We know a lot about space, but since everything is relative in the Universe, we can say with confidence that we know practically nothing about space. And it is not at all necessary that this is bad, because each new discovery continues to delight us and captures us at least until the next major discovery. Today we'll talk about the top ten most interesting space phenomena discovered recently.
Artificial "space shield" of the Earth
Researchers at NASA recently discovered that the global use of radio transmission has a surprising and very practical consequence - the creation of an ultra-low frequency bubble around the Earth, protecting us from some forms of cosmic radiation.
Our planet has the so-called natural Van Alen belts, areas where high-energy charged particles of solar radiation that have penetrated into the magnetosphere are accumulated and retained. However, scientists noted that the electromagnetic force accumulated on Earth formed a kind of low-frequency barrier, reflecting some of the high-energy cosmic particles that try to bombard the Earth every day.
The basis for this barrier is the remnants of space electromagnetic debris left over from the days of nuclear tests during the atomic era. In addition, the Earth (or rather we) has also been actively radiating radio waves into space for more than 100 years. Well, the picture is completed by our numerous power systems scattered all over the world and emitting radio waves of a certain range.
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Galaxy with a double galactic ring
Galaxy PGC 1000714 is perhaps the most unique galaxy ever discovered. It belongs to the so-called Hog's type and has a ring surrounding it, like the planet Saturn, only, of course, on a galactic scale.
Of all galaxies known to us, only 0.1 percent have rings. What makes PGC 1000714 unique is that it has one of its kind not one, but two galactic rings at once.
The rings surround the core of the galaxy, which researchers estimate is 5.5 billion years old. It is replete with aging stars, whose light goes into the red range of the spectrum. Around the main ring is a much younger outer ring, 0.13 billion years old. Hotter, younger blue stars fill it.
When scientists observed the galaxy in different ranges of the spectrum, they found a completely unexpected imprint of the second, inner ring, located closer to the galactic core, comparable in age and not at all connected with the outer ring. Considering the fact that the vast majority of galaxies belong to the classes of elliptical and spiral galaxies, PGC 1000714 can retain its uniqueness for a long time.
Planet hotter than stars
The hottest exoplanet ever discovered turned out to be hotter than most of the stars we know. The temperature of Kelt-9b is 3777 degrees Celsius, and that's just on its dark side! On the side facing its star, the temperature rises to about 4327 degrees Celsius. It is almost as hot as the surface of the Sun!
The exoplanet Kelt-9b orbits Type-A star Kelt-9 and is located about 650 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Type-A stars are considered by scientists as one of the hottest, while Kelt-9 is still only about 300 million years old. Over time, the star will expand and eventually actually come into contact with the planet Kelt-9b.
By that time, the planet is likely to be no more than a bare solid core, because the star's radiation burns out about 10 million tons of the planet's matter every second, which makes Kelt-9b throw out a giant tail, like comets.
Silent supernova
You don't need to have a space-distorting supernova or a collision of two incredibly dense objects like neutron stars to create a black hole, because it turns out that stars themselves can turn into black holes.
Scientists have long suspected that this is possible. At least our computer models told us about it clearly. But in practice, this phenomenon, apparently, was observed for the first time. Using the Large Binocular Telescope, scientists were able to identify thousands of potentially "failed supernovae". And among all of them was discovered really very interesting.
The star, dubbed N6946-BH1, had enough mass (about 25 times that of the Sun) to manifest this phenomenon. The images above show how, according to scientists, this should happen: at first, the brightness of the star increases slightly (compared to other supernovae), and then turns into complete darkness.
The largest magnetic field in the universe
Many celestial bodies produce their own magnetic fields, but the largest ever discovered belongs to gravitationally bound galaxy clusters.
For some of the discovered clusters, it can stretch for about 10 million light years. Given the size of our Milky Way, which is a paltry 100,000 light-years, the numbers are impressive.
Clusters contain a colossal volume of charged particles, gas clouds, stars and dark matter. And their chaotic interaction with each other can create such giant magnetic fields. When galaxies get too close and eventually collide with each other, the gas they contain, heated by friction, is strongly compressed, creating and shooting out so-called "relics" of an arcuate shape, whose length can reach 6 million light years, which is potentially larger than the size of clusters. who gave birth to them.
Short-lived galaxies
The early universe is full of mysteries. And one of these mysteries is, for example, strange galaxies that, according to all laws, should not have existed long enough to gain a sufficient level of observability.
These galaxies already consisted of hundreds of billions of stars (quite an impressive figure by today's cosmological standards) when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old or so. Looking "into the past" even further, astronomers have discovered a new type of hyperactive galaxies that grew the fastest in the early galactic giants.
Before the universe was even 1 billion years old, these protogalaxies already contained a huge number of stars, giving rise to them 100 times faster than our Milky Way. The researchers also found that even in the early and rather empty universe, there were galaxies that merged to create the very first clusters.
Mysterious emission of X-ray waves
The Chandra Space X-ray Observatory saw something very strange when it was conducting a study of the light of the early universe. The telescope has witnessed a powerful burst of X-rays, whose source is located about 10.7 billion light-years away. Suddenly, for a moment, its brightness became 1000 times higher, and then completely disappeared for about a day.
Astronomers have detected these strange X-ray bursts before, but this case was especially remarkable because the power of these X-rays was 100,000 times greater than similar bursts in the past.
Perhaps we are talking here about a giant supernova, a collision of neutron stars or excessive activity of white dwarfs. However, the data obtained do not indicate any of these phenomena. The galaxy from which this ejection took place is much smaller in size and is located much further than in the case of similar phenomena noted in the past, therefore scientists hope that this is "a completely new type of cosmic cataclysmic event", and they really want to understand it …
The most unusual orbit
We can easily imagine how a black hole is able to swallow any "gape" cosmic body that has recklessly approached it, but there is an object that, by some miraculous circumstance, is able to approach an insanely close distance to a black hole, and, as they say, nothing happens for that.
The discovered white dwarf X9 is the closest object orbiting a black hole. Just think: X9 is located from the black hole at a distance not exceeding three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Based on this, the orbital period of the white dwarf is only 28 minutes! Every 28 minutes, it makes a complete revolution around the giant gap in space and time of the universe. Even when ordering pizza, you have to wait an hour at best.
Two "bosom friends" are located about 15,000 light years from us in the globular star cluster 47 Tucana, which is part of the Toucan star cluster. Astronomers say that earlier X9 was most likely a large red star, but later fell into the field of influence of a black hole, which sucked out all the juices from it, stripping all outer layers. The peculiarity of the processes taking place at this moment could turn a stellar object into a giant diamond-like body.
Dead space
The Cepheids are a class of very young stars that are only 10 to 300 million years old. They are pulsating stars, which makes them the ideal kind of galactic beacons due to their changing brightness.
Researchers find them scattered throughout the Milky Way. However, one thing remained unknown to scientists: what is the situation with the Cepheids in the galactic core, which does not allow to look there due to the superdense accumulation of interstellar dust? Nevertheless, a way was found to look inside.
The study of the nucleus was carried out in the near infrared range of the spectrum, and this analysis showed very interesting results. It turns out that this area is a "space desert" and is completely devoid of the presence of any young stars.
Several Cepheids were found in the very center of the galaxy. Outside of this region, however, at 8,000 light years in all directions, space is dead space.
Third wheel? Third spare
Planets of the hot Jupiter class are strange in every way. They are the size of our gas giant Jupiter, but their orbits lie so close to their stars that in some cases they are even closer than Mercury from the Sun.
Scientists have been studying these unusual giants for the past 20 years and have discovered about 300 of them so far. However, all these hot Jupiters tend to be alone. But in 2015, University of Michigan researchers confirmed what previously seemed impossible - hot Jupiter in pairs!
Moreover, not one, but two celestial bodies act as a companion for him! The family was named WASP-47 and consists of the hottest Jupiter itself and two very different and much more compact bodies. One is a neptune-like object, and the other is an even more compact and denser rocky super-Earth.
Nikolay Khizhnyak