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Have you ever wondered what happens to water in space? It’s way more surprising than you might think! This video dives into that and other mind-blowing cosmic facts that are sure to leave you amazed.
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00:00At first, it may seem like the sun is burning, but it's actually not true, because the burning of our
00:07star isn't chemical combustion, it's nuclear fusion.
00:10The sun can't run out of oxygen or stop burning because it doesn't use oxygen to burn.
00:17Regular carbon combustion requires oxygen. As soon as there's no oxygen, the process of burning stops.
00:24Now, imagine a candle. If you cover it, it doesn't have access to oxygen anymore, and the process of burning
00:31stops.
00:31But in nuclear fusion, the nuclei of atoms are fused together to make new, bigger nuclei. Such changes cause atoms
00:40to become new elements.
00:42Nuclear fusion doesn't require oxygen or any other material altogether. You just need enough pressure or heat to squeeze the
00:50nuclei of atoms close enough for them to overcome their electrostatic repulsion and bond into one nucleus.
00:58In 2027, two teams of astronomers discovered a cloud of water floating in open space.
01:05It was the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe.
01:11It's a cloud of water vapor surrounding a huge black hole called a quasar, 12 billion light-years away from
01:18Earth.
01:19The environment around the quasar must be unique to somehow produce such giant masses of water.
01:26It was formed by energy waves colliding hydrogen and oxygen atoms together.
01:31The cloud contains 140 trillion times the entire volume of water on our planet.
01:38It could provide each person on our planet with a planet's worth of water 20,000 times over.
01:45Wow.
01:46Even cooler, astronomers believe this water cloud appeared just 1.6 billion years later than the universe itself.
01:54Scientists consider it another demonstration that water exists throughout the universe and was present already during its early days.
02:04At the same time, before this discovery, scientists had never found water vapor present so far back in the early
02:12universe.
02:12There is water in our home Milky Way galaxy, but most of it is frozen in ice.
02:21Not only water is floating out there in space, alcohol too.
02:25In 2009, scientists were examining a massive cloud of gas and dust in the center of our galaxy when they
02:33stumbled upon a surprise.
02:35There was ethyl formate within the cloud.
02:38This chemical is responsible for the sweet flavor of raspberries.
02:43They also found one more cool region.
02:45This one was brimming with ethyl alcohol, the same type found in many beverages.
02:52At the North Pole of Saturn, a mysterious storm is raging.
02:57It's ginormous, spanning an area larger than our planet and showcasing a beautiful but baffling hexagonal pattern.
03:06No one has understood yet why the storm has such a bizarre shape.
03:10After the hexagon was first discovered in 1987, it remained hidden in darkness, up to the moment when sunlight exposed
03:20it again.
03:21Soon afterward, the Cassini spacecraft, designed to explore the Saturn system, provided a series of captivating images and even a
03:30video of the hexagonal storm.
03:32It turned out to be colossal in size.
03:35Its estimated depth is around 180 miles, and the eye of the storm is 50 times as large as the
03:43typical storm on Earth.
03:45The storm is also changing its color from blue to gold.
03:50Winds of hydrogen and ammonia surround the storm and move at more than 300 miles per hour.
03:56The storm has several centers.
03:58Some of them move clockwise, and others follow a counterclockwise direction.
04:03The largest vortex appears to be white, and it's twice larger than the standard hurricane on our planet.
04:11As for the hexagon itself, it's a jet stream made up of atmospheric gases.
04:17Experts refer to it as just a current of air and weather features.
04:21But there is one intriguing detail.
04:24A vortex sitting at a higher altitude than Saturn's clouds.
04:28It looks like a large, towering structure.
04:31Saturn's auroras, triggered by the planet's magnetic field, are located atop of the hexagon, giving its appearance a mystical vibe.
04:43Astronomers have found a giant, likely active volcano near Mars' equator.
04:48It was literally hiding in plain sight.
04:51It's ancient and deeply eroded, but seems to be still functioning.
04:55There may even be remnants of a glacier ice near its base.
05:00That's why this discovery might indicate a promising new location to search for life,
05:06as well as a potential destination for future human and robotic exploration.
05:12The structure is still awaiting its official name.
05:15At the moment, it's referred to as the Noctis volcano.
05:19It reaches a height of 29,600 feet and spans an impressive 280 miles across.
05:27Such a giant size indicates that the volcano has been active for a very long time.
05:33In its southeastern part, there's a thin, recent volcanic deposit, and beneath, glacier ice might still be present.
05:43At a distance of 700 million light-years away from Earth, there's a gaping hole.
05:49A blank void with no galaxies, stars, planets, or asteroids.
05:54Literally nothing.
05:55The void is a roughly spherical region about 330 million light-years across.
06:02Our home Milky Way galaxy could fit there billions of times over.
06:06That's the mysterious Boots void.
06:09It lies in the constellation of Boots, the herdsman driving the plow around the North Pole.
06:15At first, this void had the name of the Great Nothing.
06:19But later, it was given its current name.
06:22Now, we know that galaxies look like a giant web.
06:25Most of them are parts of long structures called filaments.
06:29Those wind through the cosmos, and when they meet,
06:32they form regions with a high concentration of galaxies.
06:35These regions are what we know as galaxy clusters.
06:40But between these clusters and threads, there are enormous, empty voids that hardly contain any galaxies.
06:48Such voids actually make up almost 80% of the observable universe,
06:52and most of them are huge, from 30 to 300 million light-years wide.
06:57The Boots void is one of the most massive ones.
07:01It has even earned the title of supervoid.
07:04Astronomers think it might be the result of a few smaller voids merging together.
07:11There is a diamond planet out there that orbits a star in the constellation of Cancer,
07:17completing one full rotation in a mere 18 Earth hours.
07:22The planet's scientific name is 55 Cancri e.
07:26The radius of this faraway world is twice as large as Earth's,
07:31and its mass is eight times greater.
07:33The planet is scorching hot,
07:36the temperatures on the day side reaching almost 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
07:41But the coolest thing about 55 Cancri e is that,
07:46according to some specialists,
07:47at least a third of the planet's mass could be diamond.
07:51That's the equivalent of around three masses of our home planet.
07:55Ah, sounds like big, big money, floating out there in space.
07:59How about we calculate how much this planet could be worth?
08:03Ah, wait.
08:04Someone has already done it,
08:05and the number is astronomical.
08:08Pun intended, of course.
08:09It's 26.9 nonillion.
08:13And if you're confused by this number as I am,
08:16that's 26.9 followed by 30 zeros.
08:21Now, for comparison,
08:22one of the most expensive diamonds on Earth ever is the Cullion.
08:26It costs a whopping $2 billion,
08:29and its original weight was a mind-boggling 3,106.75 carats.
08:36It was, and still is, the largest raw gem diamond ever found.
08:41Later, it was cut into many small diamonds.
08:44The largest of them is Cullion 1,
08:47which also goes by the name of Star of Africa.
08:50It has a carat weight of about 530.
08:54But imagine how much bigger and more expansive the diamond planet is.
09:00Nebulas are gigantic clouds of gas and dust,
09:03and some of them can have really unusual shapes.
09:06As if they were made this way on purpose.
09:09With time, gravity starts to pull these clumps of dust and gas together.
09:14They grow larger and larger,
09:16and their gravity gets more powerful.
09:18One day, this mass becomes so big
09:21that it collapses under its own gravity
09:23and forms new stars.
09:26Among some of the most beautiful nebulas out there,
09:29we must mention the Butterfly Nebula.
09:32Its wingspan is more than three light years,
09:34and the structure inside the nebula
09:37is one of the most complicated ever observed.
09:40The central star, a white dwarf,
09:42is heated to an incredible 450,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
09:47It means it formed from a giant gargantuan star,
09:51likely more than five times the size of our Sun.
09:54The white dwarf is surrounded by a thick disk of dust and gas at the equator.
09:59It's what probably makes the whole structure look like an hourglass,
10:03or a butterfly.
10:06The ring nebula looks like a giant cloud of dust and gas
10:10surrounding an old, almost-extinguished star.
10:13At first sight, it does look like a ring.
10:15But astronomers say the nebula isn't a bagel.
10:18It's a jelly-filled donut.
10:20They must be hungry.
10:22The deep space colorful object,
10:24more than 2,000 light years away from Earth,
10:27is actually a ring that wraps around a blue, ball-shaped structure.
10:31Each end of this structure sticks out of the ring's opposite sides.
10:37The pillars of creation look like something out of this world.
10:41See for yourself.
10:42They're located 7,000 light years away from Earth in the Eagle Nebula.
10:47That's a young cluster of stars just 5.5 million years old.
10:51On a space scale, they're just babies.
10:54Once, the Hubble Space Telescope managed to take an image
10:57of several dark silhouettes near the nebula center.
11:00And now, you can see them with your own eyes.
11:04Those are the so-called pillars of creation,
11:07an active star-forming region.
11:09Look at this famous image.
11:11The blue colors represent oxygen,
11:14red is sulfur,
11:15and green means the presence of both hydrogen and nitrogen.
11:19The pillars are also bathed in the ultraviolet light
11:22coming from a nearby cluster of young stars.
11:25Unfortunately, the winds from those stars
11:27are slowly but steadily eroding the magnificent towers of gas and dust.
11:35Far out in space,
11:37a ghostly super-ancient galaxy is floating all alone.
11:41It shines with a faint glimmer of starlight
11:44and has hardly changed for billions of years.
11:48Astronomers have no idea why it's there or how it formed.
11:52Meet DG-SATI, a living fossil galaxy.
11:57It's as big as the Milky Way,
11:59but is nearly invisible
12:00because its stars are spread out incredibly thinly.
12:04But what makes the galaxy so unique
12:07is that it's sitting all alone,
12:09unlike other galaxies of this kind,
12:12which are usually found in clusters.
12:13It might mean that DG-SATI was formed in a different era,
12:19probably a mere 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
12:23If it's true,
12:24the galaxy is a real living fossil.
12:29Astronomers have discovered the most massive stellar black hole
12:32ever spotted in our home Milky Way galaxy.
12:35This newly found space monster
12:38is 33 times bigger than the Sun
12:41and sits 2,000 light-years away from us.
12:44Until recently,
12:45the largest stellar black hole
12:47found residing in our galaxy
12:49has been around 20 times as big as our star in terms of mass.
12:53As for the average stellar mass black hole,
12:56it's usually about 10 times as hefty as the Sun.
13:00Scientists spotted the giant black hole
13:03after a star started to wobble
13:05while orbiting in that area.
13:07The black hole got the name of Gaea BH3.
13:11The proximity of this space object to Earth
13:14makes it the second closest
13:15to our planet black hole ever discovered.
13:18The nearest one is called Gaea BH1.
13:22Makes sense.
13:23It's hanging out around 1,560 light-years away from us.
13:28This uncomfortably close neighbor
13:30has a mass of around 9.6 times that of the Sun.
13:34That means it's way smaller
13:36than the newly found black hole.
13:39Gaea BH3 is located in the Aquila constellation.
13:43From Earth, it seems to have the shape of an eagle.
13:46Interestingly, astronomers didn't expect
13:49to find a high-mass black hole
13:51lurking so relatively close to Earth
13:53and remaining undetected for so long.
13:57Now, look at this marvelous exoplanet.
14:00It resembles a giant eyeball
14:03hanging out there in space.
14:05But it isn't the coolest thing about it.
14:07This distant world, identified in 2017,
14:11is one of the most promising places
14:13for finding life outside our solar system.
14:16The exoplanet is called LHS 1140b,
14:21and it shows signs of having a global ocean
14:24capped in ice.
14:25It's that very iris,
14:27a huge region around 2,500 miles across,
14:31which is constantly gazing at its host star.
14:34The planet has a radius of about 1.73 times
14:38the radius of Earth,
14:39and is 5.6 times as massive as our home planet.
14:44The giant eyeball planet orbits much more closely
14:47to its star than Earth does.
14:49It needs just around 25 days
14:52to complete an entire orbit.
14:54If the star were similar to our sun,
14:57such a distance would definitely be too close
15:00for life to appear on the planet.
15:01But instead, it's a cool and dim red dwarf.
15:05That's why the exoplanet lies
15:07in the habitable zone of its star,
15:10where it's not so cold
15:11that all surface water would freeze,
15:14and not so close that this water would steam away.
15:17At the moment,
15:19LHS 1140b looks like the most promising candidate
15:23for hosting life in our planetary neighborhood.
15:28Solar flares are extremely powerful bursts
15:31of electromagnetic radiation
15:33that can last from minutes to hours.
15:36They occur when there's some magnetic disturbance
15:39in the sun.
15:40Then, magnetic field lines in the atmosphere
15:43of our star get tangled and snap.
15:45This releases giant amounts of excess energy,
15:49including ultraviolet radiation
15:51and intense X-rays.
15:53These twisted lines appear in sunspots.
15:56Those are darker and cooler regions
15:58on the surface of the sun.
16:00They form when magnetic fields
16:02that used to hide deep within our star
16:04rise up to the surface.
16:06As for coronal mass ejections, or CMEs,
16:10which are launched by solar flares,
16:13they're sent outward into space.
16:15They hit planets, satellites,
16:17and basically any objects in their path.
16:20Those that come across Earth
16:22trigger geomagnetic storms,
16:24which, in most cases,
16:26result not only in beautiful auroras,
16:28but also in power grid failures
16:31and satellite malfunctions.
16:33All these extreme solar phenomena,
16:36CMEs, sunspots, and solar flares,
16:39get much more intense
16:40during the peak of the sun's
16:4211-year-long activity cycle.
16:45It's known as solar maximum.
16:47Right before this event,
16:49the sun steps up its activity.
16:51It starts to spit out
16:53giant blobs of fiery plasma
16:55amidst powerful streams of radiation
16:57and grows planet-sized spots.
17:00At first, experts were sure
17:03that the current solar cycle
17:04would reach its peak in 2025.
17:07But judging by recent numerous sunspots,
17:11intense solar storms,
17:12and some other rare solar phenomena,
17:15solar maximum is likely to arrive
17:17sooner than that.
17:19This planet is as light
17:21as a piece of fluff stuck to your jacket.
17:24In the scientific world,
17:26its name is WASP-193b,
17:29but we'll call it
17:30the Cotton Candy Planet.
17:32It's located around
17:331200 light-years from us.
17:36We'll never see it with our own eyes,
17:38but scientists say
17:39the Cotton Candy Planet
17:40is pretty much
17:41Jupiter's bigger,
17:43bouncier cousin.
17:44It has an extremely low density.
17:47Combined with other factors,
17:48like its high temperature
17:50and the infrared brightness
17:52of its host star,
17:53it makes it special.
17:55Interestingly,
17:56the planet's radius
17:57is just 1.46 times
17:59the radius of Jupiter,
18:00but its mass
18:02is a mere 0.139 times
18:05of our gas giant.
18:07May I have a close-up here, please?
18:09Ah, thank you.
18:10See how fluffy it is?
18:12It would be absolutely impossible
18:14to stand on its surface
18:16should you ever reach
18:17this distant world.
18:18It's not often
18:19that you can meet
18:20something like WASP-193b
18:23at a planetary party.
18:25Such planets are rare.
18:27Their fluffiness
18:28might be caused
18:29by their planet stars.
18:30Those heat them,
18:31puffing them up
18:32like a marshmallow
18:33that's seen
18:34too much campfire action.
18:35The planet's super low density
18:37makes it a real anomaly
18:39among those
18:405,000-plus exoplanets
18:42we have already discovered.
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