The most extreme stars in our universe could be the key to understanding life in the cosmos. These monster stars are among the oldest in the universe, and can be hundreds of times larger than the Sun and burn over million times brighter.
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#spacedeepestsecrets
#season2
#episode8
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacetime
#spacescience
#space
#nasa
#spacedocumentary
#darkmatter
#monsterstar
#oursolarsystem
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#spacedeepestsecrets
#season2
#episode8
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacetime
#spacescience
#space
#nasa
#spacedocumentary
#darkmatter
#monsterstar
#oursolarsystem
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:02Stars, burning beacons of light that dominate the cosmos.
00:07People don't really realize what sort of monsters these things are.
00:11Mysterious furnaces that both create and destroy.
00:16Each individual star is a fearsome beast of nuclear energy.
00:23Where did the first stars come from?
00:26They would have come into existence, they would have burned bright, and they would have exploded.
00:32And could their explosive deaths have helped forge our solar system?
00:39Today, new technology is helping astronomers unravel the secrets of the most violent stars in the universe.
00:48They are a shining light on how stars live and die.
00:55Unlocking the source of their power.
00:59And revealing how they shape the cosmos.
01:16We live in a universe teeming with stars.
01:20Using our most powerful telescopes, we can see on the order of a hundred billion galaxies.
01:25Each one of those galaxies has hundreds of billions of stars.
01:30We're talking something like a sextillion of stars out there, and that's a number so big you can't even imagine
01:37it.
01:37There are still many mysteries that we don't yet have answers for about the nature of stars and their inner
01:43workings and their deeper history.
01:46Today, scientists around the world are working to uncover the mysteries of how stars have evolved to dominate our universe.
01:56Now, new technology is allowing astronomers to trace their developments from the very first stars to exist to their explosive
02:05deaths.
02:08Their discoveries suggesting the evolution of extreme stars may have transformed our solar system and played a pivotal role in
02:17our very existence.
02:21One of the key mysteries, where did the first ever stars come from?
02:27We think that the very first stars in the universe were different than the ones we see around us today.
02:33That first generation of stars was likely very massive, very large objects.
02:39What were these first stars really like?
02:45On Mount Graham in Arizona, star hunter Dan Stark is searching for clues.
02:52Without a doubt, the formation of the first stars and the growth of the first galaxies was one of the
02:57most important events in cosmic history.
03:01One of our goals is to be able to witness the first stars turning on.
03:07Dan wants to use the large binocular telescope to investigate the early universe where the first stars may have emerged.
03:16With two 27-foot mirrors, this 715-ton rotating structure is one of the largest optical telescopes on the planet.
03:26But how can he observe stars that existed so far back in time?
03:32One of the great things about astronomy is that we can use our telescopes effectively as a time machine.
03:37So because light travels to us at a finite speed, we see the universe not as it is today, but
03:43as it was when that light left whatever object we are looking at.
03:47What you see here is the Andromeda galaxy.
03:51The Andromeda galaxy is located 2.5 million light years away.
03:54We see this not as it is today, but as it was 2.5 million years ago.
04:00But if we want to study the first stars, we need to look at objects that are a great deal
04:06further away.
04:07So we are not just talking about 2.5 million years ago, we are talking about over 13 billion years
04:14ago.
04:16Today, engineers are upgrading the telescope.
04:19They are fitting a new detector called Lucy that will help Dan explore the ancient universe.
04:28This primal time looked very different to the shining cosmos that we see today.
04:37Thirteen and a half billion years ago, the universe was a fog of hydrogen and helium gas.
04:44Hidden in this cold darkness, gravity began to clump the gas together deep inside.
04:55The gas became squeezed in the center.
05:02Until the pressure and heat was so extreme, it triggered nuclear reactions.
05:11And a star was born.
05:14Bathing the cosmos in starlight for the very first time.
05:22Dan has measured the light from a mysterious faint smudge, a galaxy called EGS ZS-81.
05:30It's one of the oldest galaxies ever observed.
05:34This little speck you see here, this galaxy, the light has been traveling for more than 13 billion years.
05:40It's located within the first 700 million years of the Big Bang.
05:44But there is something unusual in Dan's data.
05:48The stars in this galaxy look different to modern stars, like our sun that we see near us today.
05:55We're seeing something that we don't yet understand.
05:58It looks like these stars are producing a tremendous amount of energetic radiation.
06:03It appears these ancient stars are not only emitting visible light, but extreme ultraviolet radiation.
06:11You may need very massive or hot stars in order to power the kind of spectral features that we're seeing.
06:19Could these emissions hint at what the first stars in the universe were like?
06:27Scientists think they were behemoths.
06:32Made from only hydrogen and helium, they grew hundreds of times more massive than the sun.
06:38Their unprecedented size sent temperatures soaring, making their surface burn blue.
06:46Blazing over a million times brighter than the sun, they may have been the most radiant stars that ever existed.
06:56To find out if the ancient stars Dan has detected could be the first ever formed, he is measuring what
07:03they are made of.
07:05The only elements to exist after the Big Bang were hydrogen and helium.
07:11Now if these were truly the first stars, we would expect to just see hydrogen, helium.
07:17We wouldn't expect to see any trace of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, these heavier chemical elements.
07:24But we found the evidence for a tremendous amount of carbon already in place at these early times.
07:33Finding carbon instead of hydrogen and helium means the very first stars must be further back in time, even closer
07:42to the Big Bang itself.
07:44We keep pushing these cosmic frontiers back from a billion years to a few, you know, 500 million years to
07:51200 million years after the Big Bang.
07:54As we build larger and larger telescopes, we keep looking further and further back and eventually, ultimately, we'll get back
08:01to this first generation of stars, first generation of galaxies.
08:04We'll be able to see these truly primordial objects emerge.
08:08New technology will help astronomers like Dan to one day reveal what the earliest stars were truly like.
08:19What really goes on inside stars?
08:23What extreme physics makes them shine?
08:29In Oxfordshire, England, lies a 200-acre laboratory where scientists are hunting for clues.
08:37Physicist Ian Chapman has built a star on Earth.
08:42It is absolutely remarkable that mankind is able to do things as crazy as put a star here on Earth,
08:49which is effectively what we do every single day of the year.
08:53His star machine is called Jet. Five stories tall and costing over a billion dollars, it's made from 38 giant
09:02magnetic coils that surround a center reactor.
09:07Jet is the biggest fusion reactor that we have in the world at the moment.
09:11It's a huge facility, but we need something on this scale to produce the enormous magnetic fields which are required
09:18to contain something which is so energetic and so hot.
09:22Ian is investigating where stars get their energy from by studying the extreme nuclear physics generated inside jet.
09:31Of course, in space we can't see what's going on inside a star.
09:36The beauty of a laboratory experiment like this is that we really can diagnose in great detail exactly what's happening.
09:43Can this landmark investigation reveal what scientists have tried to prove for centuries?
09:48Can they prove what powers stars?
09:51Three, two, one, zero.
09:55Three, one, zero.
10:09In Oxfordshire, England, Ian Chapman is investigating the physics that powers stars, something scientists have examined for hundreds of years.
10:19This billion-dollar international research facility is called JET.
10:24And if Chapman's theory is correct, it should reveal how a star like our Sun can produce such vast amounts
10:31of energy.
10:34The Sun is an immense ball of hydrogen and helium.
10:41Above the surface, a superheated halo burns at over 2 million degrees.
10:47Beneath this shroud of gas lies the fiery surface emitting 400 trillion trillion watts of sunlight.
10:58The energy is fueled from an internal power source.
11:05310,000 miles beneath the surface in the star's mysterious core.
11:17Ian wants to know how heating hydrogen gas to extreme temperatures can generate energy
11:24and reveal how the Sun could be powered.
11:28The reactor must be able to withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the center of the Sun.
11:36Engineers use a manually controlled robotic arm to inspect the surfaces inside the reactor vessel.
11:46So, here we go.
11:48Ian starts the process by heating the fuel source, hydrogen gas.
11:54What we're doing here is we'll take some gas, put it into the vessel, and then we have to get
11:58that gas really, really hot.
12:00And so we're passing an extreme current, millions of atoms of current go through that fuel and turn it into
12:05a plasma,
12:06just like you would see in stars in space.
12:08So you have a solid, then a liquid, then a gas, then a plasma.
12:11And a plasma is like a very energetic gas.
12:14The team draws huge amounts of electricity to power the 38 magnets.
12:19Ten, nine, eight...
12:22700 megawatts, enough to power an entire city.
12:26Three, two, one...
12:31They heat the hydrogen to 72 million degrees.
12:38The cooler edges of the plasma begin to glow.
12:42And with a final boost of energy, plasma reaches over 180 million degrees.
12:49So hot, it turns invisible.
12:54Once you have a plasma under that temperature condition, it behaves in a very similar way to what happens in
12:59the Sun.
13:00Scientists believe they can test how the Sun is really powered.
13:08Deep in the heart of the Sun,
13:12the extreme pressure and temperature forces hydrogen atoms together,
13:19causing them to fuse and create helium.
13:23This is nuclear fusion, and it creates as much energy as a hundred billion atomic bombs.
13:30Every second, gamma rays blast out of the core and radiate through the super-dense plasma.
13:38The energy transforms on its journey,
13:41finally reaching the surface, where it shoots out as light.
13:50At JET, their results have confirmed that when hydrogen plasma reaches 180 million degrees,
13:57a huge amount of energy is released from nuclear fusion.
14:04This physics is finally revealing how nuclear fusion can power stars like our Sun.
14:12Fundamentally, what we're doing here is we're understanding where the stars get their energy from,
14:17why the stars shine, why they're giving out the energy that they are,
14:20because of the fusion which is going on inside the body of the star.
14:30But a star's nuclear fuel won't last forever.
14:34The more massive a star is, the faster it lives and the faster it dies.
14:40So, really massive stars have very short lives.
14:47How does a massive star cataclysmically explode?
14:52Scientists believe gravity could be to blame.
15:00Throughout its life, a star is precariously balanced.
15:06Inside, gravity compresses the star, pulling it together,
15:11while energy blasting from the core pushes out.
15:16But when the fuel runs out, gravity wins, crushing the core in milliseconds.
15:22And an explosion begins.
15:26But the star's outer layers hide the fury for up to ten hours.
15:31It's a giant time bomb.
15:36The star goes supernova, the greatest explosion in the cosmos.
15:43To understand the power in a supernova, all you have to do is look at a photograph of one.
15:48So supernovae typically occur in galaxies.
15:50So here's the galaxy of 100 billion stars.
15:53And then you have the one exploding star that's brighter than the over 100 billion stars.
16:04Supernovae blow off these enormous shells of gases that have these structures and colors and filaments.
16:13They're just beautiful.
16:14Although we understand the basic principles behind the explosions of stars, the details are still not understood.
16:22We see the expanding ejected gases and they're really bright.
16:26But this is the aftermath of the explosion.
16:30So what about the explosion itself?
16:33To understand the mysteries inside supernovae, scientists hope to catch one in the act.
16:41But can they predict when a star might catastrophically explode?
17:01In the Italian mountains, physicist Andrea Molinario is working on a supernova early warning system.
17:09Andrea spent his days searching for strange, elusive particles called neutrinos.
17:16Neutrinos come from many different sources.
17:18Trillions of them are crossing through us every second.
17:21But we cannot feel that.
17:24Hundreds of billions of neutrino particles are continually passing through our bodies unnoticed.
17:30They can even travel through the entire planet without being stopped.
17:34The reason is that neutrinos have really low probability of interacting with matter.
17:39So this makes them really, really hard to detect.
17:46To investigate, Andrea travels to a hidden laboratory nearly a mile under the Italian mountains.
17:58Inside the lab is a machine designed to catch the mysterious neutrinos.
18:03And it is very large.
18:06This is the large volume detector.
18:08It's a huge neutrino detector.
18:10It's made up of 840 different tanks.
18:13Each of these tanks is filled with a special liquid.
18:16When a neutrino gets there and interacts with this liquid, a flash of light is produced.
18:21The tanks hold 1,100 tons of liquid packed with sensors that can pick up the faint flash of light
18:29and turn it into a signal.
18:33It's so sensitive to unwanted radiation, it must be hidden deep underground.
18:39We are under 1,400 meters of rock above our heads.
18:44So we have the full mantis on top of us.
18:48Andrea thinks that neutrinos could be the key to predicting supernovae.
18:53He is looking for a sudden spike in detections, a signal measured only once before.
19:00Hours after a neutrino signal, a bright light appeared in the night sky.
19:05A supernova.
19:08You don't know exactly when a supernova is going to happen.
19:12These are events that happen all of a sudden.
19:15Could a burst in neutrinos be connected to a stellar explosion?
19:22Scientists believe that deep inside a dying star,
19:27the core collapse turns 99% of the star's energy into a powerful burst of neutrinos.
19:36They shoot through the star at almost the speed of light and escape into the cosmos.
19:44In their wake, a shockwave is triggered as each layer collapses and explodes.
19:52In turn, the wave surges to the edge of the star until hours later,
19:56it finally hits the surface and explodes in all its glory.
20:06We know that neutrinos will reach the heart a few hours before the light.
20:12If Andrea picks up a sudden surge in neutrinos,
20:15the system can issue astronomers with an alert warning them that a dying star could be about to explode.
20:22The detection of neutrinos from a supernova is an early warning for the astronomers around the world.
20:29With a supernova possible in our galaxy at any time, the detector must always be online.
20:36We always have to be ready to detect a neutrino from this event.
20:40There will be, of course, a great excitement for this detection,
20:43but then this will be followed immediately by a huge work that has to be done.
20:50But Andrea isn't the only one waiting for this burst of neutrinos.
20:55Around the globe, from Canada to the South Pole, there is a network of similar detectors.
21:03They lay deep underground, or are suspended within the Antarctic ice itself.
21:10Working together, they connect to the same network,
21:14the Supernova Early Warning System, or SNOOS.
21:21One day soon, astronomers will finally be able to witness the moment a star explodes.
21:29The earliest moments of the visible explosion would be very, very important
21:33for our understanding of how stars explode.
21:36So, for example, we don't understand yet how the implosion of a star will lead to the explosion,
21:43how the transfer of energy actually occurs.
21:45If I heard that there's been a burst of neutrinos,
21:49and the neutrino astronomers are able to tell me where roughly to point in the sky,
21:54that would be very exciting.
21:57Though a supernova is a tremendously explosive and destructive event,
22:02what we've come to learn is it's also a central piece of a great cycle of production.
22:09Watch out for rattlesnakes.
22:10New evidence is emerging that a supernova explosion could be linked to the formation of our solar system.
22:19Could a supernova have even played a part in our very existence?
22:24New evidence.
22:37Stars.
22:39Extreme nuclear furnaces shedding light into the cosmos.
22:46But could their explosive deaths play a crucial role in how the cosmos evolves?
22:53Since the early universe, stars have been creating chemistry.
22:58People refer to the stars as the chemical factories of the universe
23:02because inside stars, hydrogen and helium are being converted into heavier elements.
23:09So all of the atoms in my body, the carbon, nitrogen, calcium, etc.,
23:14is all created inside a star.
23:19Heavy elements necessary for life are forged inside stars that could catastrophically explode.
23:27Looking at these phenomena is important to us
23:31because it's the exploding stars that eject into the cosmos the heavy elements.
23:40Could it be that an exploding star was critical in the formation of our own solar system and even our
23:47own very existence?
23:52In the Arizona desert, Minoxi Wadwa is hunting for clues to help solve this mystery.
24:01Watch out for rattlesnakes.
24:03She is looking for evidence about our solar system's formation, not in space, but laying on the desert floor.
24:12Meteorites.
24:13When we look at meteorites, when we study meteorites, we're really looking back into the deep past four and a
24:19half billion years ago
24:20when the solar system was forming, and it was before even the planets were formed.
24:25Meteorites could be vital clues, fallen from space, where they started out as asteroids.
24:31Meteorites.
24:33Four and a half billion years ago, our solar system was forming in a spiraling disk.
24:40Deep inside, dust clumped together forming rocks.
24:45And collisions formed our planets.
24:49But some rocks stayed separate for millions of years.
24:54These asteroids are time capsules from the beginning of the solar system.
25:01Ancient asteroids could help scientists unlock the mystery of our sun and planet's formation
25:07and reveal exploding stars really were involved.
25:12Most of these objects are in orbits around the sun,
25:16and if Earth happens to be just in the right place or in the wrong place,
25:19they basically fall on the Earth at that time.
25:24So this is most definitely not a meteorite.
25:28They're called meteorongs.
25:32What we're really looking for is something that looks like this.
25:37A classic meteorite.
25:38It was actually found very close to this area.
25:41This is around 4.5 billion years old.
25:45So if there was a supernova going off nearby, there would be some record of that in these earliest formed
25:52objects.
25:53And so that's part of what we're looking for in these rocks when we study them.
25:57You know, even as a person who studies these meteorites for a living,
26:00it's incredible to me that we actually get to hold something in our hand that existed when there was nothing
26:08else around in our solar system.
26:10There was just this cloud of gas and dust from which things solidified and these were the very first solid
26:16objects.
26:17Minokshi wants to use meteorites to test one theory.
26:23As our solar system formed, a supernova blast may have swept across the cosmos.
26:29This superheated tsunami of materials would have collided with everything in its path.
26:36The blast mixed debris into the spiraling disk and may have deposited exotic elements among the dust that began to
26:44form our solar system.
26:47If the theory is true, Minokshi should find a supernova signature mixed into all the rocks of the solar system
26:55except for the very oldest.
26:58In the lab, she can see two different types of material inside the same meteorite.
27:04Most of the meteorite is this dark material, but embedded in it are these white inclusions.
27:10And these inclusions are the very first solids that condensed from that cloud of gas and dust as our solar
27:16system was forming.
27:19Minokshi carefully extracts the inclusions from the meteorite.
27:24Then she measures their chemical makeup, identifying individual atoms.
27:30Her results show something remarkable.
27:34The chemical signature of a supernova appears in the black bulk of the meteorite, but not in the white areas.
27:41The oldest parts called inclusions.
27:44So the inclusions that we studied from this meteorite, they are actually missing a component that can only really be
27:52injected by a supernova.
27:54So our solar system had already started to form and was basically solidifying these first solids.
28:02And then the supernova went off and injected this material into that forming solar system.
28:10Exotic heavy elements from an exploding star are missing from the oldest fragments of the solar system.
28:17But they are incorporated into everything else.
28:22This kind of chemical evidence is now giving us some proof that in fact there might have been really a
28:29supernova involved in the formation of our solar system.
28:33This material goes out, it's fertile, it's rich, and as it cools, it's ripe for forming stars and forming planets
28:45and forming life.
28:46So it's these supernovae, then, that give rise to the heavy elements in our bodies.
28:51The carbon in our cells, the oxygen that we breathe, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our red
28:57blood cells.
28:58If it were not for the explosions of stars, the elements that are created in stars would remain locked up
29:05in the core forever.
29:07Since the dawn of their existence, stars have been transforming the chemistry of the universe.
29:13Could it be that with each new generation, the properties of stars themselves have been transforming too?
29:34In Boston, Massachusetts, astronomer Elizabeth Newton is investigating the extreme properties of some of the smallest stars in the cosmos.
29:45Hey, John. Ready to do some observing?
29:49She wants to know if small stars behave differently to larger stars like our sun.
29:55Because small stars are everywhere.
30:00From the Earth, around 9,000 stars are visible with the naked eye.
30:06Many are yellow like our sun.
30:10But strip away the dust of the Milky Way and we would see many more.
30:15One percent are blue giants that live fast and die young.
30:22But hiding amongst them, more than three quarters of all stars are faint red dwarfs.
30:29So dim that from Earth, they are invisible to the human eye.
30:36The sun's nearest neighbor is a red dwarf only four light years away.
30:41We just don't see it.
30:47Elizabeth is observing the behavior of a particular red dwarf star called Eevee-Lacerte or Eevee-Lac.
30:58In 2008, NASA's Swift satellite recorded a massive X-ray flare from Eevee-Lac.
31:06Lasting for eight hours, it was the brightest stellar flare ever recorded.
31:11How could a star seemingly so benign become so violent?
31:20Eevee-Lac, like many red dwarf stars, can have very energetic flares.
31:25Even though these stars are very small, they can have flares many times more powerful than the strongest flares that
31:30we've seen on the sun.
31:36We managed to break through the clouds, so we have an image of Eevee-Lacerte now.
31:40And here it is. So this is our red dwarf star. It's pretty cool.
31:46Studying the red dwarf, Elizabeth thinks its fierce activity is due to how the star rotates.
31:52In general, if you have a rapidly rotating star, that star will have a strong magnetic field.
31:56A slowly rotating star, that star will have a small magnetic field.
32:00And Eevee-Lac is in a rapid spin.
32:06The red dwarf is spinning six times faster than the sun, creating a powerful magnetic field.
32:17Deep inside, a magnetic loop forms and rises through the churning plasma.
32:26When the loop breaks through the surface, it can become tangled, and suddenly snap.
32:36It unleashes a mega flare, more powerful than a hundred million atomic bombs.
32:50Red dwarfs, the most common stars in the universe, are magnetically active monsters.
32:56They emit flares that could wipe out any nearby signs of life.
33:01But they might not stay this way forever.
33:05You could think of a red dwarf star as a person.
33:07So they have this youth where they're throwing tantrums, or this, you know, very obnoxious child.
33:13And they, you know, throw things everywhere.
33:15So it's like you're having a two-year-old for like three billion years.
33:21And then all of a sudden, at three billion years, that kid finally begins to just slow down.
33:26And as they slow down, they, their tantrums become less.
33:30They're really quite well behaved.
33:32The slowing down of red dwarfs reveal another secret.
33:36Their slow-burning personality makes them extreme survivors.
33:41The lifetime of a star like the sun is 10 billion years.
33:45For the red dwarf stars, it's about a trillion years or longer.
33:47These stars have very long lives.
33:51This new research is revealing how red dwarfs evolved from tempestuous beasts to slow-burning beacons.
34:01Stars can be extreme in many ways.
34:03To me, there's something wonderful about the fact that red dwarfs are extreme survivors.
34:08These stars will last longer than any other type of star.
34:12They will be the last stars that exist in the universe.
34:17But there may be a star killer hidden in the cosmos.
34:21An extreme star formed from a supernova that could cannibalize red dwarfs.
34:42Since the birth of the first stars, our universe has been dominated by these shining bodies.
34:50Stars are far more than glimmering lights in the cosmos.
34:55Some people refer to stars as being the chemists of the universe.
34:59Amazingly, every single element besides hydrogen and helium came from the stars.
35:06When you look at the universe as a whole, you look at galaxies, you look at stars, you look at
35:09people, what do we all have in common?
35:11We're born, we evolve, and as we evolve, we change, and then we die.
35:16But could a star rise from the dead?
35:21A zombie cannibal that could feast on other stars?
35:31Near Manchester, England, Rene Breton is searching for clues.
35:37He has detected mysterious radio pulses coming from space.
35:46Initially, people were really puzzled because of the repeating nature.
35:49And the very first one to be discovered was nicknamed LGM-1, which stood for Little Green Man Number One.
35:58Because to some extent, you could think, oh, is someone trying to contact us?
36:02Are there aliens emitting this signal?
36:09Rene uses this giant telescope called Lovell to investigate the signals.
36:15The Lovell telescope is the third biggest fully steerable telescope in the world.
36:20It's got a diameter of 76 meters, and so it's possible to detect an extremely faint signal from the sky.
36:29Rene needs to inspect the dish for dirt before he takes any readings.
36:35The telescope is so sensitive, any buildup on the surface can affect his data.
36:42If we were to talk on a mobile phone on Mars, we could actually pick up the signal, the conversation
36:48with the Lovell telescope.
36:49So that's how sensitive it is.
36:51The dish passes the inspection, and Rene descends to start his observations.
36:5805-3131, and declination is plus-21-98-2.
37:04Rene steers the telescope towards the dead remains of an old exploded star called the Crab Nebula.
37:11In this direction, we can hear a repeating source, it turns out.
37:18We are pointing towards the Crab Nebula, and even though there doesn't seem to be much in there except this
37:24cloud of gas,
37:26we can actually see in the radio a source that repeats 33 times per second.
37:32The true nature of these pulses could be even stranger than aliens.
37:39Deep inside the Crab Nebula lays a cosmic freak.
37:45Formed from the core of an exploding star,
37:49it weighs more than the sun, but crushed into the size of a city.
37:54Its immense gravity comes from inside the crystal iron crust.
38:00Where a soup of neutrons is so dense, a teaspoon can weigh a billion tons.
38:08It spins 33 times a second, and beams of radio energy stream from its magnetic poles.
38:17This freakish star is a pulsar.
38:22Sometimes I say that pulsars are like zombie stars, because they should be dead stars,
38:27but actually they're still kind of alive in a way.
38:31These hidden zombie stars lurking in the cosmos reveal themselves with their radio pulses.
38:38And they are everywhere.
38:41Rene and his team have detected hundreds of pulsars,
38:44some of them spinning at over 42,000 RPM.
38:47The slowest ones may only repeat once every 10 seconds,
38:54whereas the fastest ones can go up all the way up to 700 times per second.
38:59But the rotating beam of one extremely fast pulsar shows something very unusual.
39:06Pulsars are very stable, they repeat over and over,
39:09but we see that about 15 minutes in, the pulsar disappears for a couple of minutes,
39:14before we're appearing again.
39:16So, it's somewhat mysterious, something may be blocking the radio signal.
39:21Looking closer, Rene has found this pulsar has a companion.
39:30A tiny defenseless star distorted by gravity,
39:34and scorched on one side by the pulsar's lethal radiation.
39:39The pulsar blasts gas off the star's surface, slowly ripping it to pieces.
39:47Caught in a deadly orbit, the pulsar feasts on the material,
39:52cannibalizing its victim.
39:54But the pulsar is a messy eater,
39:57and the dense cloud of gas blocks the pulsar's beams,
40:01creating a gap in the pulses that reach Earth.
40:06A giveaway sign that here lies a monster.
40:13Because of its extreme dining habits, this pulsar has been given a nickname.
40:18We call these systems black widows,
40:21because a bit like the black widow spiders,
40:24which after mating basically consume the male and gets rid of it.
40:28It might be that these systems actually consume their companion
40:32and completely get rid of them.
40:35And the feasting of this messy eating pulsar is keeping it alive.
40:40This material that falls onto the surface of the pulsar spins it up.
40:44Just a bit like kids jumping on a merry-go-round
40:47and making it spin faster and faster.
40:50These black widow systems are even more extreme zombies,
40:54because they really literally feed off their surroundings
40:58in order to keep being alive and spinning really, really fast.
41:06From the very beginning, extreme stars have been shaping our universe.
41:11We have come to know an amazing amount about stars,
41:15considering you can't touch them or, you know, stick a thermometer in them.
41:19But every time we improve our technology, we find mysteries and puzzles that we didn't know were there.
41:27For thousands of years, humanity has wanted to think of the stars as something different from us.
41:32But the thing that I'm amazed at is how connected we are to the stars.
41:38I mean, right here, pulsing through my veins, is the story, the drama of the violent universe.
41:45From the very first stars in the universe, extreme stars have been tied to our very existence.
41:54Inside their nuclear core lies a furnace that cooks new elements that are cast out in cosmic explosions.
42:06This circle of star life has sculpted the universe we see today.
42:11Where extreme stars will continue to dominate our cosmos.
Comments