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Unlock the enigmas of the cosmos with a look at the real dark mirror of our universe and other fascinating space facts, while diving into the unsolved mysteries that continue to baffle scientists. Discover the unknown that lies beyond the stars.
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00:00Ruh-roh, there might be another universe, like a dark mirror image of ours, where time flows in reverse.
00:07This flipped-over world might also be the source of dark matter, the invisible substance that's all over our universe.
00:15There might also be many more universes out there, in which an exact copy of you woke up this morning,
00:22but it chose a white t-shirt instead of a red one, sending it on a completely different life path.
00:29But let's start with this elusive dark matter.
00:32It makes up most of the universe's mass, yet we're not sure what exactly it does or where it comes
00:39from.
00:39That's because it doesn't act like regular matter.
00:42We can't see it or feel it.
00:44We just know it's there because of how it seems to bend gravity.
00:49Even though regular matter and dark matter are very different, they seem to exist in a balance.
00:55Some scientists think this must be connected somehow.
00:59A new theory suggests that, for every way regular matter moves, there's a mirror version of it in the world
01:06of dark matter,
01:07like a bridge connecting the two worlds.
01:09There's also a strange coincidence in regular matter where a neutron and a proton have almost the same weight.
01:17This allows them to stick together and make atoms stable, making everything that we can see with our eyes exist.
01:24If protons were a bit heavier, there would be no balance and atoms wouldn't form.
01:30In the dark mirror universe, maybe things happen differently.
01:34Maybe in there, the equivalent of a proton doesn't bind to other particles,
01:40leaving behind lonely neutrons, which could be the source of dark matter.
01:44This theory also suggests that dark matter might have its own chemistry,
01:49like dark atoms in a dark periodic table.
01:52For the longest time, scientists believed there was just one type of dark matter.
01:57Although these particles are similar in some ways, like being almost invisible,
02:02they may vary in their sizes, speeds, and how they affect regular matter.
02:07If this idea is right, it means there could have been interactions between our universe
02:13and the dark mirror universe in the past.
02:16Studying how elements formed in the early universe might give us clues about this.
02:22The idea of a flipped world has sparked curiosity
02:26and even some confusion in the scientific community in recent years.
02:31Astronomers use a theory called the Lambda-CDM model
02:35to explain the composition and behavior of our universe.
02:39According to it, most of the universe is made of two things,
02:43dark energy and dark matter.
02:45Dark energy is like the pushing force that makes the universe expand faster.
02:50Dark matter is this invisible thread that pulls things together with its gravity,
02:56acting like a universal glue.
02:59Regular objects, like stars, planets, and comets,
03:02only make up a small part of the mix.
03:05The model also tells us about the Big Bang,
03:08and how everything started from a hot, crowded beginning,
03:11and how the universe has been growing and changing ever since.
03:15While this model seems to be correct in many ways,
03:18it doesn't explain all cosmic phenomena.
03:22If you were to draw this model on a piece of paper,
03:25it would look like a series of flat pancakes stacked on top of one another.
03:30Each one of the pancakes represents a rendition of the universe at a certain point in time.
03:37Yesterday's universe would stand below that of today,
03:40but it would be a slightly smaller pancake.
03:43By the end, you'll see that the universe's history looks like this giant upside-down poem,
03:49with its minuscule tip being the Big Bang.
03:52Beyond this point, we can't see any further away in time with the tools we have.
03:58So, we don't know what's beyond.
04:00More so, we're still not even sure what happened immediately after the Big Bang.
04:05But, if we simply apply the math,
04:09the universe might go beyond this historical tipping point,
04:13which could mean it could go in reverse,
04:16creating a similar mirrored cone where time would flow backwards,
04:21in our perspective at least.
04:23This alternative idea not only challenges our understanding of cosmic origins,
04:28but also raises questions about fundamental principles in physics.
04:33All the excitement around a mirrored universe also came from ANITA,
04:39a scientific instrument stationed in Antarctica and its discoveries.
04:43This device saw some weird high-energy particles
04:46seemingly bursting from beneath the Antarctic ice.
04:50The problem with these particles is that they didn't behave as the laws of physics dictate.
04:56Scientists think they have a type of cosmic rays.
04:59They travel from space, through the Earth, and back out again.
05:04But the particles we already know about shouldn't behave like that.
05:08That's because higher-energy particles usually collide with something inside the Earth
05:13and don't come out the other side like these do.
05:17They seem to be doing things both forward and backward.
05:21For now, there's no concrete proof of a mirrored universe.
05:25These particles could simply be ones we haven't discovered before.
05:29And scientists need to study them closely to come up with a definitive answer
05:33as to why they're behaving like this.
05:36Kind of like 4-year-olds.
05:39But what if there isn't just one other universe, but many more?
05:44This multiverse concept comes from ideas like the inflation theory,
05:49which says that our world had this rapid expansion in its early stages.
05:53While inflation stopped in our neighborhood billions of years ago,
05:58it's likely that it continues in other regions of the multiverse,
06:02creating different universes with their own laws of physics and unique characteristics.
06:08Our universe is the only one that we know of that can support life.
06:12We have stable stars that can provide heat and warmth, for example,
06:16which is crucial for creatures to start moving around.
06:20We also have an abundance of elements, like carbon and hydrogen,
06:25which we also need to exist.
06:27The multiverse hypothesis gives an explanation for why our universe exhibits such life-friendly conditions.
06:34It may explain that there are countless other universes out there,
06:39with varying conditions, making the existence of life in at least one of them less likely.
06:45One fascinating implication of the multiverse theory is the idea of doppelgangers,
06:52these exact copies of individuals existing in parallel universes.
06:57This notion suggests that within the vast expanse of the multiverse,
07:01there could be infinite scenarios where identical versions of ourselves
07:06are experiencing similar events at the same time.
07:10Before we begin our travels to different universes altogether,
07:14we might need to understand our own.
07:17There's this galaxy, for instance, far from us, that might have no dark matter at all.
07:23It's about 250 million light-years away and looks normal at first glance.
07:29But if we look closer, we can't seem to find any dark matter.
07:33If it turns out that there are more galaxies like this one,
07:37it could change our ideas about how galaxies are made.
07:41Dark matter is usually thought to be necessary for this process,
07:45acting like the glue that holds the whole thing together.
07:49It is true, however, that this particular galaxy is more faint and has fewer stars than usual.
07:56When it was first discovered in 2019,
08:00scientists thought it might not have dark matter because of how fast it was spinning.
08:05The speed at which a galaxy spins tells us how much stuff there is in it.
08:11By comparing this speed with what we can see,
08:14astronomers can figure out how much extra stuff, like dark matter, must be there.
08:19And in this unique galaxy, the math says there isn't any.
08:25Among all these theories, there's also one that says dark matter might not be real at all.
08:31This new study proposes that maybe we've been looking for something that doesn't even exist.
08:38They think that our understanding of gravity might not be good enough
08:42to explain why some galaxies behave oddly.
08:45So instead of dark matter causing these weird behaviors,
08:49they say it might just be that we don't fully understand how regular matter works.
08:55They base these findings on a theory called modified Newtonian dynamics.
09:00It suggests that gravity behaves differently at very large distances or very low speeds.
09:09In April 2023, astronomers found something exciting, a runaway black hole.
09:16This thing is moving through the universe at an incredible speed,
09:20about 3.5 million miles per hour.
09:23It's 4.5 thousand times faster than the speed of sound.
09:27They found it accidentally.
09:30Researchers noticed that there was some weird straight line in Hubble images.
09:34After some digging, they realized there was a moving black hole.
09:39As it moves, it compresses the gas on its path,
09:43literally creating new stars along its journey.
09:46So it's leaving a beautiful long trail of stars behind it.
09:50And when I say long, I mean it.
09:53Its tail is 200,000 light years long,
09:56which is like the length of two Milky Ways.
09:59Turns out one end of this star trail connects to a distant small galaxy.
10:04This is probably where the black hole came from.
10:07Most likely, there were two supermassive black holes whirling around each other.
10:11And then, another galaxy came along with its own supermassive black hole
10:15and ejected one of the original ones like a mean kid,
10:19which is why it's called runaway.
10:22There might be a ninth planet with the very original name,
10:25Planet 9, in our solar system.
10:27If it exists, it's probably somewhere far beyond Pluto.
10:33Astronomers think so because some rocky objects near Neptune move in a weird way
10:37as if they were influenced by the gravity of a large, unseen planet.
10:42Planet 9 might be a gas or ice giant, seven times the mass of Earth.
10:48One of the ideas is that it could have existed in our solar system,
10:52but then bumped into something huge and ended up with a crazy long orbit around our sun.
10:58If we actually discover it, it could change our understanding of the solar system.
11:02A new telescope is coming soon,
11:05equipped with the largest digital camera ever built,
11:08and it will start scanning the sky in 2025.
11:12Maybe it will finally spot this mysterious planet.
11:16Another awesome discovery was made in 2023.
11:20The James Webb Space Telescope found over 500 planet-like objects in the Orion Nebula.
11:27Some of them are roughly the mass of Jupiter,
11:29so they're literally called Jupiter-mass binary objects, or jumbos.
11:35They just float out there with no stars,
11:37and they're not really stars or planets themselves.
11:40What's even crazier is that in about 42 pairs of them,
11:44the objects are orbiting each other,
11:46even though planets aren't supposed to do that.
11:49On top of that,
11:50such large objects shouldn't form and exist without a star at all.
11:55So now, astronomers are trying to explain this.
11:58Perhaps jumbos have formed in places where there was enough stuff for big planet-like objects,
12:04but not enough for stars?
12:05Or maybe all of them were ejected from their star systems for some reason.
12:10Who knows?
12:11But now, we definitely need to study them.
12:15The black hole in the center of our galaxy,
12:18Sagittarius A star,
12:19used to be super weird.
12:21Luckily, it didn't run away like that other one,
12:24but it was completely crazy in the past.
12:27Astronomers found two supermassive structures called the Fermi bubbles and Erosita bubbles.
12:34They spanned about half the width of our entire galaxy,
12:37and they've been towering over the Milky Way for over 2 million years now.
12:42And scientists think that it's our black hole that created them.
12:46It seems like when it was at its peak activity,
12:49it had a wild energetic eruption that lasted about 100,000 years.
12:54This event probably left these bubbles.
12:57In 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope took a striking,
13:02super-detailed image of the so-called Herbig Haro objects.
13:06These objects are called Herbig Haro 46-47.
13:11They're basically young stars surrounded by beautiful patches of nebulosity.
13:17You can see the stars being surrounded by a disk of material that feeds them
13:21as they grow for millions of years.
13:24They're located at about 1,470 light-years away,
13:28but they're actually not our main topic of discussion.
13:32What's much more interesting is this weird thing right below them.
13:36A space structure that looks like a question mark.
13:39What is this thing?
13:41No one knows for sure.
13:43It has an orange-red color, which hints that it might be super-distant.
13:47Far from our galaxy, maybe even billions of light-years away.
13:52Some think that this strange question mark
13:55is probably the result of two or more galaxies merging together.
13:59One of them was a bit curved, so it's probably a distorted spiral galaxy.
14:03The curve might be the tails being stripped off as they spiraled towards each other.
14:09The other one was rounder and smaller like a regular spherical one.
14:14The gravity games never fail to amaze us.
14:18Astronomers started searching for extraterrestrial megastructures.
14:22They think that if there's another intelligent civilization out there,
14:25they could have built something incredibly huge to power their technology.
14:30For example, like Dyson spheres.
14:33Hypothetical structures around stars that use the star's energy as fuel.
14:39Astronomers analyzed some historical telescope data that detects infrared signals.
14:44They spotted some weird signals that could hint at the presence of these structures.
14:49In total, there are seven such candidates right now.
14:53All of them are coming from red dwarf stars,
14:55which are redder, smaller, and less massive than the sun.
14:59Another research institute found 53 potential candidates.
15:03They're still not sure what exactly causes these signals,
15:07but it could be not Dyson spheres, but some huge debris.
15:11It looks like there are some mysterious structures in the center of our galaxy.
15:16In 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope has taken a detailed picture of the Sagittarius sea region.
15:23It's right near the center of the Milky Way.
15:26This image showed a dense area where stars are forming.
15:30There were many young stars and dark clouds that blocked the light from the stars behind them.
15:35That's a very packed place,
15:37with about 500,000 stars of different ages, sizes, and colors.
15:42This place is very chaotic and extreme.
15:46Now, scientists are using it to study star formation.
15:50But the weird part is that they noticed something else.
15:53The large region of ionized hydrogen.
15:56It looks like cyan in the image.
15:59This area is about 25 light years long,
16:02surrounding the lower side of dense cloud.
16:05And it looks like there are some needle-like structures.
16:09They seem to be located randomly,
16:11and astronomers have no idea what they are.
16:14So now, they have to study this in more detail.
16:18Astronomers have found a super rare, massive galaxy.
16:22It's called JWST 7329,
16:25and it's absolutely ancient.
16:28Our entire universe is about 13.8 billion years old.
16:33But the stars in this galaxy seem to have formed around 13 billion years ago,
16:38so just around 800 million years after the Big Bang.
16:42Also, this venerable elder has four times more mass in stars than our Milky Way does today.
16:49This strange discovery challenges what we know about galaxy formation and the nature of dark matter.
16:56Everything we know tells us that galaxies shouldn't have formed so early.
17:01There shouldn't have been enough dark matter for that.
17:04But here we are.
17:05There was an incredible astronomical event called AT2021 LWX,
17:16which is also called Scary Barbie.
17:19It was an unbelievably bright burst of energy that happened on April 13, 2021.
17:25It's one of the most energetic space events ever observed.
17:29No galaxies or quasars were nearby.
17:31So what in the world happened?
17:35At first, astronomers thought that it was caused by a supermassive black hole pulling in a massive star.
17:42But after some studying, they think it's probably because a giant black hole had some crazy dinner.
17:48It probably ate a large amount of gas, possibly a giant molecular cloud.
17:54The titanic black hole in question is between 100 million and a billion times the mass of the sun.
18:01This is one of the most massive known and active black holes.
18:07Astronomers found the oldest strand of the cosmic web ever seen.
18:12The cosmic web is what we call a huge structure of the universe that's made of interconnected filaments of galaxies
18:18and dark matter.
18:20They're like a framework for galaxies and other structures, playing a crucial role in their formation.
18:25The filament we're talking about is made up of 10 closely packed galaxies.
18:30It's unimaginably huge, stretching over 3 million light years.
18:35And it looks like the newly discovered strand is very ancient.
18:39It occurred only 830 million years after the Big Bang.
18:44It's probably anchored by a luminous quasar.
18:47This discovery makes us question how exactly galaxies are formed and what exactly happened to our universe after the Big
18:55Bang.
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