- 1 day ago
NASA has discovered an exoplanet so unusual that it almost looks too perfect to be real.
Its size, orbit, and possible conditions have raised questions about whether worlds like Earth may be far more common than we ever imagined.
But the deeper scientists look, the more this distant planet seems to challenge what we thought we knew about life beyond our solar system.
Its size, orbit, and possible conditions have raised questions about whether worlds like Earth may be far more common than we ever imagined.
But the deeper scientists look, the more this distant planet seems to challenge what we thought we knew about life beyond our solar system.
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00:04What if the strangest planets in the universe aren't the ones from science fiction,
00:09but the ones astronomers have already found?
00:12One of the strangest planets ever discovered looks blue from space.
00:16At first glance, it almost resembles Earth,
00:20but temperatures there exceed 1000 degrees Celsius,
00:24and scientists believe hurricane force winds blast molten glass
00:29through the atmosphere at over 8,000 kilometers per hour.
00:33And somehow, this isn't even the strangest exoplanet we've found.
00:38One of the most famous examples is HD 189733 b,
00:45located about 64 light-years from Earth.
00:48From a distance, the planet appears deep blue, almost resembling our own world.
00:53But its atmosphere is filled with silicate particles,
00:56essentially tiny fragments of glass.
01:00Combined with temperatures above 1000 degrees Celsius,
01:04and winds reaching more than 8,000 kilometers per hour,
01:09these particles are blasted sideways through the atmosphere.
01:13Scientists believe this creates one of the most violent weather systems ever observed on a planet.
01:19Another world that seems impossible is WASP-12b.
01:24This gas giant orbits so close to its star that a year there lasts only about 26 hours.
01:31The planet receives extreme amounts of radiation,
01:34and has been stretched into an egg-like shape by gravity.
01:38Observations show that material from the planet is actively being pulled away by its parent star.
01:46Astronomers are literally watching a planet lose mass as it slowly gets consumed.
01:52Then there is Trias-2b, often called the darkest known planet.
01:56This world reflects less than 1% of the light that reaches it.
02:01Fresh asphalt on Earth reflects more light.
02:04Scientists believe unusual chemicals in its atmosphere absorb almost all incoming visible light,
02:11making the planet appear nearly black against the surrounding darkness of space.
02:16Despite temperatures exceeding 1000 degrees Celsius,
02:20it remains one of the least reflective objects ever discovered.
02:24Perhaps the most famous exoplanet on the Internet is 55 Cancri e.
02:30This super-Earth is roughly twice the size of our planet,
02:34and orbits so close to its star that surface temperatures exceed 2000 degrees Celsius.
02:41Early studies suggested its interior might contain enormous amounts of carbon,
02:46compressed under immense pressure, leading to headlines calling it the Diamond Planet.
02:51While newer research suggests the picture is more complicated,
02:56scientists still believe the planet's geology may be radically different from anything found in our solar system.
03:03Some discoveries are strange because scientists still don't understand how they exist at all.
03:09TOI 849b appears to be the exposed core of a giant planet.
03:15It has roughly 40 times Earth's mass,
03:18but somehow lost nearly all of the thick atmosphere expected around an object of that size.
03:25Researchers believe it may be the naked core of a former gas giant,
03:29exposing layers that are normally hidden deep inside planets like Jupiter.
03:34An even bigger mystery is WASP-193b, one of the least dense planets ever found.
03:41The planet is larger than Jupiter, yet its density is so low that astronomers struggle to explain how it remains
03:48stable.
03:50Current models suggest its atmosphere is inflated to extraordinary proportions,
03:55creating a world that resembles a giant ball of gas far larger than expected for its mass.
04:01The most extreme temperatures may belong to KELT-9b.
04:06This giant planet reaches more than 4,000 degrees Celsius on its daytime side,
04:11making it hotter than some stars.
04:14At these temperatures, molecules cannot remain stable for long.
04:19Metals such as iron and titanium are believed to exist as vapor in the atmosphere.
04:24Scientists classify KELT-9b as one of the most hostile environments ever observed anywhere in the galaxy.
04:33Not all bizarre planets orbit stars.
04:36Astronomers have also discovered rogue planets wandering through interstellar space
04:41after being ejected from their original systems.
04:44Some estimates suggest there could be billions of these lonely worlds drifting through the Milky Way.
04:50Because they emit almost no light, they are extremely difficult to detect,
04:56which means many more may still be hidden in the darkness between stars.
05:00The most surprising thing about these discoveries is that they completely changed our understanding of planetary systems.
05:08Before the 1990s, scientists assumed our solar system was probably typical.
05:13Today, the evidence suggests the opposite.
05:17The universe appears to be filled with worlds far stranger than anything early astronomers imagined.
05:23And considering that we have explored only a tiny fraction of our galaxy,
05:28the strangest planet ever discovered may still be waiting to be found.
05:35So, what is the habitable zone?
05:37Well, in my room, it's the small section which isn't buried in food wrappings and video games.
05:42But astronomically speaking, it's a region around a star where the temperature of H2O matters.
05:49Too hot, and the water will evaporate.
05:52Too cold, and it will freeze.
05:53So, just like Goldilocks, the habitable zone is just right to allow liquid water to exist.
06:00And water is essential for life as we know it.
06:03Just ask the three bears.
06:05The size of this zone depends on the temperature of the star.
06:08But the habitable zone isn't necessarily a guaranteed oasis of life.
06:14Other factors, such as a planet's atmosphere and magnetic field, also play a crucial role in this.
06:20Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 planets outside our solar system.
06:25And only 63 of them are potentially habitable for life forms, like on Earth.
06:30Kind of a cosmic lottery.
06:32The good news is, this rule also works for the moons.
06:36If moons of planets are within the habitable zone, they may also have conditions suitable for life.
06:43That would be a jackpot in our lottery.
06:45Two oasis for the price of one.
06:47In our solar system, this zone is within a range of 80 to 111 million miles.
06:54Of all the planets, only we were lucky enough to have life.
06:58But what if we could make all the planets in our solar system habitable?
07:03Well, let's start with Mercury.
07:05First off, we'd need to give Mercury a bit of a makeover by thickening its atmosphere and providing it with
07:11a magnetic field.
07:12So, let's shower it with some asteroids that contain water.
07:16It's terraforming time, baby!
07:18Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, which means it gets plenty of sunshine.
07:23So, not that it needs any help in that department.
07:26Actually, Mercury needs to chill out a bit.
07:29Right now, it's 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
07:31That's too hot, said Papa Bear.
07:34That's why we should move it to a more habitable orbit, about twice as far away from the Sun as
07:39it is now.
07:41Now, thanks to terraforming and pleasant temperatures, we'd finally get some water.
07:46And if we want to get really cozy, we could always build habitats underground, or on the surface.
07:53But then we'd have to shield them from the heat and radiation.
07:56Anyway, with a little creativity, we could make it work.
08:00I mean, people live in Arizona, right?
08:02Yeah, but then we'd need a lot of golf courses.
08:05Let's move on to Venus.
08:07Ah, the famous planet of love.
08:09Where the temperatures are hot enough to melt lead, and the atmospheric pressure can crush you in seconds.
08:14Isn't it romantic?
08:16Venus is referred to as Earth's sister planet.
08:20But as it often happens with siblings, we have almost nothing in common.
08:25Well, let's try to solve this problem.
08:27If we add some hydrogen on Venus, it could react with a carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to form water
08:33and graphite.
08:35Water would help us to create some oxygen.
08:37But for this plan to work, we'd need to get hydrogen from space like it's a Black Friday sale.
08:42After that, we can build our new homes.
08:45We'll just have to make sure the buildings are strong enough to withstand the winds and acid rain.
08:51Piece of cake, right?
08:53Luckily, with the next planet, things are much easier.
08:56Mars is often considered the most promising candidate for extraterrestrial life in our solar system.
09:02It's a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere, but it has signs of water on its surface.
09:08And not only water, but even microbial life.
09:11So, the Martians must think of us as extraterrestrials.
09:16Anyway, if we're going to terraform Mars, adding oceans is a must.
09:21They'd thicken the atmosphere and warm the surface.
09:23Time for another asteroid shower.
09:25Or we could create some giant mirrors to reflect the sunlight and melt the ice caps.
09:31Easy peasy.
09:32And as soon as oceans appear on Mars, it'll gradually turn into a lush green planet.
09:38Very similar to our Earth.
09:39After that, we'll just need to build some artificial habitats and make sure they have all the comforts of home.
09:45Now, making rocky planets habitable isn't that difficult, compared to the gas giants.
09:52Jupiter has no solid surface at all.
09:54And it's basically impossible to colonize.
09:57So, let's get creative.
09:59We could build floating habitats in the clouds of Jupiter, where temperatures and pressures are more Earth-like.
10:05We just need to protect them from little inconveniences.
10:09Like wind speeds of more than 400 miles per hour and lightning every other minute.
10:14But if we managed to build homes in Jupiter's atmosphere, we could have some truly unique views.
10:20Just imagine waking up every day and seeing swirling clouds and colorful bands out your window.
10:27Or taking a stroll through the gas giant's thick atmosphere.
10:30Scary and awesome.
10:32Just watch your step on that balcony.
10:35We could also use some high technologies to make Jupiter's atmosphere breathable.
10:40Something that would consume its gases and release oxygen.
10:43Now, this is pure sci-fi, but wouldn't that be cool?
10:47Let's move on to Saturn.
10:48It's also a gas giant, which has no solid surface for life to exist.
10:53But don't lose hope.
10:55Just like with Jupiter, we could create some floating habitats in the upper atmosphere of Saturn.
11:00Try living on a luxurious cloud.
11:03Although the rent would be sky-high.
11:05We could also cover the planet with a giant shield, like a cosmic umbrella.
11:10In space, it's raining cosmic rays instead of water.
11:14But this barrier could protect us from harmful radiation and solar winds.
11:19Thanks to this, the weather on Saturn would become a bit calmer.
11:23Also, remember how we were talking about moons?
11:26One of Saturn's moons, Titan, has a dense atmosphere and maybe even a subsurface ocean of water.
11:32And Saturn also hides an ocean beneath its crust.
11:36Both of them might be perfect places for actual colonization.
11:40That would be much easier than colonizing Saturn.
11:43Uranus is another ice giant made up of dense, fluid, icy materials – methane, ammonia, and water.
11:50Considering the surface temperature of minus 353 degrees Fahrenheit, you could say it's pretty chilly out there.
11:58So how do we make this work?
12:01Well, we could try to create a greenhouse effect.
12:04It's a natural process that helps keep the Earth's temperature stable and pleasant – unless we mess around with it.
12:11When sunlight enters the Earth's atmosphere, some of it gets trapped by gases called greenhouse gases.
12:17They act like a blanket around the Earth, keeping the planet warm.
12:21Unless we mess around with it.
12:23So, if we want to make this ice giant warmer, we can try to recreate this effect, only better.
12:30For example, we could introduce some of these gases into Uranus's atmosphere.
12:35Or build a network of mirrors to trap the heat from the Sun.
12:39Although it would require tons of giant mirrors.
12:42And just imagine trying to position them all correctly.
12:45So, instead of all this headache, we could always set our sights on Uranus's moons.
12:51They're believed to have rocky surfaces and maybe even oceans that could support life.
12:57Plus, the views are out of this world.
13:00Moving on to the final planet, Neptune.
13:03The cool, distant cousin of the Solar System.
13:05It's also an ice giant.
13:07Its year lasts 165 Earth years.
13:11First, let's create an atmosphere.
13:13Neptune's atmosphere is mostly made up of hydrogen, helium, and methane .
13:19We'd need to transport some plants there.
13:21Or simply lots of oxygen to make this place a bit more breathable.
13:26And how do we add water to a gas giant?
13:29Maybe by melting ice from the moons.
13:31Or by transporting large amounts of water from Earth.
13:34Or just imagine a squadron of spaceships dragging giant containers to Neptune.
13:40And then, once the planet has a breathable atmosphere and liquid water, we'd need to build habitats.
13:46Probably another sky city, because you can never have enough of those.
13:51So, let's say we somehow magically made all the planets habitable.
13:55Now what?
13:57Well, there would be a boost in human exploration and colonization.
14:01People would build new homes on different planets.
14:04Imagine, immigrating from Mercury to Neptune because you prefer chilly temperatures more.
14:10With more habitable planets to study and explore, scientists would learn more about our world.
14:16We'd have so many breakthroughs.
14:18Also, it's time for some interplanetary trade.
14:21We could mine tons of resources from planets, asteroids, and moons.
14:26A dream come true for Elon Musk.
14:28But of course, it's not all fun and games.
14:31All of this would most likely lead to conflicts over resources and territory.
14:36Imagine trying to keep peace between Jupiterians and Martians.
14:40Well, all jokes aside, the possibility of all planets being habitable is mind-boggling.
14:47But in reality, terraforming planets like this is impossible, at least for now.
14:52But who knows?
14:54Many things were considered impossible before.
14:56But this didn't stop us.
14:58So, let's keep dreaming.
15:00Meanwhile, we can clean up the planet we're already on.
15:05So, planets with two suns, like Tatooine from Star Wars, used to sound like pure fantasy.
15:11For decades, scientists believed these systems were too unstable to exist.
15:16Two stars tugging at a planet should fling it into space or drop it into one of the suns.
15:22Except, it turns out that nature didn't get the memo.
15:25Astronomers have found a planet calmly orbiting two stars like it's no big deal.
15:30This planet lives closer to its two parent stars than any other directly imaged planet in a binary star system
15:37astronomers have ever seen.
15:39Now, direct imaging means they saw the planet's light, not just its shadow.
15:44The whole system sits about 446 light-years away.
15:47So, the light we see from it today left before humans ever built modern cities.
15:52This space monster is roughly six times the mass of Jupiter.
15:57And even more surprising, the planet is only about 13 million years old.
16:02That sounds ancient, until you zoom out a little.
16:04Earth is about 4.6 billion years old.
16:07Which makes this planet basically a newborn in cosmic terms.
16:11The two suns of this monster orbit each other incredibly fast,
16:16and complete a full loop in just 18 Earth days.
16:19That means their gravity constantly shifts, yanking space around them like a cosmic washing machine.
16:25Even so, the planet stays locked in its path, so it takes it 300 Earth years to finish a single
16:32orbit.
16:33So, nobody fully understands how this planet formed in the first place.
16:37When two stars orbit each other this closely, their gravity usually tears apart planet-forming material before anything big can
16:45take shape.
16:46Scientists have only found a few dozen planets like this so far.
16:50And that's nowhere near enough to piece together the full story.
16:53To solve the mystery, they need more data.
16:57Another cool find that still needs more research is a planet so stretched by gravity that it looks like a
17:03lemon, not a sphere.
17:05This planet is nothing like the calm blue and green worlds we see in space movies.
17:09It orbits a pulsar, which is basically a star's corpse.
17:14When a massive star expires, it collapses into an ultradense object that spins insanely fast and blasts radiation like a
17:22cosmic lighthouse.
17:24Being near one of those means game over for anything solid.
17:28And yet, this planet hangs on, barely.
17:31The gravity stretches it, pulling harder on the side facing the pulsar than the far side, like cosmic taffy.
17:38And here's where it gets extra unsettling.
17:42When scientists analyzed this planet's atmosphere, they didn't find water or oxygen.
17:47They found helium and pure carbon.
17:50No clouds, no oceans, no chance of life.
17:53According to everything we know about planet formation, this world shouldn't exist at all.
17:58So, it might not be a planet in the normal sense.
18:01It could be the exposed core of a star that got shredded, leaving behind something stuck between planet and stellar
18:09cores.
18:10That's a pretty scary trend.
18:11The line between planets and stars keeps getting blurry.
18:15And speaking of scary, meet this guy.
18:18This system lives around two red dwarf stars.
18:21These two stars orbit each other at a distance similar to how far Jupiter sits from the Sun.
18:27Scientists found two Earth-sized planets and a third possible one squeezed right up next to the stars.
18:34One planet completes a full year in just over two days.
18:38Another takes about three and a half days.
18:39The Canada planet orbits even faster.
18:43To put that in perspective, these planets sit less than two million miles from their star.
18:48The Moon sits about a quarter million miles from Earth.
18:51So yeah, these worlds are close.
18:54When they combined data from space and ground-based telescopes, astronomers realized they were staring at something totally new.
19:02Planets that transit or pass in front of both stars.
19:06Most planets in double-star systems orbit only one star.
19:10And this setup shouldn't last long according to the rules of physics.
19:14But these planets exist anyway, calmly breaking the rules.
19:18So this guide proves that planet formation works in ways we still don't fully understand.
19:24And space clearly enjoys messing with our expectations.
19:28Now let's crank up the horror a notch.
19:30Astronomers made the first-ever 3D map of a planet outside our solar system.
19:36And not just any planet.
19:38This one is so hot, it literally tears water molecules apart.
19:42As the planet moved behind its star, the James Webb watched tiny changes in the star's light at different colors
19:49or wavelengths.
19:50Some colors get absorbed by water vapor. Others don't.
19:54By stacking all that info together, scientists figured out temperatures at different heights and locations in the planet's atmosphere.
20:01And that's how they learned that parts of its atmosphere heat up to nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than
20:08molten lava.
20:09This super-hot planet sits about 400 light-years away and weighs around 10 times as much as Jupiter.
20:16It races around its star in just 23 hours.
20:20When you're there is basically a day.
20:22And because it's so close, the temperatures get so high.
20:27Winds try to move heat around, but they totally fail.
20:30Wasp-18b's atmosphere barely has any water and instead overflows with carbon monoxide.
20:37Astronomers once believed water should be common in giant planet atmospheres.
20:41This world proves water is optional, not guaranteed.
20:46Now, magma worlds are another perfect proof of that.
20:49There's a huge group of planets called sub-Neptunes.
20:52Planets bigger than Earth, but smaller than Neptune.
20:55For a while, some scientists hoped these worlds were Haitian planets,
20:59covered in deep oceans of water or ice, wrapped in thick atmospheres.
21:04One famous example was K-218.
21:06Its atmosphere showed methane and carbon dioxide, but almost no ammonia.
21:12But, as it turned out, lava dissolves ammonia too.
21:15So, the missing ammonia doesn't prove water at all.
21:19It could just mean the planet has a global ocean of magma instead.
21:23The researchers modeled how these planets heat up, cool down, and evolve over time.
21:28They asked a simple question.
21:30Do these planets ever cool enough to stop being lava worlds?
21:34And the answer was, almost never.
21:37When they tested thousands of known sub-Neptunes, they say almost all of them are likely lava worlds, not water
21:44worlds.
21:45In simple terms, these planets don't breathe water vapor.
21:48They breathe rock vapor.
21:50Their atmospheres come from magma boiling, not oceans evaporating.
21:54And that changes everything.
21:56Many worlds we once labeled maybe habitable turn into hellscapes the moment you run the numbers honestly.
22:03And that means space isn't hiding Earth clones, but mass-producing furnaces and other sorts of monsters.
22:10Take this bad boy, for instance.
22:12It sits only about 64 light years away, which is uncomfortably close in cosmic terms.
22:18And it's the nearest hot Jupiter to Earth.
22:20From afar, it looks stunning.
22:23A smooth, deep blue marble floating peacefully in space.
22:26But that color hides something absolutely brutal.
22:30On this planet, it rains glass.
22:32Sideways.
22:33Winds scream across the atmosphere at around 5,400 miles per hour.
22:38Fast enough to shred anything instantly.
22:41The blue color comes from tiny particles of silicate, the stuff glass is made of, floating in the air.
22:48The planet's surface temperature hits about 2400 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt rock.
22:55That heat turns those silicates into microscopic shards of glass that whip around the planet like a worldwide sandblaster.
23:02Standing there wouldn't hurt.
23:04You wouldn't exist long enough to ever feel it.
23:07And then there's the darkest planet ever found.
23:10It reflects less than 1% of the light that hits it.
23:14It's darker than coal.
23:15Darker than black paint.
23:17Light just disappears into it.
23:19Not all planets even bother with stars at all.
23:22Astronomers have found rogue planets.
23:24Worlds kicked out of their solar systems.
23:26These lonely planets drift through space in total darkness.
23:30Frozen and untethered.
23:32With no sunrise ever again.
23:34Now, all of this shows us that our universe isn't designed for life.
23:38Life survives despite the universe, not because of it.
23:42Earth isn't typical.
23:44It's lucky.
23:45We're only at the beginning of this discovery era.
23:48Every year, new telescopes sharpen the picture.
23:51And every year, the picture gets stranger.
23:54The more clearly we see the universe, the less it resembles our imagination.
23:58And that's the most unsettling truth of all.
24:02Spotted.
24:03It seems like two giant stars were caught in the middle of a romantic kiss.
24:07This sounds a little bit like paparazzi fodder at first.
24:11But we're actually talking about a cosmic twist an international team of astronomers has discovered.
24:18So, the life cycle of a solo star is relatively simple.
24:23They're born in vast, gassy areas of space, burn through their fuel, and at some moment, they explode as supernovae.
24:30But when stars are born relatively close to each other, their gravitational pull can cause them some troubles and captivate
24:38them into what seems like an eternal dance.
24:41In some moments, they come so close to each other that they're practically touching.
24:47These stars may spend billions of years circling each other.
24:51But their kiss lasts for a few million years only, which is just a blink of an eye in cosmic
24:56terms.
24:58The lead author of this study was on a mission to find these binary stars caught in such a cosmic
25:05kiss.
25:05He focused his search on the Tarantula Nebula, a beautiful star-forming region located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which
25:15is 160,000 light-years away from our home planet.
25:19And there it was, the shiny double star system that stood out from the rest.
25:25The two stars found there were pretty big and nearly the same size.
25:30Together, they make a mass of about 57 times larger than that of our Sun.
25:34Before this, we discovered only three other binary systems with a large mass.
25:40And since these two stars were so close to each other, they created an intense gravitational pull.
25:47This made them orbit each other at a staggering rate of once a day with their centers a mere 7
25:53.4 miles apart.
25:56With the stars being so close, they formed a bridge where their fuel could mingle, allowing for around 30%
26:03of their total volume to be shared between the two.
26:07Temperatures of this system were crazy too.
26:11At first, it seems the internal mixing of their energy might make these stars live longer, as it allows for
26:17more fuel to be burned and for longer periods of time.
26:21But this is just a temporary benefit.
26:23There are two most likely scenarios for the stars' ultimate fate.
26:28They could merge to form one giant star, which would eventually explode into a supernova.
26:34Or, they could each explode separately and live out their remaining years as black holes orbiting each other.
26:42If they merge, this process would probably take around 600,000 years.
26:48While if they become binary black holes, they could continue burning for another 3 million years.
26:55But both scenarios would ultimately lead to their destruction.
26:59Unless the stars could end up as two separate black holes drifting away from each other through the vastness of
27:05space, there's a possibility for that to happen too.
27:09There's something spectacular stargazers across the globe could see recently.
27:14Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest planets in the sky, ended up so close it appeared like they were about
27:21to collide.
27:22Or as if they were kissing too.
27:25At least that's what it looked like from here on Earth.
27:28In real terms, they're still 400 million miles away from each other.
27:32Here's another interesting thing astronomers like to talk about.
27:36G objects.
27:37Those are celestial objects that look like clouds of dust and gas, but behave like stars.
27:45At the center of our galaxy, there's a supermassive black hole.
27:49It's 4 million times the mass of our sun.
27:52And recently, scientists found out there are two mysterious G objects that hang out pretty close to that black hole.
28:00So-called G1 and G2.
28:04And the most probable theory is that G2 are two stars that were orbiting the black hole in tandem and
28:11merged into an extremely large star cloaked in unusually thick gas and dust.
28:17During G2's closest approach to the black hole, it showed a strange signature.
28:23It was elongated and much of its gas was torn apart.
28:27As it got closer to the black hole, it lost its outer shell and now it's getting more compact again.
28:35The thing that has everyone excited about the G objects is the material that gets pulled off of them by
28:41tidal forces as they sweep by the central black hole.
28:45This material must inevitably fall into the black hole and the result is an impressive fireworks show.
28:52This happens because the material eaten by the black hole will heat up and emit radiation before it disappears across
29:00the event horizon.
29:01An event horizon is that scary boundary around a black hole from which nothing can escape.
29:09Now, it seems scientists have discovered four more G objects and they're all located within 0.13 light-years of
29:17this black hole.
29:18And it could be that all of the six objects used to be binary stars that got together and merged
29:25because of the powerful gravity of this giant black hole.
29:29Usually, it takes over a million years to finish the merging process between two stars.
29:35We definitely want more G objects because it's one of the rare opportunities for us to study how things behave
29:43near a supermassive black hole without being swallowed.
29:47Yet.
29:49Have you heard of variable stars?
29:52Look up at the sky.
29:53We often think of the stars as unchanging, eternal lights.
29:57Yes, some stars might appear constant, but others change in brightness over time, which is why we call them variable
30:05stars.
30:06Some of them dim and brighten again over days, months or even years.
30:11We can't see it with the naked eye.
30:14We're talking about changes astronomers can only notice using equipment and over longer periods.
30:21And how about vampire stars?
30:24Imagine two stars, a red giant and a white dwarf in a binary system swirling around each other like cosmic
30:32ballet dancers.
30:33The red giant, which used to be a vibrant and fiery star, now has aged and grown tired.
30:40Its outer layers of hydrogen, which were once held tightly by its gravity, have now weakened, making it vulnerable to
30:47the smaller, denser white dwarf.
30:49The white dwarf, known as the vampire star, thirsts for the hydrogen fuel that its larger sibling holds.
30:57And it sees a great chance there.
31:00As they spin together, the vampire star uses its powerful gravitational force to steal the hydrogen from the red giant's
31:08outer layers.
31:09The vampire star glows with a blue hue, looking full of energy and more youthful and vibrant than its aged
31:16dancing partner.
31:18Not only vampire stars, the horror continues with zombie stars too.
31:24Sometimes when the red giant explodes, it doesn't completely break up into smaller pieces.
31:29Instead, a white dwarf remnant is left behind.
31:33It's basically a zombie star that was gone at the moment, but has risen back to life.
31:39But this isn't your average zombie, hungry for brains.
31:44No, this star hungers for the very substance that its vampire sibling had been taking from it all along, hydrogen.
31:51And if the zombie star is close enough to its victim, it will start sucking material back in to start
31:57its core again.
31:59It will become a hydrogen explosive, ready to go boom in a spectacular show of cosmic revenge.
32:05It's a fascinating phenomenon.
32:08We usually won't even manage to detect it, because these explosions are much fainter than the usual supernovas.
32:15But when it does happen, the resulting blast is truly epic.
32:20And it destroys both the vampire star and its zombie sibling.
32:25It seems vampires and zombies may not be a work of fiction after all.
32:30Not only are we made of stardust, but we're also more similar to stars than we thought too.
32:36For example, stars also like to hang out with their close group of friends.
32:41Most stars prefer to travel through the universe in clusters.
32:45It's a group of stars that end up bound together by gravitational force.
32:50The stars in the cluster are mostly made of the same age and type, hobbies and interests.
32:55I guess even they have better social lives than I do.
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