Stars are some of the most mysterious things in the universe, and Przybylski’s Star (HD 101065) is one of the weirdest of all! Discovered back in the 1960s, astronomers were blown away by its super-rare elements, ones so strange they almost shouldn’t exist. But wait, it gets weirder—recent research shows the star isn’t just made of odd stuff; it also moves in a way scientists can’t explain. And Przybylski’s Star isn’t the only cosmic oddball. Take Tabby’s Star (EPIC 204278-988)—it randomly dims by as much as 22% for weeks at a time, and no one knows why! Some people even wonder if it’s aliens (though probably not). Then there’s WD J0914+1914, known as the “Diamond Star,” because its core is literally a giant diamond bigger than you can imagine. #brightside
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Animation is created by Bright Side.
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Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Listen to Bright Side on:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/idhttps-podcasts-apple-com-podcast-bright-side/id1554898078
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https://www.eastnews.ru
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FunTranscript
00:00Chbilsky's star was discovered in the 1960s.
00:04Since then, astronomers have been intrigued by its unique chemical makeup.
00:08The star is suspected to contain ultra-rare elements verging on the almost impossible.
00:15Using special equipment on the European Southern Observatory's telescope in Chile, researchers
00:20took readings of the star's magnetic field.
00:23They discovered that the star's rotation period, which is the time it takes to finish
00:27one revolution on its axis, stretches out over almost 200 years, which is super slow.
00:35Of course, there are even more bizarre objects called app stars.
00:40They're a chemically interesting category of stars that rotate extremely slowly, with
00:44one rotation taking up to 1,000 years.
00:48What makes these stars even more peculiar is a wide range of chemical elements astronomers
00:53detect when analyzing their stellar spectrums.
00:57But if we look at Chbilsky's star, we'll see that it's both similar to and different
01:02from other app stars.
01:04It contains unusually low amounts of iron and nickel.
01:07Our sun has 10 times more and incredibly high amounts of rare, heavy elements.
01:13Those might include strontium, cesium, and neodymium, as well as at least two undiscovered
01:19elements.
01:20They wouldn't occur through any natural processes we currently understand.
01:25There's a hypothesis that the presence of such heavy elements could be caused by a star's
01:30unseen companion, like a neutron star.
01:33Some people go as far as to say that such an incredible chemical makeup could be a sign
01:38of an alien technosignature.
01:41Any specialist will tell you that it's the strangest stellar spectrum they've ever observed.
01:46Some even claim that there are so many chemical indicator lines you can't immediately understand
01:50what you're looking at while observing the star's spectrum.
01:54Chbilsky's star also contains high levels of radioactive elements that take a few thousand
02:00years to decay.
02:02And here's where another mystery lies.
02:04They should have long vanished from the star.
02:08After all, it's almost a billion and a half years old.
02:11Scientists haven't managed to figure out the reason for the presence of these elements
02:15yet.
02:16Maybe it's the combination of the star's rare qualities.
02:19It spins very slowly, it's hot, and it has a strong magnetic field.
02:24This could raise to the surface atoms that would normally be mixed inside the star.
02:30There's another theory that explains the presence of these radioactive elements.
02:34They could be there as if they were themselves decayed forms of ultra-heavy elements that
02:38we haven't discovered yet.
02:40So far, no one has been able to prove this theory.
02:44Even the discovery of Chbilsky's star's super-slow rotation doesn't bring us closer to the answer.
02:49It's obvious that there's a lot to learn about the bizarre star, and who knows which secret
02:54it still has up its sleeve.
02:57Another not-less-mysterious star is called Tabby's star.
03:01It's a sun-like orb around 1,500 light-years away from Earth, sitting in Cygnus the Swan.
03:09Unlike our sun, this star dims randomly by 5-22%, and it lasts for days at a time.
03:16The reason could be a giant planet passing in front of the star, but then the eclipses
03:21would be more regular and not so random.
03:25And if it was a Jupiter-sized planet, it would also need to block around 1% of the star's
03:30light, which would make it unique and unlike anything we know.
03:34After American astronomer Tabitha Boyajian discovered the star's massive and irregular
03:39fluctuations in 2015, further observations followed.
03:44They show that the overall magnitude of the star has been gradually dimming over the years.
03:50Some theories trying to explain this phenomenon are quite believable.
03:54For example, some scientists think that these brightness changes are intrinsic to the star.
03:59They could be caused by its magnetism, or changes in heat flow in its interior.
04:04Other ideas are more daring, including some kinds of activity of an extraterrestrial civilization.
04:11One of the most plausible theories, though, is that the dimming is caused by the chunks
04:15of an orphaned exomoon.
04:17It could have been pulled away from its parent planet by gravitational interactions with
04:22Tabby's star.
04:23As the moon approached the star, it exploded, sending dust clouds into stellar orbit.
04:29These countless chunks of rock and dust are now moving between Tabby's star and Earth
04:33in a giant, clumpy cloud.
04:36It could indeed explain why we observe such irregular brightness variations.
04:40Usually, when astronomers spot a spiral arm structure, it turns out to be a galaxy.
04:47But not in this case.
04:48SAO 206462, located 460 light-years away from our home planet, is a young star.
04:56It's surrounded by a circular disk of gas and clearly defined spiral arms.
05:01The bizarre star was spotted during an exoplanet search with the help of the Subaru telescope
05:06located in Hawaii.
05:08Instead of finding fully-fledged planets around a young star, astronomers discovered planets
05:13that were still in formation.
05:16These baby planets are growing out of the disk of gas and dust surrounding the star.
05:21The disk extends out to around 80 astronomical units, which is twice the orbit of Pluto.
05:28At least two of these planets have stretched the disk into its extremely unusual spiral shape.
05:34A different planet is responsible for each arm.
05:40In our home galaxy, there is a giant star that is a real stellar wind machine.
05:46At the moment, this monster is just waiting to burst and send a wave of radiation and
05:51hot gas towards Earth.
05:53All because it's a Wolf-Rayet, a star which is at that precarious point before it goes
05:58supernova.
06:00Its core doesn't have any more helium left to burn.
06:03Instead, the star is forced to churn through much heavier elements, for example, oxygen.
06:09Unfortunately, it disrupts the careful balance between gravity and fusion, leading to the
06:14star shedding its layers.
06:16When the oxygen eventually runs out, the star will go supernova.
06:20But this time, the show will be different.
06:23The thing is, WR104 is one half of a binary pair, which means that two stars are feeding
06:30into each other, spinning up their stellar winds.
06:34It will continue until they start going incredibly fast.
06:38Is the potential explosion going to harm Earth?
06:41On the one hand, we're far away enough for even a directed supernova to not hurt our
06:46planet.
06:47At the same time, there is a threat of an extremely dangerous gamma-ray burst.
06:51Luckily for us, it takes a very specific and unlikely train of events for a Wolf-Rayet
06:56to produce a gamma-ray burst.
06:58Plus, even if it does, the star might be pointed far away enough for the danger to miss us.
07:04Anyway, astronomers are still watching the star, just in case.
07:09A star sitting in the constellation of Centaurus keeps a secret not many know about.
07:14At first glance, it looks like a dim white dwarf.
07:18But when astronomers analyzed it, it turns out to be incredibly dense.
07:22Take the mass of the Sun and cram it into something that is only a third the diameter
07:27of Earth.
07:28This space wonder is also rather cool.
07:31Its core temperature is a mere 11,900 degrees Fahrenheit.
07:35For comparison, the Sun's core temperature is around 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.
07:41At such low temperatures, stars begin to vibrate.
07:44And then, scientists can use these vibrations to sneak a peek inside a star.
07:49And in the case with the star in question, which was later named Lucy, they discovered
07:54that its carbon core had crystallized.
07:57In other words, it formed a giant diamond 10 billion trillion trillion carats in size.
08:02Since the discovery of Lucy, a few other crystallized stars have been spotted.
08:07Some of them have diamond hearts the size of our planet.
08:10The last bizarre star for today is called Vega, and it's squashed.
08:15The star's bulging waistline is caused by an extremely high spin rate.
08:19Vega rotates once every 12 and a half hours.
08:22This pushes the material around its equator outward.
08:25It also leads to the phenomenon known as gravity darkening when stellar material further from
08:30the center of the star experiences less gravity, which makes it cooler and darker.
08:36So when Vega faces Earth pull and on, it looks perfectly round.
08:41But the dark halo around its middle is a telltale sign of Vega's oblate shape.