Category: Mysteries of Space

Example: a neutron star whose diameter does not exceed ten kilometers can weigh as much as our sun.
If a person is (hypothetically) moved to the surface of this object, the astronaut’s weight will increase by one million tons at once.
Here are the things…

The distance to the Earth is 90 million sv. years. They are located in the constellation Virgo.

On the far side, two stars are visible, surrounded by diffraction rays, belonging to our Milky Way, their colors echo the shades of extragalactic objects, reminding that the stars of our Galaxy are no different from the stars in distant island universes.

The huge galaxy NGC 5566 – the dominant member of the trio – shows swirling spiral arms and bands of light-absorbing dust. A small bluish galaxy NGC 5569 is visible directly above it.

Near the center there is a third galaxy – NGC 5560, it is elongated and distorted by interaction with the massive NGC 5566.
The trio is included in the Atlas of Pecular Galaxies compiled in 1966 by Hulton Arp as Arp 286.

Comet Bernstein was discovered not so long ago in 2014

Unfortunately, it will not be possible to see the passage of this celestial body without the “armed eye”, since the minimum distance at which the comet will fly from the earth will be one billion km. However, by the standards of space, this is “scanty”, so astrophysicists and many space lovers will closely monitor this space object.

According to scientists, comet Bernardinelli — Bernstein was discovered quite recently in 2014 and now it is located at a distance of about three billion km from our planet. While it is not in the Solar System, it will arrive there only by 2031.

The celestial body will follow, among other things, not far from the orbit of Saturn, after which it will follow the Oort cloud for more than two million years. Experts note that comet C/2014 UN271 has never been in the Solar System and does not pose any threat to the Earth.

A nova is a sudden explosion of the brightest light that occurs in two—star systems. Every new young star comes from a white dwarf. A white dwarf is a very dense remnant of a star’s core—and from a nearby companion star.

Over time, the white dwarf pulls matter out of its victim, heats it up. Then there is a powerful flash, an outburst of energy, which throws out matter at the highest speed.

Usually a bright new star disappears in two weeks, rarely the time can be longer. But on June 12, 2021, astronomers recorded a new star V1674 Hercules, which flashed so brightly that it could be seen with the naked eye. A little more than a day later, she became weak again. It’s like someone turned a flashlight on and off. Previously, the fastest new star was recorded in 1991.

Every 501 seconds in V1674 Hercules, its oscillation occurs, which can be seen both in visible light waves and in X-rays.
A year has passed since its explosion and the brightness of this star continues to fluctuate.

If you understand the clouds are closer to the Sun. Here, the different ability of clouds and the Earth’s surface to reflect and absorb sunlight plays a role. The earth heats up and gives off heat, and clouds often do not have such an opportunity

If we compare the distance from the surface of the Earth to the surface of the Sun and the distance from the cloud level to the surface of the Sun, their ratio will be equal to one with an accuracy of “machine epsilon” — the distance from the Sun does not play any role here.

According to the scientific council, the results of the research allow us to explain the existence of systems with planets and brown dwarfs orbiting at short distances around the remnants of sun-like stars

Planets whose mass exceeds Jupiter by more than a dozen times, for example, can tear off the outer shell of the star absorbing it, which is in the final stages of its evolution, astronomers said at the 240th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

According to conservative estimates, “Approximately 5 billion years are left for our luminary, and when our Sun uses up the hydrogen fuel in the core, it will expand and become a red giant, absorbing the inner planets. The possible consequences and dynamics of such events are poorly understood, but it is believed that this is a relatively common fate for most planetary systems with a sun-like star. The work of scientists using hydrodynamic modeling shows that the interaction can lead to a number of results depending on the size of the absorbed object and the stage of evolution of the star,” the authors of the study, presented in the Astrophysical Journal, say.

Evolved stars can be hundreds or even thousands of times larger than their planets, and this size mismatch makes it difficult to perform simulations that accurately simulate physical processes at scale. To get around this problem, astronomers examined a small section of the star centered on the object being absorbed. This made it possible to evaluate the flow around it and measure the effective resistance forces.

“According to calculations, no bodies with a mass less than one hundred Jupiter masses can tear off the shell of a sun-like star before it expands to ten times the radius of the Sun. However, at later stages of evolution and expansion, the stellar envelope can be torn off by an object exceeding Jupiter in mass by only ten times,”

the authors of the study explained

The results of the research make it possible to understand and explain existing systems as they generate with planets and brown dwarfs that rotate at short distances around the remnants of sun-like stars. Previous studies have been based on assumptions that this may be the end result of the planetary absorption process, which included a reduction in the orbit of the absorbed body and the ejection of the outer layers of the star.

“The simulation also showed that planetary absorption can increase the luminosity of a sun–like star by several orders of magnitude for up to thousands of years, depending on the mass of the object and the stage of evolution of the star,”

the authors of the study concluded

In this photo of the ALMA radio telescope, it looks like a sleeping snake curled up in a ring… In reality, this object is from deep space — or, to be more precise, the spiral galaxy NGC 1087.

The Milky Way and NGC 1087 galaxy have jumpers — only NGC 1087 galaxy has a very small one when compared with other similar spiral galaxies. A distinctive feature of the galaxy NGC 1087 is its extremely small core. Astronomers and scientists are still unknown, they are puzzling over what this similar structural feature of the galaxy is connected with.

The ALMA image is a combination of photographs, they are taken at different wavelengths. The red color corresponds to clouds of cold molecular gas that forms stars. The bluish areas in the background are clusters of older, already formed luminaries. They were photographed by VLT.

According to conservative estimates, there are about 100 billion stars in the galaxy with the name “Milky Way”, scientists estimate (according to others – 400 billion). With the naked eye, a person can see no more than 10,000 stars, whether it is a lot or a little, you can judge. But the scale is still impressive.

Many people tried to count on a clear night, then it may seem to you that the sky is filled with tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of stars. However, from the first time you will be able to count, at best, no more than 3000 luminous objects.

It is equal to ~ 10 trillion kilometers – this distance is simply unthinkable, it cannot be superimposed on something earthly to at least project in your head how far it is.

You and I on Earth are used to correlating everything with the physical distances between two objects. Only in space, in its infinite space, the distances are so great that the units of measurement used on earth life there are no longer suitable and have to be shifted to taking into account time.

The most common unit is suitable for this — the light year. It is equal to the distance that light (the fastest known quantity in the universe) travels in one year. This is about 10 trillion km.

Here is an example – the second closest star to Earth, Alpha Centauri, is 4.4 light–years away from us. That is, ~44 trillion km away from us.

Scientists suggest that approximately four hostile civilizations may inhabit the Milky Way, which are capable of invading the Earth. But again, in order not to scare you, these are assumptions built on indirect signs.

Scientists still suggest that on some planets of the millions of planets in the Milky Way, on which extraterrestrial life may exist. A new study from scientists suggests that about four of them may be inhabited by hostile alien civilizations that are ready to invade the Earth if possible. One of the signs of the existence of Methane in the layers of the atmosphere – this indicates the existence of organic matter, which may exist or existed. The probability of an invasion of our planet is very vague and is estimated as very low, because if there is intelligent life somewhere in distant galaxies, and they are able to reach us, we are of no interest to them.
So far, science does not know for sure if there is anyone else besides us…