began on May
01:31:4518, 1991. That day, he boarded a transport ship and went into space to the Mir space station.
01:31:52On May 20, the docking with the station was completed. There, together with another engineer,
01:31:58Sergei performed his space duties. They went on spacewalks several times,
01:32:03did repairs, took care of the station, and conducted scientific experiments.
01:32:07When you have company and a lot of work, living in space is not so hard. But things got worse
01:32:13on the day when Sergei was supposed to return home. According to the plan, the mission should
01:32:18have lasted for five months. A new astronaut was supposed to replace the old ones. The transport
01:32:24ship had finally docked with the station. But on October 10, only one astronaut returned to Earth.
01:32:30Sergei was left alone at the Mir station. He continued to work as the sole flight engineer
01:32:35of the crew. The station couldn't remain empty. They had to send someone to replace Sergei.
01:32:40He wasn't ready for such a long stay in space. He hadn't trained for it. But there was no choice.
01:32:46He couldn't just leave the station. One month passed. They informed Sergei that he would return
01:32:51home soon. But something happened that no one expected. They contacted Sergei and said he
01:32:58couldn't return since the country that promised to bring him home no longer existed. During this time,
01:33:04a big crisis began in Russia. The cosmonaut's return was impossible since no one had the money
01:33:09for it. Just imagine Sergei's condition. You were hundreds of miles from home in black outer space,
01:33:16completely alone, and have no idea how many days you have left to be there.
01:33:21The days passed slowly. Weeks. Then a month passed. It would have been much easier if being in space
01:33:28was not harmful to your health. But in conditions of zero gravity, the human body takes serious
01:33:34damage. First, it's a weakening of the muscles. The body doesn't receive the necessary load it
01:33:39needs, and the muscles are constantly in a relaxed state, leading to dystrophy. Yes, astronauts do a
01:33:46set of exercises every day. But this is not enough to keep the body in shape. In addition to muscles,
01:33:52bones begin to weaken, and a person becomes weak. Even after six months of such a life,
01:33:58any astronaut needs a long time to get back into their previous shape after returning home.
01:34:03Also, there's a lot of radiation in space, which is dangerous for people.
01:34:08It comes from several sources at once. The main radiation comes from the sun. On Earth,
01:34:13we're protected from it, thanks to the planet's magnetic field. Almost all radiation accumulates
01:34:19in the upper atmosphere and doesn't reach us. This accumulation of radiation in the atmosphere
01:34:24is also bad for astronauts. But the worst radiation is the galactic one. It comes from
01:34:30distant stars and galaxies and has a powerful effect on all living things. Radiation provokes
01:34:36many unfavorable conditions and destroys the body at the cellular level. Now, all spaceships and the
01:34:42ISS are equipped with shields and coatings that reflect radiation. But still, it doesn't provide
01:34:48100% protection. In space, the astronaut's immune system changes. There are no conditions under
01:34:55which immunity could improve. It seems that there's nothing wrong with the absence of many
01:35:00bacteria and microbes. But the body's defense is weakening. A person becomes more vulnerable to
01:35:06microbes that can be brought by another astronaut. You also have serious food restrictions. Food in
01:35:12tubes doesn't contain as many useful vitamins as it does in natural products. Without vitamins,
01:35:18the body weakens even more. And sometimes, astronauts have to go on spacewalks, which
01:35:25aren't easy. A space suit is a huge and uncomfortable outfit. It constrains your
01:35:30movements and puts pressure on your body. Work in space can last up to several hours.
01:35:36During this time, you sweat a lot. One of the suit's filters may be broken, and all the fluid
01:35:41released by your body can spread throughout the suit and reach your face. Your eyes may water.
01:35:47The drops could interfere with your vision. Thousands of dangers can await an astronaut
01:35:52during a mission in outer space. Imagine that you do some repairs, and something goes wrong.
01:35:58The wrench jumps off the bolt, and it flies out, for example. You try to catch it and unconsciously
01:36:04push off from the ship. You catch the bolt, but your body is already flying away. You have nothing
01:36:09to hold on to. But fortunately, you have a safety rope. Anyway, it can break off from your space
01:36:16suit because you attached it incorrectly. As soon as the rope breaks, your body changes the angle
01:36:21of flight. Now you're not just flying away. Your body is spinning at this moment. The Earth and
01:36:26black space flash in your eyes. So you get it. There are definitely risks, but nothing like that
01:36:33happened with Sergei. All astronauts spend many hours training to be ready for any troubles.
01:36:39They gain good physical shape and lose it during the mission. Add to this the psychological factor.
01:36:46Your body weakens. You don't breathe fresh air. You can't see your friends, and you don't have
01:36:51the opportunity to return home. A small layer of wall separates you from the cold vacuum of space.
01:36:57All this causes stress, which also weakens your immunity and harms your nervous system.
01:37:03Fortunately, astronauts also get through serious psychological training.
01:37:07They can maintain self-control in the most stressful situations. But when you're alone
01:37:12in space for more than six months and don't know when you'll return, you can get seriously nervous.
01:37:18Fortunately, Sergei didn't panic. He performed his daily duties, trained, and of course, missed home.
01:37:25A month later, he received the same response. We can't bring you back yet. The country is in a
01:37:31difficult situation. He felt worse every day. His strength was leaving him. He wasn't sure if he'd
01:37:37be able to survive. The most interesting thing is the station had a capsule developed to return to
01:37:43Earth. But Sergei didn't use it because no one would have served the station. Russia sold the
01:37:49station seats to other countries. Also, they hoped to sell Mir. This meant that Sergei had to keep
01:37:56the station working. Sergei's mission lasted twice as long as planned. As a result, he spent 10 months
01:38:03or 311 days in space and set a world record. During this time, he flew around the Earth about
01:38:115,000 times. Finally, he received the long-awaited message. He's coming home! Germany paid about
01:38:1824 million dollars for a ticket to the station. They were going to replace the astronaut.
01:38:24Krikalev got into the capsule and flew to Earth. Many people were waiting for his return down
01:38:29there. The cosmonaut landed and everyone rushed to help him. He looked very thin, sweaty, and exhausted.
01:38:37Four men helped him out of the capsule. They helped him stay on the ground, gave him a fur coat, and
01:38:43brought a bowl of broth. It seemed that such a flight would leave an imprint on his life forever.
01:38:48But the cosmonaut's mood was excellent. Two years later, he went into space again and became the
01:38:55first Russian cosmonaut to fly on a NASA shuttle. And two years later, he was one of the first to
01:39:01live on the ISS. In 2005, he made his sixth and last flight. He went to the ISS, where he spent
01:39:09about six months, after which he returned home on the lander. After this flight, he set a world record
01:39:16for the total duration of stay in space at 803 days. Only 10 years later, someone managed to
01:39:23break that record. But that's a different story.
01:39:28Hey MythBusters! Today we're debunking some classic space myths.
01:39:33Hop on the next space shuttle and let's get to the bottom of these tales once and for all.
01:39:40Picture this. You're floating weightlessly in space, sipping on a cup of delicious hot chocolate,
01:39:46when a peculiar thought pops into your head. Can you scream in outer space? And if yes,
01:39:52would anyone hear that scream?
01:39:57If you've watched the movie Alien, then you know the answer to this one.
01:40:01You can't hear sounds in outer space. It's not that sounds don't exist. It's just that you can't
01:40:07hear them. There's no one better to clarify this myth than Chris Hadfield. He's been on a couple
01:40:13of spacewalks during his life as an astronaut. And once you're out there in the darkness of space,
01:40:19you can't hear anything. All you hear is silence. Complete silence. But hey,
01:40:26just around the corner is a massive ball of explosion, aka the sun. We just can't hear the
01:40:33explosions happening because there's no medium for sound to travel through. It would be quite
01:40:38uncomfortable for an astronaut though if they could hear all the noises going on in outer space.
01:40:45Now, imagine you're zipping through space, feeling like a futuristic superhero.
01:40:49When a shooting star passes by your side. But wait, is it really a star? Unfortunately,
01:40:55shooting stars are not stars at all. They are small space rocks known as meteoroids,
01:41:02entering Earth's atmosphere and creating a stunning light show.
01:41:06Oh, and since we're debunking myths, let's head straight for another one.
01:41:11You've probably heard that meteors only crash into Earth on extremely rare occasions. Like once
01:41:18every dinosaur extinguishing apocalypse. That's not true. Scientists estimate that about 48 tons
01:41:25of meteoritic material fall on Earth each day. But almost all of this material is vaporized in
01:41:32Earth's atmosphere. The bright trail we see in the night sky is what we popularly call a shooting
01:41:37star. Next time you make a wish upon a shooting star, remember, you're actually hoping on a tiny
01:41:43piece of space debris. It's not so romantic after all. Can we or can we not fly into the stratosphere
01:41:52on air balloons? Apparently, we can. The Earth's stratosphere starts relatively close to the ground,
01:41:59about 7 or 8 miles up from the Earth's surface. But it continues a long way up.
01:42:05If you were to fly yourself all the way into the stratosphere with some type of air balloon,
01:42:10just make sure you have really good equipment at hand. You'll need a special suit and some
01:42:15breathing devices because air starts to get pretty thin the higher you get. Of course,
01:42:21if you do go all the way up, you need to get a picture of the Earth's curvature.
01:42:25So take a chest harness with you where you can put a special camera or something like that.
01:42:30And how about you live stream the whole thing? That would be a first!
01:42:34Imagine it's been 102 days since you left Earth. You've adapted well to life in outer space.
01:42:40But something weird is happening to your body. You're getting taller. How is that even possible?
01:42:46Don't stress about it, it's completely normal. The truth of the matter is, you're not getting
01:42:52taller. This is what happens to your body when it's not under the effect of gravity.
01:42:57Our body has natural space between vertebrae and joints. On Earth,
01:43:02this space is almost completely squeezed due to the force of gravity. But in space,
01:43:07your body gets some time off of the pushing force of gravity and begins to stretch more and more.
01:43:14So yes, astronauts can grow up to 3% taller when they're on long missions. And here's a curiosity,
01:43:20NASA has that all covered when they're tailor-making spacesuits of course.
01:43:24This way, astronauts will always have extra space in their suits.
01:43:28Once astronauts are back on Earth, the anti-gravity effect will wear off. So maybe they'll
01:43:33spend a few days wearing capri pants before it fits perfectly on their bodies again.
01:43:39Never have I ever pictured an airplane door bursting open mid-flight and a bunch of passengers
01:43:44being sucked into the atmosphere like flying feathers. Well, I'm betting most of you have
01:43:49had similar thoughts when getting inside a plane. Now imagine if this were to happen in outer space.
01:43:56Common knowledge says that if an astronaut is sucked out of an airlock,
01:43:59this person would be burnt to a crisp. Brace yourselves, because this is not only true,
01:44:05but the reality of it is way worse. According to astronaut Chris Hadfield, this is what would
01:44:11happen. The part of your body in the shade of the sun would experience temperatures of negative
01:44:15418 degrees Fahrenheit, while the part of you getting sunlight would burn at around 4 degrees
01:44:22Fahrenheit. Your lungs would collapse, and your blood would start to boil like tea water.
01:44:28So you would burn, freeze, lose your ability to breathe, and boil. Yikes!
01:44:36How many times have you heard that astronauts have to work out every second of every day,
01:44:41otherwise they'll pass out? This is a complete myth. Remember we talked about gravity earlier?
01:44:48Due to the lack of gravity in outer space, our bodies don't have to do any heavy work.
01:44:53Our torsos don't have to sustain the weight of our heads, and we don't have to make any effort
01:44:58to move our legs because, essentially, there's no walking in outer space. Now imagine living
01:45:04like that for 6 months, or even a year of your life. Your muscles could turn into jello. That's
01:45:12why astronauts work out. They'll strap themselves and run on a treadmill, or they'll do some
01:45:18weightlifting in a special machine. This way, their muscles won't feel the lack of gravity too
01:45:23much. They do need to keep hydrated, though. You know what? If I was an astronaut, I'd ask
01:45:30NASA if I could take my super soft water flask up into space with me. You've probably heard that
01:45:37space smells like burnt steak, or barbecue sauce. Now as much as this sounds absurd,
01:45:43this myth is more true than it is false. Astronauts obviously can't smell space when they're in it
01:45:49because they can't take off their helmets. They usually smell it once a space vehicle docks and
01:45:55they open up a hatch. Apparently, what causes this smell is the presence of hydrocarbons that
01:46:00float around in space. That's why astronauts don't have to work out how to get out of outer space.
01:46:08Who would've thought, huh? Hey smart people, let me ask you a question.
01:46:13Do you really think that if astronauts fly at the speed of light, they won't age a single second?
01:46:18I knew you'd say no! Let's get a few things straight. First of all, we haven't figured out
01:46:24how to operate vehicles at the speed of light. This would require an immense amount of energy
01:46:30and we don't have the technology to do that. Second, even if we managed to send a human
01:46:36inside a spacecraft that traveled at the speed of light, this person would still age. They would
01:46:41age differently than the people who remained on Earth, that's a fact, but they would still age.
01:46:46Do you lot really think there's such a thing as immortality? Nah. If you've seen the first Avatar,
01:46:53then you certainly remember that humans only managed to get to Pandora because they traveled
01:46:58in cryosleep. In other words, they froze their bodies, put them in a cryo bed, and traveled for
01:47:04years without aging. Yes, this sounds amazing, but we still don't have the technology to do that.
01:47:10Our bodies are mainly made out of water, right? And when you freeze water, it expands. That's why
01:47:17you should never leave soda cans unattended in your freezer. Right now, if we froze a person's
01:47:22body, the water inside of it would expand, harming tissues and organs. So no, we can't cryosleep our
01:47:29way into interstellar travel. Not yet, at least. Here's a crazy thought. What would happen if an
01:47:36astronaut took a drone with him on one of their spacewalks? Unless it's a NASA-designed drone,
01:47:42maybe the thing would freeze and burn like humans would if they went into space without a suit.
01:47:47But hey, a person can dream, can't they?
01:47:49Houston, we've got good news. A group of select humans is being interviewed to hop on board the
01:48:00first commercial vacation to outer space. The space agency has given you a survey to answer.
01:48:05They want to know what you would pack on this space adventure. Depending on your answers,
01:48:09you just might be one of the chosen ones. Now how about we take a look at that list together?
01:48:19Pencils. I guess I never would have thought of that, but it makes sense. Legend has it that the
01:48:25US spent millions of dollars trying to design a pen that worked in space. You know, since the lack
01:48:30of gravity is a huge, I mean, inescapable factor of life in outer space, pens don't work. The ink
01:48:37won't flow down as it does here on Earth. It turns out that pencils will do the trick. This way you
01:48:42can play word puzzles with the other space tourists, or even make some drawings of your
01:48:46adventure. You'd never forget to pack a toothbrush, of course. According to veteran astronauts,
01:48:52toothbrushes are so simple, yet their technology is enough for space. If you were to squeeze a
01:48:58water bottle inside a spacecraft, the molecules of water would float around in small bubbles.
01:49:03But if you wet your toothbrush, it naturally holds the water in it, keeping it moist to receive your
01:49:07toothpaste. Oh, I was going to say funny socks. Glad that you beat me to it. Here are two things.
01:49:14First, there's not a lot of walking that goes on in space. People don't tend to touch the ground
01:49:19too much up there. And second, space isn't the best place to showcase your fashion style.
01:49:25Astronauts tend to use special clothes while they're out there, and it will be no different
01:49:28for you as a space vacationer. So socks will keep your feet warm and fuzzy, but they'll also speak
01:49:34for your fashion interest. Maybe one day you'll wear a smiley face sock, while the other day
01:49:38you'll go for a Grinch-themed one. Of course, socks are pretty helpful on board an aircraft.
01:49:43They'll make you slide through stuff more easily. Next time I go to the convenience store,
01:49:48I'll remember to buy some wet wipes for your space travel. Experienced space travelers do
01:49:52love them. And it wasn't even NASA that invented them, huh? Since water is a no-go inside a
01:49:58spaceship, the best option is wet wipes. Better yet, if they're scented. Astronauts even use
01:50:03different kinds of wipes. They buy the disinfecting ones and the ones to use on their bodies.
01:50:08Just make sure you know how to tell the difference between them when you're up there.
01:50:12There's a popular myth that says that NASA invented Velcro. But the truth is, we tend to
01:50:17think that everything that's used in space was invented by NASA for a very intelligent and
01:50:21specific purpose. It wasn't, though. Velcro was invented for mundane reasons back in the 1950s
01:50:27by a Swiss company. They were adopted by space travelers because they work as anti-gravity props.
01:50:32They don't erase gravity, of course. But you can glue Velcros into daily stuff and then hang them
01:50:37on the Velcro attached to the spaceship's walls. It's a very smart system. But best to take your
01:50:43own pair, right? If you're spending a long time in outer space, photographs from back home might
01:50:48come in handy. Choose them well, though. Since the spacecraft isn't all that big, the rest of
01:50:53the people on board will know which pictures you decided to bring along. Best to keep that Harry
01:50:58Stiles poster back in your earthly bedroom, right? Just bring real pictures of people that you know
01:51:03and love. Did I hear pizza? A huge part of traveling and exploring new places is being
01:51:10able to taste different flavors of food. In outer space, that's a bit more complicated. But hey, at
01:51:16least you can take some pizza with you. Well, actually, you'd have to have it delivered to you
01:51:21in a cargo ship. This way, ingredients would come fresh and ready to eat. It wouldn't be the first
01:51:26time that people in space tried eating earthling junk food. Some astronauts have even eaten crepes
01:51:31and hot dogs. Perhaps the best part of this pizza party would be that your food could float.
01:51:36Now, isn't this a super nice way to enjoy some earth delicacies? Hmm, as much as I understand
01:51:41your desire to pack a toilet with you on this space trip, that's virtually impossible. I mean,
01:51:45I understand you. Some people are attached to the toilets in their homes, and a space toilet is far
01:51:50from the ideal experience. But NASA has been improving their toilet system, and it's the best
01:51:56it's been over the years. So that will have to do. Here's something I would take as well. A laptop.
01:52:02But what good would it do in outer space, you might ask? Apparently, there is internet all
01:52:08over the International Space Station. So even if you're not spending most of your trip docked at
01:52:12the ISS, you could enjoy some Netflix on the days you spend over there. There is internet all over
01:52:17the ISS apparently. Crazy, huh? And speaking of leisure, I love that you would take a yo-yo.
01:52:23I'm not sure how efficient it would be in space, since there's no gravity to bounce it back and
01:52:27forth. But it would be nice to see how a yo-yo reacts in a gravity-free environment.
01:52:33Oh, I love jigsaw puzzles. This would definitely be on my list as well.
01:52:37Imagine trying to build a jigsaw puzzle that keeps floating in the air.
01:52:41Maybe you'll have to create a system to avoid the separate pieces floating aimlessly through
01:52:45the spacecraft. But imagine once you finish that turtle puzzle, it will look like it's swimming
01:52:49around the craft. You can't pack a window, but they sure are an important part of life in outer
01:52:55space. Let's keep in mind some of the rules of the trip. Each traveler will have the opportunity to
01:53:00do one spacewalk during their time in space. This is already huge. Consider yourself lucky.
01:53:09Some elite astronauts only get to do one spacewalk during their entire career.
01:53:13That is so because spacewalks are risky and require a lot of training.
01:53:17But you'll get your training once you're up there. The thing is,
01:53:20all other days, you'll be stuck inside a floating tin can. So windows will come a long way.
01:53:27They'll help to remind you where you are. They'll give you some perspective of space and Earth.
01:53:32Of course, you should take your camera. How else will you be able to register for this
01:53:36once-in-a-lifetime experience? Just make sure it works inside an aircraft or the ISS,
01:53:41and you're good to go. Hmm? Coffee? Don't worry. You don't need to pack your own.
01:53:47Up until recently, astronauts had to rely solely on instantly brewed cups of coffee when they were
01:53:52in space. But you're lucky that coffee experts have already solved this issue. Nowadays, there's
01:53:57the ISSpresso machine. The machine itself is similar in size to an earthling espresso machine.
01:54:04But to drink it, space travelers have to use a zero-gravity coffee cup together with a straw.
01:54:09If you try drinking it regularly, you wouldn't get hot coffee to hit you directly in your face.
01:54:14Instead, the coffee would be glued to the bottom of your cup. I have to say I really stand this
01:54:19invention. Last, but not least, why not pack your guitar with you? I noticed you were missing a
01:54:25musical instrument. If this was a conventional flight, you might have to pay extra for luggage.
01:54:30But since it's all included, don't be shy and take your guitar. Astronauts such as Chris Hadfield
01:54:36take their musical instruments with them when they're in space. He even became famous for his
01:54:40version of Bowie's Space Oddity, up to the point that Bowie himself told him he lived Chris's
01:54:45version of it. It helps to pass the time, but it's also great for socializing. Can you imagine a
01:54:50pretend bonfire happening in the void of space? I can, and it looks super cool. Well, I think you're
01:54:56set to go. I'll personally call NASA and ask them to pick you as one of the lucky space travelers.
01:55:02See you in outer space, amigo!
01:55:11At a distance of 640 light-years from the Sun, scientists discovered planet WASP-76b,
01:55:17where it rains iron. The planet is very close to its Sun and always turned to it in the same side.
01:55:24The term is tidally locked. The temperature on the sunny side is so high that metals melt and
01:55:30evaporate there. The other half of the planet is cool enough so that metals condense again and
01:55:35fall down as rain. Speaking of tidal locks, our Moon is the same way. There's no dark side to
01:55:41our satellite. It's just always turned to us with one side. When the Moon happens to be in between
01:55:47the Earth and the Sun, what we call its dark side becomes brightly lit. We just can't see it from
01:55:53our planet. Figures. A recent study claims that the Moon has a tail. And every month,
01:56:00it wraps around our planet like a scarf. A slender tail made up of millions of atoms of sodium
01:56:06follows Earth's natural satellite. And our planet regularly travels directly through it.
01:56:11Meteor strikes blast these sodium atoms out of the Moon's surface and further into space.
01:56:17You won't believe it, but the Moon seems to be shrinking. Earth's natural satellite is now 150
01:56:23feet smaller than it used to be hundreds of millions of years ago. The reason for this
01:56:28phenomenon might be the cooling of the Moon's insides. It could also explain the quakes shaking
01:56:34the surface of our planet's natural satellite. Astronomers have recently found out that Mars is
01:56:40seismically active. Mars quakes occur there on a regular basis. For several days every month,
01:56:46the Moon remains between the Sun and our planet. That's when Earth's gravity picks up that sodium
01:56:51tail. Our planet drags it into a long stripe that wraps around its atmosphere. This lunar tail is
01:56:58totally harmless. It's also invisible to the human eye, 50 times dimmer than what you can perceive.
01:57:05But on those rare days, high-powered telescopes can spot its faint yellowish glow in the sky.
01:57:11The tail looks like a gleaming spot that's 5 times the Moon's full diameter.
01:57:17Turns out, there are plenty of planets in the Universe, and even in the Milky Way galaxy,
01:57:21that have liquid or frozen water on them. The closest one is within our Solar System.
01:57:26It's Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Scientists are almost sure that, underneath its frozen surface,
01:57:33there's an actual ocean of water. But it's too soon to be hyped about possible life on such
01:57:38planets. Liquid water is only one of many things that have to come together for life to appear on
01:57:44a planet. A star in the galaxy GSN 069 is likely to turn into a planet the size of Jupiter in the
01:57:52next trillion years. It might happen because of the stars' regular encounters with a black hole.
01:57:58First, astronomers noticed unusual X-ray bursts that were strangely bright. They went off every
01:58:049 hours. After studying this phenomenon for some time, the scientists realized it was a star moving
01:58:11in a unique orbit around a black hole. The dazzling flashes? It was the material getting
01:58:16slurped off the star's surface by the black hole. It turned out that over millions of years,
01:58:22the black hole had already transformed the red giant into a white dwarf. And the process isn't
01:58:27going to stop whatsoever. Astronomers have found some traces of phosphine in the atmosphere of
01:58:33Venus. On our planet, this gas, colorless and flammable, is often found where microbes live.
01:58:40No wonder a new theory suggests that there might be life on Venus. But even if there was some life
01:58:45on the evening star, it could have only appeared in its atmosphere. Probably no living organism
01:58:52would be able to survive the planet's extreme environment. Venus' surface is extremely dry,
01:58:57there's no liquid water on the planet, and the pressure there is 90 times greater than that on
01:59:02Earth's surface. The temperatures often rise higher than 900 degrees. That's hot enough to
01:59:08melt some metals. As for vacations there, I'll pass. In fact, there's a place millions of light
01:59:14years away where there's a whole floating space cloud made entirely of water. There's so much of
01:59:20it that we could fill all our oceans 140 trillion times over. Slightly more than what we need.
01:59:27Water on Earth is actually a puzzle shrouded in mystery and covered with riddles. The most
01:59:32popular theory is that it was brought to our planet by icy comets and asteroids that left
01:59:38behind not only mighty craters, but the liquid substance thanks to which we can now thrive.
01:59:44But in space, there's a whole lot of organic matter, and under specific conditions,
01:59:49it could yield so much water it would be enough to fill our oceans thousands of times over.
01:59:54Researchers conducted an experiment in which they heated this organic matter and obtained
01:59:59clear water and oil. If this is confirmed in future studies, it could mean that even oil
02:00:05appeared on Earth not only thanks to fossilized remains of living beings, but came from outer
02:00:11space as well. And yet, there might just be about 6 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way
02:00:17galaxy alone. The latest data has shown that every fifth Sun-like star can have at least one planet
02:00:23in its habitable zone. And not just any planet, mind you. It has a rocky core and surface,
02:00:29and it's of comparable size to the Earth. Being inside the habitable zone of its star,
02:00:35such a planet would have high chances of becoming home to living creatures, microbes at least. And
02:00:41if there are billions of these planets in our galaxy, you could safely say that at least one
02:00:46of them is not only habitable, but inhabited already. And now, multiply this by the number
02:00:52of galaxies in the universe, also considering that many of them are much bigger than the Milky Way.
02:00:58This gives us billions upon billions of Sun-like stars and Earth-like planets,
02:01:03and some of them are surely more like ours than others. And get this, we might be able to walk
02:01:08upright because of supernova explosions. About 2.5 million years ago, a supernova sent cosmic
02:01:15rays to our planet. They triggered a series of electrical storms in the Earth's atmosphere,
02:01:20which turned into thunderstorms. Those, in turn, caused wildfires in northeast Africa,
02:01:25where our earlier ancestors lived. Fires turned the forest area into a savanna,
02:01:31the atmospheric pressure changed, and our ancestors had to stand on two legs to survive.
02:01:36The biggest explosion since the Big Bang was registered in 2019. This happened in the
02:01:41Ophiuchus Cluster, which unites thousands of galaxies. According to scientists, the blast
02:01:47was equal to 20 billion billion, that's 18 zeros, megaton explosions happening once a millisecond
02:01:53for 240 million years. Um, I'll have to trust that, my math is not that good.
02:01:59In 2019, NASA's InSight lander, whose goal was to study the interior of Mars,
02:02:04registered the first Marsquake ever. These quakes were coming fast, about two per day.
02:02:10Most of them were tiny, you wouldn't even feel them if they happened on our planet.
02:02:14So far, more than 300 Marsquakes have been detected. Those are the first quakes on any
02:02:20space body other than Earth and the Moon. Another mysterious phenomenon discovered by the mission
02:02:26was bizarre magnetic pulses. They occurred every midnight around the lander. It's still unclear
02:02:32what those pulses were. Maybe after midnight, they're going to let it all hang out, or something.
02:02:37Pluto's atmosphere rises much higher above the surface of the dwarf planet than, let's say,
02:02:42Earth's. It also has more than 20 layers, all of them freezing cold and extremely condensed.
02:02:49Remember the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth? Hey, I wasn't around then.
02:02:53But who could forget? There might've been another space show that ended badly for at least 75% of
02:02:59all life on our planet in the past. Roughly 360 million years ago, a supernova explosion occurred
02:03:06about 65 light-years away from us, and the cosmic rays sent by it swept away the ozone layer of our
02:03:12pretty blue ball. Wow, tough neighborhood. That's it for today! So, hey, if you pacified
02:03:20your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends! Or,
02:03:24if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

Recommended

2:12:17
I
Up next
Moon Facts That Will Make You Crave a Lunar Liftoff
Bright Side
2:02:49
75 Space Facts That Will Intrigue and Astonish You
Bright Side
2:09:39
The Largest Planet in the Universe + Other Astonishing Space Facts
Bright Side
2:06:05
50 Space Facts That Will Astonish and Astound You
Bright Side
2:05:26
Space Facts That Will Inspire You to Look Up
Bright Side
3:07:47
Everyday Facts That Will Make You Question Everything You Know
Bright Side
2:16:07
75 Facts That Will Make You Want More
Bright Side
2:08:28
These Phenomena Show How Little We Know About Earth
Bright Side
2:05:03
The Weirdest Stuff in Space: Cool Facts You Need to Know
Bright Side
2:03:46
A Human Free Earth And Other Wild What-If Scenarios
Bright Side
2:01:25
If You're a What-If Curious Mind, Click and Dive In
Bright Side
3:59:20
The Dark Side of the Moon You’ve Never Heard About
Bright Side
2:00:09
Black Hole That Shouldn't Exist + 99 Wild Space Facts
Bright Side
1:59:02
75 Intriguing Facts to Liven Up Any Conversation
Bright Side
2:04:20
A Cool Way to Check Your Attentiveness
Bright Side
2:08:35
These Facts Will Melt Your Brain in the Best Way Possible
Bright Side
2:04:25
Facts That Make You Realize We're Wonders of Weirdness
Bright Side
2:03:28
Little-Known Moon Facts That Will Have You Spaced Out
Bright Side
2:02:38
Terrifying Sea Creatures That Will Haunt Your Dreams
Bright Side
2:01:04
Travel Tips So Cool, You'll Thank Us Later
Bright Side
2:10:24
Amazing Body Facts You Won't Forget Tomorrow
Bright Side
2:06:05
50+ Things Your Everyday Stuff Can Do
Bright Side
2:02:33
If You See This, the Countdown Is On
Bright Side
2:01:54
Is Oumuamua Artificial? + 40 Intriguing Space Facts
Bright Side
2:00:46
100+ Uncommon Truths About the World Around Us
Bright Side