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Now in space, Inky darkness between blinding points of light does a great job.
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It hides black holes, gaping, hungry and scary.
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Their blackness makes it really difficult for astronomers to find detailed information
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about these space monsters.
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When a powerful and massive star reaches the end of its life, it can't just fade into
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When to the most likely scenarios, the star will run out of its nuclear fuel.
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When in a blazing flash of light, it'll collapse under its own gravity.
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If the star was large enough, it'll turn into a black hole.
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There's a hypothetical type of black hole called primordial.
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Scientists have never gotten any real proof of their existence.
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These holes are insanely old and quite tiny by black hole standards that is.
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Astronomers believe they could appear several milliseconds after the big bang.
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At that time, stars and galaxies weren't born yet.
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It means primordial black holes probably witness the entire history of the universe.
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By now, the smallest primordial black holes have most likely evaporated away.
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But the bigger ones can still be scattered out there in space.
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But how did primordial black holes appear in the first place?
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In the very beginning, space wasn't the same.
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In some regions, it was hotter, in others cooler, and some areas were extremely dense.
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Scientists believe these dense spots could collapse into primordial black holes.
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The most curious thing though?
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These holes might be so small exactly because they popped up right after the big bang.
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The longer it took a black hole to appear, the larger it was.
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The mass difference between older, smaller, and younger, bigger black holes was incredible.
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After the mass, thousand times greater than our sons, and that of a jelly bean.
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There was a theory that primordial black holes could actually be dark matter.
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This matter is believed to make up around 80% of the mass of the observable universe.
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Astronomers can't see this bizarre ingredient directly, since it doesn't emit light or
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The idea remained unpopular for decades.
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Recently, scientists have realized there are many more black holes in the universe than
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they used to think, and it means the theory might actually work.
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And the vast and still hidden from us population of big bang black holes could not only make
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up but be dark matter.
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After all, astronomers haven't discovered a single dark matter particle yet, even after
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decades of searching.
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Science is argued that dark matter can't be tons of multi-sized primordial black holes.
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They would collide far too often for this to work out.
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Others object that black holes might exist in twos, and then a third one can always approach
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the pair and replace one of the initial holes.
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After all, our universe is swarming with black holes, and there's no lack of them.
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This process would repeat again and again, meaning there would be almost no merges or
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Primordial black holes might stay in clusters the size of the distance between our sun and
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Each of these clusters can be home to thousands of black holes, all crammed together.
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A 30 solar mass monster of a black hole might sit at the center with more common stellar
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ones occupying the rest of the space.
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Such clusters can be everywhere astronomers think dark matter is.
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But, so far, this is still only an exciting theory, and some scientists don't support
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More data is needed.
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Now, black holes sometimes behave like massive galactic volcanoes.
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From time to time, they flare up, but instead of spewing lava, they produce enormous amounts
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of energy, and it makes gaping holes in the surrounding material and gas.
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A short while ago, scientists discovered one of the largest craters in the universe.
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Radio and X-ray telescopes detected a supermassive black hole that threw a temper tantrum many, many,
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It happened in a galaxy cluster about 390 million light years away from Earth.
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The crater left behind, which was actually a hole punched in the cluster's hot gas, could
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fit 15 Milky Way galaxies.
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Recently, astronomers have found out that one of the most massive stars in the neighborhood
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might just have vanished.
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The star used to hover in space 75 million light years away from Earth.
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It's usually too far away for scientists to clearly see individual stars, unless they're
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really massive, like the one we're talking about.
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It was gigantic and shining 2.5 million times brighter than our sign.
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For the last time, astronomers saw the star's light in 2011.
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And when they decided to examine it more closely, several years later, they couldn't find
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Such huge stars usually go out in an extremely bright supernova.
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But nothing here, which puzzled the scientists to no end.
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There's a theory it collapsed into a black hole, and it happened without triggering a supernova
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It does occur among stars nearing the end of their lives, but very, very rarely.
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Maybe 141B is a planet outside of our solar system.
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At first glance, it's not that different from Earth.
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It has liquid oceans that evaporate into clouds, condensed, and get back to the surface
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But instead of water, this all happens with rock.
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The surface of the exoplanet is covered with lava seas tens of miles deep.
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The temperature on K2141B reaches 5,000 degrees during the day, as hot enough for the magma
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in the oceans to vaporize into the atmosphere.
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Then, supersonic winds, which can move at the speed of one mile per second, carry this
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rock vapor to the planet's night side.
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The vaporized magma cools down, becomes liquid again, and falls as a rocky rain.
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Looks like we're going to need a bigger bumbershoot.
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A star in the galaxy GSN-069 might turn into a planet the size of Jupiter in the next
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trillion years or so.
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All thanks to the star's regular encounters with a black hole.
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First at astronomers noticed bizarre x-ray bursts.
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Those were super bright and went off every nine hours.
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After examining this phenomenon, the researchers realized it was a star getting flung in a unique
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orbit around a black hole.
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And the flashes they saw were the material being slurped off the star's surface.
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It happened every time the star darted past its greedy host.
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Over millions of years, the black hole is already transformed the red giant into a white
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dwarf, and the process isn't going to stop anytime soon.
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Astronomers have recently discovered some traces of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere.
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On Earth, this colorless and flammable gas is often found near microbes.
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That's why a new theory claims there might be life on Venus.
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If there is, it could only appear high in the clouds, because no living organism would
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be able to survive the planet's extreme environment.
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Its surface is incredibly dry with no liquid water, and the pressure 90 times greater than
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that on Earth's surface.
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The temperatures there reach almost 900 degrees, hot enough to melt certain metals.
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Methane, a gas that's usually produced by living things, was found on Mars
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European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft detected it in Gale Crater near the Martian
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This discovery might one day answer the question if there's life on Mars.
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Asteroid 2019-OK, scared scientists by sneaking up on our planet in July of 2019.
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This rather large rock, up to 400 feet across, appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
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It traveled uncomfortably close to the Earth, a mere 45,000 miles away.
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That's less than one-fifth of the distance to the Moon.
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The Sun's outer layer is way hotter than its surface.
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The temperatures vary from 10,000 degrees close to the surface and a mind-boggling 1 million
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degrees in the corona.
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That's the Sun's outermost layer.
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The reason for this phenomenon might be nanoflares.
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Those are regular, powerful bursts of heat from the star.
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Another theory blames the layer that lies just beneath the Sun's surface.
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It seems to generate a weak magnetic field.
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That's why, when the energy from this layer leaves the Sun, it heats the corona through
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a mesh of magnetic branches and roots.
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The Moon might still be shrinking.
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Our planet's natural satellite has become 150 feet skinnier than it used to be several
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hundred million years ago.
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If it's inside, keep cooling.
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It might explain the quakes shaking the Moon's surface.
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In 2019, NASA's Insight Lander, whose goal was to study the interior of Mars, registered
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the first Mars quake ever.
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These quakes were coming fast about two per day.
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Most of them were tiny.
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You wouldn't even feel them if they happened on our planet.
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So far, more than 300 Mars quakes have been detected.
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Those are the first quakes on any space body other than the Earth and the Moon.
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Another mysterious phenomenon, discovered by the mission, was bizarre magnetic pulses.
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They occurred every midnight around the lander.
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It's still unclear what those pulses are.
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Maybe, after midnight, they're going to let it all hang out, or something.
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Pluto's atmosphere rises much higher above the surface of the dwarf planet than
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It also has more than 20 layers, all of them freezing cold and extremely condensed.
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Oh, by the way, our Moon also has some sort of atmosphere.
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Called an exosphere, it consists of helium, neon, and argon.
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It's 10 trillion times less dense than Earth's atmosphere.
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Or, you know, really thin.