At first glance, space may look like a peaceful, quiet and romantic place, perfect for scientific observation of other stars and galaxies, but in practice it turns out that space is a rather strange and very cruel space that never ceases to amaze and often frighten even the most seasoned scientists. You will be surprised, but scientists have already predicted several terrible events, which with a high degree of probability should happen very close to us. And they can happen even while humanity will still exist.
Mars will get rings
New research indicates that Mars will one day cause the death of its nearest moon, Phobos. With a diameter of only 22 kilometers, Phobos is one of the two satellites of the Red Planet. With every century, Phobos' orbit is shrinking, which brings the satellite closer to Mars by about 2 centimeters. Unfortunately, after some time, the satellite will approach the planet so close that its gravitational forces will literally destroy it. According to preliminary forecasts of scientists, this process will take about 40 million years. Eventually Mars will lose one of its satellites, and the debris of Phobos will form a ring around the Red Planet, similar to one of those that Saturn has.
Over the next several million years, debris from the destroyed satellite will fall into the equatorial region of Mars. This, in turn, may turn out to be a problem for the Martian bases, which, perhaps, humanity will build by this time (and assuming that by this time humanity will survive at all).
This alleged event is of great interest to many scientists. After all, Phobos is a rather unique satellite in our solar system, since it belongs to a whole group of moons that have been or will be destroyed due to too close proximity to their planets. Phobos in this case is the last of these satellites. Its doom could provide scientists with valuable information about the youth of the solar system and the death of other moons.
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The moon will crack
In the distant future, our Moon will share a fate similar to Phobos, which, according to scientists, will also be destroyed, and as a result, it forms a ring of debris around the Earth. Fortunately for romantics and werewolves, this will happen very, very soon - in about five billion years.
Unlike the situation with Phobos, the culprit for the death of the satellite will not be its planet, but a large glowing red-hot ball in the center of our system. We are talking, of course, about the sun. Despite the fact that the Sun is now very stable, one day it will enter the phase of the red giant state, and then, most likely, the Moon will be split in half.
Scientists estimate that the Moon moves away from the Earth by about 4 centimeters every year. However, by the time the Sun becomes a red giant, the star's atmosphere will push the Moon so close to Earth that its tidal force will rip the Moon in half. The result is a pile of lunar debris that will form a ring about 37,000 kilometers in diameter. This ring will surround the Earth, and it will become like Saturn. As in the case of Phobos, the ring of debris will eventually disappear, marking the event with catastrophic meteor showers that will hit the Earth.
Mlekomeda
Our Milky Way galaxy will sooner or later collide with the neighboring galaxy Andromeda. The consequences of this event will be fatal. The Milky Way (as we know it now) has only about 4 billion years left to prepare for its demise.
The force of gravity is causing the Milky Way and Andromeda to converge at a speed of 402,000 kilometers per hour. When two spiral galaxies collide, a new galaxy is formed. This event will be of truly amazing proportions, even in astronomical terms. It will last about 1 billion years. All this time, galaxies will sometimes attract, then move away from each other in a cosmic dance, tearing themselves apart, until they ultimately merge into one new galaxy.
Despite the large number of stars in these galaxies, scientists believe that collisions between them are very unlikely. In other words, scientists want to say that the birth of a new galaxy - Milkomed, as astronomers call it - will not cause the death of the Earth and even our solar system.
Nevertheless, by this time the Sun will be so hot that the oceans on Earth have long since evaporated. Milkomeda itself will become an elliptical galaxy with a reddish tint. The Earth in it will be located almost at the very edge, along with the entire solar system.
Killing cloud
When scientists compiled simulation models of the further evolution of our solar system, they found that at some point in history our system would be exposed to a deadly cosmic fog, tiny particles of which can be fatal to all life on Earth.
When this murderous cloud of dust and gas reaches us, then this event (of course, except for the death of all living things) will happen without any fanfare. The cloud will not cover our Sun and will not enter our system, as they say, with thunder and lightning. All mortal danger will lie in its density. It will be at least 1000 times larger than anything that the Earth currently has to move through within the solar system. This cloud will behave like a physical force that will rob our planet of the heliosphere, Earth's protective shell that protects us from the deadly rays of the sun.
When the fog reaches Earth, the dust and gas it contains will deprive our atmosphere of oxygen. Cosmic rays will fall on the Earth, whose background radiation will threaten all living things. According to scientists' forecasts, this disaster is one of the closest to us in terms of time. Researchers say we are about 4 light years from this event. By cosmic standards, this is actually one second. However, by human standards, this murderous corrosive cloud shouldn't wait at least several millennia.
The most powerful geomagnetic storm
In September 1859, an amateur astronomer named Richard Carrington discovered the most powerful solar storm in history. This phenomenon was called the "Carrington Event". A large solar flare caused a powerful coronal mass ejection (matter from the solar corona), which headed straight for the Earth.
At that time, only the telegraph systems of Europe and North America were affected. In addition, northern lights were observed all over the planet. However, in the modern world, a repetition of the Carrington Event has far more disastrous consequences. The entire planet's energy system is likely to simply burn out; millions of homes will be left without electricity. Rebuilding damaged power grids will require many months of work. People will recover from financial losses only after a few years. Storing food and medicine will become incredibly difficult. All electrical services and services, including communications, will be severely damaged, and possibly destroyed.
It is frightening that similar phenomena occurred after 1859 and may soon be repeated again. In 2012, the Earth, one might say, got off lightly when a coronal mass ejection in terms of power above the "Carrington Event" missed the Earth. Scientists believe that if the release happened earlier, society would still recover from the damage caused.
The modern world is particularly vulnerable because it relies so heavily on electricity. In addition, science has not yet come up with a way to reflect such phenomena or even predict them (the maximum is possible to find out an hour before the event itself).
Between 1996 and 2010, there were 15,000 coronary mass ejections. Scientists believe that it is a matter of time (perhaps in the next decade) until the Carrington Event hits the Earth right on target.
Death stars
A huge cluster of various meteorites and asteroids, called the Oort cloud, can form a "bubble" around our Sun. This will happen if the star has to move through the cloud or simply approach it at such a distance that the gravitational forces of the star will pull the objects contained in it. The displaced objects could enter the inner solar system and possibly wreak havoc among the planets.
Scientists have already identified several of these "death stars" targeting the Oort cloud. The most dangerous of these is the orange dwarf HIP-85605. There is a 90% chance that this star will have to pass through the cloud. Fortunately, this will not happen until 240,000 years from now.
Gliese 710 is another star with similar intentions. The star will make a possible neighbor visit in about a thousand years or so. Moreover, over the next two million years, such visits to the outer boundaries of the solar system are expected from at least 12 stars.
The chances of a collision between an Oort cloud object and the Earth are small, but not impossible. There are two impact craters on our planet, which are most likely associated with the star HIP103738, which passed very closely (by astronomical standards) near the Sun almost 4 million years ago.
Dwarf parasite
Approximately 3260 light years from the solar system (which is very close by astronomical standards) is the binary system T Compass, consisting of a sun-like star and a white dwarf. They are linked by a very parasitic relationship. The white dwarf sucks out the hydrogen-rich gas belonging to its neighbor, and is illuminated every 20 years with very powerful flares.
For astronomers, these events appear so far only as bright blue flares. However, such parasitic relationships will become a real problem when their ultimate result is the formation of a supernova, after the white dwarf has accumulated too much mass, which it steals from its neighbor. The event will become truly spectacular. As a result of this, not only will the white dwarf itself die, but also a danger will appear for the Earth, as it reaches an energy equal to 1000 solar flares. It is likely that this will destroy our ozone layer.
Scientists have calculated that the death of the white dwarf will occur in about 10 million years. However, if the white dwarf begins to gain mass faster than those figures that were calculated by scientists, then a supernova explosion may occur much earlier.
Collision of planets
Planetary orbital paths are unstable and become even less stable over time. When scientists ran computer simulations to figure out the future of planetary orbits, they found something interesting, if not exciting.
In a couple of billion years, there will be some fraction of the likelihood of planetary collisions within our solar system. The orbit of Mercury, for example, orbiting the Sun, can increase so much that the planet will be in the same orbit with Venus, which is hello to collision. If such a meeting takes place tangentially, then this can lead to one of two scenarios: either Mercury will be thrown towards the Sun, or it will go straight to the Earth.
Scientists have conducted a total of 2,500 simulations of various planetary orbits, and 25 options have indicated such drastic and dangerous changes in the orbit of Mercury. In addition, within the framework of the simulation, scientists have established that there will be no threat to other planets if a direct impact occurs between Mercury and Venus, or Mercury falls on the Sun.
In an even less likely scenario, Mercury's orbit could be destabilized by a close pass near the edge of Jupiter's gravitational forces. In this case, Mars will suffer. The red planet will become a kind of ricochet heading towards the Earth. Our planet, unfortunately, will not be able to reflect such a blow. When passing by the Earth, Mars will cause a collision between the Earth and Venus, changing the orbit of the latter. This event will become the largest space billiards table in which there will be no winners.
Catastrophic changes in the state of the vacuum
Scientists believe that there are several options through which the entire universe can be destroyed. And although most of these options will theoretically become possible after humanity is likely to die out long ago, there is an exception, which scientists have called "Great Change."
This event can be explained by a simple experiment with water. If the glass and the water poured into it are completely clean, then the water in it will never freeze, even if the temperature around it is below freezing point. Yes, this water will cool very much, but it will still remain in liquid form, because it will not have any holding elements to form ice. However, one has only to throw a piece of ice into it - and the water will freeze very quickly. The fact is that the Universe can be cooled to the same state, but instead of water, vacuum plays the main role here.
Quantum physics insists that even a complete vacuum contains particles of energy. However, the danger can be represented by a vacuum, which can contain less energy than the one that currently exists in the Universe. If two vacuum states with different energy reserves collide, the result of this meeting will be catastrophic.
Like water, our Universe (which is a vacuum with a lot of energy) is just waiting for a trigger that will trigger a reaction to change its state. If a vacuum with lower energy indices somehow appears in the Universe, then a bubble will very quickly form around it, which will begin to expand at the speed of light. On its way, this bubble will destroy absolutely everything: people, planets, galaxies and, ultimately, the entire Universe.
Wolf-Rayet Star
The constellation Sagittarius contains a potential threat that could send all life on Earth back to the Mesozoic era. Inside the fiery spiral, called WR 104, there are two dying stars orbiting each other. The fate of both stars is already predetermined. They should both go supernova. The fact is that one of the stars is, as they say, on its very last gasp, in fact, before the supernova explosion itself. This star belongs to the Wolf-Rayet class of stars and is a cosmic time bomb.
This particular Wolf-Rayet star will go supernova in the next few hundred thousand years. And because of its location, the most powerful gamma rays that a star literally shoots out at the last moment of its life can be directed towards Earth. Gamma-ray bursts (or gamma-ray bursts) are currently considered by scientists as the most powerful and large-scale cosmic explosive emissions in the Universe. A gamma-ray burst lasting one minute can contain as much energy as the Sun can generate in just its entire life cycle of 10 billion years!
Since these rays move at the speed of light, we may not even have time (or rather, we will not be able to) see them. Although the spiral star WR 104 is about 8,000 light-years away, it has the potential to cause disastrous consequences for life on Earth. If these gamma rays hit us, then we will talk about a large-scale extinction. Agricultural disasters, acid rain, and as a bonus, hunger for survivors (if any) await us.
A cooler climate and a weaker ozone layer will allow more harmful ultraviolet rays to enter our atmosphere. All those who live on the side of the Earth that will face the outbreak at the moment of impact will experience a radiation effect similar in volume to a nuclear explosion. The survivors will very soon die from radiation sickness.