Top 10: Weirdest Things In The Universe
To most city dwellers, the universe seems to be comprised of dull, white dots sprinkled across the night sk. However, out there, beyond our hazy atmosphere, lies a universe filled with strange, wonderful phenomena.
Some are big, some are beautiful, but all are weird.
So, here are 10 of the weirdest things in the universe today.
\
10
Nebula
Big, dirty clumps of dust, gas and plasma; that might sound like something you’d find under your bed, but in fact it’s what makes up nebulae. These light-years-wide clouds are galactic factories drifting across space while baby planets and infant stars spin out of them in their cooling edges.
Smart dudes with really big telescopes have found all sorts of beautiful nebulae scattered across the cosmos. They come in fun shapes like horse heads, crabs or pillars, unlike the things under your bed that come in shapes like dirty socks or crusty tissues.
9
Supernova
When stars run out of fuel, they don’t just flicker off and die -- they detonate into gargantuan explosions that shed layers of gas far off into space. That material eventually coalesces to form new stars in a billion-year, galactic-level cycle of birth and death. Luckily, we’re left to admire their stunning beauty from a nice, safe distance.
But not for long! Our sun is a ticking time bomb biding its time until it blows and ends life as we know it in a cataclysm of molten plasma and gas. And billions of miles away, alien astronomers will simply check it off as another supernova in a backwater little solar system in the Milky Way.
8
Cosmic microwave background
The universe is huge (newsflash), and all across it scientists were finding “radio noise” that they couldn’t explain. Then, one think-outside-the-box man figured out it was radiation left over from a very big, very old explosion -- namely, the Big Bang.
It’s out there, everywhere, the clearest evidence supporting a theory that lies at the very heart of our most fundamental questions on existence. Heavy stuff.
7
Dark energy
It was only a few years ago that scientists discovered the universe was expanding at an accelerating pace -- a fact that caught them completely off guard. Further research showed the rate of expansion has been slowing down and speeding up throughout time. The only possible explanation was a mysterious, invisible form of energy they dubbed "dark energy."
Experts in the field try to explain it to laypeople like us as a patchy magnetic field that stretches across the universe and slows its expansion more in some places than others. We’re just supposed to nod knowingly and hope it won’t kill us.
6
Dark matter
Scientists with a lot of time on their hands decided to take an inventory of the universe and figure out how much it weighed.. When they tallied everything up -- all the stars, the comets, our Uncle Vern -- the numbers just didn’t add up. Then stereotypically named Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky hypothesized that a bulk of space is made up of a mysterious substance that can’t be seen or measured by our current technology.
He stood, presumably looming over a lectern in front of a crowded astronomy convention, paused dramatically and deemed this invisible stuff "dark matter."
In the years since, we’ve figured out ways to actually measure the stuff and prove that old Fritzy wasn’t talking out of his black hole
5
Neutrinos
There are some pretty weird things going on deep within the fiery bellies of
burning stars. The heat and pressure cause all sorts of particles to fly around
and smash into each other. Out of that stellar soup leak some of the smallest
things known to man: neutrinos. They radiate out from the sun and spread across
the universe.
So, with billions of suns out there, there’s a lot of neutrinos flying around.
In fact, right now countless neutrinos are passing through your body. Don’t fret
-- they’re so small they can pass through miles of lead unhindered, so your
spleen isn’t in any danger.
4
Quasars
Not just a great Scrabble word, quasars are among the most powerful things in the
universe. They are a form of massive black holes found at the center of some of
the oldest galaxies that fringe our universe.
A lot of stuff gets ****ed in and squished infinitesimally small (we’re talking
meteors, planets, the occasional star), and an insane amount of energy is
released. It slowly radiates out into space and, billions of years later, it gets
picked up on Earth as radio waves.
Tsk, tsk, quasars. That amount of heat loss is unconscionable in today’s reality
of environmentalism.
3
Neutron stars
When a star dies, it collapses inward, literally squishing its electrons and
protons so tightly they fuse together to form neutrons. Imagine something as huge
as our sun being compressed down to an object just 10 miles in diameter.
The resulting neutron star is the densest known thing in the universe. How dense?
One sugar cube of neutron star material would weigh 100 million tons, and likely
make your Starbucks very, very hot.
2
Pulsars
If you thought neutron stars were cool, you’ll also love their close cousin: the
pulsar. These dead stars spin around unimaginably fast and emit massive doses of
radiation in short bursts so consistent they can be used to set clocks here on Earth.
They have a magnetic field one trillion times stronger than Earth’s. That kind of
strength, coupled with the speed at which the little guy is spinning, mean that
the radiation pouring off it is systematically tugged away from us at amazingly
precise intervals. Warning: Trying to think about this too hard may cause your
head to explode.
1
Black holes
Have you ever really stopped to consider what black holes actually are? These
aren’t imaginary things made up by science fiction writers; they’re old stars that
have cooled so much and grown so incredibly small and dense that their gravity
attracts everything around it -- including light. Where does all that stuff go?
To Heaven? Maybe Pittsburgh?
"Black" hole is a bit of a misnomer, since any light that comes near them is
****ed away. Technically, they should be called "invisible" holes (which is a
cooler name, anyway).
Mail By:
Samina Khan
0 comments:
Post a Comment