I think we all agree that space is a totally insane place. And exactly as close and understandable to us as distant and unimaginable. It may seem to you that the landscape on a planet with two suns is the same as somewhere beyond the Moscow Ring Road, but this is the merit of science fiction writers. In fact, there are stranger things in space. Let's take a look at them.
Falling stars
I think everyone knows that stars do not fall - they are just meteors that burn out upon entering the atmosphere. But what many don't know is that really shooting stars also exist, and they are called moving stars. These are large balls of incandescent gas racing through space at a speed of millions of kilometers per hour.
When a binary star system is swallowed up by a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy, one of the two partners is swallowed and the other is thrown away at high speed. Imagine a huge ball of gas, four times the size of our Sun, rushing at great speed.
Hell planet
Promotional video:
Gliese 581 is simply "hell of a hell". Seriously. The planet with all its nature seeks to kill you. Despite this, scientists have established that this hell may be the most likely candidate for future colonization. The planet revolves around a red dwarf, many times smaller than our Sun, the luminosity of which is only 1.3% of our star. The planet is much closer to its star than we are to ours. Because of this, it is in a state of blocked tide: one side of the planet is always facing the star, while the other looks out into space. Like our moon.
Tidal blockage has led to interesting features. If you go out on the side of the planet facing the Sun, you will surely melt like a snowman. On the other side of the planet, you will definitely freeze instantly. However, it is theoretically possible to live in the "twilight zone" between the two extremes.
Life on Gliese 581, if any, has its own difficulties. The planet revolves around a red dwarf, which means there is a red sky above the planet, thanks to the lower frequencies of the visible spectrum. A living hell. Photosynthetic elements will have to get used to the constant bombardment of infrared radiation, which will stain them deep black. No salad would look delicious on a planet like this.
Castor system
If one or even two suns are not enough for you, look at the Castor system. One of the two brightest points in the constellation Gemini in our night sky, this system is still brighter than its partner. The fact is that the Castor system is not one, not two, but all six stars orbiting a common center of mass. Three binary star systems revolve around one another - two hot and bright A-type stars and four M-type red dwarfs. Taken together, these six stars produce 52.4 times the luminosity of our Sun.
Space raspberry and space rum
For the past few years, scientists have been studying the dust cloud at the center of our Milky Way. If God is out there somewhere, he has a good imagination: this dust cloud called Sagittarius B2 smells like rum and tastes like raspberries.
This cloud of gas is composed mostly of ethyl formate, which gives raspberries their flavor and rum their distinctive odor. The giant cloud contains billions, billions and more billions of this substance - and it would be wonderful if it were not saturated with particles of propylcyanide. The creation and distribution of these complex molecules remains a mystery to scientists, so the intergalactic restaurant will remain closed for now.
Planet of Searing Ice
Remember Gliese? This "hell" that we visited earlier? Let's go back to the same solar system. As if one murderous planet wasn't enough. Gliese supports a planet made almost entirely of ice - with a temperature of 439 degrees Celsius. Gliese 436 b is a hot ice cube. The only reason this ice remains solid is because of the gigantic amount of water present on the planet. Gravity pulls it all in the direction of the core, squeezing the water molecules so tightly that they cannot evaporate.
Diamond planet
This planet will adorn the neck of any girl, and maybe even some Bill Gates. 55 Cancri e - made entirely of crystal diamond - would be worth $ 26.9 million. Probably even the Sultan of Brunei dreams of this at night.
The giant diamond planet was once part of a binary star system until its partner began to devour it. However, the star was unable to carry its carbon core with it, and the carbon simply turned into diamond under the influence of heat and tremendous pressure - with a surface temperature of 1,648 degrees Celsius, conditions were almost ideal.
A third of the planet's mass is pure diamond. While Earth is covered in water and is abundant in oxygen, this planet is made up of graphite, diamond, and several silicates. The huge gem is twice the size of the Earth and eight times heavier, which ranks it among the "super-earths".
Himiko Cloud
If there is an object somewhere that can show us the origins of the primordial galaxy, then this is it. The Himiko Cloud is the most massive object ever discovered in the early universe, and dates back only 800 million years after the Big Bang. The Himiko Cloud amazes scientists with its gigantic size, about half the size of the Milky Way.
Himiko dates back to the so-called reionization era, or the period from 200 million to one billion years after the Big Bang - and this is the first glimpse of early galaxy formation that scientists have been able to observe. Previously, it was assumed that the Himiko cloud may be one large galaxy with a mass of about 40 billion from the sun, however, according to the latest data, there may be three galaxies in the Himiko cloud at once, and relatively young ones.
The largest water reservoir in the universe
Twelve billion light-years away, in the heart of a quasar, is the largest water reservoir in the universe. It contains approximately 140 trillion times more water than Earth's oceans. The water, unfortunately, takes the form of a massive cloud of gas several hundred light years in diameter. It is located next to a colossal black hole in the heart of a quasar, and the hole, in turn, is two hundred billion times larger than our Sun and at the same time constantly spews energy equivalent to that which would produce 1000 trillion suns. Well, this is for you to roughly imagine the scale of the local brew.
The strongest electric current in the universe
Just a couple of years ago, scientists stumbled upon an electric current on a cosmic scale: 10 ^ 18 amperes, or roughly one trillion lightning. Lightning is believed to originate in a huge black hole in the center of the galaxy, the core of which is believed to contain a "powerful space jet." Apparently, the black hole's powerful magnetic field allows it to launch these lightning bolts through dust and gas over a distance of over 150,000 light years. And if you think that our galaxy is large - one such lightning is one and a half times its size.
A huge group of quasars
Perhaps the Himiko cloud is large enough - half the size of our galaxy. What about a structure that is so huge that it breaks the traditional principles and laws of modern astronomy? This structure is the Large Quasar Group (LQG).
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is only a hundred thousand light-years across. Think about it: if something happens at one end of the galaxy, it will take a hundred thousand years for light to reach the other end. When we see an event on the other side of the galaxy, it means that the event happened when the human race was just beginning to form. Well, now take that distance and multiply it by forty thousand.
The huge group of quasars is 4 billion light years across. A cluster of seventy-four quasars violates the rules of standard astrophysics, since the maximum size of any cosmic structure can be only 1.2 billion light years across.
Scientists have absolutely no idea how this gigantic structure formed, as they previously knew clusters only a hundred million light-years across. The giant structure absolutely does not care about the laws of physics, which say that when viewed from afar, the universe looks relatively homogeneous.
And in November 2013, an even more severe structure of the Universe was discovered - the Great Wall of Hercules - the Northern Crown. It spans over 10 billion light years across.
Ilya Khel