Black Hole That Shouldn't Exist + 99 Wild Space Facts

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Transcript

00:00:00The James Webb Space Telescope is an absolutely stunning piece of equipment,

00:00:05which is around 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope,

00:00:09and the latter has managed to observe places that are around 13 billion light years away.

00:00:15But recently James Webb has outdone itself. It spotted something it wasn't supposed to see.

00:00:20Astronomers using the telescope have detected a supermassive black hole

00:00:24from when our universe was less than 600 million years old.

00:00:28Just a baby, this discovery is the most distant, actively feeding supermassive black ever observed.

00:00:34It's located at the heart of its host galaxy, designated Ceres 1019.

00:00:40The black hole is also one of the smallest and least massive ones found in the early universe.

00:00:45It's equal to approximately 9 million suns.

00:00:48It might seem like a lot, but in reality,

00:00:51supermassive black holes often grow to billions of times the mass of our star.

00:00:55But what is so unusual about this find, and why are scientists having a hard time trying to explain it?

00:01:01You see, it's supposed to take way longer than 600 million years

00:01:05for a supermassive black hole to grow to its full potential.

00:01:09It happens when a black hole either feasts on surrounding matter or merges with a larger black hole.

00:01:15Even black holes similar to the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy,

00:01:19which is almost 4.5 million times the mass of our sun,

00:01:23are supposed to be seen in the more recent universe.

00:01:26Well, to tell you the truth, scientists have long suspected that supermassive black holes

00:01:31could have existed in the early universe.

00:01:34But this theory has been proven only thanks to the JWST and its infrared eye.

00:01:39It has shown that the black hole Ceres 1019 is actively munching on all the matter it can lay its hands on.

00:01:46Such feeding black holes are usually surrounded by swirls of gas and dust falling inside them.

00:01:51Such swirls are also called accretion disks.

00:01:54The gravitational force of a black hole heats this matter, which makes the disk shine bright like a diamond.

00:02:00Ahem, sorry, but that's not all.

00:02:02Strong magnetic fields produced in the process channel the matter to the poles of the black hole,

00:02:07and from time to time this matter is blasted out of there in twin powerful jets.

00:02:11They move at a speed that is close to the speed of light, which generates incredibly bright light.

00:02:17By the way, astronomers were watching the galaxy hosting the unusually old black hole

00:02:23as part of the cosmic evolution early release since survey.

00:02:27They saw the galaxy as it was when the universe, which is around 13.8 billion years old now,

00:02:33was a mere 570 million years old.

00:02:36Besides the main character of this video, scientists spotted two other black holes.

00:02:41Those probably appeared 1 in 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang,

00:02:45and 11 ancient galaxies that existed between 470 and 675 million years after the beginning of cosmic history.

00:02:54The coolest thing about all these discoveries is that until recently,

00:02:58all research about things that existed in the early universe was mostly theoretical.

00:03:02But now, with the help of the James Webb Telescope,

00:03:05astronomers can not only see galaxies and black holes at unimaginable distances,

00:03:10but they can also measure them.

00:03:12This isn't the only discovery connected with black holes made recently.

00:03:16For example, not so long ago scientists saw two stars slow down in their orbits around black holes,

00:03:22and concluded it was most likely the result of drag produced by dark matter.

00:03:26It was the first time astronomers might have discovered some indirect evidence

00:03:30that huge amounts of dark matter could surround black holes.

00:03:34Now, about that dark matter. What is it? And what does it consist of?

00:03:39Our universe consists of normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy.

00:03:43Normal matter, which is everything you can see with your own eyes or with the help of instruments,

00:03:48makes up around 5% of the universe.

00:03:51Hmm, since it's such a small fraction of the universe, maybe we shouldn't call it normal?

00:03:57Dark energy takes up around 68%, and about 27% of the universe is dark matter.

00:04:05This dark matter is just one more space thing that confuses scientists to no end.

00:04:10If dark energy is a force responsible for the expansion of the universe,

00:04:14dark matter is supposed to explain how objects work together.

00:04:18Potential candidates for dark matter vary from strange particles to super dim objects.

00:04:23But even though astronomers can't grasp what exactly dark matter is,

00:04:27they know for sure what it isn't.

00:04:29This matter is dark, so we can rule out visible stars and planets.

00:04:33It also can't be dark clouds of normal matter.

00:04:36Otherwise, scientists would be able to detect it.

00:04:39Dark matter is not antimatter, since astronomers don't see unique gamma rays

00:04:43that appear when antimatter comes in contact with matter.

00:04:46And neither is dark matter gigantic galaxy-sized black holes.

00:04:50In other words, dark matter is still as much of a mystery to us as dark energy.

00:04:55Anyway, back to the potential dark matter discovered around the black holes.

00:05:00If it is confirmed, it'll be a great breakthrough in dark matter research.

00:05:04What helped scientists come up with this idea

00:05:07is that dark matter interacts gravitationally, influencing ordinary matter.

00:05:12So, a team of researchers watched the orbits of two stars decay by about 1 millisecond per year

00:05:19while they were circling their companion black holes.

00:05:22The scientists concluded that these changes in speed

00:05:26were the result of dark matter generating friction and a drag on the stars.

00:05:31With the help of computer simulations of the black hole systems,

00:05:35the team tested a model widely known in cosmology.

00:05:39It's called the dark matter dynamic friction model,

00:05:42and it predicts a certain loss of momentum by objects

00:05:45that are gravitationally interacting with dark matter.

00:05:48And guess what? The simulation matched these predictions.

00:05:52The results of this research helped to confirm a theory that had existed for a long time,

00:05:57that black holes can actually swallow dark matter that comes too close.

00:06:01As a result, dark matter gets redistributed around black holes,

00:06:05creating areas with different densities,

00:06:07which can influence the orbits of surrounding objects,

00:06:10like the stars we've been talking about.

00:06:13Speaking of black holes, there's a theory that primordial black holes could actually be dark matter.

00:06:19This type of black hole is hypothetical since scientists have never got any real proof of their existence.

00:06:24Such holes are insanely old and quite tiny.

00:06:27By black hole standards, that is.

00:06:29Astronomers believe they could appear several milliseconds after the Big Bang.

00:06:33At that time, stars and galaxies weren't born yet.

00:06:37It means primordial black holes probably witnessed the entire history of the universe.

00:06:42By now, the smallest primordial black holes have most likely evaporated away,

00:06:46but some bigger ones can still be scattered out there in space.

00:06:50If primordial black holes indeed existed, they could appear because in some regions of space,

00:06:55it was hotter, other regions were cooler, and some areas were extremely dense.

00:07:00Scientists believe these dense spots could collapse into primordial black holes.

00:07:05The most curious thing, though?

00:07:07These holes might be so small exactly because they popped up right after the Big Bang.

00:07:12The thing is, the longer it took a black hole to appear, the larger it was.

00:07:16The mass difference between older, smaller, and younger, bigger black holes was incredible.

00:07:22Compare the mass a thousand times greater than our sun's and that of a pea.

00:07:26There you go.

00:07:27Anyway, the idea of the connection between primordial black holes and dark matter,

00:07:32or rather, the idea of them being the same thing, remained unpopular for decades.

00:07:38But recently, scientists have realized there are many more black holes in the universe than they used to think,

00:07:44and it means that the theory might actually work.

00:07:46And the vast and still hidden from us population of Big Bang black holes could not only make up but be dark matter.

00:07:54After all, astronomers haven't discovered a single dark matter particle yet, even after decades of searching.

00:08:02What if the sun went boom?

00:08:04Well, you can guess it would be super bad news for us.

00:08:07Hmm, this was sure a short video, huh?

00:08:10Nah, wait, I have more.

00:08:12If the sun blew up, chaos would ensue in our solar system.

00:08:16But scientists tell us that it will certainly happen one day.

00:08:20But why?

00:08:21How exactly would events unfold?

00:08:23And is it possible for us to somehow survive this event?

00:08:27Hey, let's delve into it.

00:08:29First of all, get ready for a journey to the sun's core.

00:08:34The sun's heart is packed with hydrogen atoms, having an out-of-this-world dance party.

00:08:39These atoms are so excited that they smash into each other with all their might.

00:08:44And when they collide, something magical happens.

00:08:47It's called nuclear fusion.

00:08:49And in this fusion fiesta, the hydrogen atoms combine to form helium atoms, a chemistry experiment on a grand scale.

00:08:57During this nuclear fusion, a teeny bit of mass from the hydrogen atoms is transformed into a massive amount of energy.

00:09:05It's Einstein's famous equation E equals mc squared coming into play.

00:09:10Energy is unleashed in the form of light and heat, radiating outwards to brighten up the entire solar system.

00:09:17And once all these processes get going, a bunch of energized particles called photons join the fun.

00:09:24These photons are like tiny packets of light, bouncing and zipping around in all directions.

00:09:30They play a crucial role in carrying the sun's energy through space, illuminating our world and warming our cozy planet.

00:09:37But to keep all this going, so that atoms don't escape and create complete chaos, the sun's core needs to be under tremendous pressure.

00:09:46This pressure comes from the immense weight of the sun's outer layers pressing down on the core.

00:09:51The outer layers are squeezing the inner core.

00:09:54But the inner layers don't give up.

00:09:56The energy created from fusion and the bustling photon party tries really hard to escape the sun's core.

00:10:03But the core is so dense, like me, and the pressure is so big, that the energy takes its sweet time to make its way out.

00:10:11It bounces around, gets absorbed and re-emitted by other particles.

00:10:16Eventually, after a long time, it reaches the sun's surface and zooms off into space, reaching us as sunlight.

00:10:24So now you know how the sun works.

00:10:26Now what happens once it reaches the end of its life?

00:10:29Well, here's the twist.

00:10:31Our sun has a limited supply of hydrogen fuel.

00:10:34In about 5 billion years, it'll run out of its fuel.

00:10:38After that, the star will undergo some big changes.

00:10:42Now pay attention, because there's a pretty good chance we're all going to miss this.

00:10:47First, the sun will puff up and become a red giant, exploding like a balloon.

00:10:52It will grow so big that it will swallow up the inner planets, including our beloved Earth.

00:10:58Talk about a sun taking up all the space.

00:11:00So we won't even see the end of our sun unless we move somewhere further away.

00:11:05After the red giant phase, the sun will shrink a bit.

00:11:09Its outer layers will fade away into space, leaving behind a beautiful planetary nebula.

00:11:15It'll be revealing its glowing core.

00:11:19The core, now filled with helium, will start sounding weird and will start fusing heavier elements like oxygen and carbon.

00:11:27These reactions won't be as energetic, like a party with less dancing and more chill vibes.

00:11:33Eventually, even the helium will be used up, and the sun will become a compact white dwarf.

00:11:39A stellar retiree enjoying its retirement home.

00:11:43Scientists estimate that the sun has about 7-8 billion years left before it dims its lights.

00:11:49Don't worry, though.

00:11:50By that time, humanity might have traveled to far-off galaxies, or maybe even evolved into amazing space beings.

00:11:57So our sun won't go out with a bang like fireworks.

00:12:01It's not big enough to become a supernova or a black hole.

00:12:05Those stellar superstars need way more mass than our sun to pull off those cosmic tricks.

00:12:11But what if it blew up very suddenly, just like an abrupt event without any reason?

00:12:17Well, let's see.

00:12:19Imagine this.

00:12:20The sun goes boom, and Earth is in for a wild ride.

00:12:24The event unleashes an insane amount of energy, sending a shockwave racing through space at the speed of light.

00:12:30It takes about 8 minutes for this shockwave to reach Earth.

00:12:34Why?

00:12:35Well, the sun is a whopping 93 million miles away from us on average.

00:12:39So it takes a little over 8 minutes and 20 seconds for the sun's light to travel all that distance and reach us.

00:12:46But let's talk about the event itself.

00:12:48It would be a great sight to witness, but sadly, it would also be the end.

00:12:53Roll credits.

00:12:54The crazy amounts of unleashed energy would cause the sun to expand rapidly, again, swallowing up the inner planets, including our Earth.

00:13:03And that's not all.

00:13:04Brace yourself for a massive burst of radiation.

00:13:07The sun would unleash a torrent of supercharged particles.

00:13:10We're talking about X-rays and gamma rays, the kind that can seriously mess things up.

00:13:16When these high-energy particles hit the atmosphere, they go wild, causing all sorts of chaos.

00:13:22They ionize the atmosphere, creating a ginormous electromagnetic pulse.

00:13:27This pulse is like a shockwave for electronic devices.

00:13:30It fries them, zaps them, and leaves them useless.

00:13:33So if your gadgets aren't protected, they're in for a rough time.

00:13:37Speaking of rough times, after that, it's instant vaporization for our planet.

00:13:42But the sun's grand finale just doesn't mess with Earth.

00:13:46It wreaks havoc on the entire solar system.

00:13:48That massive burst of energy would be crashing into everything in its path.

00:13:52Planets and other objects get knocked off of their cozy orbits, causing chaos and unpredictability.

00:13:58The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter? Kapow!

00:14:02It's gone, obliterated, or scattered to the cosmic winds.

00:14:06And even planets that will survive this event will probably go off their orbits to wander somewhere.

00:14:12And let's not forget about the outer planets, like Jupiter and Saturn.

00:14:17These giants generate their own internal heat, which keeps them cozy and attracts lots of moons.

00:14:23But the sun's boom would steal their warmth, turning them into incredibly cold places.

00:14:29And now that we've discussed how catastrophic all this would be for everything in our solar system,

00:14:35let's ask the logical question, can humanity make it?

00:14:39The short answer is, nope, we wouldn't make it.

00:14:42Everything would be wiped out, except maybe some sneaky bacteria hiding in the shadows.

00:14:47But in a crazy scenario where the sun gave us a heads-up about its plans, we might have a fighting chance.

00:14:54If we knew in advance and had time to prepare, we could get our survival gears turning.

00:15:00So what could we do?

00:15:02Since Earth itself won't survive the sun's tantrum, we'd have to move somewhere.

00:15:07Remember how we mentioned that not all planets would be completely destroyed?

00:15:11Well, sadly, the ones closest to the sun, Mercury, Venus, and Earth would disappear.

00:15:17So the easiest option would be to move to some other solar system with its own Earth-like planet.

00:15:23But what if the Earth somehow managed to survive this catastrophe?

00:15:28Let's not think about how it happened and just discuss the consequences.

00:15:32Well, our climate would go crazy.

00:15:35During the first moments of the sun's kaboom, the radiation and particles would crank up the temperature big time, like a never-ending heat wave.

00:15:43We're talking major greenhouse effect.

00:15:46The oceans would evaporate, creating thick, fluffy clouds that trap heat and refuse to let it escape into space.

00:15:53And after that, without the sun's warm embrace, the Earth would quickly become an icy freezer.

00:15:59So we'd have to think outside the box.

00:16:02Another idea would be to take shelter deep underground, where we won't be that much affected by radiation and sudden temperature changes.

00:16:09As you dig deeper, the temperature rises.

00:16:12So, with the right tools and resources, humanity could hunker down in fortified bunkers, surviving for a couple of years without the sun's rays.

00:16:21Why just a couple of years?

00:16:23Well, remember how we said the sun is a gravity center of our solar system?

00:16:28Without it, Earth would be adrift in search of a new center of gravity.

00:16:32Imagine our planet, our trusty satellite, the Moon, and all the other planets slowly floating away into space.

00:16:40Luckily, our trusty sun is hanging in there, keeping us warm and shining for many more cosmic adventures to come.

00:16:47So we're safe for a few billion years.

00:16:50But it's always fun to imagine impossible scenarios.

00:16:53So stay tuned for more What Ifs.

00:16:56From where we stand, the sun seems so calm and peaceful.

00:16:59But like humans, and basically the whole living world, the sun has its own phases when it's more or less active.

00:17:05It's just that the consequences are way bigger and more chaotic when the sun becomes hyperactive.

00:17:10Let's zoom in to see what's happening up there.

00:17:13So one of the ways we measure the activity of our star is by counting sunspots on its surface.

00:17:18Sunspots are dark patches that form when the sun's magnetic field gets all tangled up.

00:17:24It's simple. The more sunspots, the more active our sun is.

00:17:29And it seems the sun has been partying like crazy recently.

00:17:32The number of sunspots scientists have seen is the highest for nearly 21 years.

00:17:37In June, 163 sunspots appeared on the sun's surface.

00:17:41The last time we had so many dark patches across the sun was in September 2002, when there were 187 of them.

00:17:49Uh-oh. It seems this chaotic party is getting closer to its peak.

00:17:53And that's something we call solar maximum.

00:17:56How does all this even happen?

00:17:58The sun's magnetic field is strong and organized at some point.

00:18:01But as we said, sometimes comes the time when it kind of ends up tangled,

00:18:05sort of like a ball of rubber bands that are wound together very tightly.

00:18:09This also means plasma is rising from the surface, forming loops,

00:18:14and causing a mess in the shape of solar flares and something we call coronal mass ejections, CME.

00:18:20That's when plasma in the sun's upper atmosphere, called the corona, goes crazy and bursts really strong.

00:18:27Then at some point, this ball snaps and completely flips and turns the South Pole into the North Pole and vice versa.

00:18:34All this happens every 11 years or so.

00:18:36So when the sun comes into this phase when it becomes very active, it shoots out hot blobs of plasma,

00:18:42gets big dark spots as large as planets, and releases powerful eruptions of energy and radiation.

00:18:48Something fascinating happens when the sun becomes more active,

00:18:52a thing called plasma waterfall or polar crown prominence, PCP.

00:18:56It's like a mini eruption that starts on the sun, and it seems like it tries to get away,

00:19:01but then the sun's magnetic field pulls it back before it can escape into space.

00:19:06And this plasma waterfall is really spectacular.

00:19:09It goes up to 62,000 miles above the surface.

00:19:13It's like you stack eight Earths on top of each other.

00:19:17Then there's something called a polar vortex.

00:19:20It's like a gigantic halo of plasma that rotates around the sun's North Pole really fast.

00:19:25This vortex happens when a large tentacle of plasma snaps apart and falls back toward the surface,

00:19:31similar to how a plasma waterfall forms.

00:19:34Scientists don't know why this plasma stays above the sun's surface for so long.

00:19:39And one of the cool examples of CMEs was a giant one in the shape of a butterfly in March this year.

00:19:45It got such an unusual shape because it exploded on the side of the sun we couldn't see,

00:19:50so it was impossible to fully measure how strong it was.

00:19:54Fortunately, that one didn't explode in our direction, but it might have hit Mercury a little bit.

00:19:59And it's possible it knocked off some dust and gas since Mercury has a weak magnetic field.

00:20:04All this sounds cool in theory, but it's not such good news for us.

00:20:08Because of all this, we might experience more intense solar storms

00:20:12that can, again, lead to geomagnetic storms on Earth.

00:20:15And these don't just sound alarming, they indeed are.

00:20:18They create chaos and disrupt the magnetic field of our planet.

00:20:21Geomagnetic storms can create beautiful northern lights, true.

00:20:25But we'd all rather enjoy such beauties as the Aurora Borealis in regular conditions,

00:20:30or just watch a good old sunset above the ocean.

00:20:34It's not that every solar storm will necessarily hit Earth, even if there are more of them.

00:20:39To reach our planet, they must be pointed in the right direction at the right moment.

00:20:42But if that happens, the storm can ionize the upper atmosphere and bye-bye our communications.

00:20:48It can cause temporary blackouts for systems such as GPS and radio.

00:20:52It isn't necessarily a big problem on its own,

00:20:55but it can be very dangerous if it happens at the wrong time, like during a tsunami or an earthquake.

00:21:02The storms can also damage electrical infrastructure, like rail lines and power grids.

00:21:06If you're on a plane at that time, you might be exposed to higher levels of radiation.

00:21:11It's still not clear how dangerous that will be for you,

00:21:14but it can be a serious problem for astronauts in space.

00:21:18When solar storms mess with the magnetic field,

00:21:21this can affect the migrations of some animals, such as sea turtles, whales and birds.

00:21:26Since things in the animal kingdom mostly work in the natural order,

00:21:30who knows how these animals go through or even survive such changes.

00:21:35And when the Sun is at a maximum of its activity, satellites in space are in trouble too.

00:21:40We have more satellites in space than ever before.

00:21:44And when the upper atmosphere becomes denser because of all these changes,

00:21:48this can push satellites in different directions.

00:21:51They might crash into one another or some can even fall back to Earth,

00:21:54which again is only cool in movies with superheroes who can relatively easily deal with this stuff.

00:22:00Hopefully, we'll avoid a massive solar storm like the Carrington event.

00:22:04The story was similar.

00:22:06In August 1859, astronomers across the globe watched how the number of sunspots was getting bigger and bigger.

00:22:12A man named Richard Carrington was among them.

00:22:15At the beginning of September, he was sketching the sunspots when,

00:22:19out of a sudden, he was blinded by a flash of light.

00:22:22It lasted around five minutes, but it was spectacular.

00:22:26He later described it as a white light flare.

00:22:30It was a very strong coronal mass ejection CME,

00:22:33and in only 17.6 hours, this storm crossed the long way between the Sun and our home planet,

00:22:3990 million miles, and unleashed its force on us, even though this usually takes days.

00:22:45And when this storm started, telegraph machines across the world sparked.

00:22:49Operators got electric shocks and paper even caught fire.

00:22:53People were really scared and confused because they had never seen such bright skies before.

00:22:58Some even thought it was the end of the world.

00:23:01The next day, telegraph workers still couldn't work properly because Earth's atmosphere was still charged.

00:23:08They even managed to send messages using the auroral current instead of regular electricity.

00:23:13But it brought something incredible, two stunning auroras in the sky.

00:23:18People in Hawaii and Cuba could see beautiful northern lights,

00:23:22while those as far north as Chile could see the southern lights.

00:23:26It's all slowly but steadily escalating.

00:23:29Take solar flares, for example.

00:23:31These are powerful bursts of energy from the Sun.

00:23:34In 2022, there were five times more of these flares compared to the previous year.

00:23:38Plus, the strongest ones, X-class flares, have been getting stronger and more common than before too.

00:23:44And this might be way more extreme than anyone thought.

00:23:48Plus, it's likely to start a little bit earlier than we predicted.

00:23:52Scientists first thought the peak would happen in 2025, but it seems it could even occur by the end of 2023.

00:24:00We can't completely protect ourselves if a solar storm hits us directly.

00:24:04But we can still do some things, like ground planes, adjust the paths of satellites in space,

00:24:09and try to make sure a vulnerable infrastructure stays safe.

00:24:12To do all this, we need better solar weather forecasts to help us get ready for the worse.

00:24:18All this might sound very bad at first.

00:24:20But don't worry, solar flares won't destroy our planet.

00:24:23They do send charged solar material toward us at pretty high speeds.

00:24:27But it's not like we're completely doomed if these things hit us.

00:24:31Our planet won't leave us unprotected.

00:24:33We still have the atmosphere and magnetic field that keep us relatively safe.

00:24:38Our thick atmosphere is like a shield that blocks radiation that might harm us.

00:24:42So these solar flares can mostly affect technology, but they won't destroy Earth.

00:24:47I guess we have our own superheroes after all.

00:24:51If the sun decided to stop producing light, then the animals in the wild would be the first to notice.

00:24:57Most animals need daytime to roam from place to place, especially in the large savannas in Africa.

00:25:03Zebras, wildebeests, and giraffes all need the day to move to avoid predators.

00:25:09As soon as the sun goes down, it's their bedtime.

00:25:12If the sun suddenly went dark, animals wouldn't comprehend what was going on

00:25:17and would simply become an early lunch for predators.

00:25:20Nocturnal creatures would be equally confused at the time change.

00:25:25Birds usually flock during the day, so we wouldn't hear or see any of them.

00:25:30We have them to thank for eating pests in the sky.

00:25:33Well, them and bats.

00:25:35But if you're in an area with no bats, then consider the insects to be the winners here.

00:25:42Temperatures would start to drop gradually.

00:25:44Humans would notice the effects as well.

00:25:47We're used to having the sun shining at the peak of noon.

00:25:50But with the sunshine's disappearance, we would be living in total darkness.

00:25:55It'd just be a matter of survival.

00:25:58If the sun suddenly got dark, then we'd only have around eight minutes to enjoy the rest of it.

00:26:04That's because it takes that much time for sunlight to travel thousands of miles across the solar system.

00:26:09We would have to use UV lights to grow some crops.

00:26:12But it wouldn't be enough to feed the whole world.

00:26:15Not to mention the dropping temperatures across the world.

00:26:18Survival would be difficult in the open plain.

00:26:22Everyone would have to duck inside shelters and warm bunkers.

00:26:26Plants need photosynthesis to grow.

00:26:28Without it, we wouldn't have any crops.

00:26:31Bread wouldn't exist, since it needs wheat.

00:26:34Even the algae in the oceans need photosynthesis to survive.

00:26:39Which is the highest source of oxygen, rather than forests.

00:26:42This means oxygen levels would start to deplete.

00:26:45Large bodies of water, like lakes, oceans and seas, would also start to lack oxygen to sustain marine life.

00:26:53One of our main sources of vitamin D is the sun.

00:26:57There are other ways of getting it, but the sun is the best and most convenient way.

00:27:02Without crops or vegetation, all the herbivores would have to rummage for the last green grass on land,

00:27:08or a leaf hanging from a tree.

00:27:10They would soon run out of food, which would also be bad news for us humans,

00:27:15since we need animals like cows, horses and sheep for our livelihoods.

00:27:20This wouldn't happen overnight.

00:27:22Of course, the oceans would remain warm for some time.

00:27:25But eventually, they would get cold and freeze.

00:27:30Earth is still a planet powered by an iron core that produces so much heat.

00:27:35This would not be enough to keep the planet warm.

00:27:38Our next step would be finding the right shelter and keeping warm.

00:27:42If this happened overnight, then chances are, there wouldn't be any ready-made bunkers for a scenario like this.

00:27:49Unless you're watching this video and decide to build one after.

00:27:53They would have to provide heat 24-7 and be capable of growing crops under UV light.

00:27:59Solar-powered facilities would be a thing of the past.

00:28:02People would have to wear sustainable suits when venturing out into the open.

00:28:06Since it would be so dark, we would need strong lights or powerful night vision goggles to see anything.

00:28:13The lands would be desolate.

00:28:15Nocturnal creatures that can handle freezing temperatures would take it over.

00:28:19Structures would collapse, since there would be oxygen depletion.

00:28:23Concrete needs oxygen to remain intact.

00:28:26The bunkers themselves would have limited oxygen as well.

00:28:29We would need to uproot many trees and place them under strong UV lights for them to produce oxygen.

00:28:36In turn, it would produce its ecosystem in the large underground bunkers.

00:28:40The oceans on the surface would freeze over eventually.

00:28:43Gathering any natural resources from the ocean floor, like gas or oil, would be impossible.

00:28:50The large object, which used to be a bright and sunny star, would still be floating around.

00:28:56But what would happen if the sun disappeared overnight?

00:29:00Well, pretty much the same thing, except way worse.

00:29:04The sun is the largest celestial object in our solar system, which keeps all of our planets lined up the way they are.

00:29:10They orbit around the sun, minding their own business.

00:29:15Without such a large object keeping them steady, the planets would start to float around randomly.

00:29:20Some might even collide with each other.

00:29:23In other cases, the planets would just float around and fly off into space eventually, until they found a new star to orbit around.

00:29:30Earth might or might not be one of those planets.

00:29:35Our planet would still be dark.

00:29:37We would be flying through space at an unusual speed.

00:29:41The planet wouldn't rotate on itself, and many objects would crash into us.

00:29:45We'd be in the trajectory line of mass comets waiting to strike us down.

00:29:50The threat of the cold wouldn't be a major factor anymore.

00:29:54It would be what's beyond us.

00:29:56This means we'd have to dig our bunkers deeper.

00:29:59We wouldn't have an atmosphere anymore to trap any form of heat or anything.

00:30:03We would be floating for an eternity.

00:30:07But let's go back to that scenario where the sun just decided to go dark.

00:30:11Don't worry.

00:30:12Our planet would still be orbiting the sun along with the other planets.

00:30:16The temperatures would keep plummeting until nothing could survive on the surface.

00:30:20It would be total darkness 24-7.

00:30:23Only bacteria and possibly tardigrades could survive on the surface.

00:30:28Tardigrades are microscopic critters that can survive just about anything, including outer space.

00:30:34Eventually, oxygen would be absent from the Earth's surface,

00:30:38and there wouldn't be anything up there anymore except for them.

00:30:41Since they would be the dominant and possibly the only creatures on the surface,

00:30:45they'd manage to evolve into bigger species and produce many more.

00:30:50Hundreds of thousands of years into the future,

00:30:53humans would have had to evolve to the conditions underground.

00:30:57Our eyes would be much bigger to take up as much light as possible.

00:31:01Our skin would become whiter since there would be no sun underground.

00:31:05Our hearing would also be much more sensitive since the underground would create echoing sounds.

00:31:11We'd still have the intellect we do now, but our bodies would be ready for the surface.

00:31:16The main threat would be the giant tardigrades sluggishly dragging themselves around.

00:31:21Under a microscope, they look kind of cute, but imagine them the size of a polar bear.

00:31:26Still want something like this in your backyard?

00:31:30They can live anywhere, so they'd infiltrate the bunkers now and then.

00:31:33They'd get ferocious and come in different sizes and shapes.

00:31:37At this point, humans would not be the dominant species since they'd have to hide underground.

00:31:43Some tardigrades from different tribes wouldn't be friendly with each other.

00:31:47Major cities that used to be bustling with people would be home to giant water bears.

00:31:52Tardigrades are known as water bears since they kind of look like little bears,

00:31:57but these beasts with eight legs would be much bigger than them.

00:32:01Bears and most animals would have been wiped out on the surface.

00:32:04Under the ice, some deep sea creatures would thrive and have moved closer to the surface.

00:32:10These animals were used to living in darkness away from the sun,

00:32:14but over thousands of years of dominating the waters, they'd have grown to enormous sizes.

00:32:20Some of these creatures would adapt to crawling out of the mainland.

00:32:24Even though the surface would be frozen, they'd still find ways to crack through the ice and make their way.

00:32:29Humans, meanwhile, would create large underground channels and networks, building cities and colonies.

00:32:35We'd dominate the tunnels where our hands and feet would grow to become web-like and large.

00:32:40We'd take over everything underground and remain the smartest species on Earth.

00:32:45We'd manage to keep old art pieces from the surface and important records to stay as human as possible.

00:32:51We'd keep on surviving no matter what.

00:32:55The snow-capped shape of Mount Taranaki, in the middle of Egmont National Park in New Zealand,

00:33:01is surrounded by a dense, dark-colored forest.

00:33:04It creates a gloomy green circle around the area.

00:33:07From above, the circle looks almost perfect.

00:33:11But it's only because of the local farmers.

00:33:14They use all the fertile soil they can, and it results in a contrasting color scheme.

00:33:20A near-perfect cone volcano, a rare geological phenomenon, has occasionally been erupting for over 100,000 years.

00:33:28It grew taller and larger after every eruption.

00:33:32It's predicted that, in about 50 years, this volcano could turn the area around it into another Pompeii.

00:33:41In Italy, there's a unique spot known as the Giant Pink Bunny.

00:33:45You can find this humongous art project on the green fields of the Colletto Fava mountain in northern Italy.

00:33:51The 200-foot-long and 20-foot-high bunny appeared in 2005.

00:33:56It was created by the art group Gelatin from Vienna.

00:34:00Not only does it have a strange and unique design, but it's also knitted.

00:34:05It took the team 5 years to finish the delicate structure.

00:34:08It used to be just like any other stuffed toy.

00:34:11Visitors could climb the bunny, taking in the views around them.

00:34:15But since it was placed on the hills, the art piece has started decaying.

00:34:19After all, it was only meant to last 20 years at the most.

00:34:23The once-bright pink bunny has turned gray and has almost disappeared.

00:34:28If you look at the Google Maps satellite images these days, you might only notice its outline.

00:34:34While not as popular as Old Faithful, the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming,

00:34:41is one of the most spectacular sights to see even from ground level.

00:34:45But from above, the bright bands of orange, yellow, and green really start showing their beauty.

00:34:51It's one of the biggest springs in the world, larger than a football field at 370 feet across.

00:34:57The hot water in it travels 121 feet to the surface.

00:35:02The spring is a feeding ground for heat-loving bacteria that change their color in the cooler water.

00:35:09A director searching for an unusual area for filming discovered a mysterious floating island in northeastern Argentina.

00:35:17Almost perfectly round and surrounded by a dark forest, it gives you an eerie feeling.

00:35:23No wonder the place got nicknamed The Eye.

00:35:27With the help of time-lapses on Google Earth, it was discovered that the inner land mass was moving around

00:35:33rather than sitting still as was first believed.

00:35:36A circle of land 387 feet in diameter, ranging from several inches to many feet in thickness,

00:35:43casually floats in the clear waters. It even rotates slowly, pushed by the cold water from below.

00:35:50This water is still being studied. It's completely exclusive to the surrounding area.

00:35:57From above, it looks like nothing more than a little island sitting in Homebush Bay, Australia.

00:36:03But zooming in will change that perspective.

00:36:06Once a successful trading port, the bay is filled with 4 abandoned cargo freighters that were too hard to remove.

00:36:13Once they became decommissioned, they were left in the bay and forgotten.

00:36:18The shipwreck SS Airfield transformed from a broken-down wreck into a small but beautiful nature reserve.

00:36:26It's filled with thriving mango trees that have overtaken the ship and are slowly breaking down its hull.

00:36:33In the Gobi Desert, in the northeast part of China, bizarre symbols appeared in certain areas.

00:36:39This led to many theories of what they could be. Maybe ancient markings like the Nazca lines found in Peru.

00:36:47Guesses range from odd weather patterns and pipelines for some future development to target practice areas.

00:36:54It turned out to be none of those.

00:36:56They're simply special symbols used to calibrate the cameras on China's satellites.

00:37:02The Badlands Guardian in Walsh, Canada is one of the most famous and fascinating spots you can find on Google Earth.

00:37:10It looks like a man's head carved into the landscape.

00:37:13A feather headpiece that Native Americans used to wear sits on top of the head.

00:37:18It might be quite a modern design because the face also seems to have a pair of earphones.

00:37:25Unfortunately, it's just a simple road with an oil rig at the end.

00:37:30From ground level, the entire thing is not nearly as impressive.

00:37:34It looks just like any other exposed rock face that's been changed by the seasons.

00:37:39But this phenomenon is nothing more than the pareidolia effect, the same that makes you see objects in the clouds.

00:37:47An island on a lake on an island in a lake on an island is surely a mouthful.

00:37:53But Google Earth beautifully captured the place.

00:37:56A tiny island named Vulcan Point sits inside a crater lake on an island called Volcano Island inside a lake called Lake Taal on the Philippine islands of Luzon.

00:38:07It's one of the only two lakes in the world that have been discovered to have a third-order island in them.

00:38:13Taal Volcano is still active, and because of the large lake inside the crater, there's a risk of a volcanic tsunami.

00:38:21It can be triggered by debris falling into the lake after an eruption.

00:38:26This might create waves in the lake that can spill over the sides of the crater.

00:38:32The Firefox crop circle appeared in a cornfield in Oregon in 2006, but it wasn't some mystery or rare phenomenon.

00:38:41Celebrating the browser's 50 millionth download, the Linux users group from the Oregon State University created the giant logo.

00:38:50It was larger than 45,000 square feet.

00:38:53The group members stomped down all the stalks in a near-perfect circle.

00:38:58It was completed in under 24 hours after two careful weeks of planning.

00:39:03The final circle had a diameter of over 200 feet and was completely invisible from the road.

00:39:09It could only be appreciated from the sky.

00:39:14The most beautiful bright blue ponds are found at the Intrepid Potash Mine near Moab, Utah.

00:39:21Most potash forms in desert regions where inland seas or lakes dry out.

00:39:26As the water evaporates, it leaves behind potassium salt deposits.

00:39:31Most evaporation ponds are more reddish in color, but some dye was added to these particular ones.

00:39:37Dark water absorbs more sunlight and heat, speeding up the evaporation process.

00:39:42This leaves behind the salts much more quickly.

00:39:46Stunning aerial views of these ponds are a bonus.

00:39:50Making the largest advertising logo on Earth is something every marketing agency would dream of doing.

00:39:56And Coca-Cola did just that in 1986.

00:40:00The logo is an extremely large sculpture.

00:40:03It can only be viewed in its entirety from the sky.

00:40:06The biggest problem about such advertising, though, is that barely anyone knows about it.

00:40:12This huge Coke ad is 160 feet tall and 394 feet wide.

00:40:18It was built from 70,000 empty Coke bottles in northern Chile's Arica.

00:40:24The gigantic monument was created to celebrate the brand's 100-year anniversary.

00:40:31A guitar of this size can only be appreciated from extremely high above.

00:40:35The unusual-shaped forest is located south of Cordoba in the Pampa region of Argentina.

00:40:41Known as the Guitar Forest, it extends for more than half a mile.

00:40:46It also contains more than 7,000 cypress and eucalyptus trees.

00:40:51A 74-year-old Argentine farmer, with the help of his children, managed to transform this piece of land into something magical.

00:40:59All done to pay tribute to his beloved wife.

00:41:03From high above, this area seems to be just a collection of boulders in the middle of a lake,

00:41:08but this is actually Hippo Pool in Tanzania.

00:41:12Hippos are common in all the rivers in the area,

00:41:15but this spot is certainly the best in the Serengeti to watch them playing around.

00:41:20The animals there swim in large groups of about 200 hippos.

00:41:24They stir up the waters and fill every square inch of space inside.

00:41:29If you can't get to Tanzania to see the spectacle,

00:41:32Google Earth gives you the opportunity to have this experience in the safety of your home.

00:41:38There are many large-sized pools in the world, and then there's the pool at San Alfonso del Mar,

00:41:44a resort outside of Santiago, Chile.

00:41:47Officially, the world's largest pool ever created.

00:41:51It cost nearly $2 billion to build.

00:41:54The pool is roughly the size of about 16 football fields.

00:41:58The water for the pool is taken from the Pacific Ocean.

00:42:02It gets filtered and treated multiple times a day to keep the gigantic pool clean.

00:42:07There's a saltwater pool inside a large glass pyramid,

00:42:11if you want to swim in a pool inside a pool.

00:42:14I'm getting confused.

00:42:16A strange and mysterious swirling pattern appeared in the desert of Egypt back in 1997.

00:42:23When this design was first discovered on Google Earth,

00:42:26it created a bit of a stir of what it could be.

00:42:29That was until it turned out to be nothing more than a giant art installation called Desert Breath.

00:42:35Two intertwining spirals are complete opposites.

00:42:39One spiral is piles of sand that are shaped like cones,

00:42:43and the other is made of mini-craters.

00:42:46When the installation was first completed, the spirals led to the center of a circular pool of water.

00:42:51But since then, the water has dried out.

00:42:56No one will hear your cry in space, or something like that.

00:43:00We've all heard this famous chilling phrase.

00:43:03And it's actually true.

00:43:05Space, for the most part, consists of a giant nothingness.

00:43:08There's a lot of, you know, space in space.

00:43:11But this doesn't mean there are no sounds in space.

00:43:14In fact, there are plenty of them.

00:43:16And some of them can even make you shiver.

00:43:18Let's take a look at the scariest space sounds.

00:43:21First of all, how are cosmic sounds even recorded?

00:43:25Sound is just the vibration of molecules.

00:43:27When you scream, you make the molecules push each other furiously

00:43:31until they reach the ear of the person you're yelling at.

00:43:34Then these vibrations get transmitted to the brain,

00:43:37and we recognize them as something that you might need to apologize for.

00:43:42In other words, to hear something, we need molecules.

00:43:45And that's where things get complicated.

00:43:47There aren't any of them in space.

00:43:49The entire universe almost completely consists of a vacuum.

00:43:53No, not a Hoover. Absolute nothingness.

00:43:56However, the wizards from NASA still record space sounds somehow.

00:44:00So how do they do it?

00:44:02The thing is, there are some types of waves that don't care about molecules.

00:44:06We regular folk can't perceive them without some special devices.

00:44:10These waves include, for example, radio waves.

00:44:14We'll need a radio or something like that to recognize them.

00:44:17And that's exactly what NASA's satellites do.

00:44:20They catch random radio waves.

00:44:22Thanks to their heroism, we can find out how different cosmic bodies sound.

00:44:27These satellites record a variety of waves, fluctuations of plasmas,

00:44:31magnetic fields, and other, you know, stuff.

00:44:34And then scientists from NASA transform all this into normal soundtracks.

00:44:39And some of them sound quite frightening, to put it mildly.

00:44:43Let's take our magnetic field, for example.

00:44:46It surrounds our planet like an invisible shield,

00:44:49protecting us from all sorts of nasties, like radiation and solar winds.

00:44:53At the same time, we can neither see it, feel it, nor hear.

00:44:57Oops! Well, the last one is outdated.

00:45:00Scientists from the Technical University of Denmark

00:45:03took magnetic waves recorded by the SF Swarm satellite,

00:45:06they converted them into an audio track,

00:45:09and got a pretty creepy result.

00:45:13Now, to be honest, it sounds more like an eerie entity stalking you in the middle of the night.

00:45:19And if you remember the maps of Earth's magnetic field,

00:45:22it starts to feel like a spider crawling nearby.

00:45:26And this isn't the first strange sound that we caught on Earth.

00:45:30Recently, we caught another weird radio emission from space.

00:45:33Scientists found out that the repeating signal came from somewhere very far away,

00:45:38like billions of light-years away from us.

00:45:41Such fast radio bursts usually lasted no longer than a few milliseconds,

00:45:45but this one was unique.

00:45:47It lasted about 3 seconds, basically thousands of times longer than usual.

00:45:52And at the same time, the signal was very precise,

00:45:56so much so that scientists even compared it to a heartbeat.

00:46:00Scientists believe that this signal is caused by pulsars, or neutron stars.

00:46:05One time, Nikola Tesla caught something similar.

00:46:08But unfortunately, at that time, we didn't know about such things as pulsars,

00:46:13so Tesla was sure that he had caught a message from some extraterrestrial life.

00:46:18It's a pity that the truth turned out to be much more boring.

00:46:21But let's move on from the Earth to the Moon.

00:46:24In 1969, the astronauts of the Apollo 10 mission,

00:46:28the spacecraft that made the final test flight to the Moon,

00:46:31flew past its surface.

00:46:33And then they caught some strange signals coming from the dark side of the Moon.

00:46:37The side that we never see because the Moon is tidally locked to us.

00:46:41The sound was so weird that the astronauts weren't even sure whether to report it to NASA.

00:46:46They were afraid they wouldn't be taken seriously,

00:46:49and maybe even not allowed to participate in the next space missions.

00:46:53Here's what it sounded like.

00:46:58But according to NASA, it's not some creepy extraterrestrial music at all.

00:47:03These may just be some radio waves that affected each other because of their proximity.

00:47:08Although the astronauts who heard it for the first time probably felt a little creeped out.

00:47:13Let's move to the other planets.

00:47:15Now, 40 years ago, scientists actively explored the surface of Venus.

00:47:19They sent as many as 10 probes there,

00:47:22which were supposed to capture audio and video shooting from the surface.

00:47:26Now we know what Venus, which could easily destroy us at any attempt to even get close to it,

00:47:31sounds like.

00:47:36Horrifying.

00:47:37And you wouldn't expect anything else from the most dangerous planet in the Solar System.

00:47:42Unfortunately, Venus is even more toxic than the average Twitter user.

00:47:46Ha!

00:47:47So these probes didn't last too long.

00:47:49They heroically arrived on a planet and soon broke down.

00:47:53Next one is Jupiter.

00:47:55This space giant, which is 11 times larger than the Earth, never fails to scare us.

00:48:01One of NASA's probes, Juno, flies around Jupiter every few weeks.

00:48:05The probe is moving at a tremendous speed, 130,000 miles per hour.

00:48:10One day, Juno caught one of the strongest invisible signals it had ever encountered.

00:48:16This was the point at which the mad solar wind came into conflict with the magnetic field of Jupiter.

00:48:22It kind of sounded like a cosmic boom.

00:48:25The original sound lasted two hours, but it was compressed to a few seconds.

00:48:30It actually sounds more like a collision of a sea wave and a rock.

00:48:34But here, in terms of horror, Jupiter surprisingly loses to one of its small moons, Ganymede.

00:48:41In 2021, the Galileo space probe flew past Ganymede,

00:48:45and during its flight, it received a rather strange recording.

00:48:53These sounds are satellite radiation,

00:48:56and it's unclear whether it sounds like a cozy sunny day in the jungle

00:49:00or like thousands of bats waiting for you in the night.

00:49:04Next one is Saturn.

00:49:06This signal was caught by the Cassini-Huygens Automatic Interplanetary Station,

00:49:10which was launched into space in 1997.

00:49:13When flying past Saturn, Cassini recorded a pretty scary sound.

00:49:19This terrifying cry of thousands of souls is actually just some radio waves.

00:49:25They aren't too different from what the auroras emit on Earth.

00:49:28A little later, Cassini received another recording,

00:49:31the sounds made by lightning and thunderstorms on Saturn.

00:49:35They sound pretty interesting, too.

00:49:39More like popping corn or a Geiger counter, right?

00:49:42But that's just because these lightning strikes have a crazy frequency.

00:49:47Moving on from the Solar System to outer space.

00:49:50The famous Voyager 1 was launched back in 1977

00:49:54and continues to send us data even 40 years after its launch.

00:49:58In 2012, it left the Solar System and entered interstellar space.

00:50:03And then, while abandoning its home,

00:50:06Voyager 1 detected the sound of plasma waves.

00:50:09The original recording lasted 7 months,

00:50:12but fortunately, scientists felt sorry for us and reduced it to 12 seconds.

00:50:18It isn't really eerie, but it's still kind of unsettling.

00:50:22And although it feels like nothing can beat Saturn's horrors,

00:50:26let's end this tournament with one of the scariest objects in the Universe,

00:50:30a black hole.

00:50:31This sound was recorded by the Chandra Space Telescope.

00:50:35While studying a cluster of galaxies in the constellation Perseus,

00:50:39they discovered something strange.

00:50:41Some undulating movements appear from the center of the cluster.

00:50:45They spread out in all directions, like circles on the water.

00:50:49Scientists have suggested that this was caused by a supermassive black hole.

00:50:54The thing is, black holes don't always devour space objects entirely.

00:50:59Sometimes, they kind of spit them out.

00:51:02This causes vibrations of gases, which we can convert into soundtracks.

00:51:06What's interesting is that the oscillation of each such wave

00:51:10actually lasts about 10 million years.

00:51:13You're just listening to a very accelerated recording.

00:51:16Scientists have reduced the delay between oscillations

00:51:19by about 144 quadrillion times.

00:51:22So, let's check it out.

00:51:25This is probably the eeriest sound from the whole list.

00:51:28Nothing too loud or wild, but there's something dark and disturbing about it.

00:51:34Now, those were the scariest space sounds captured by NASA.

00:51:37To be fair, most of them sounded creepy simply because they're radio waves,

00:51:42but it's still fun to get spooked sometimes.

00:51:45Dark, ever-hungry monsters live all across the Universe.

00:51:50They're born when massive stars blast into space.

00:51:54Black holes, as heavy as Earth, are just as large as a ping-pong ball.

00:52:00They don't have a surface, but their gravity is so strong, even light can't escape it.

00:52:05Black holes don't have physical boundaries like a membrane either.

00:52:09The event horizon, which is closest to a typical boundary,

00:52:13is a threshold which, after passing, you can't get out.

00:52:17For a star, running into a black hole normally ends in a spectacular light show and its destruction.

00:52:25Just one star that astronomers know of managed to survive an encounter with a black hole as heavy as 400,000 Suns.

00:52:34It happened in a galaxy about 250 million light-years away from Earth.

00:52:39Astronomers with really powerful equipment noticed bursts of X-rays that raged in space every 9 hours.

00:52:47They thought they must be Mayday signals from a star trapped by a cosmic abyss.

00:52:53The star was an average red giant when it met its new friend for the first time.

00:52:59When they got too close to each other, the hungry space monster couldn't resist the temptation and snacked on its guest.

00:53:07When it was done with the star's outer hydrogen layers, all that was left was the star's core.

00:53:13Eventually, the poor thing turned into a white dwarf.

00:53:17But, for some reason, the giant space monster couldn't finish the meal and trapped it in its orbit for later instead.

00:53:25Ever since, the now white dwarf has been traveling in 9-hour laps.

00:53:30It stays far enough from the hole so it won't fall in or get swallowed.

00:53:35Its journey isn't going super smoothly.

00:53:38Because of gravity, the orbital path is constantly rotating.

00:53:42After 2 days, it resembles a spirograph pattern.

00:53:47As the black hole keeps snacking on it, the star keeps losing its mass and growing in size.

00:53:53Its own orbit is becoming more and more circular.

00:53:57Scientists believe one day it will be able to spiral away from its mean friend and turn into a planet the size of Jupiter in a trillion years.

00:54:07That's 70 times longer than the Universe has existed so far, so it might not ever happen.

00:54:14The Milky Way alone has hundreds of millions of black holes, and there are way more beyond it.

00:54:21They might feed on other stars and release them in other galaxies.

00:54:25The telescopes that exist now might not be strong enough to spot them.

00:54:30Most galaxies, including our Milky Way, have supermassive black holes at the center.

00:54:36They can be billions of times heavier than the Sun.

00:54:40Others of their kind are only 3 times the mass of the Sun.

00:54:44The nearest black hole to the Earth was spotted 1,000 light-years away, just around the corner in galactic terms.

00:54:52It's in a star system you can see with an unaided eye.

00:54:56Scientists found it when they noticed a star behaving weirdly.

00:55:00It was a giant, rotating like crazy.

00:55:03They guessed it must have a powerful gravitational companion.

00:55:08The hungriest black hole astronomers have spotted so far weighs as much as 34 billion suns and is about 6 times bigger than the one at the center of the Milky Way.

00:55:19It eats the equivalent of one sun every day.

00:55:24Sometimes black holes even devour others of their kind that happen to be too close to them.

00:55:30Before you get on a spaceship to escape to some safe, no-black-hole galaxy, here's some good news.

00:55:37Even though they're supermassive, they don't have a radius large enough to destroy Earth.

00:55:42And even the hungriest of them are safe to watch from a distance.

00:55:47No black hole should come closer to our planet than the Sun for as long as the Universe has existed, multiplied by 10 billion times.

00:55:57In the unlikely case one of these scary things passes by Neptune, it could affect the Earth's orbit.

00:56:03That would be no good.

00:56:06In theory, anything can turn into a black hole.

00:56:10The only difference between it and the Sun is the material their centers are made of.

00:56:15It's incredibly dense in those huge space monsters.

00:56:19In reality, there's just one known way to make a black hole.

00:56:23It has to be the gravitational collapse of a supermassive star 20 to 30 times the mass of the Sun.

00:56:30So the Sun will never, ever become a black hole.

00:56:34If it happened, though, and the former star retained its mass, it would still have the same gravitational power.

00:56:41Earth would still keep going around it and wouldn't get pulled in.

00:56:45Its orbit would also remain as it is.

00:56:48The only huge problem would be the lack of sunlight.

00:56:52In reality, the Sun isn't massive enough for such a transformation and will eventually become a white dwarf.

00:57:00A black hole won't ever eat an entire galaxy for lunch.

00:57:04There are about 400 billion stars inside the Milky Way.

00:57:09Just around 0.1% of all the stars that will ever form will end up becoming black holes.

00:57:17The ever-hungry supermassive monster, located right in the middle of a galaxy, has an impressive gravitational reach.

00:57:25But even that wouldn't be enough.

00:57:27It has already eaten most of the stars that were close to it.

00:57:31It already weighs like a few million Suns, so it can't grow much larger even if it keeps snacking on Sun-like stars.

00:57:39Galaxies will keep bumping into each other, and black holes will keep growing and merging.

00:57:45But because the Universe is already huge and keeps expanding, these collisions and mergers won't go on forever.

00:57:53Black holes will travel this huge space like rogue stars.

00:57:57They won't even be able to eat the dark matter on the outskirts of galaxies.

00:58:02Eventually, all the black holes will perish, but that would be a long, long time from now.

00:58:10If you ever become a space explorer and travel far enough to meet a black hole and fall into one, your life won't instantly end.

00:58:19Instead, things will be way more complicated.

00:58:23The way you perceive space and time will change, and your reality will split in two.

00:58:28In one of them, you'd cease existing.

00:58:31In the other, you'd live and enter the hole unharmed.

00:58:35When you go deeper inside the hole, you'll notice space becoming curvier and curvier.

00:58:41At the center of the hole, it's infinitely curved.

00:58:45It's called singularity.

00:58:48Laws of physics based on the ideas of space and time don't have power here.

00:58:53In a large enough hole, millions of times more massive than the Sun, things would go perfectly smoothly for you.

00:59:01And you'd just keep free-falling, feeling no gravity.

00:59:05You could just keep falling and falling in total emptiness until you reach singularity.

00:59:11You'd have no chance to move in the opposite direction.

00:59:15In there, space and time switch roles.

00:59:18Time is constantly pulling you forward on Earth, but figuratively, and it would be doing that quite physically inside the hole.

00:59:27In a smaller hole, the force of gravity would be stronger at your feet than your head.

00:59:32That's why you would go through spaghettification.

00:59:36This is how scientists call the process when you compress horizontally and stretch vertically like spaghetti because of crazy gravity of the black hole.

00:59:47Speaking of spaghetti, how are black holes like an Italian dinner?

00:59:51Because once you go pasta the event horizon, you get spaghettified.

00:59:56And since you're all by yourself, you'd be feeling cannelloni right now.

01:00:00Wow, now I'm hungry.

01:00:02Meanwhile, if you had a fellow space traveler who, for some reason, didn't end up in the black hole, it would look all different to them.

01:00:11They'd see you stretch and grow like through a huge magnifying glass.

01:00:16The closer you get to the edge of the hole, the more it would seem like you're moving in slow motion.

01:00:21Then you'd freeze, and the flames would surround you.

01:00:25You'd be in two places at the same time, living different destinies.

01:00:29But there would still be just one copy of you.

01:00:32This is how black holes teach us nothing is real.

01:00:36Reality can be different to different people.

01:00:40Some scientists believe that we're all living inside a huge black hole.

01:00:45Everything in the Universe started with the Big Bang.

01:00:48But there's a theory saying there was also something before that.

01:00:53It was a super dense seed that had all the mass and energy of the Universe concentrated in it, about as heavy as a billion suns.

01:01:02It was a trillion times smaller than any particle humans can observe.

01:01:07This seed could be born inside a black hole.

01:01:11If you believe there's more than one Universe, black holes could also serve as doors between those Universes.

01:01:19It could be like a root that two trees share.

01:01:23You can't see a black hole directly because it doesn't give off any light.

01:01:28Scientists used to be able to only spot them by what they were doing to their surroundings.

01:01:34When over 200 scientists around the world worked together, they managed to take the first pictures of that space oddity.

01:01:42The equipment they used, added together, would be the power of a telescope the size of Earth.

01:01:51All aboard! This is the Intergalactic Cruiser.

01:01:55The destination on your ticket is a tour of the local group of galaxies.

01:02:00Featuring the Large and Small Magellanic Galaxies, the Orion Nebula, the Andromeda and Triangulum Galaxies, and a few surprises in between.

01:02:10Tickets please!

01:02:12Be advised you may experience a slight tingling sensation as we rev into hyperspace.

01:02:17The ship, and everything in it, is going through a dimensional phase change.

01:02:21It's nothing to worry about. The tingling passes quickly.

01:02:26Now passengers, as we head toward Galactic Latitude 180° North, as Terrarians are accustomed to calling it,

01:02:34our first main item of interest will be an intense star-forming region known as M42, the Orion Nebula.

01:02:43But first, a special treat by the captain that's not on the advertised itinerary.

01:02:48The Horsehead Nebula! It's off to the port side, that's left for you Aggies.

01:02:54Its designation is M43.

01:02:56The newborn star at the top of the horse's head has a strong solar wind that is deforming the shape of the nebular cloud.

01:03:04Get a good look at it now, because in a few thousand years, those gases will be completely blown away by the star-like nebula that made our Sun.

01:03:13Yep, long gone, except for the nebular gases captured by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

01:03:21Okay now, one of our junior explorers asks a question.

01:03:24What is the M in M42 and M43?

01:03:28Well young lady, the M stands for Messier.

01:03:31Pronounce Messier, not Messier, as in, is your room messier than mine?

01:03:37Charles Messier, I mean Messier to be precise, was a French astronomer in the 18th century.

01:03:43He published a catalogue of 110 fuzzy objects as seen through an early telescope.

01:03:49The horse head nebula is number 43 on his list.

01:03:52We'll see more M's as we continue our tour.

01:03:55Heads up, we're coming to the Orion nebula.

01:03:59The gases in the nebula may seem less colorful than you expect.

01:04:03That's because we're accustomed to seeing long exposure telescopic photos and enhanced photos designed to highlight the different gases in the nebula.

01:04:12May I suggest using the pair of tinted glasses that come with your onboarding packet if you want to heighten your experience.

01:04:19In we go.

01:04:21Now, it's a good thing we are in hyperspace.

01:04:24As we approach the trapezium star cluster in the center, the bright star, Theta C, sends out a solar wind at 5 million miles an hour.

01:04:33It sculpts the whole cloud of gas and dust, creating shockwaves that compress nearby stars.

01:04:40Theta C is a megastar, 200,000 times brighter than the Sun.

01:04:45It will go supernova in about a million years.

01:04:48I won't be around that.

01:04:50Oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur glow in ionized states like a fluorescent light bulb.

01:04:56Oxygen blue, hydrogen red, some green and sulfur, and dust glow as yellow-orange.

01:05:03As we pull out of the Orion nebula and rise high above the galactic plane, the spiral arms of the Milky Way are visible.

01:05:11Our Sun, which you cannot distinguish from this height above the galaxy, is in the Orion spur that lies between the outer Perseus arm and the inner Sagittarius arm.

01:05:22Notice the center of the Milky Way contains a bright magnetic bar that plays an essential part in star formation.

01:05:30Over 70% of nearby galaxies include magnetic bars.

01:05:35It's a sign of a mature galaxy.

01:05:38Only 20% of distant galaxies contain magnetic bars in their cores.

01:05:43Which reminds me, passengers, the juice bar is now open.

01:05:47Our H-1 server will take your orders.

01:05:50Now that's the Andromeda galaxy far, far out to the port side.

01:05:54But may I call your attention to the many dwarf galaxies, over 40 of them, that populate our galactic neighborhood.

01:06:01We're heading to one now.

01:06:03The Large Magellanic Cloud, LMC to astronomers, is an irregular dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way,

01:06:11containing about 30 billion stars with a dynamic star-forming region called the Tarantula Nebula, which we will be cruising through shortly.

01:06:20Of course, if there is a Large Magellanic Cloud, there must be a Small Magellanic Cloud, SMC.

01:06:27And there it is, below and to the left of the LMC.

01:06:32The Milky Way will eventually ingest both dwarf galaxies.

01:06:36Some prefer the word accreted, but the result is the same.

01:06:40If you use your tinted glasses again, you can see that the LMC has stripped away a tremendous amount of gas from the SMC,

01:06:48as they have interacted gravitationally over millions of years.

01:06:52Hey, I know all about gas.

01:06:55Now we're heading out of the Milky Way to a distance of about 50 kiloparsecs.

01:07:00That's 50,000 parsecs, or about 163,000 light-years.

01:07:05So, what's a parsec?

01:07:07No, it's not slang for pair of socks.

01:07:11A parsec is about 3.26 light-years.

01:07:14A light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles.

01:07:17The word parsec is a combination of two words, parallax and second.

01:07:22Parallax is the shift an object seems to make when viewed from two different perspectives.

01:07:28Looking at an object with your left eye and then your right eye, you'll see the object appear to shift.

01:07:34That's parallax.

01:07:36When an astronomical object is photographed with the Earth on one side of the Sun,

01:07:40and then again six months later on the other side of the Sun,

01:07:44the shift is measurable in degrees of arc, or minutes of arc, or seconds of arc,

01:07:50down to milliseconds of arc.

01:07:52That's a parsec, a parallax of one arc-second, which turns out to be 3.26 light-years.

01:07:59Hey, what about a jone of arc?

01:08:02That's how you measure distances in France.

01:08:05Meanwhile, since you can't measure a light-year with a ruler or a tape measure,

01:08:10Parsecs are the scientific way of telling the distance to a star or intergalactic object.

01:08:16The greater the parallax, the closer the object is.

01:08:19The smaller the parallax, the farther away it is.

01:08:23Now, straight ahead in the heart of the Tarantula Nebula is the R136 star cluster.

01:08:29Within a distance of one light-year, there are over 40 stars each with a mass over 50 times that of the Sun.

01:08:37Wow.

01:08:38Comparatively, there isn't a single other star within four light-years of our home star, Sol.

01:08:44And that's a good thing.

01:08:46You can see Supernova 1987A at about 2 o'clock high.

01:08:51A blue giant star 100,000 times brighter than the Sun experienced a core implosion,

01:08:58resulting in a Type II supernova 100 million times brighter than the Sun.

01:09:03It has left behind a neutron star clouded in dust and gas and a wildly spectacular display of fireworks.

01:09:11Now, 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud is the closest supernova to Earth since 1604,

01:09:19which happened in the Milky Way about 20,000 light-years from Earth.

01:09:23It was visible in the daytime for about two weeks, or so.

01:09:28After 1987A went supernova because it was a blue giant star,

01:09:33speculation has increased that the blue giant star Rigel, the foot star of the constellation Orion,

01:09:40might go supernova in the not-too-distant future, or already has gone supernova.

01:09:46Rigel is approximately 860 light-years from Earth,

01:09:50so anything that happens to Rigel would take about 860 years before it would be noticed on Earth.

01:09:57Supernova 1987A ejected the heavy elements like cobalt, nickel, and iron,

01:10:03and lighter silicates into the Tarantula Nebula,

01:10:06where they will form the basic building blocks of stars and planets.

01:10:10Our server is now offering space-themed snacks.

01:10:14May I recommend the Jupiter Cotton Candy Puffs for the children on board?

01:10:18Remember, I know all about gas.

01:10:22Our next stop is the Andromeda Galaxy and environs.

01:10:26Notice its halo as we leave the Milky Way and its 300 billion stars behind.

01:10:32As many as 150 globular clusters reside in the galactic halo.

01:10:38They orbit down and through the galactic disk and contain some of the oldest stars in the Universe.

01:10:44How they got here, in our home galaxy, is a matter of intense study.

01:10:49You will notice NGC 6822, an irregular dwarf galaxy off to the starboard.

01:10:56NGC stands for New General Catalog of Astronomical Objects.

01:11:01Now you'd think there'd have been an old general catalog, but there wasn't.

01:11:06It was just a new catalog.

01:11:08There is, however, a revised new general catalog which astronomers refer to regularly.

01:11:14Clears that up, huh?

01:11:16As we pass NGC 6822, you'll notice a magnetic bar beginning to form and bright patches of new star formation.

01:11:25This galaxy was discovered in 1884 by E.E. Barnard and is also called Barnard's Galaxy.

01:11:33Mr. Barnard was quite an astronomical observer.

01:11:37He has a crater on the Moon named for him, one on Mars, an area on Jupiter's moon Ganymede,

01:11:43a minor planet, number 819, Barnardania,

01:11:47and the star with the fastest movement across the sky, Barnard's Star.

01:11:52Now not too many people have their name emblazoned across space as has Edward Emerson Barnard.

01:12:00Approaching the giant Andromeda galaxy with its trillion stars,

01:12:04we will skirt above its western edge and visit one of the enormous galaxy's dwarf companion galaxies,

01:12:11M110 or NGC 205.

01:12:14Yes, it also has two designations.

01:12:17Hey, take your pick.

01:12:19The first of its kind, a dwarf spheroidal galaxy of about 3.5 billion solar masses,

01:12:25M110 or NGC 205 if you wish, has eight globular clusters near its core.

01:12:32It too will be swallowed, or accreted if you prefer, by the Andromeda galaxy.

01:12:38It may have already been stripped of much of its stars and gas,

01:12:41a point highlighted by M110's general lack of star formation.

01:12:46Everybody having fun yet?

01:12:49And now our final stop, M33, the Triangulum galaxy,

01:12:54the third and last spiral galaxy of our local group.

01:12:58Located in the small constellation of Triangulum, Latin for triangle, good guess,

01:13:04M33 is about half the size of the Milky Way.

01:13:08The Triangulum galaxy is 2.7 million light-years from Earth,

01:13:12but it is much closer to the Andromeda galaxy and moving towards it.

01:13:17If two spiral galaxies collide, it may alter the course of the Andromeda galaxy

01:13:23and prevent the predicted collision with the Milky Way.

01:13:26Well, let's hope so.

01:13:28Now this important message.

01:13:30We will serve dinner on our return trip to Earth.

01:13:33There's a choice of chicken or fish.

01:13:35We hope you have enjoyed the tour.

01:13:37Hey, if you fill out our survey and give us five stars, you can also have dessert.

01:13:45People stop their cars on the highway, get out of them, and lift their heads in wonder.

01:13:50In the cities, everyone takes to the streets.

01:13:53Balconies and rooftops of houses are full of people staring at the moon in shock.

01:13:58It's red.

01:14:00Some people scream that it's the end of the world.

01:14:03Some seek shelter.

01:14:05Indeed, the usual white moon now looks like it's been doused in red paint.

01:14:10There's no need to be afraid if you see such a thing.

01:14:13On the contrary, enjoy the view, because you have witnessed a rare astronomical phenomenon.

01:14:19This is a total lunar eclipse.

01:14:22Here's the sun. It's in the center of our solar system.

01:14:25Mercury, Venus, and here's Earth and the moon.

01:14:29Earth takes 365 days to orbit around the star.

01:14:32At the same time, the moon revolves around the Earth and completely orbits our planet in 27 days.

01:14:39The Earth creates a shadow zone, and sometimes the moon passes through it.

01:14:44The shadow is cone-shaped and gradually narrows.

01:14:47The moon is 238,000 miles away.

01:14:51That's like nine lengths of the equator.

01:14:53At this distance, the width of the shadow is about 2.6 times the width of the moon.

01:14:59When the moon is in this zone, direct sunlight doesn't reach it.

01:15:03That is, it should have disappeared, but instead, it becomes red.

01:15:08All because the sun's rays pass through the Earth's atmosphere.

01:15:12They scatter, and most of the blue light disappears.

01:15:15But the red and orange rays continue and hit the surface of the moon.

01:15:20Voila! You see a phenomenon called the blood moon.

01:15:24By the way, this curvature of light occurs at sunsets and dawns.

01:15:29The atmosphere scatters the blue light, and you see a red and orange sky.

01:15:34If you were standing on the surface of the moon during a total lunar eclipse,

01:15:38planet Earth would be exactly between you and the sun.

01:15:41So, you would be able to observe the solar eclipse.

01:15:45The surface of the Earth would become entirely dark for you.

01:15:48All you'd see would be the sun's corona illuminating the edges of the planet.

01:15:53The Earth from the surface of the moon is almost the same size as the moon from the surface of the Earth.

01:15:59Such a red eclipse of the moon is rare because several factors must coincide.

01:16:05One of them is that the moon must be full.

01:16:08Usually, you can see two total lunar eclipses a year.

01:16:12In 2038, you'll be able to see four such eclipses.

01:16:16And the eclipse itself can last up to 108 minutes.

01:16:20But this is rare, and the last time such a long blood moon was seen was in 2000.

01:16:26Many years ago, people didn't know so many facts about our satellite,

01:16:30and the sight of a red moon frightened them.

01:16:33It was a bad sign and a harbinger of trouble.

01:16:36People who knew the schedule of eclipses could take advantage of it.

01:16:40For example, Christopher Columbus had an astronomical almanac

01:16:44and knew when the next lunar eclipse would occur.

01:16:47He frightened the inhabitants of the Caribbean islands when he predicted the red moon.

01:16:53Once upon a time, the moon used to be a red ball of lava.

01:16:58This was way back in time, 4.5 billion years ago.

01:17:01Now this is our solar system.

01:17:03It's full of dust and asteroids.

01:17:05They're constantly bumping into each other, playing space billiards.

01:17:09This is Earth.

01:17:11It's just beginning to cool off from the constant asteroid and comet impacts.

01:17:15But then, Theia appears on the horizon, a planet the size of Mars.

01:17:20It had a chaotic orbit and was approaching Earth in a spiral.

01:17:25A collision was inevitable, and at one point,

01:17:28one of the biggest crashes in our solar system occurred.

01:17:31Theia struck the Earth at an angle.

01:17:33It ripped out part of the Earth's crust and threw it into space.

01:17:37The Earth, in turn, absorbed part of the planet that rammed it.

01:17:40The debris from the collision circled the Earth for a long time.

01:17:44They were a kind of ring, almost like Saturn's.

01:17:47Debris in orbit collided and piled up around a common center of gravity.

01:17:52And that's how the Earth got the moon.

01:17:55There's a theory that this collision helped give birth to life on our planet.

01:17:59Theia hit the Earth at a perfect angle.

01:18:02If the crash had been head-on,

01:18:04both planets would likely have been destroyed in a massive explosion.

01:18:08If the impact had been tangential,

01:18:11then there wouldn't have been enough debris in Earth's orbit to form the moon.

01:18:15But we got the lucky ticket.

01:18:17The moon stabilized the Earth's rotation.

01:18:20The collision shattered the planet's solid crust and allowed oceans to form.

01:18:24Remember, water is the basis of life.

01:18:27When the cores of Earth and Theia merged, we got a powerful magnetosphere.

01:18:32This protects all living organisms from solar radiation.

01:18:36The moon, along with the sun, controls the tides.

01:18:40Its gravity seems to draw water to it from the Earth's surface.

01:18:44The sun does the same thing.

01:18:46That is, if we imagine the Earth as a ball of water,

01:18:49there would be two mountains, one on the moon's side and one on the sun's side.

01:18:54And as the moon moves around the Earth, this mountain of water moves with it.

01:18:59If you were in the open ocean with a tape measure,

01:19:02you would see that the moon is attracting water to itself by about 4 to 6 inches.

01:19:08The moon is gravitationally locked with the Earth.

01:19:11That's why it's always turned to us with one side, like Mercury and the sun.

01:19:16But the moon doesn't stand still.

01:19:18It's gradually moving away from our planet, about 1.5 inches a year.

01:19:23Not quickly, but in about 600 million years,

01:19:26it will have shrunk in our sky so much that we won't be able to see lunar eclipses anymore.

01:19:31Do you see this crater? It's Tycho.

01:19:34It's visible during a full moon because of these bright rays

01:19:37that extend thousands of miles from its epicenter.

01:19:40This is the youngest crater on the moon.

01:19:43Scientists say it appeared there due to a meteorite impact about 109 million years ago.

01:19:48At that time, dinosaurs were roaming the surface of our planet,

01:19:52and they may have seen the impact.

01:19:54It was most likely accompanied by a big explosion,

01:19:57and looked like a salute in the night sky.

01:20:00Humanity loves to explore the moon.

01:20:03We've sent a bunch of missions there.

01:20:05A total of 12 people have set foot on the surface of the moon.

01:20:09The gravitational force there is six times less than on Earth.

01:20:13So, if the average person on our planet weighed about 180 pounds,

01:20:17on the surface of the moon, the scales would only show 30 pounds,

01:20:21like the weight of an average dog.

01:20:23That's why the astronauts moved, jumped, and fell so strangely there.

01:20:28And you would be six times stronger on the surface of the moon.

01:20:32Here on Earth, the average person could lift about 130 pounds.

01:20:36But on the moon, you could raise a big motorcycle, or a grizzly bear.

01:20:41The surface of the moon is covered with regolith.

01:20:44This is the lunar dust that covers the solid ground.

01:20:47Such dust is good at preserving footprints.

01:20:50Here's the most famous footprint, which gave birth to many crazy theories.

01:20:55Here's the footprint, and here's the shoe that left it.

01:20:59But the shoe is completely flat.

01:21:01This is explained simply.

01:21:03The astronauts wore extra boots for walking on the lunar surface.

01:21:06They have exactly the kind of sole that left these marks.

01:21:10In addition to the footprints, we left many fascinating objects on the moon.

01:21:14Several lunar rovers, a golf ball, flags, and human waste.

01:21:19There's also a lot of broken satellites and rocket parts.

01:21:23All in all, about 413,000 pounds of human-made objects are there.

01:21:28That's the weight of three passenger planes, or 31 adult elephants.

01:21:33In the future, we plan to resume missions to the moon.

01:21:36New landers will explore the surface of our satellite to find natural resources there.

01:21:41It's also a great place to test new rovers.

01:21:45We're even going to build something like the International Space Station in the moon's orbit.

01:21:49The Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway.

01:21:52It'll be a convenient platform for exploring our satellite and launching spacecraft into distant space.

01:21:58If you start from here, the spacecraft won't need to spend almost all its fuel to overcome the force of Earth's gravity.

01:22:04So, such a station would save fuel and money.

01:22:08Scientists hope that we'll be able to mine water from the moon's surface.

01:22:12It's been proven that there's ice there, mostly at the bottom of craters where the sunlight doesn't reach.

01:22:18Perhaps we'll send a rover there that can drill down a few feet into the surface, searching for water.

01:22:24Humanity already has the technology to build a full-fledged colony there.

01:22:28It would take up to three days to get there.

01:22:31We just need to get enough solar panels and building materials to the moon.

01:22:35There's no atmosphere on the moon, so potential lunar inhabitants would be defenseless against solar radiation.

01:22:42We would have to build houses underground to provide protection.

01:22:45Modern 3D printers will help make construction easy and fast.

01:22:49However, food and water supplies can only be maintained by constant supplies from Earth.

01:22:55The same goes for oxygen.

01:22:57Each rocket launch costs millions of dollars, so for now, colonization of the moon is in question.

01:23:04The moon could also become an object for space tourism.

01:23:07Imagine a spaceship launches from Earth.

01:23:10Three days on the road, and you're orbiting the moon.

01:23:13The lunar module undocks, and you land on the surface.

01:23:17You ride the rover, explore the craters, then return to the lander.

01:23:21The engines start. The lander returns you to orbit.

01:23:24You dock with the ship and return to Earth.

01:23:27Sounds like some pretty great plans for a week's vacation.

01:23:30Have you heard about a diamond star that could put all the riches on Earth to shame?

01:23:35Or how about twinkling stars with surfaces made of solid iron?

01:23:40So let's take a look at these weird stars and try to unravel their mysteries.

01:23:47There's a star in the Centaurus constellation that was nicknamed Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

01:23:53Yes, it was named after a Beatles song, because it basically is a Beatles song.

01:23:58You see, the star was discovered to have a massive diamond at its core.

01:24:05Now, you may be wondering how big this diamond really is.

01:24:09Well, it's estimated to be about 10 billion trillion trillion carats.

01:24:15That's a one followed by 34 zeros.

01:24:18To put that into perspective, the Hope Diamond, which is one of the largest diamonds on Earth,

01:24:24is a measly 45.5 carats in comparison.

01:24:28Can you imagine the size of the ring you could make with this star diamond?

01:24:33And it's about the same mass as our sun.

01:24:37But don't get too excited about the prospect of owning this diamond just yet.

01:24:42Even if you were Jeff Bezos, you wouldn't be able to afford it.

01:24:46According to Ronald Winston, CEO of Harry Winston Inc.,

01:24:50the diamond is so big that it would likely depress the value of the market.

01:24:55So you'd have to settle for a much smaller diamond engagement ring.

01:25:01One interesting thing about the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds star is that it's incredibly dense.

01:25:07In fact, it has the mass of the sun crammed into an object only a third the diameter of Earth.

01:25:13That's like trying to fit an elephant into a shoebox.

01:25:17And yet, despite its massive size, it's actually quite cool.

01:25:22With a core temperature of only about 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

01:25:26By comparison, the core temperature of our sun is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.

01:25:34Since the discovery of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,

01:25:38several other crystallized stars have been found, some with diamond hearts the size of Earth.

01:25:44It just goes to show that the universe is full of surprises.

01:25:47And you never know what kind of treasures you might find out there in the vast expanse of space.

01:25:54And this isn't the only weird star we've discovered so far.

01:25:58There are many strange, unexplained things in outer space.

01:26:04For example, let's take Vega.

01:26:07Vega, also known as Alpha Lyrae, is a bright star located in the constellation Lyra.

01:26:13It's one of the brightest stars in the night sky and is easily visible to the naked eye from most parts of the world.

01:26:22Now, Vega may look like a beautiful, bright star to us Northern Hemisphere folks.

01:26:27But little do we know, it's hiding a secret.

01:26:30It's actually quite squashed.

01:26:34You see, Vega's high spin rate causes it to bulge at the equator, kind of like a cosmic belly.

01:26:41It rotates once every 12.5 hours, which is pretty fast for a star.

01:26:46And it throws material out around its waistline.

01:26:49It's almost like the star is hula-hooping.

01:26:52This material is further from the center of the star, so it experiences less gravity,

01:26:58causing it to cool and darken, leading to a gravity darkening effect.

01:27:05So Vega is basically a cosmic fitness guru's worst nightmare.

01:27:10Although for us stargazers, it still looks round because we're looking at it from Earth's whole end.

01:27:16However, if we saw it from a different angle, we'd get a very different view.

01:27:21One that might make us wonder if Vega has been sneaking some cosmic donuts behind our backs.

01:27:29But while we might joke about its equatorial waistline,

01:27:33there's no denying that Vega is still one of the brightest and most fascinating stars in our galaxy.

01:27:41But if you want something actually bright, then how about a supernova?

01:27:48Supernovas are giant space booms that occur when stars reach the end of their life cycle.

01:27:55It's like the grand finale of a firework show, but on a cosmic scale.

01:27:59They release more energy in a few seconds than our Sun will produce in its entire lifetime.

01:28:07And this is exactly what happened to the next star of our show.

01:28:12This celestial object with a weird name, IPFT-14HLS.

01:28:18But there's a catch. It isn't your average supernova.

01:28:22Even though this star made a blast in 2014 and started to fade away like usual,

01:28:28recently it made an unexpected comeback and brightened once more.

01:28:33Talk about a dramatic entrance.

01:28:37And if that wasn't enough, this thing continued to fade and brighten at least five times in total,

01:28:43which is a bit like a yo-yo.

01:28:45It's like the star just couldn't make up its mind about whether it wanted to stay bright or fade away into the abyss.

01:28:54Also, when scientists measured the supernova's spectrum,

01:28:57they found that it was evolving ten times slower than other stars.

01:29:02Maybe it's a supernova that just wants to enjoy its golden years.

01:29:08All in all, this object is a real mystery.

01:29:14But this is not the only star suffering from the two-in-one syndrome.

01:29:19At first glance, MY Camelopardalis appears to be a fairly common star.

01:29:24But after a closer look, astronomers concluded it was actually two stars in one.

01:29:32These two stars are orbiting each other at over 600,000 miles per hour.

01:29:37It's a contact binary star system,

01:29:40which means that the stars are so close together that they share a common envelope.

01:29:45In other words, they're so close to each other that they're practically smooching.

01:29:51These celestial Romeo and Juliet are one of the most massive known binary stars out there.

01:29:58Each of them individually weighs in at a whopping 32 and 38 solar masses, respectively.

01:30:06Astronomers also think that they might be on the brink of a stellar merger,

01:30:11which means that one day, they might just combine into one giant superstar.

01:30:16Wow, who knew space could be so romantic?

01:30:21Next, introducing another long name, HD 140283, also known as Methuselah's Star.

01:30:30This little guy in the constellation Libra has been around for a while.

01:30:35And by a while, I mean a really long time.

01:30:38Actually, scientists used to think it was older than the universe itself.

01:30:45Just imagine if it turned out to be true.

01:30:48But eventually, they figured out that it's actually around 14.8 billion years old,

01:30:54a peer of our universe.

01:30:56That's still pretty impressive, though.

01:30:58This star is so old, it remembers when the Milky Way was just a baby galaxy.

01:31:06But despite all that, this star still has some life left in it.

01:31:10It's just starting to expand into a red giant,

01:31:13which is kind of like when you hit your 30s.

01:31:16Talk about aging well.

01:31:20But if all these things are somewhat comprehensible,

01:31:23then how about a star that was literally named WTF Star by scientists?

01:31:29No, I'm not kidding. At least, it used to be.

01:31:32Now, it's called Tabby's Star.

01:31:35It also has a more scientific name, but that one is a bit of a mouthful.

01:31:41But what's really bizarre about this star is its irregular dimming.

01:31:46For some reason, it doesn't glow like a normal star,

01:31:49but blinks as if someone turned on and off a flashlight.

01:31:53And it's not just a little dip.

01:31:55We're talking up to a 22% drop in light.

01:31:59So it's not because it sometimes gets blocked by a planet or something.

01:32:05Scientists have come up with all sorts of explanations for this strange behavior,

01:32:09from comets to dust to even an extraterrestrial megastructure.

01:32:14That's right. But before your imagination runs too wild,

01:32:18it's important to note that the most likely explanation is just plain old dust.

01:32:23Perhaps the star is surrounded by some kind of dust cloud,

01:32:26and sometimes it prevents us from seeing it clearly.

01:32:32Although this explanation is still not 100% confirmed,

01:32:35there are still plenty of mysteries surrounding Tabby's Star.

01:32:39One thing's for sure, it may be a bit of an oddball,

01:32:42but that's what makes it so fascinating.

01:32:46So there you have it, folks.

01:32:48We're left in awe of the incredible diversity and strangeness of the cosmos.

01:32:53There's so much more to discover out there.

01:32:56So let's keep exploring and keep being amazed by the wonders of the universe.

01:33:01What can survive in space?

01:33:03Well, people can, if they have an excellent spacesuit.

01:33:06Spacesuits are, shall we say, kind of a needed item in the vacuum of space.

01:33:11Without one, you'll have to stay inside the spaceship or a modular dwelling on the Moon or Mars.

01:33:17Currently, NASA has only several older spacesuits ready for use outside the spacecraft,

01:33:22like the International Space Station.

01:33:25NASA's Artemis mission to the Moon is planning to have new suits designed for both men and women.

01:33:31It has a quarter-billion-dollar budget for them.

01:33:33These new suits are much less bulky than the older ones and much more fashionable.

01:33:38But what other creatures besides people can live in space?

01:33:42Three named animals were sent into space, and they all came home safely.

01:33:46Does that qualify?

01:33:48Two dogs, Belka and Strelka, spent a day inside a Russian spacecraft in 1960

01:33:53and became media stars upon their return.

01:33:56The USA launched a chimp named Ham on a 16-minute ride into space.

01:34:01Space starts 62 miles above the ocean level and only takes a rocket a few minutes to get there.

01:34:07Ham, who wore a spacesuit, performed all his button-pushing tasks admirably

01:34:12and is honored in the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

01:34:17But tardigrades can actually live in space.

01:34:21Tardigrades, or water bears as they are often called, are brown and look like teeny tiny grizzly bears

01:34:27and are one of the most miniature animals with legs.

01:34:30They have eight of them.

01:34:32Most species of tardigrades have no eyes, but some do.

01:34:35It's possible to see water bears with a good magnifying glass

01:34:39since they average about a half millimeter in size.

01:34:42Sprinkle a little water on moss and they'll come out.

01:34:46They can walk about one body length per second and run at about two body lengths per second.

01:34:51Water bear eggs are easier to spot because they're bright white.

01:34:55The European Space Agency took water bears to the International Space Station

01:34:59and left them outside for 10 days.

01:35:02They survived.

01:35:03They still survived with no air, water, almost a perfect vacuum,

01:35:07harmful solar radiation, extreme cold, and heat.

01:35:11Well, that doesn't sound very fun, does it?

01:35:13In extreme conditions, water bears rely on their exoskeleton, or tun, to protect themselves.

01:35:19In laboratory tests, this exoskeleton could withstand immense pressure

01:35:23at over 87,000 pounds per square inch.

01:35:26That's quite a spacesuit they got.

01:35:29Water bears have even been frozen solid for 30 years.

01:35:33And when warmed up, the water bears revived and were still able to reproduce.

01:35:38As we search for life in space, as we explore Mars,

01:35:42these types of extreme lifeforms become essential to understand.

01:35:46If water bears can survive literally every environmental condition,

01:35:50can we conclude that life is everywhere in space?

01:35:54Extremophiles are lifeforms living in extreme conditions, such as other planets might have.

01:35:59Movile Cave in the country of Romania is one such place that could just well be on another planet.

01:36:06All life on Earth, on the surface of the Earth, is carbon-based.

01:36:10This means that carbon atoms act much like a universal Lego block,

01:36:14to which hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms connect

01:36:17to form the molecules that the cells of living organisms are made of.

01:36:21But not in Movile Cave.

01:36:23Movile Cave was sealed off at least 2.5 million years ago.

01:36:27The water that percolates up through limestone rock has formed a lake in the cave,

01:36:32a mix of hydrogen sulfide, poisonous and corrosive, and ammonia.

01:36:37What could live in this toxic soup?

01:36:39Well, sulfur-based lifeforms.

01:36:42An entire ecological system without light or photosynthesis exists inside Movile Cave.

01:36:48The food chain is built on chemosynthesis, microorganisms eating sulfur-based chemicals.

01:36:5433 species of sulfur-based creatures were found living in the hostile environment of Movile Cave.

01:37:00Shrimps, scorpions, centipedes, snails, etc., etc.

01:37:05Movile Cave is an alien world deep underground full of sulfur-based lifeforms.

01:37:11If creatures like this exist in Movile Cave on Earth,

01:37:14what can we expect to find living in outer space?

01:37:18Bacteria.

01:37:19Bacteria can live in outer space.

01:37:21And fungi, too.

01:37:23Bacteria form the base of the food chain,

01:37:26and bacteria have been proven to be able to live in outer space.

01:37:30In the 1980s, cosmonauts on the Mir space station

01:37:33complained that something was growing outside the station's windows and blocking their view of Earth.

01:37:38It turned out, upon inspection, to be bacteria and fungus, or fungi.

01:37:44The windows, made of quartz, were being damaged and weakened by what was growing on the surface.

01:37:49Fungi were also found to be eating copper on some of the cables.

01:37:53Mold was found growing in some places on the outside of Mir.

01:37:56The space station was under attack by microorganisms.

01:38:01Scientists took this very seriously and began to investigate.

01:38:05It seems that in a sterile environment, such as space,

01:38:08bacteria come out of their hiding places when no other microorganisms are around.

01:38:13Cosmic radiation may even help them mutate and adapt to the space environment.

01:38:18The bacteria seem to be growing even faster in space than on Earth.

01:38:22Years later, the United States decided to run a bacterial experiment on the International Space Station.

01:38:28They coated rocks with various bacteria and put them outside the space station.

01:38:33Some bacteria did not survive the harsh conditions of space, but many did.

01:38:38One strain, called OU-20, survived for over a year and a half outside the ISS.

01:38:44Japan also did a bacterial experiment on the International Space Station.

01:38:49Outside the Japanese Kibo module, Kibo's robotic arm placed three panels

01:38:54with the bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans, or D. radiodurans for short.

01:38:59It survived outside in space for three years.

01:39:03The lead scientists of the Japanese experiment calculated

01:39:06that the bacteria could live as long as eight years in space.

01:39:09That's long enough to make a journey to Mars and back four times.

01:39:13Now, this raises a couple of interesting questions.

01:39:16Could life have come to Earth from Mars in a space rock?

01:39:19And, more pointedly, could an infectious bacteria come to Earth in a space rock?

01:39:25Suddenly, what had only been considered in science fiction books and movies

01:39:29was now a subject of intense scientific scrutiny.

01:39:32And then came the Mars meteor.

01:39:35Antarctica is the best place to find meteors because it's covered by ice.

01:39:39The ice in the Allen Hills regions of Antarctica

01:39:42is locked in place by the configuration of the surrounding mountain.

01:39:46The ice here sublimes.

01:39:48That means the ice evaporates, never becoming liquid but turning directly into vapor.

01:39:53As the ice in the Allen Hills region sublimes,

01:39:56it exposes all the meteors that have hit the ice over many hundreds or thousands of years.

01:40:02Meteor hunters literally drive around on snowmobiles and pick them up with togs,

01:40:07never touching them to avoid contaminating them with human bacteria.

01:40:11They bag the meteors, number them, and record the location

01:40:14and any other pertinent facts about the meteor.

01:40:17That's how meteor ALH84001 was found, the Mars meteor.

01:40:23Since Earth gets hit by about 17 meteors every day,

01:40:27over thousands of years the numbers add up.

01:40:30Almost everywhere has been hit by a meteor at one time or another.

01:40:3411 years apart, two houses on the same street in Wethersfield, Connecticut,

01:40:39had their roofs punctured by one-pound meteors.

01:40:42But only a rare few meteors ever come from Mars.

01:40:46126 meteors have now been identified as coming from the Red Planet.

01:40:51ALH84001 came from Mars.

01:40:55Scientists know this because the United States has landed on Mars

01:40:59and sampled Martian rocks and the Martian atmosphere composition.

01:41:03ALH84001 contained the same gases as Mars' atmosphere

01:41:08and similar chemical composition as the rocks.

01:41:11But the meteor also contained something else, a fossilized life form.

01:41:16There has been much debate about whether or not the tiny object inside ALH84001

01:41:22is a fossilized bacteria life form, or rather a chemical deposit.

01:41:27But the studies aboard the International Space Station

01:41:30confirm that bacteria can live for a long duration in space.

01:41:34So it is entirely possible that some bacteria could make the journey to Earth from Mars in a meteor.

01:41:40The United States' Mars-exploring Perseverance rover

01:41:44has recently found organic molecules inside Mars rocks.

01:41:48These organics are carbon and hydrogen.

01:41:51It won't be known if these organic molecules were produced by living organisms

01:41:55or merely by chemical reactions until the samples are returned to Earth sometime before 2030.

01:42:01The search for life on Mars is ongoing.

01:42:04But Mars is not the only place in the Solar System that might have life.

01:42:08Jupiter's moon Europa is a good suspect, too.

01:42:12Entirely covered by miles of thick water ice,

01:42:15Europa may have an ocean of salty water beneath its icy crust.

01:42:19Ice acts as an insulation blanket.

01:42:22Combined with possible internal thermal processes in Europa's core

01:42:26means that Europa's ocean water could be warm.

01:42:30The Europa Clipper Express mission plans to confirm conditions for life on Europa.

01:42:35Loaded with nine pieces of observational equipment,

01:42:38the Europa Clipper will attempt to observe just about everything possibly going on

01:42:43by orbiting above Europa,

01:42:45including the chemical composition of the mysterious reddish-colored material

01:42:49that has ejected onto the surface ice from the ocean below.

01:42:53What could this reddish material be?

01:42:56Could it be a specifical chemical mix?

01:42:58Or could it be krill, shrimp, fish,

01:43:01life forms like in Mobile Cave?

01:43:03Or the ancient remnants of a Brightside narrator?

01:43:07Stay tuned!

01:43:11Attention, attention!

01:43:12Something very exciting is going on on Saturn.

01:43:15It's called a spokes season.

01:43:17And no, the planet isn't turning into a giant gaseous wheel.

01:43:21Let me tell you more about this phenomenon.

01:43:25Each year, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope

01:43:28devotes some of its time to observing Saturn,

01:43:31a gas giant, like me,

01:43:33the second largest planet in the Solar System.

01:43:35And this space body always has something new to surprise us with.

01:43:39For example, look at one of the latest images of the gas giant.

01:43:43See those smudgy spokes?

01:43:45They mean that Saturn's spokes season is starting.

01:43:48Like our planet, Saturn is tilted on its axis.

01:43:51That's why it has four seasons.

01:43:53But since the orbit of the gas giant is much larger,

01:43:56each of these seasons lasts about seven Earth years.

01:43:59Keep this in mind, it's important.

01:44:02Now, the next thing we need to talk about

01:44:04to understand the concept of the unique spokes season on Saturn

01:44:07is the equinox.

01:44:09On Earth, it's the moment when the Sun is exactly above the equator of the planet,

01:44:14and day and night are of the same length.

01:44:16But on Saturn, it's something a bit different.

01:44:19An equinox occurs when Saturn's rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun.

01:44:24And even though equinoxes on Saturn happen every spring and fall,

01:44:28just like on our planet,

01:44:30they actually occur very seldom.

01:44:32Roughly once in 15 Earth years.

01:44:35That's why astronomers are so excited about this event.

01:44:38Now look, there are two smudgy spokes in this ring.

01:44:41It's called ring B on the left of the picture.

01:44:44They resemble the spokes on a bicycle.

01:44:46The shading and shape of spokes vary.

01:44:49They may seem dark or light, it depends on the angle and illumination.

01:44:53Sometimes they might look like blobs

01:44:55instead of something with a classical radial spoke shape.

01:44:58They also don't last long,

01:45:00but more and more will start to appear the closer we're to May 6, 2025.

01:45:05That's when the autumnal equinox on Saturn will occur.

01:45:09But what causes the spokes?

01:45:11Astronomers think it might be the gas giant's magnetic field.

01:45:15When a planetary magnetic field interacts with the solar wind,

01:45:19it creates an electrically charged environment.

01:45:22On Earth, this results in northern lights, also called aurora borealis.

01:45:26And if we speak about Saturn,

01:45:28the tiniest icy ring particles might get charged too.

01:45:32And it probably temporarily levitates these particles

01:45:35above the larger boulders the rings consist of.

01:45:38For the first time, the spokes in Saturn's rings

01:45:41were spotted by NASA's Voyager mission.

01:45:44This happened in the early 1980s.

01:45:46At the time, we didn't know that these spokes were a seasonal phenomenon.

01:45:50Voyager 2 just passed by the planet and then sped on.

01:45:54To figure out what these spokes were and how they functioned,

01:45:57astronomers needed a space telescope

01:46:00that could observe Saturn's rings from afar, like Hubble.

01:46:04The latest equinox on Saturn occurred in 2009.

01:46:07At that time, NASA's Cassini space probe was traveling around the gas giant.

01:46:12It sent many amazing images back to Earth.

01:46:15They quickly proved that the spokes weren't caused by gravitational interactions with Saturn

01:46:20or the influence of the gas giant's moons or small moonlets,

01:46:24which make up the planet's rings.

01:46:26It was the year 2005 when Cassini confirmed

01:46:29that the spokes were related to Saturn's magnetic field.

01:46:33That mission was finished in 2017.

01:46:36Now, Hubble keeps its long-term monitoring of the changes on and around Saturn.

01:46:41Despite all the observations,

01:46:43astronomers still can't predict the beginning and duration of the spoke season.

01:46:47Luckily, Saturn's prominent rings are a perfect laboratory for studying this phenomenon.

01:46:52Because even though other gas giants in the Solar System also have rings,

01:46:57those are not so visible, and scientists don't know whether spokes occur on those planets.

01:47:02But these spokes aren't the only exciting space phenomenon.

01:47:06Our Solar System is a fascinating place, that's why.

01:47:09If you were standing at the Martian equator barefoot,

01:47:12your feet wouldn't get cold.

01:47:14The temperature there would feel like on a sunny spring day on Earth.

01:47:17But you'd have to wear a hat.

01:47:19At the height of your head, it would be freezing cold.

01:47:22Now, Venus spins backward compared to most other planets in the Solar System and the Sun itself.

01:47:28One of the explanations astronomers have come up with is a collision with some solid object,

01:47:34for example, an asteroid, that happened in the past.

01:47:38Jupiter's moon Io has hundreds of volcanoes,

01:47:41which makes the satellite the most volcanically active object in the Solar System.

01:47:46The moon also has a weird yellowish surface.

01:47:49It looks blotted and resembles a pepperoni pizza. Yum!

01:47:52Europa, one of Jupiter's four biggest moons, is covered in ice.

01:47:57This ice shell can be 10 to 15 miles thick.

01:48:01It also has some smooth patches, so if you're into ice skating, you would like it there.

01:48:06If you lump together all the known asteroids in the Solar System,

01:48:10their total weight would still be smaller than 10% of the mass of our Moon.

01:48:15Scientists believe that Mercury might still have a partially molten core.

01:48:20It could explain why Mercury has a magnetic field, even if it's just 1% as strong as Earth's.

01:48:26Mercury's core takes up around 42% of the planet's volume.

01:48:30Mercury also has wrinkles.

01:48:33When its iron core was cooling, the planet's crust contracted.

01:48:37It made the surface of the planet uneven.

01:48:39These wrinkles are called lobate scarps.

01:48:43The biggest of these scarps can be hundreds of miles long and up to a mile high.

01:48:48Uranus is the only planet in the Solar System to rotate on its side.

01:48:53The reason might be an ancient mega-powerful collision with an Earth-sized object.

01:48:58But so far, it's just a theory.

01:49:00Mars might get a set of rings of its own in the next 70 million years.

01:49:05Its largest moon, called Phobos, is orbiting closer and closer to the planet.

01:49:10One day, it's likely to get broken apart by the gravitational pull of the Red Planet

01:49:15and turn into a ring that can last for millions of years.

01:49:18I won't be around then, so I'll just take their word for it.

01:49:21Scientists think that the Moon's surface has more craters than Earth's

01:49:26because it doesn't have so much natural activity going on.

01:49:29Winds, rains, earthquakes, and erosion keep altering the surface of our planet.

01:49:34But the Moon has almost no weather to change its appearance.

01:49:38Saturn is the most flattened planet in the Solar System.

01:49:42It's squished at the poles, and any point on the equator

01:49:45is about 4,000 miles farther from the center of the planet than the poles.

01:49:50The Hubble Space Telescope weighs almost as much as two male African elephants

01:49:55and is as long as a big school bus.

01:49:57Yeah, that's a launch I'd love to see – two elephants in a school bus!

01:50:01It's made almost 1.5 million observations since it was launched in 1990.

01:50:06Astronomers have used this data to write about 15,000 scientific papers.

01:50:12Everything on Earth and everything people can see in space,

01:50:15with the help of telescopes, is normal matter.

01:50:18It's made up of atoms and molecules and adds up to less than 5% of the Universe.

01:50:23Almost 68% of the Universe is dark energy, and the remaining 27% is dark matter.

01:50:30Does that really matter?

01:50:32As a matter of fact, it does.

01:50:34Saturn has a mysterious vortex swirling over the planet's south pole.

01:50:39The whole thing resembles an enormous hurricane-like storm,

01:50:42measuring almost 5,000 miles across.

01:50:45That's two-thirds the diameter of Earth.

01:50:48What confuses astronomers is that although the phenomenon looks like a hurricane,

01:50:52it doesn't behave like one.

01:50:55Saturn is also the only planet in the Solar System that's less dense than water.

01:51:00In other words, if you found a bathtub huge enough to fit this gas giant,

01:51:04it would float there like a rubber duck.

01:51:07Earthquakes on the Moon don't occur as often as on our planet.

01:51:11But when they do, it happens closer to the center of the satellite.

01:51:15Scientists think moonquakes might be caused by the gravity of Earth and the Sun.

01:51:20One of Saturn's moons, Iapetus, has bizarre two-tone coloring.

01:51:25The difference between the moon's two hemispheres is great.

01:51:28One of them is light, and the other is eerily dark.

01:51:32Scientists haven't figured out this mystery yet.

01:51:35The only asteroid belt in the Solar System astronauts know about is between Mars and Jupiter.

01:51:41There are thousands of asteroids in this area.

01:51:44They're irregularly shaped solid objects of different sizes,

01:51:47but all of them are way smaller than a planet.

01:51:50Scientists have analyzed the chemical content of some meteorites

01:51:54found in the Sahara Desert, Antarctica, and other places.

01:51:58Some of the rocks turned out to have a Martian origin.

01:52:01Others arrived from the Moon or the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

01:52:05Ooh, space rocks.

01:52:07So we can also say space rocks.

01:52:10Yeah, we could say that.

01:52:14You've been training for this for years.

01:52:17You know you're ready.

01:52:21You're standing on the door's threshold.

01:52:23You take a deep breath and bravely open it.

01:52:27You jump outside the International Space Station and into the vastness of space.

01:52:32Ah, this never gets old, you say on the transmitter device.

01:52:38You feel like a feather whenever moving through space.

01:52:41Except for the suit, of course.

01:52:45It's true what that guy told you one day.

01:52:47Astronaut suits limit your body's movement by 20%.

01:52:51For you, that means you've got a 20% higher chance of being clumsy in outer space,

01:52:57which is never good odds.

01:52:58There's not a lot of room for error during a spacewalk.

01:53:02You finally get to the docking port.

01:53:04You look around and see the part of the station that needs fixing.

01:53:08This is where other space shuttles dock when they come in from Earth or other planets.

01:53:13About a week ago, a shuttle coming from Jupiter miscalculated the landing and broke a piece of the port.

01:53:20You've attached the new shield to your suit's belt.

01:53:22Now all you've got to do is screw it on the station.

01:53:26You've spent hours training underwater to do this.

01:53:29You wore a heavy, hot, uncomfortable suit inside a pool in order to get the training you needed.

01:53:35Incoming! Sarah shouts on the transmitter.

01:53:38You don't even have time to ask what, as an absurdly fast storm of space debris catches you off guard.

01:53:44It shakes everything around you.

01:53:45You try to hold on tight to the strap that's keeping you safe, but oh no!

01:53:48A piece of debris just hit your helmet shield.

01:53:52Come in, Bob. Are you okay? Sarah asks you through the radio.

01:53:57You got a bit shocked by the impact, but everything seems fine.

01:54:01The meteorites are finally gone, so you can focus on your task now.

01:54:05You pull the rope that's connecting the new docking shield closer to your body, but the other part of the rope has nothing on it.

01:54:11Zip. Nada.

01:54:13Oh my, you think to yourself.

01:54:15Hmm, come in, Sarah. We have a lost shield. I repeat, we have a lost shield.

01:54:21This is a pretty serious situation, and you are aware of it.

01:54:24Anything that falls into space can go into a collision route with the International Space Station or with other space vehicles.

01:54:31You try to remember your training, but your mind goes blank.

01:54:35This is worse than that one time you broke your girlfriend's favorite ceramic jar.

01:54:39Sarah, the other astronaut who's with you on the ship, is shouting words on the transmitter.

01:54:44Oh no, Bob! Tell me you didn't do this! This is a total catastrophe! I'm coming outside!

01:54:50You spot the shield under the ISS. It's the size of a medium-sized car door, and it's moving quite fast.

01:54:58Here's what can happen in this scenario. The shield could head back down to Earth and break into the atmosphere.

01:55:04It would probably catch fire and disintegrate on the way down, but anyways, it would make NASA and you look pretty bad.

01:55:10The other option is the car door-sized shield gains momentum, and it orbits all the way to hit the ISS, and you for that matter.

01:55:19Or some satellite that happens to be in a similar orbit.

01:55:23Here's the thing. If you ever thought that space was an infinite void, you got that part wrong.

01:55:29Since different countries started to build equipment strong enough to travel in space, space has been more crowded than ever.

01:55:35Not with people, but with satellites, asteroids, and space debris.

01:55:39You were surprised when you learned that Earth receives meteorite showers every single day, but they're so small that no one on the surface of the planet notices it.

01:55:47They usually turn to ashes before hitting the ground, but that's not all.

01:55:52What just happened to you on this mission has happened on several other missions before.

01:55:56Astronauts keep losing stuff in outer space.

01:55:59So much so that NASA had to create a division to track down and monitor the orbit of all debris that is just floating carelessly around.

01:56:07You couldn't believe it when someone told you that there are over 23,000 softball-sized pieces of debris roaming around in space.

01:56:13And if we're talking about smaller objects, then that number goes up to half a million.

01:56:19As you were about to unstrap yourself and dangerously venture through outer space without any protection, you noticed Sarah has beat you to it.

01:56:27You can't let her do this alone, so you decide to tag along.

01:56:31FYI, this is against every NASA handbook and training you ever received in your life.

01:56:37But you think, if this works in sci-fi movies, it must work for us.

01:56:41Even though we all know that's very far from the truth.

01:56:45Sarah is close to the debris shield, but her body weight makes her orbit in a completely different direction.

01:56:51Okay, you think to yourself. This is your turn to shine and be a hero.

01:56:56You try moving your arms like you would do underwater, but there's no friction in space. Duh.

01:57:02You can't butterfly swim your way to rescue the rogue equipment.

01:57:05You try to contact Sarah, but she doesn't come in. I guess you're on your own now.

01:57:10For some reason, you start to orbit in a similar route as the floating car door shield.

01:57:15It must be the amount of stuff you've got strapped onto yourself.

01:57:18Or maybe it was the breakfast burrito you had that morning.

01:57:21You feel like you're George Clooney in the movie Gravity.

01:57:24No, better yet, you feel like Obi-Wan Kenobi.

01:57:28Yes, you're feeling as strong and powerful as a Jedi right now.

01:57:32You keep your hands stretched before your body, hoping you'll gently collide with the space debris.

01:57:36And three, two, one, and the landing was successful.

01:57:39Just joking, but yes, you managed to dock onto the debris. Hooray.

01:57:43Now what? You think?

01:57:46Guess you needed to have gone through that plan of yours a little bit more, huh?

01:57:49You still have no way of steering the debris.

01:57:52And now, you have no way to contact mission control and tell them the object, and yourself, are en route to somewhere.

01:58:00Don't get scared. You didn't come this far to get scared.

01:58:03Don't get scared. You didn't come this far to get scared.

01:58:06What's the best thing you can do?

01:58:08First, take a mental picture of the Earth.

01:58:11It never disappoints, from up here.

01:58:14Then, you try to play out the possible scenarios that could happen in the situation ship you're in.

01:58:19Your normal body weight would not be enough to get you out of Earth's orbit.

01:58:23In the hypothetical scenario in which this did happen, you'd probably be vacuumed into Venus's orbit,

01:58:29and spend a quite unpleasant period of your life around immense heat.

01:58:32Even though in Greek mythology, Venus represents love,

01:58:36there is nothing lovely about orbiting close to this planet, and you know this.

01:58:40If you got too close, your spacesuit would never be able to take on the heat.

01:58:45It's only made to sustain temperatures of around 250 degrees Fahrenheit tops,

01:58:50and Venus's atmosphere can heat up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

01:58:53But honestly, the worst case scenario is much simpler than that.

01:58:57Your spacesuit could decide to drown your ears, nose, and mouth in water.

01:59:01Yup, this has happened on spacewalks before yours.

01:59:05You see, in order to keep your spacesuit chill and cool,

01:59:09the suit relies on a gallon's worth of water that makes up for a cooling system.

01:59:14This system, which is supposed to send recycled air into the back of your helmet, does leak sometimes.

01:59:20And since you're stranded in the middle of the big nowhere, you'd have only that nowhere to run.

01:59:24But wait, what's that popping up on the horizon?

01:59:28It's a modular space shuttle.

01:59:31You try shouting, but nobody can hear you outside your helmet.

01:59:34You wave with your hands, but it's coming straight at you.

01:59:39Finally, it took longer than I wished to find you, Sarah said.

01:59:44Apparently, she made it back to the space station just in time to catch you before you went definitely rogue.

01:59:50Guess I'll be losing some astronaut points for this little misadventure, huh?

01:59:54You say, and yes, you definitely will.

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