- 2 days ago
Strange structures and unexpected signals detected near the center of the Milky Way are challenging what scientists thought they knew about our galaxy. Researchers have identified unusual Morse-like patterns and ancient signals that may be hundreds of millions of years old. These discoveries offer new clues about the extreme processes happening around the galactic core and bring us closer to understanding what really lies deep inside the Milky Way. Animation is created by Bright Side.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
Category
đŸ˜¹
FunTranscript
00:00The Milky Way galaxy, where we live, looks like a ginormous pinwheel rotating in space.
00:06It's a spiral galaxy that appeared around 14 billion years ago.
00:10It's filled with a lot of stuff.
00:12Stars, nebulae, which are clouds of dust and gas.
00:17Planets, asteroids, you and me and your parents and that messy kid down the street.
00:21You get the idea.
00:23And all these fan out from the center of the galaxy in long, spiraling arms.
00:27A marvelous view.
00:29The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across, and it takes our Sun, along with all the solar system,
00:36250 million years to make one revolution around the center of our home galaxy.
00:42Wow, that's a big lap.
00:45Look at the sky at night, and most stars you see there would be located in just one of the Milky Way's arms.
00:51Before telescopes were invented, people couldn't see stars clearly.
00:55They blurred together into a single white streak stretching across the sky.
00:59It looked like a river of milk.
01:02And that's how the name of our galaxy appeared.
01:04Now, let's get down to some recent and very exciting news.
01:08An international team of scientists have discovered something they've never seen before, hidden in the center of the Milky Way.
01:15It resembles Morse code.
01:17Is that our galaxy trying to communicate with us?
01:21In the early 1980s, astronomers discovered giant one-dimensional filaments dangling vertically near Sagittarius A star.
01:30That's our galaxy's central supermassive black hole.
01:33And recently, a new kind of such filament has been found.
01:36But they're much shorter and lie either horizontally or radially.
01:40In other words, they're spreading out like spokes on a wheel, going away from the black hole.
01:47Interestingly, even though both types of filaments do have certain similarities,
01:52researchers believe they most likely have different origins.
01:55The vertical filaments stretch through the galaxy, towering up to 150 light-years high.
02:02But the horizontal ones resemble the dashes and dots of Morse code.
02:06Scientists were beyond excited when they made this discovery.
02:09But they had to do a lot of research to make sure the structures indeed were what they looked like.
02:15They managed to confirm that the filaments were not random, but tied to the outflow of the black hole.
02:22Thanks to them, it became possible to study the spin of the black hole and the orientation of its accretion disk,
02:28a rotating disk of matter formed around the black hole under the influence of its immense gravitational force.
02:35But let's have a closer look at the filaments we've been talking about.
02:39There are around 1,000 vertical ones.
02:42They appear in pairs and clusters and are often either equally spaced or side-by-side like strings on a harp.
02:49As for their horizontal counterparts, they seem to be around 6 million years old.
02:55Now, both types of filaments are one-dimensional.
02:57They can be viewed with radio waves.
03:00And they seem to be tied to processes happening in the galactic center.
03:05That's it.
03:05The similarities end there.
03:07The vertical filaments are perpendicular to the galactic plane.
03:11The horizontal ones are parallel.
03:14But at the same time, they point radially toward the center of the galaxy and the black hole.
03:20The vertical filaments are magnetic.
03:22The horizontal ones seem to emit thermal radiation.
03:25The vertical filaments contain particles moving at speeds very close to the speed of light.
03:31The horizontal ones don't do it.
03:34There are way more vertical filaments, and they're much larger than those stretching horizontally.
03:39150 light-years against 5 to 10 light-years at most.
03:43In any case, the new discovery is still filled with tons of unknown things.
03:48And astronomers are ready to start unraveling them.
03:52But the filaments aren't the only unexpected and bizarre phenomenon in the solar system.
03:57Some time ago, Australian researchers discovered a weird spinning object in the Milky Way.
04:03And it was unlike anything they'd seen before.
04:06This object released massive bursts of radio energy three times every hour.
04:11And even though there are other objects that switch on and off, for example, pulsars,
04:16such frequent pulsation has never been observed before.
04:20Some astronomers admitted that this discovery was pretty spooky, since no known object in the sky could do it.
04:27Research teams started working on the discovery and found out that the object is likely to be 4,000 light-years away from Earth.
04:34It's also super bright and has an incredibly strong magnetic field.
04:40And still, if you do all the math, not me, you'll discover that it isn't supposed to have enough power to produce such radio waves every 20 minutes.
04:49The theories about the origin of this mysterious object vary.
04:53Some experts claim it could be an ultra-long period magnetar, whatever that is.
04:58Others think it might be a white dwarf or the remnants of a collapsed star.
05:03But it also might be something we've never heard about, an entirely new type of object.
05:09But one thing is clear.
05:11Astronomers manage to observe the signal across a wide range of frequencies.
05:16Which means it has a natural origin and isn't something artificial.
05:20Now there's another mystery about the Milky Way.
05:23Hey, what can I say?
05:25It's a mysterious place.
05:26Around 15 years ago, astronomers launched the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope.
05:32Gamma rays are an incredibly high-energy form of light.
05:35That's why, when you observe the sky through the Gamma Ray Telescope, rather than with your own eyes, the difference is dramatic.
05:43So, when astronomers started to use the telescope, they noticed that the center of our galaxy emitted much more gamma radiation than, for example, its outskirts.
05:52To put it simply, something is growing incredibly brightly right in the middle of the Milky Way.
05:59But the most perplexing thing is that no one has been able to find a plausible explanation for this phenomenon for almost a decade.
06:07Some astronomers suggested that the central region of the Milky Way was glowing with such intensity because the dark matter was getting destroyed there.
06:15While no one has ever observed dark matter annihilation, scientists have been hypothesizing about this phenomenon for a long time.
06:24Naturally, we wouldn't be able to see dark matter itself.
06:28But the process could be producing the radiation the Gamma Ray Telescope has spotted.
06:33That's how it could be happening.
06:35If particles of dark matter collided, just like ordinary matter particles do in particle accelerators, they would annihilate one another.
06:44And as a result, they would burst into a shower of other particles, including the ones that make up Gamma Rays.
06:50But that's where the problem lies.
06:53If the mystifying glow was created by the annihilation of dark matter, then Gamma Ray particles would get distributed evenly in space.
07:01Instead, they gather together in clumps.
07:04That's why, to the great disappointment of numerous supporters, the theory based on the dark matter came up short.
07:11There is an alternative explanation of why the Milky Way is glowing.
07:16The culprit might be a group of millisecond pulsars, which are neutron stars spinning incredibly fast.
07:23And when I say fast, I mean about 1,000 times per second.
07:27The theory that the glow is caused by millisecond pulsars is quite plausible.
07:31As I mentioned before, the light coming from there is clumpy rather than smooth.
07:37And it often happens when the source of light is one individual object, such as a pulsar.
07:43Several studies have concluded that, due to the nature of the light, millisecond pulsars are the best explanation for this phenomenon.
07:51However, many scientists are still not persuaded.
07:54Those stubborn folk want proof, right?
07:56Well, first of all, they state that the clumps of light may appear due to the interaction of gas between stars and cosmic rays.
08:04Besides, the pulsar theory has one more catch.
08:08Why would so many of them be clustered together in a perfect sphere around the center of the Milky Way?
08:13Probably, the clusters of stars that orbit the Milky Way could have been disrupted by the galaxy's gravity.
08:20As a result, these spilled stars, including pulsars, later formed a spherical shell around the center of the Milky Way.
08:28But, in fact, the whole picture looks like something completely different from both pulsars and dark matter.
08:35It leaves scientists with more questions than answers.
08:38And all that's left to do is a lot more research and testing.
08:43This signal had been traveling through space for 200 million years.
08:48And now, when it finally reached Earth, it brought a fascinating story with itself.
08:53It might even help us solve an 18-year-long mystery.
08:58We caught this one in 2022.
09:00It was such an intense burst of radio waves.
09:02Even though it lit up for a fraction of a second, it outshined entire galaxies.
09:08At first, this signal hasn't caught attention because we've seen similar things before.
09:13It was a fast radio burst, or FRB for short.
09:17These guys have been a mystery for years now.
09:20All because we have no idea where they come from.
09:24Now, FRBs are brief booms of energy, coming to us from all over outer space.
09:29They're barely catchable, lasting up to 3 seconds.
09:33But they're also very hard to miss, because their power is absolutely unimaginable.
09:38One little burst can release as much energy as the Sun does in an entire day.
09:44They've been a puzzle for us ever since 2007.
09:47We've caught over a thousand of those signals from literally everywhere.
09:51From our own galaxy, to places as far as 8 billion light-years away.
09:56And none of them revealed where they're coming from, or what they mean.
10:00At least, we know they're not from extraterrestrial creatures.
10:04They have to be coming from something that happens nearly constantly.
10:08And this recent signal might finally help us learn the truth.
10:12It lasted about 2 milliseconds, and it wasn't particularly bright.
10:16But when researchers took a closer look, they realized they can actually finally track this one.
10:23They got to it immediately.
10:25They saw that the burst came from a galaxy about 200 million light-years away.
10:30In other words, this is exactly how long these radio waves have been traveling to us.
10:35The signal flickered in a weird pattern.
10:38This is what we call a scintillation.
10:41When light or radio waves travel to us,
10:43they can stumble upon unexpected crazy clouds of gas.
10:47The particles and light waves start bouncing off this gas,
10:50which disturbs the signal a little bit.
10:53So, when we received it, it was a bit weird and distorted.
10:57Kind of like me.
10:59But this exact cloud was what helped us locate where exactly this signal came from.
11:05Turns out, it came from a neutron star.
11:09Now, these are some fascinating guys.
11:10They're the remnants of stars that live fast and burn bright.
11:15When a powerful star like this, much larger than our Earth, runs out of fuel,
11:20it can no longer support its weight.
11:22So, it goes away with an insane spectacle called a supernova.
11:27During its last moments, its core collapses under its own super-strong gravity.
11:32And this creates one of the densest objects in the universe.
11:36Again, a lot like me.
11:37Hey, what can I say?
11:38For curiosity, let's compare it to osmium, the most dense element on our planet.
11:44If you had a small cube of osmium, it would weigh around 0.8 pounds.
11:50That's already pretty heavy, and it means that one cubic foot of osmium
11:54would weigh a shocking 1,410 pounds.
11:59That's like an average cow.
12:00Now, just try to guess how much a small cube of neutron star would weigh.
12:06Wrong.
12:06It would be a horrifying 7 billion tons per one little cube.
12:11Don't even think about holding it in your hand.
12:13That thing would warp the fabric of reality around it.
12:16It's kind of like trying to imagine Mount Everest being squeezed into a tiny ball.
12:21Hard to even imagine.
12:22So, even though they're so heavy, these stars are surprisingly small, only about 6 miles in radius.
12:31That's like a city size, and it would still weigh more than our sun.
12:34But, if that's not enough horror for you, the neutron star we're talking about wasn't your regular one.
12:42It was a magnetar.
12:44Now, magnetar is a rare type of neutron star.
12:48When a neutron star is born, there's only a 10% chance that it will become one of those guys.
12:54It can happen if, while the star is collapsing, its magnetic field grows wildly stronger.
13:00The spin is rapid, the insides are going wild, and boom!
13:04We've got a magnetic field a trillion times stronger than Earth's.
13:09More than that, these are among the most extreme magnetic fields in the entire universe.
13:14They can literally rip atoms apart.
13:18Which is exactly what they do.
13:20They just rip everything apart.
13:21So, they end up being surrounded by a superhot, electrically charred soup of particles called plasma.
13:28The magnetic field is going wacky, twisting, and bending the plasma as it sees fit.
13:34And this all just ends up as an ultra-hot party.
13:38Everyone is constantly colliding, scattering, and being absorbed.
13:42Not the best place for a hangout.
13:45Now, back to our main character.
13:47The magnetar in our story also had a plasma soup and a terrifying invisible field surrounding it.
13:54And this is exactly where that mysterious signal came from.
13:57A signal was born somewhere in that place, at a distance of 6,200 miles away from the magnetar.
14:05Sounds like a lot, but that's a distance shorter than a flight from New York to Singapore.
14:10But this is very weird, because how can a radio burst even escape a place like that?
14:16Now, usually, they'd end up being blocked or absorbed.
14:19Most often, radio waves end up hanging out there, like in a cage.
14:24This one, however, managed to break free somehow, which means that something happened that punched through the plasma.
14:32Energy somehow goes goofy, twists, and reshapes itself in such ways that it starts releasing radio waves.
14:38Now, in any case, this means that FRBs most likely come from neutron stars and various types, like magnetars or pulsars.
14:49Recently, astronomers made a new amazing telescope called CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, a mouthful.
14:58This one detects FRBs literally every day.
15:02FRBs are full of surprises in general.
15:05In the same year, we discovered an FRB with periodic peaks lasting over 3 seconds, much longer than typical bursts.
15:13This one could also come from a neutron star.
15:16But if it was just neutron stars, we wouldn't probably receive them all that often.
15:21It looks like these signals are very diverse, and might actually be born from all sorts of places, like near black holes.
15:29So, there are some other theories about their origin.
15:32For example, they could come from two stars smashing into each other.
15:37What could be more epic than that?
15:39A collision of two stars would release unimaginable energy, and they'd destroy each other completely.
15:45Uh-oh!
15:46Some astronomers think they could explain FRBs.
15:49But, of course, that's not something that happens often at all.
15:54Also, FRBs sometimes repeat.
15:57Most of them flash once and disappear, but sometimes they almost flicker like the one we discussed.
16:03Some of them even follow very precise patterns.
16:07For example, one well-known repeater follows a 16-day cycle.
16:11It goes crazy for about 4 days, and then goes quiet for 12 days before starting again.
16:17This one is hard to explain even with neutron stars.
16:21There has to be some unique astrophysical mechanism at play.
16:25Maybe something that orbits something else.
16:29But anyway, a star's collision would only explain signals that flash once and never again.
16:35Another possibility is the blitzar.
16:39It's a goofy name for a very dramatic idea.
16:42A neutron star turning into a black hole.
16:45Once again, an event like that unleashes a huge burst of radio waves.
16:49But, again, an occasion like that would be incredibly rare.
16:53And the signals aren't supposed to repeat.
16:56Black holes themselves are a pretty good option, though.
16:59They're central to many FRB theories.
17:02Could these bursts come from a neutron star falling into a black hole?
17:06Or from a collapsing black hole itself?
17:09Maybe even dark matter interacting with a black hole?
17:13Hey, who knows?
17:14Let's just throw all the ideas in there.
17:17Of course, the thing that everyone's most excited about is extraterrestrial civilization.
17:22Maybe not all of these bursts, but at least some of them could be signals from our intelligent neighbors.
17:28But, like we said, that's very unlikely, considering that the signals come from all over the sky and many different distances.
17:37Also, almost all of them are the same.
17:39And that would be super hard and weird from an intelligent civilization to try and reproduce.
17:45Though, who knows what else we might discover in the future.
17:50That's it for today.
17:51So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
17:56Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
Be the first to comment