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Let's explore space together! Check out many interesting facts about the planets!
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00:00We've discovered Kepler-22b, a small exoplanet in the Cygnus constellation.
00:06Seems like nothing important, right?
00:08But it's actually a big deal.
00:10This is the first planet located in the habitable zone that was found by the Kepler telescope.
00:17In other words, there may be water on this planet, and if there's water, there may be life.
00:22Kepler-22b can become our new potential home.
00:26So let's take a closer look at it.
00:30Actually, discovering new planets is not easy at all.
00:33Not all of them can be seen through our super cool telescopes, even the almighty Hubble.
00:39Sometimes, the stars are so small and dim that it's really hard to find them on a map.
00:45The same thing happened with Kepler-22.
00:48In such cases, scientists have to use a special method.
00:52First, they take a bunch of photos of the star in different periods of time.
00:56Then, they look at them and think, hmm, are there any dark dots on this star somewhere?
01:02And if they find one, that might be a planet.
01:07These photos actually help us to discover some very important stuff.
01:11Like, first of all, this planet exists.
01:14Secondly, here is its size, radius, and proximity to the star.
01:19And finally, will we be able to live there?
01:23Now, we know that Kepler-22b is very similar to our planet, and could potentially become a second Earth.
01:30It's also very close to us, only 635 light-years away.
01:35Yeah, it's about 3 quadrillion miles.
01:38But, this is one of the closest options.
01:42Kepler-22, the star of Kepler-22b, is a yellow dwarf.
01:46It's very, very similar to our sun.
01:49The same size, the same radius, even the age is almost the same.
01:544 billion years.
01:55The difference is only in luminosity.
01:58It's about 20% dimmer than the sun.
02:00So, no matter how much you strain your eyes, you won't see this star in the night sky.
02:07The planet Kepler-22b is about 2.4 times larger than our Earth.
02:12And that's pretty good.
02:14More radius means more potential water and space to live.
02:18Although, going from one city to another would take a while.
02:22It's scary to even imagine a three-day-long plane flight.
02:27We don't know the exact mass of this planet, but scientists think it's bigger than Earth's.
02:32Actually, the mass of Kepler-22b can be up to 36 times greater than that of our planet.
02:38What does it mean?
02:40Vigorous gravity.
02:41If the planet is 36 times heavier than Earth, then gravity there will be about 6 times stronger.
02:48Can you barely lift 20 pounds of potatoes?
02:51Try 120.
02:54Not to mention that you yourself can become much heavier on that planet.
02:58You'll have to get incredibly pumped up just to walk there.
03:02You have to literally turn yourself into a bodybuilder just to get to work.
03:07The worst thing is that, with such gravity, it'd be incredibly difficult for plants to survive there.
03:13They'd need at least a little freedom to rise up from the ground.
03:17And animals.
03:18Our dogs and cats would have to turn into little balls of muscle to survive there.
03:24But if this planet has its own animals or other inhabitants, we can roughly imagine what they may look like.
03:31They probably have a lot of legs to make moving easier.
03:34They aren't really tall, but they're very massive and extremely strong.
03:38Hmm, muscular giant spiders?
03:41Could be worse, I guess.
03:44The good news is that this is all unconfirmed information.
03:48If we're very lucky, and gravity there turns out to be just a bit stronger than Earth's,
03:53then, of course, it'll be much easier to live there.
03:57The next thing we know about Kepler-22b is that it's about 15% closer to its star than we
04:03are to the Sun.
04:04If Kepler-22b existed in our solar system, it would be located somewhere between Earth and Venus.
04:12Does that mean we're all going to burn?
04:14No, silly.
04:16As I mentioned before, the star Kepler-22 is pretty cold.
04:20Just some 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
04:22And that's why we can assume that the temperatures on Kepler-22b will be about the same as we have
04:28on Earth.
04:29If the planet orbits its star the same way Earth orbits the Sun, which we don't actually know,
04:35Kepler-22b can rotate around its star on its side.
04:38Like, for example, Uranus.
04:41What?
04:42Didn't you know Uranus is actually lying on its side?
04:46Also, look at its rings.
04:48Yes, Uranus also has rings, like Saturn.
04:51But they're vertical.
04:52The universe is truly a mysterious place.
04:57So, if Kepler-22b is really something like that, then the weather on the planet will be, to put it
05:03mildly, not very good.
05:06Incredibly cold winters will be regularly followed by hot summers.
05:09And, just like with tidally locked planets, we'd be able to live more or less comfortably only on the narrow
05:16piece of land between these two crazy sides.
05:19Let's hope that this is not the case and the planet rotates normally.
05:25But it's not all that bad.
05:27Studies show that there may be an ocean on Kepler-22b.
05:31You already know that water means life.
05:34But, in this case, it's also a big plus, because a planet covered by an ocean always has more stable
05:40temperatures.
05:41The water absorbs some of the heat and distributes it evenly across the planet.
05:45The hot parts cool down, and the icy ones warm up.
05:50By the way, that's exactly what happened to Earth billions of years ago.
05:54When our planet started getting its first little puddles, our beloved moon helped these puddles to spread all over the
06:01planet.
06:02Thanks to this, a burning horror that used to be our Earth turned into a cute little ball full of
06:08life.
06:09So, if Kepler-22b has water but no atmosphere, scientists think that the average temperature there could be around 12
06:17degrees Fahrenheit.
06:18But, if there's also an Earth-like atmosphere, then the temperature can reach 72 degrees Fahrenheit.
06:24That would be nice.
06:27And finally, one year there is equal to 290 Earth days, about nine months.
06:32The planet has no natural satellites, so, unfortunately, we'd have to say goodbye to a beautiful view of the moon.
06:39On the bright side, we'd probably be able to see the sun as a distant little star.
06:44We could admire it in the night sky, remembering our home, while not hiding from giant spiders.
06:52And this is all that we know at the moment.
06:54Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to explore such planets.
06:58So, there's a lot of very important data that we don't know.
07:01For example, what kind of planet is this, anyway?
07:06Yep, we're missing the most important information about Kepler-22b.
07:10We don't know if it's a rocky planet or not.
07:13And, if not, then all the previously mentioned information means nothing.
07:19It may turn out to be a gas planet.
07:21Or a planet covered with gas, but with a solid core, like Neptune.
07:26Or a water world covered with a giant ocean.
07:30In this case, it better be a water planet.
07:33Then, at least, we could build some kind of underwater city there.
07:37We could filter the water and eat fish, until we evolve into an amphibious species.
07:42Does it even count as evolution if we go back to our roots?
07:47Scientists, however, think that Kepler-22b may turn out to be a Neptune-like planet.
07:52Some astronomers have even assigned the planet to a category of mini-Neptunes.
07:57Yes, this is a real planetary category.
08:00But this hasn't been proven yet.
08:04But even if, fortunately for us, Kepler-22b turns out to be a rocky planet,
08:09we still don't know what the atmosphere is like there.
08:12Does it exist at all?
08:13What if it turns out to be something like the atmosphere of Venus,
08:17which is more toxic than your ex?
08:19Then we'd have to dig deep underground to somehow survive on this planet.
08:23And then we'd have to come up with a heat source,
08:26because it's pretty cold underground.
08:28Yeah, let's hope this won't be the case.
08:32There are many possibilities with Kepler-22b.
08:35So far, we don't have a clear answer.
08:38But let's hope that scientists will find it before we load the first people into shuttles
08:42and send them to conquer Kepler-22b.
08:45That would be awkward if it turns out to be a gas planet, or something like that.
08:52Uh-oh, hurricane alert!
08:54Everyone's hiding!
08:55The speed of the wind outside is more than 75 miles per hour.
08:59Seems like a lot.
09:00But this storm is moving at 400 miles per hour.
09:04Wait, do such speeds exist?
09:06Yep.
09:07But to see a storm that fast, you'll have to travel to Jupiter.
09:11So, let the journey begin.
09:14The planet is huge.
09:16Almost 1,300 Earths could fit into this gas giant.
09:19It's also incredibly hot,
09:21with the temperatures reaching about 43,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the planet's core.
09:26Unfortunately, you can't land on Jupiter's surface because, well, being a gas giant,
09:32it doesn't have any solid surface.
09:34But you can go deeper into Jupiter's atmosphere.
09:37Look at these thick brown, yellow, red, and white clouds passing by.
09:42They're what make the planet look colorful and kind of stride.
09:46If you continue descending toward the center of the planet, you'll see its atmosphere,
09:50mostly made up of hydrogen and helium gas, becoming liquid.
09:54It happens because of immense atmospheric pressure.
09:57The planet's core itself is a mysterious object.
10:01Scientists still haven't figured out whether it's a molten ball of thick liquid
10:05or a solid rock 14 to 18 times the mass of Earth.
10:09Anyway, exploring Jupiter isn't the main goal of your trip.
10:13No, you've arrived here to see the Great Red Spot.
10:17It's an enormous storm raging in the southern hemisphere of the gas giant.
10:21Its top parts are towering more than 5 miles above the tops of the surrounding clouds.
10:26The storm is 1.3 times wider than our planet.
10:30In 2017, NASA's Juno space probe managed to collect lots of data about the red spot.
10:36And it turned out that this monster of a storm
10:39goes more than 200 miles down into the planet's atmosphere.
10:43That's 30 to 100 times deeper than any ocean on Earth.
10:47But these measurements are most likely imprecise,
10:50and the storm's true roots can be reaching even deeper.
10:53The Great Red Spot is colder than the rest of the atmosphere.
10:57And keep in mind that Jupiter's temperatures are minus 234 degrees Fahrenheit in the upper cloud layers.
11:04On the other hand, the closer to the core, the hotter it gets.
11:09Mysteriously, the highest temperatures ever recorded on the gas giant
11:12occurred in the atmosphere right above the Great Red Spot.
11:16There, the heat reached 2,400 degrees.
11:20The temperature is higher than that of lava on our planet.
11:24Astronomers believe that the turbulence caused by the storm
11:27might produce gravitational and sound waves that can be responsible for the superheating.
11:32But the storm itself is warmer at the bottom than at the top.
11:36People have been watching the moving vortex on Jupiter for more than 150 years.
11:42Some time ago, astronomers predicted that it would gradually slow down
11:46and become smaller or disappear entirely.
11:49But that turned out not to be the case.
11:51After having analyzed all the data received with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope,
11:57researchers were baffled to discover that the winds at the outer boundaries of the storm
12:01had actually picked up speed.
12:03The change in the wind speed is no more than 1.5 miles per hour during one Earth year.
12:09It's a tiny change.
12:11But however small the difference is, it still means a lot.
12:15The wind speed at the edges of the storm can reach a mind-boggling 400 miles per hour.
12:21That's faster than Earth's tornadoes.
12:23At the same time, if you found yourself at the center of the Great Red Spot,
12:27you wouldn't be too impressed.
12:29The winds there move way more slowly.
12:31Scientists faced lots of challenges when they were trying to understand the mystery
12:36that was the Great Red Spot.
12:38It's unclear what fuels the storm.
12:41Can it be the nature of the storm's home planet?
12:43Since it's a gas giant, Jupiter doesn't have any solid ground.
12:47So there's no friction, which might be the only thing that could make the storm weaken.
12:52The hot gases in the planet's atmosphere are always moving, rising, falling, swirling.
12:59Just like on our home planet, where cooler and warmer air mix and merge into one another,
13:04forming giant circling storms.
13:07Astronomers think that once, several enormous storms could have come together
13:11and created the Great Red Spot.
13:13And now, it keeps going by constantly drawing cool gases from below and hot gases from above.
13:20Plus, the storm might be absorbing other smaller vortices.
13:23This makes the Great Red Spot even more powerful.
13:27Unfortunately, thick clouds on Jupiter don't allow astronomers to see what's going on in
13:32the planet's lower atmosphere.
13:34Scientists have been speculating on what may hide beneath the Great Red Spot for decades.
13:39Is it a massive volcano?
13:42Unlikely.
13:43Jupiter is mostly made up of gases, and it doesn't have a crust that could crack,
13:48letting lava escape from the planet's interior.
13:50There are also a few theories explaining why the storm has its trademark color.
13:55It varies from whitish and pale salmon to bright orange and brick red.
14:01Some scientists believe the answer lies deep below the Great Red Spot,
14:05closer to the planet's surface.
14:06A colorless layer of gas might be reacting to the UV radiation coming from the Sun.
14:12This is probably what gives the storm its red color.
14:15But so far, it's just a theory.
14:18Hey, your guess is as good as mine, huh?
14:21Jupiter isn't the only planet that can boast having a giant storm.
14:25Another one, as wide as our home planet, rages on Saturn.
14:29It's called the Great White Spot.
14:31How clever!
14:32The storm has a tail of white clouds encircling the entire planet.
14:37It occurs every 30 years or so.
14:39This storm, indeed, starts as a spot.
14:42But then, it starts stretching and stretching.
14:46Astronomers have figured out that the Great White Spot is actually a huge system of thunderstorms.
14:51At the top of the storm, lightning can flash more than 10 times per second.
14:56But the main mystery about the Great White Spot is where it gets its energy from.
15:01Some scientists think it may be powered by the Sun.
15:04Others argue that the storm's cloud pattern only makes sense if there's an internal source of heat that can power
15:10the winds.
15:11Anyway, severe storms on different planets of the solar system aren't the only space mystery that makes astronomers scratch their
15:18heads.
15:18Let's move to Pluto, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, and explore its atmosphere.
15:25It rises really high above the surface of the planet and has more than 20 layers, all of them freezing
15:31cold and extremely condensed.
15:33By the way, our Moon also has some sort of an atmosphere.
15:37Called an exosphere, it consists of helium, neon, and argon.
15:42It's 10 trillion times less dense than Earth's atmosphere.
15:46While traveling through space, watch out for black holes!
15:49Woo!
15:50A black hole is a place where gravity is so strong that even light can't get out.
15:55But black holes can sometimes behave like a massive galactic volcano.
16:00From time to time, they flare up.
16:02Sounds like me.
16:03But instead of spewing lava, they produce enormous amounts of energy.
16:07And this phenomenon leaves gaping holes in the surrounding material and gas.
16:12A short while ago, scientists discovered one of the largest craters in the universe.
16:18Radio and X-ray telescopes detected a supermassive black hole that threw a temper tantrum many, many years ago.
16:25It happened in a galaxy cluster about 390 million light-years away from Earth.
16:30The crater this event left behind could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies.
16:35Yeah, I can't get my head around that either.
16:38During your space voyage, think twice before landing on unknown planets.
16:43Otherwise, you may end up in a place like K2-141b.
16:48That's a planet outside of our solar system.
16:50At first glance, it's not that different from Earth.
16:53It has liquid oceans that evaporate, form clouds, condense, and get back to the surface's rain.
16:59But instead of water, it rains rocks.
17:02The surface of this exoplanet is covered with lava seas dozens of miles deep.
17:07The temperatures on the K2-141b reach 5,000 degrees during the day.
17:13That's toasty enough for the magma in the oceans to vaporize into the atmosphere.
17:18Then, supersonic winds, which can move at the speed of one mile per second,
17:22carry this rock vapor into the planet's night sign.
17:25The vaporized magma cools down, becomes liquid again, and falls as a rocky rain.
17:32Uh-uh, not a vacation spot.
17:34Too hot.
17:34I'll pass.
17:36You know, back in the 1970s, scientists discovered a mysterious gravitational anomaly called the
17:42Great Attractor.
17:44Wait a minute, I had that nickname in high school.
17:46Anyway, it's a place in the sky that draws hundreds of galaxies, including our Milky Way.
17:51You won't be able to see it because it's on the other side of the Milky Way, 150 million
17:57light-years away.
17:58The Great Attractor actually lies in the direction scientists usually call the zone of avoidance.
18:04Eh, I have one of those too.
18:06It's my closet.
18:07Now, there's so much dust and gas in this region that we can't see what's happening there.
18:12That area blocks most of the visible light from beyond.
18:15But all that dust and gas don't block x-rays and infrared light.
18:20So, as x-ray astronomy developed, researchers could finally start to observe all the objects
18:25within that area, including the mysterious force attracting everything.
18:30But so far, no one has figured out why it's happening.
18:34Our moon may be 200 million years younger than we previously thought.
18:39Many scientists believe that the moon formed during a powerful collision between our planet
18:43and an unknown Mars-sized body.
18:46The molten dust and debris got together and formed a new object we know as the moon.
18:52The lunar crust was probably going through a process of solidifying over a couple of hundred
18:57million years.
18:58Did you know about an early magma ocean on the moon?
19:01Scientists realized it was a real thing after they had discovered big amounts of the lightweight
19:06mineral called plagioclase.
19:08This material usually crystallizes and floats to the surface of magma.
19:13Anyway, this mineral was 4.36 billion years old, which means it formed 200 million years
19:19after the first solid materials had appeared in our solar system.
19:23Thus, the theory that the moon formed during this giant chaotic collision might be true.
19:28Now, if you stand on the moon one day and leave your footprint on its surface, it can stay
19:33there for a million years.
19:34You'd also see the footprints of other astronauts, even though no one has landed on the lunar surface
19:40for decades now.
19:41The moon doesn't have a full-fledged atmosphere.
19:44There's no breeze or anything else that can sweep up the dust and erase the footprints.
19:49We see it as a small dot somewhere in the distance.
19:52But in reality, the sun is so big that if it were an empty ball, you could fill it with
19:58more than a million Earths.
19:59The sun makes up 99.86% of the mass of our entire solar system.
20:05Another enormous object in our solar system is Jupiter.
20:08It's 11 times wider than our planet.
20:11For example, Earth isn't even the size of the Great Red Spot.
20:15This enormous storm has been raging on Jupiter for more than a century.
20:19And no, it's not anchored to anything solid, since Jupiter is a gas giant.
20:24It's like a massive hurricane, oval in shape, reddish in color, and wide enough to engulf
20:30our home planet.
20:32Once upon a time, it was three times as wide as our planet.
20:35But over the last few centuries, it's been shrinking as well as growing taller.
20:40As for Jupiter, this gas giant is some sort of vacuum cleaner that keeps our solar system
20:45safe.
20:46Jupiter has incredibly strong gravity that eats up comets or asteroids that might potentially
20:52harm our home planet.
20:53In some other planetary systems, gas giants, similar to Jupiter, migrate from the position
20:59where they formed.
21:00They spiral inward and come closer to their parent stars.
21:04And as they travel, they swallow up small rocky planets.
21:08Or their strong gravitational force flings these planets out of their star systems.
21:13Luckily for us, Jupiter's gravitational force doesn't work that way.
21:17If Jupiter-like planets stay away from their stars, they keep their planetary systems safe,
21:22protecting those small planets in their inner orbit.
21:26Jupiter, for instance, can change the orbits of small space bodies that come too close to
21:31the inner planets of our solar system.
21:33That's why this gas giant is a good guardian of our solar system.
21:37Now, there's a supermassive black hole that roams through space at a speed of 3 million
21:43miles per hour and leaves a trail of debris behind.
21:46Hey, I had a little brother who once did that.
21:49It's about a million times as heavy as our sun and, at the moment, 2 billion light-years
21:54away from Earth.
21:55This black hole started like any other, in its own elliptical galaxy with many stars surrounding
22:01it.
22:02Supermassive black holes often form and remain in the center of galaxies.
22:05But this one got away.
22:08One theory claims that this black hole is different because the galaxy where it formed may have
22:13bumped into another galaxy at one point in the past.
22:17Sometimes, galaxies merge into a new one if this happens.
22:20But not this time.
22:22Instead of merging, the black hole's galaxy passed through a way bigger one millions of
22:27years ago.
22:28That giant galaxy already swallowed up some other galaxies along the way.
22:32And since it was so large, the galaxy surrounding our supermassive black hole ended up ripped
22:38apart.
22:39The black hole at its center managed to run away with some of the nearby stars.
22:44That's what left a burning trail stretching across the surrounding space.
22:48Solar superstorms are so powerful that they can cause blackouts all over the world.
22:54Random flares coming from the sun cause solar storms.
22:57And they can really happen at any time.
23:00Back in 2012, we were lucky because the strongest solar storm in over 150 years passed very close
23:07to us.
23:08It just tore through Earth's orbit.
23:10If it had happened only a week earlier, our planet would have had to deal with tons of
23:15terrible consequences, including power outages all over the globe.
23:19Gamma ray bursts are strong enough to destroy planets.
23:22We're talking about extremely strong bursts that mostly occur in galaxies very, very far away.
23:28If these rays are pointed directly at some space object, they can completely wreck it,
23:33even if we're talking about an entire planet.
23:36So, Earth is safe for now, and we have nothing to be afraid of.
23:40A gamma ray burst happens in our galaxy approximately once every 5 million years.
23:46Luckily, it occurs too far away and doesn't affect life on Earth.
23:50That's what I call irrelevant, but still scary.
23:53A burning ice is a thing.
23:55It may be hard to picture it here on Earth, but one strange planet called Gliese 436b is
24:01literally a burning ball of ice.
24:04It's covered with ice, but at the same time, it has temperatures of 822 degrees Fahrenheit.
24:10You can't actually see the planet burn, since there's too much water on the planet.
24:14It's because of the strong gravitational force that pulls the water molecules to the core
24:19of the planet and packs them together incredibly densely.
24:22That way, water molecules can't evaporate, which is why the ice on the planet's surface doesn't melt.
24:29There are stars that can munch on other stars.
24:32These space objects are mostly smaller stars with a lower mass.
24:36They target the closest stars and begin to absorb their hydrogen fuel to boost their own mass
24:41and generally live longer.
24:43A vampire star becomes strikingly blue.
24:46It also gets hotter.
24:48This way, it seems that it's way younger than it actually is.
24:52If a star, or basically any other object, falls into a black hole, it gets stretched like spaghetti.
24:59This process is even called spaghettification.
25:02The gravitational force of a black hole stretches an object in one direction,
25:06but at the same time, squeezes it in another.
25:10And telescopes have captured such a process a mere 215 million light-years away from us.
25:15An unlucky star was wandering too close to a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy.
25:22The star, which was approximately the same mass as our Sun,
25:26didn't stand a chance against the extremely strong gravitational pull of the black hole.
25:31After all, the black hole we're talking about was over a million times as massive as our star.
25:37Astronomers were lucky to record this event,
25:39because after a black hole eats a star,
25:42it often spits out its material in the form of dust,
25:45so it's hard to see what's going on there.
25:48Anyways, this picture of the black hole,
25:50was it a spitting image?
25:52Hey, what did you expectorate?
25:54Okay, I'll stop now.
25:55Until then, let's go.
25:56Let's see.
25:56You