The universe is full of mysteries, and explanations are sometimes crazier than observations. And if at times it seems that decisions are literally taken out of the hat, hypotheses and theories are always based on cold, hard science. Astronomical observations are especially difficult - after all, we cannot, roughly speaking, reach the star. At best, our picture of the cosmic world is theoretical. How this theory helps in practice is another matter.
Once upon a time, dark matter was "more compliant"
Dark matter remains annoyingly mysterious due to its refusal to interact with other particles and forces. A group of eighteen scientists formulated an idea to explain the shy nature of the mysterious substance. They speculated that dark matter was not always a cosmic hermit. When the universe was younger, in its hot plasma state, dark matter happily mixed with ordinary matter, thanks to the hot frenzy surrounding it. But as the Universe cooled down, dark matter calmed down and lost its ability to influence electromagnetic forces.
This behavior of dark matter can be explained by the play of quarks, elementary particles that bind together and form hadrons useful to us, such as neutrons and protons. At low temperatures, quarks coagulate into the aforementioned large units, but at high temperatures they can indiscriminately interact with other particles. Interestingly, the congregations of ordinary and dark matter are so similar in size that in the early stages some balance could be reached between them.
Galactic wormholes
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Scientists say that wormholes are not so impossible - you just need to get some exotic matter. Unfortunately, we are in dire need of ingredients, and it is unclear whether such matter can exist and not explode. Fortunately, there is a second way to get a handy wormhole. According to scientists in India, Italy and North America, only a colossal mass is needed … as in the centers of galaxies such as the Milky Way, for example.
We live in the Milky Way galaxy, so it can be assumed that our galactic center, which is only 25,000 light years away, meets the conditions necessary for a wormhole. This region is densely packed with matter not only from stars, but also from gas clouds and the giant black hole Sagittarius A *, as well as hidden black matter. All this mass is concentrated in a relatively small galactic center, and perhaps it will be enough to roll space-time into itself, creating a shortcut to the distant part of the universe.
This idea was born at the junction of the secret knowledge of general relativity and the density map of galactic dark matter. It could be that countless galaxies secretly serve as wormholes, connecting the universe with an invisible "galactic transport system."
Volcanic asteroids
A catch of over 600 space rocks, known as the Almahata-Sitta meteorites, separated from asteroid 2008 TC3 and fell into the Nubian Desert in Sudan in 2008. And he opened before us an unexpected picture of the early solar system: just 6.5 million years after the formation of the first solid bodies of the solar system, the vicinity of the Earth could be filled with flaming volcanic asteroids.
Unique specimens of Almahata-Sitta contain various minerals that have never been found in one piece before, including silicon-rich urelites. According to astronomers, they are born in the process of almost instantaneous crystallization during the course of a violent volcanic event, which rules out the possibility that these rare rocks were formed as a result of the explosive forces accompanying meteor impacts.
Astronomers speculate that there was at least one volcanically active asteroid in the young solar system. But how did the asteroid become volcanic? Billions of years ago, when the solar system was just erupting milk teeth, it was a boiling soup of colliding solids. This cosmic billiard effect, and the residual energy left over from the catastrophic crashes, turned asteroid 2008 TC3 (and many others) into molten hell.
Hairy dark matter
Despite the fact that we have never directly observed dark matter, simulations and observations have revealed some of its features. The mysterious substance is not only electromagnetically apathetic, but also slightly lazy, rarely getting out of its gravitational bed. Therefore, the proposal by Gary Preso from NASA JPL may seem strange: he believes that particles of dark matter can organize themselves into cosmic strings.
Gigantic streams of ordered particles of dark matter - if dark matter really is made up of particles - creep across our solar system like chocolate streaks in yogurt. When the fibers of dark matter collide with a large and solid object (like the Earth), they envelop it like hair. If dark matter could be seen, the Earth would look like a planetary porcupine.
And just as hair grows out of our heads, each fiber of dark matter starts from a dense and thick root and ends with a sharp tip. If this hypothesis is confirmed, we will have a great chance to study dark matter. Presumably, this hair extends a third of the distance to the moon.
Hungry Sun
By studying other solar systems, astronomers have found many planetary bodies orbiting their stars much closer than Mercury to the Sun. In our solar system, there are no significant objects in the vicinity of the Sun. What?
A recent study by UNLV's Rebecca Martin and Mario Livio suggests that planetary bodies were in this now empty region of space a long time ago. They formed after collecting the debris of the inner solar system, and then were tragically devoured by the hungry Sun, which, like the titan Chronos, devoured its own children.
Observations of distant solar systems and a suspicious void between our home star and the smallest planet have led scientists to conclude that Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars once shared an arena with a fifth planetary sibling. According to scientists, the thick disk of space debris located between the Sun and Mercury lasted long enough to cool down and collect into a dense super-earth. But this planet did not have to exist for long within the Sun and very soon it succumbed to the inexorable gravity and appetite of the sun.
Time ago
Time seems simple enough, but if you think about it, it is infinitely complex and constantly confuses even the brightest minds. How did time begin? Why does it only flow forward? If the direction of time is determined, why do fundamental laws work so well when physicists introduce time backward into them? One hypothesis offers at least a partial answer to this puzzle: our universe is not alone.
Time in our universe moves forward due to entropy. From the very beginning of the Universe, when everything was collected at one point, such conditions were formed that everything should go in the direction of disorganization, and so the time was directed. This is the current interpretation, anyway. One hypothesis suggests that at the "moment" of the Big Bang, a sister universe was born, a strange place with a strange time that acts according to gravity, not thermodynamics. Moreover, in this parallel existence, the arrow of time is reversed to compensate for our progressive seconds, minutes and hours.
In a very small-scale partial view of a 1000-particle universe, physicists have observed that gravity appears to be able to influence the organization of particles in any time direction. Another theoretical study has shown that particles can experience reverse entropy. Ultimately, the researchers hypothesized a primary rift that split time into two opposite directions.
Earth's orbital tilt
The land is strange. It is the only planet known to us that is inhabited by ungrateful life forms, and its orbit is unexpectedly tilted in relation to the equator of the Sun. But orbital oddity is far from a local mystery: this has been observed in other bodies as well. Across the universe, astronomers have observed many gas giants whose orbits are strangely tilted relative to their parent stars.
This should not be the case, assuming that the planets formed from debris disks around their stars, as planets usually form. Caltech astronomer Konstantin Batygin believes that these shifts are caused by soft (and sometimes not so) gravitational shocks of partner stars. Since most stellar systems are binary, this could explain the many tilted orbits.
Remarkably, this may indirectly indicate that the Sun once had the honor of dancing from another star. She flew away long ago, but left a living legacy - the strange orbit of the Earth.
The very first stars
When the Big Bang suddenly spewed itself out almost 14 billion years ago, it came in the form of hydrogen, helium and lithium. The heavy elements that we are used to appeared only with the very first stars.
In search of the very first protagonists of the Universe, astronomers are trying to sniff out objects with a deficiency of the most complex elements. One of the standouts was recently spotted by the ESO's Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. From deep in space, very faint photons have been retrieved from the galaxy CR7, a 13 billion-year-old relic and the brightest galaxy ever observed.
CR7 does not mean Cristiano Ronaldo, but COSCOM Redshift 7, an identifier of how intensely light has stretched out during its painfully long journey from the early Universe to telescope astronomers. Thus, his redness betrays his age. CR7 is located in an extremely crowded region of space in the constellation Sextant.
This ancient galaxy is full of helium, but, oddly enough, does not have heavy elements. Such a discrepancy may indicate that astronomers are observing the very first generation of stars. The so-called stellar populations III are the progenitors of heavier elements that condense into planets, other stars and meatbags.
Mega Rings
A young gas giant orbiting young star J1407, which is only 434 light years from Earth, has baffled astronomers with its anomalous light curve. A planet like this, much larger than even Jupiter, is expected to reflect an enormous amount of its star's light. But instead, it exhibits periodic eclipses that are unlike anything at all.
The culprit? The giant ring system is 200 times larger than that of Saturn, surrounding the planet J1407b. Only this feature can explain the nature of eclipses, which sometimes persist for several weeks, but allow a random photon to slip through, which would be impossible in the case of an eclipse by a solid. This makes sense given the grainy nature of the rings.
Each massive ring is tens of millions of kilometers in diameter, and J1407b is surrounded by at least 30 such icy rocky rings. In addition, astronomers have discovered gaps in these rings, most likely caused by the exmoons sweeping away debris as they rotate. Unfortunately, all these rings are only temporary and will one day turn into satellites.
Asteroids and dark matter
Several asteroids and subsequent extinction have paved our evolutionary path through the bones of powerful creatures that would never agree to the current dominance of man. Why do these falls occur at an enviable frequency? Aliens put us on the space counter?
The answer, according to Harvard astrophysicists Lisa Randall and Matthew Rees, lies in dark matter: a thick layer of dark matter 35 light years thick directs space rockets towards Earth. Located in the central plane of the Milky Way, this layer pulls together all kinds of asteroids and comets and directs them to our defenseless planet. Based on the fact that large meteorites fall approximately every 30 million years, astrophysicists believe their hypothesis is more than plausible as an explanation for extinctions on Earth.
ILYA KHEL