How many times on a warm summer evening have we raised our heads up and admired the flickering dots in the sky. How many times have you dreamed of being outside the Earth and seeing with your own eyes the frozen and beautiful Universe. It has been attracting people for thousands of years, forcing them to overcome gravity and make a breakthrough in scientific thinking.
The universe is beautiful. But she is not as sweet and safe as she seems at first glance.
The sun is our life and our death
The sun is the heart of our system. This is a huge nuclear reactor, the energy of which is enough for life to flourish on an entire planet. The boiling sea of gas is mesmerizingly beautiful, but it is a deadly beauty.The surface temperature of the Sun reaches five thousand degrees Celsius, and the temperature at its center can be more than tens of millions of degrees.
Loops of burning gas - a consequence of the planet's electrical activity - extend thousands of kilometers beyond the Sun. These prominences are not just a beautiful sight. They carry a huge amount of radiation into space, from which the Earth's magnetic field protects us.
The energy generated by one prominence is more than the energy of 10 million earthly volcanoes. And the planet Earth will easily pass through such a loop, leaving some free space.
If airlines ever agree to make interplanetary flights, those who wish to do so will have to fly to the Sun for 20 years.
The sun is our life and our death. Today, thanks to its energy, thousands of life forms thrive on our planet. But everything comes to an end someday. The sun will die, most likely becoming a white dwarf. Even if it does not consume our planet, then its light and heat will not be enough to support life on Earth.
Comets - deadly messengers of life
Comets are free roamers of our Universe. These are small cosmic bodies that revolve around stars. The comet is a beautiful sight. The gaze is drawn to her “tail”. But this is just dust and evaporating ice, which is heated by the rays of the Sun.Scientists substantiate the theory according to which life on our planet originated thanks to comets. After all, where there is water, there is life. It is believed that the comets that crashed into the Earth during its formation brought with them water and biological material, which became the building base for all life on Earth.
But today comets are a threat to our existence. If one of them crashes into the Earth, life in all its forms could end forever.
Asteroids are insidious killers
Asteroids are the nomads of our solar system. These are fragments of dead planets. These are bodies whose mass is less than that of planets, they have an irregular shape, no atmosphere, but may have satellites.An encounter with an asteroid can be fatal for the planet. Both small and large, they pose a threat to humanity. Large asteroids are easier to detect, but even if a cosmic body with a diameter of more than three kilometers crashes into the Earth, an entire civilization may perish.
Scientists suggest that this is how dinosaurs became extinct on Earth.
Supernova - death and rebirth
Stars are like people, they live and die. When there is not enough fuel for a nuclear reaction, the star becomes unstable. Its core splits and deadly energy bursts out.The death of a star is an extraordinary and very dangerous spectacle. The upper layers of the star and radiation are ejected into space for many millions of kilometers. Emissions of deadly particles would destroy all life in its path.
If the star explosion had been relatively close to the Earth, we would not have been able to survive the catastrophic consequences of radiation on living beings.
But in the Universe nothing is wasted. There is order in this chaos. During a supernova explosion, new chemical elements are formed. These particles are building material for new forms of life. Calcium in our bones, iron in our blood, air in our lungs - these are the elements of a once dead star, the death of which gave life to new forms of habitation.
Black hole - incredible gravitational force
A black hole is a consequence of a deceased star with a huge mass. Black holes are the most mysterious inhabitants of space. The attraction of this object is so strong that nothing can escape from its embrace, not even light. Scientists can only guess what is inside the black hole.According to many theories, there is no time, space or matter inside, and all the laws of physics cease to exist. Many people think that a black hole pulls in everything that comes in its way. But this is not entirely true. There is a certain distance - the event horizon. If you get further beyond its boundaries, nothing will be able to escape from the deadly embrace of the black hole.
There is an assumption that our entire Galaxy may be inside a huge black hole. But to imagine this, imagination alone is not enough, and the mind may be shaken.
Pulsar - a cosmic mystery
Pulsars can be called distant relatives of black holes, because they were also formed after the death of a star. The star's core shrank so much that it became a small, bright star.Despite their size, pulsars have powerful energy. The radiation on the pulsar is greater than on the Sun.
The pulsar rotates incredibly fast - approximately 30 revolutions per second. It is incredibly dense. Just a teaspoon of the substance can weigh hundreds of millions of tons. The pulsar's magnetic field is several trillion times greater than that of Earth.
Nebulae - frozen music of the Universe
Nebulae are frozen clouds of cosmic gas and dust. This is an incredibly beautiful sight. Nebulae can rightfully be considered a star production factory, since they contain all the necessary elements for the construction of new stars. They are just waiting for the wave from the explosion of the star to push them into motion.Nebulae are located at incredible distances from Earth - thousands of light years. This is so far away that it is difficult for our minds to imagine these numbers.
Quasars - chronicles of light years gone by
A quasar is the most distant and deadliest object in the Universe. It is brighter than hundreds of galaxies. At its center is a huge black hole that is larger than billions of suns. Quasars release incredible amounts of energy. There are suggestions that quasars can emit up to a hundred times more energy than all the stars in our galaxy, and this is in a relatively small area of space.A quasar moves through space at incredible speeds - about 80% of the speed of light.
Quasars are a window into the past. After all, their light took millions of years to reach us. Some of them may no longer exist.
The universe is beautiful. It fascinates with its secrets, power and scale. Who are we by cosmic standards? Not even ants or grains of sand.
Our solar system is located on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, far from important events and breaking news. Even if she disappears in an instant, no one will notice.
But I really want to believe that humanity will be able to discover the secrets of space, find new worlds and remain in the history of our Universe.
Man has always sought to find materials that leave no chance for his competitors. Since ancient times, scientists have been looking for the hardest materials in the world, the lightest and the heaviest. The thirst for discovery led to the discovery of an ideal gas and an ideal black body. We present to you the most amazing substances in the world.
1. The blackest substance
The blackest substance in the world is called Vantablack and consists of a collection of carbon nanotubes (see carbon and its allotropes). Simply put, the material consists of countless “hairs”, once caught in them, the light bounces from one tube to another. In this way, about 99.965% of the light flux is absorbed and only a tiny fraction is reflected back out.
The discovery of Vantablack opens up broad prospects for the use of this material in astronomy, electronics and optics.
2. The most flammable substance
Chlorine trifluoride is the most flammable substance ever known to mankind. It is a strong oxidizing agent and reacts with almost all chemical elements. Chlorine trifluoride can burn concrete and easily ignite glass! The use of chlorine trifluoride is practically impossible due to its phenomenal flammability and the impossibility of ensuring safe use.
3. The most poisonous substance
The most powerful poison is botulinum toxin. We know it under the name Botox, which is what it is called in cosmetology, where it has found its main application. Botulinum toxin is a chemical produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum. In addition to the fact that botulinum toxin is the most toxic substance, it also has the greatest molecular weight among proteins. The phenomenal toxicity of the substance is evidenced by the fact that only 0.00002 mg min/l of botulinum toxin is enough to make the affected area deadly to humans for half a day.
4. The hottest substance
This is the so-called quark-gluon plasma. The substance was created by colliding gold atoms at near light speed. Quark-gluon plasma has a temperature of 4 trillion degrees Celsius. For comparison, this figure is 250,000 times higher than the temperature of the Sun! Unfortunately, the lifetime of matter is limited to a trillionth of one trillionth of a second.
5. The most caustic acid
In this nomination, the champion is fluoride-antimony acid H. Fluoride-antimony acid is 2×10 16 (two hundred quintillion) times more caustic than sulfuric acid. It is a very active substance and can explode if a small amount of water is added. The fumes of this acid are deadly poisonous.
6. The most explosive substance
The most explosive substance is heptanitrocubane. It is very expensive and is used only for scientific research. But the slightly less explosive octogen is successfully used in military affairs and in geology when drilling wells.
7. The most radioactive substance
Polonium-210 is an isotope of polonium that does not exist in nature, but is manufactured by humans. Used to create miniature, but at the same time, very powerful energy sources. It has a very short half-life and is therefore capable of causing severe radiation sickness.
8. The heaviest substance
This is, of course, fullerite. Its hardness is almost 2 times higher than that of natural diamonds. You can read more about fullerite in our article The Hardest Materials in the World.
9. The strongest magnet
The strongest magnet in the world is made of iron and nitrogen. At present, details about this substance are not available to the general public, but it is already known that the new super-magnet is 18% more powerful than the strongest magnets currently in use - neodymium. Neodymium magnets are made from neodymium, iron and boron.
10. The most fluid substance
Superfluid Helium II has almost no viscosity at temperatures close to absolute zero. This property is due to its unique property leak and pour out of a container made of any solid material. Helium II has prospects for use as an ideal thermal conductor in which heat does not dissipate.
A quasar is a galaxy at the initial stage of its development, in the center of which there is a huge supermassive black hole, whose mass is billions of times greater than the mass of our sun. Quasars emit so much radiation that they outshine all other objects in the Universe. For this reason, quasars are very difficult to study - the emitted radiation does not allow these objects to be seen in detail.
On average, a quasar produces about 10 trillion times more energy per second than our Sun. The black hole inside the quasar sucks in absolutely everything that is within its reach. Cosmic dust, asteroids, comets, planets and even huge stars - all this becomes fuel for this giant.
Today it is very difficult to determine the exact number of discovered quasars, which is explained, on the one hand, by the constant discovery of new quasars, and on the other hand, by the lack of a clear boundary between quasars and other types of active galaxies. In 1987, 3,594 quasars were known. By 2005, this figure had increased to 195,000. The most distant quasars, due to their incredible luminosity, hundreds of times greater than the luminosity of ordinary galaxies, are recorded using radio telescopes at a distance of more than 12 billion light years. Recent observations have shown that most quasars are located near the centers of huge elliptical galaxies.
Quasars are compared to the lighthouses of the Universe. They are visible from vast distances and explore the structure and evolution of the Universe. The quasar's radiation spectrum represents all wavelengths measured by modern detectors, from radio waves to hard gamma radiation with a quantum energy of several teraelectronvolts. Quasars are usually surrounded by a ring of cosmic dust, and depending on its location, there are two types of quasars. The first type is when the ring is located so that it does not block the quasar from the observer. Quasars of the second type are protected from telescope lenses by the “wall” of the ring.
Not long ago, using a huge telescope in Chile, scientists were able to study one of the quasars, which belongs to the second type. They discovered that this quasar is surrounded by a nebula of ionized gas that extends over 590,000 light-years, about six times the diameter of the Milky Way. The nebula serves as a bridge connecting the quasar to a neighboring galaxy, and this fact can be considered as support for the hypothesis that quasars use nearby star clusters as “fuel”.
Scientists have suggested that quasar activity is caused by galaxy collisions. First, galaxies collide and their black holes merge into the universe. In this case, the black hole finds itself in the center of the dust cocoon formed as a result of the collision, and begins to intensively absorb matter. After about 100 million years, the glow from the hole's surroundings becomes so strong that emissions of radiation begin to break through the cocoon. As a result, a quasar appears. After another 100 million years, the process stops, and the central black hole begins to behave calmly again.
Just recently, scientists were able to photograph colliding quasars for the first time. As part of the work, scientists were interested in a double quasar, which is located at a distance of 4.6 billion light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
In fact, there are things that are truly worth fearing, and they are everywhere, virtually hidden from our sight. The truth will not leave anyone indifferent, and perhaps it will strike someone to the core and make them think seriously.
Fast moving black holes
Black holes are invisible cosmic killers. Ask anyone what people consider the most frightening cosmic phenomenon. Many, if not most, will call black holes, because this expression is so widely circulated in the media that we have absolutely no doubt about their existence, while having a very vague idea of what these black holes actually are. For many, black holes are something like cosmic Koloboks, no matter how comical and primitive it may sound.
First of all, black holes are classified by size. The smallest and largest, huge and insignificantly small, phenomena of unknown origin. Micro black holes exist only in theoretical calculations, medium-sized holes owe their appearance to the destruction or merger of star clusters, this is precisely the scenario for the formation of black holes 
looks the most traditional to most people. A black hole cannot absorb everything that surrounds it, since its gravitational field is quite limited.
Traditionally, it was believed that only supermassive black holes could roam through space, rushing at incredible speeds of nine million miles per hour. It’s just an unrealistic number; in life, most often small children operate with such numbers, proving to their friends who and how many times is cooler.
However, this phenomenon does not pose a real threat to us. Objects rushing at great speed are not particularly dangerous; their collision with other celestial bodies is dangerous, while the direction of movement changes, and we have hundreds of invisible cosmic bodies circling in outer space. The real threat is the possibility of the hole colliding with something in its path, causing that “something” to rush towards our planet at a speed of nine hundred million miles per hour.
Supermassive black holes
Supermassive black holes do exist and are potentially the most dangerous phenomena in the Universe. By definition, the density of black holes is so high that everything within the hole itself inevitably falls into its gravitational field. Based on the name of these black holes, it is easy to assume that the mass of these celestial giants is enormous, no less than the mass of four million Suns. Today we are only able to determine the presence of black holes by observing the movements of celestial bodies in a certain place. Depending on the speed and direction of travel, we can quite confidently assume that at some point the black hole will overtake them and sweep them away like a hurricane.
At the center of any galaxy are stars and gas clusters rotating at high speed. According to scientists, this position of celestial objects implies the presence in the center of any galaxy, including ours, of a supermassive black hole. In principle, we have nothing special to fear, because our planet is located at quite long distance from the "danger zone". However, the danger lies elsewhere: the problem is that black holes are fueled by gas and eventually stop moving. Entering the gas zone creates an increase in the volume of the hole itself, then scientists say that the hole becomes more active and turns into an “active galactic nucleus.” During this period, these “galactic nuclei” turn into powerful sources of radioactive radiation, devouring all the gas in their galaxy that forms stars. As a rule, this process stops when the hole no longer has anything to “feed” and, in the end, it closes. However, during the active galactic nucleus phase, the process of star formation sharply intensifies, this is what is called a starburst. Such stars are quite large and massive, many of them turn into supernovae 
, destroying everything that might get in their way. In essence, it turns out that supermassive black holes litter their own galaxy with tons of explosives.
Red planets
Depending on the scientific theory prevalent in your school days, our solar system consisted of eight or nine planets. However, it is noteworthy that this number only includes planets whose behavior can be brought to some standard. Red planets are rebels and bad guys outer space, for whom the concept of “orbit” is not a law and they simply don’t care about the rules of behavior of the other planets. The red planets do not rotate around their axis, they wander around the galaxy until they encounter some other cosmic body on their way, which either stops the movement of the Red planet or stops itself under its influence. According to the most common theory of the origin of the red planets, they were displaced from their orbits due to their uncontrollable behavior.
The red planets are quite a frightening phenomenon, but something about them is simply terrifying. For example, their number. There are twice as many of these planets in our galaxy as there are stars. Impressive, isn't it? The second is their size, which is not inferior to the size of Jupiter. Now imagine two hundred billion Jupiters, not tied to a strict orbit, moving chaotically throughout our Universe. God either has a very strange sense of humor or is a big fan of pinball. A collision of the red planet with a foreign object does not always have dire consequences, but sometimes it can cause a real disaster. It is believed that the red planet is capable of displacing another celestial body from its orbit, sending it wandering erratically in outer space.
Hypernova star
As the name suggests, a hypernova is something like a supernova, but with a much larger diameter. Hypernovae occur when the core of a supermassive star collapses directly into a black hole. The released energy reaches simply incredible speed, creating with its movement two jet streams of plasma moving at the speed of light, while releasing powerful gamma radiation. This can only be compared to a shot from a cannon, but on a completely different scale.
However, there is also good news: this can only happen in the most big stars galaxies, into giants hundreds of times the mass of the Sun. Such huge celestial bodies are extremely rare and the formation of a hypernova is possible once every two hundred million years. The bad news is that for Earth, the date of the fatal collision is inexorably approaching.
It is quite possible that Eta Carinae, the closest object capable of colliding with a hypernova, will simply explode and collapse. However, for us these events are unlikely to have serious consequences due to the enormous distance of seventy-five hundred light years. If this happened in the neighborhood of our planet, all living things would be wiped out from the face of the Earth by a plasma explosion. Fortunately, our solar system is somewhat like a guarded residence, and the terrible giants keep a fairly safe distance from our planet. Perhaps it was the hypernova that at a certain moment caused the destruction of all life on earth, which was later called the Ordovician-Silurian extinction.
10 Strangest Objects in the Universe
I think we can all agree that space is a completely crazy place. And exactly as close and understandable to us as it is distant and unimaginable. It may seem to you that the landscape on a planet with two Suns is the same as somewhere beyond the Moscow Ring Road, but this is the merit of science fiction writers. In fact, there are stranger things in space. Let's look at them.
Shooting stars
I think everyone knows that stars don't fall - they're just meteors that burn up as they enter the atmosphere. But what many people don’t know is that really falling stars also exist, and they are called moving stars. These are large balls of hot gas rushing through space at speeds of millions of kilometers per hour.
When a binary star system is consumed by the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, one of the two partners is swallowed and the other is thrown away at high speed. Imagine how a huge ball of gas, four times the size of our Sun, rushes at tremendous speed.
Hell planet
Gliese 581 - just "hell's hell." Seriously. The planet with all its nature strives to kill you. But despite this, scientists have determined that this hell may be the most likely candidate for future colonization. The planet orbits a red dwarf, many times smaller than our Sun, whose luminosity is only 1.3% of our star. The planet is much closer to its star than we are to ours. Because of this, it is in a tidally locked state, with one side of the planet always facing the star and the other facing out into space. Like our Moon.
Tidal locking has led to interesting features. If you come out on the side of the planet facing the sun, you will probably melt like a snowman. On the other side of the planet, you will definitely freeze instantly. However, it is theoretically possible to live in the “twilight zone” between the two extremes.
Life on Gliese 581, if there is one there, has its challenges. The star orbits a red dwarf, which means the planet has a red sky due to the lower frequencies of the visible spectrum. Pure hell. Photosynthetic elements will have to get used to the constant bombardment of infrared radiation, which will turn them deep black. No salad would look appetizing on such a planet.
Castor system
If one or even two suns is not enough for you, look at the Castor system. As one of the two brightest points in the constellation Gemini in our night sky, this system is still brighter than its companion. The fact is that the Castor system is not one, not two, but all six stars revolving around a common center of mass. Three binary star systems orbit each other - two hot and bright A-type stars and four M-type red dwarfs. Together, these six stars produce 52.4 times more luminosity than our Sun.
Space raspberry and space rum
For the past few years, scientists have been studying the dust cloud at the center of our Milky Way. If there is a God somewhere, he has a good imagination: this dust cloud called Sagittarius B2 smells like rum and tastes like raspberries.
This cloud of gas consists largely of ethyl formate, which gives raspberries its flavor and rum its distinctive smell. The giant cloud contains billions, billions, and billions more of this substance - and it would be wonderful if it were not saturated with particles of propyl cyanide. The creation and distribution of these complex molecules remains a mystery to scientists, so the intergalactic restaurant will remain closed for now.
Planet of Scorching Ice
Remember Gliese? This hellish place we visited earlier? Let's go back to the same solar system. As if one killer planet wasn't enough. Gliese supports a planet made almost entirely of ice - with a temperature of 439 degrees Celsius. Gliese 436 b is a scorching cube of ice. The only reason this ice remains solid is the gigantic amount of water present on the planet. pulls it all towards the core, compressing the water molecules so tightly that they cannot evaporate.
This planet will decorate the neck of any girl, and maybe even some Bill Gates. 55 Cancri e — made entirely of crystalline diamond — would cost $26.9 nonillion dollars. Probably even the Sultan of Brunei dreams of one like this at night.
The giant diamond planet was once part of a binary star system until its partner began devouring it. However, the star was unable to carry its carbon core with it, and the carbon simply turned into diamond under the influence of high temperature and enormous pressure - with a surface temperature of 1648 degrees Celsius, conditions were almost ideal.
A third of the planet's mass is pure diamond. While Earth is covered in water and abundant in oxygen, this planet is made up of graphite, diamond and several silicates. The enormous gem is twice the size of Earth and eight times heavier, classifying it as a “super-Earth.”
If there is an object somewhere that can show us the origins of a primordial galaxy, this is it. The Himiko Cloud is the most massive object yet discovered in the early Universe, and dates back to just 800 million years after the Big Bang. The Himiko Cloud amazes scientists with its gigantic size, about half the size of the Milky Way.
Himiko belongs to the so-called reionization era, or the period from 200 million to one billion years after the Big Bang - and is the first glimpse of early galaxy formation that scientists have been able to observe. Previously it was assumed that the Himiko cloud could be one large galaxy with a mass of about 40 billion solar, however, according to the latest data, the Himiko cloud may contain three galaxies at once, and relatively young ones.
Largest water reservoir in the Universe
Twelve billion light years away, at the heart of a quasar, lies the largest reservoir of water in the Universe. It contains approximately 140 trillion times more water than Earth's oceans. The water, unfortunately, takes the form of a massive cloud of gas several hundred light years in diameter. It is located next to the colossal black hole at the heart of the quasar, and the hole, in turn, is two hundred billion times larger than our Sun and at the same time constantly spewing energy equivalent to that of 1000 trillion suns. Well, just so you can roughly imagine the scale of the local brew.
The strongest electric current in the Universe
Just a couple of years ago, scientists stumbled upon electric current cosmic scale: 10^18 amperes, or approximately one trillion lightning strikes. Lightning is believed to originate from a huge black hole at the center of the galaxy, which is believed to contain a "powerful cosmic jet" at its core. Apparently, the black hole's powerful magnetic field allows it to launch these lightning bolts through dust and gas over 150,000 light-years away. And if you think that our galaxy is large, one such lightning bolt is one and a half times its size.
A huge group of quasars
Perhaps the Himiko cloud is quite large - half the size of our galaxy. What about a structure that is so huge that it breaks the traditional principles and laws of modern astronomy? This structure is the Large Quasar Group (LQG).
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is only one hundred thousand light years across. Think about it: if something happens at one end of the galaxy, it will take a hundred thousand years for light to reach the opposite end. When we observe an event on the other side of the galaxy, this means that the event took place when the human race was just beginning to form. Well, now take that distance and multiply it by forty thousand.
The huge group of quasars is 4 billion light years across. The cluster of seventy-four quasars violates the rules of standard astrophysics, since the maximum size of any cosmic structure can only be 1.2 billion light years across.
Scientists have absolutely no idea how this giant structure formed, since they previously only knew of clusters a hundred million light years across. The giant structure does not care at all about the laws of physics, which say that when viewed from afar, the Universe appears relatively homogeneous.
And in November 2013, an even more severe structure of the Universe was discovered - the Great Wall of Hercules - the Northern Crown. Its size is more than 10 billion light years.
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