Mystery of Dark Matter in Space May Finally Be Solved

Now in space, Inky darkness between blinding points of light does a great job.

It hides black holes, gaping, hungry and scary.

Their blackness makes it really difficult for astronomers to find detailed information

about these space monsters.

When a powerful and massive star reaches the end of its life, it can't just fade into

nothingness.

When to the most likely scenarios, the star will run out of its nuclear fuel.

When in a blazing flash of light, it'll collapse under its own gravity.

If the star was large enough, it'll turn into a black hole.

There's a hypothetical type of black hole called primordial.

Scientists have never gotten any real proof of their existence.

These holes are insanely old and quite tiny by black hole standards that is.

Astronomers believe they could appear several milliseconds after the big bang.

At that time, stars and galaxies weren't born yet.

It means primordial black holes probably witness the entire history of the universe.

By now, the smallest primordial black holes have most likely evaporated away.

But the bigger ones can still be scattered out there in space.

But how did primordial black holes appear in the first place?

In the very beginning, space wasn't the same.

In some regions, it was hotter, in others cooler, and some areas were extremely dense.

Scientists believe these dense spots could collapse into primordial black holes.

The most curious thing though?

These holes might be so small exactly because they popped up right after the big bang.

The longer it took a black hole to appear, the larger it was.

The mass difference between older, smaller, and younger, bigger black holes was incredible.

After the mass, thousand times greater than our sons, and that of a jelly bean.

Now you get it.

There was a theory that primordial black holes could actually be dark matter.

This matter is believed to make up around 80% of the mass of the observable universe.

Astronomers can't see this bizarre ingredient directly, since it doesn't emit light or

any kind of energy.

The idea remained unpopular for decades.

Recently, scientists have realized there are many more black holes in the universe than

they used to think, and it means the theory might actually work.

And the vast and still hidden from us population of big bang black holes could not only make

up but be dark matter.

After all, astronomers haven't discovered a single dark matter particle yet, even after

decades of searching.

Science is argued that dark matter can't be tons of multi-sized primordial black holes.

They would collide far too often for this to work out.

Others object that black holes might exist in twos, and then a third one can always approach

the pair and replace one of the initial holes.

After all, our universe is swarming with black holes, and there's no lack of them.

This process would repeat again and again, meaning there would be almost no merges or

collisions.

Primordial black holes might stay in clusters the size of the distance between our sun and

the nearest star.

Each of these clusters can be home to thousands of black holes, all crammed together.

A 30 solar mass monster of a black hole might sit at the center with more common stellar

ones occupying the rest of the space.

Such clusters can be everywhere astronomers think dark matter is.

But, so far, this is still only an exciting theory, and some scientists don't support

it yet.

More data is needed.

Now, black holes sometimes behave like massive galactic volcanoes.

From time to time, they flare up, but instead of spewing lava, they produce enormous amounts

of energy, and it makes gaping holes in the surrounding material and gas.

A short while ago, scientists discovered one of the largest craters in the universe.

Radio and X-ray telescopes detected a supermassive black hole that threw a temper tantrum many, many,

many years ago.

It happened in a galaxy cluster about 390 million light years away from Earth.

The crater left behind, which was actually a hole punched in the cluster's hot gas, could

fit 15 Milky Way galaxies.

Recently, astronomers have found out that one of the most massive stars in the neighborhood

might just have vanished.

The star used to hover in space 75 million light years away from Earth.

It's usually too far away for scientists to clearly see individual stars, unless they're

really massive, like the one we're talking about.

It was gigantic and shining 2.5 million times brighter than our sign.

For the last time, astronomers saw the star's light in 2011.

And when they decided to examine it more closely, several years later, they couldn't find

it.

Such huge stars usually go out in an extremely bright supernova.

But nothing here, which puzzled the scientists to no end.

There's a theory it collapsed into a black hole, and it happened without triggering a supernova

first.

It does occur among stars nearing the end of their lives, but very, very rarely.

Maybe 141B is a planet outside of our solar system.

At first glance, it's not that different from Earth.

It has liquid oceans that evaporate into clouds, condensed, and get back to the surface

as rain.

But instead of water, this all happens with rock.

The surface of the exoplanet is covered with lava seas tens of miles deep.

The temperature on K2141B reaches 5,000 degrees during the day, as hot enough for the magma

in the oceans to vaporize into the atmosphere.

Then, supersonic winds, which can move at the speed of one mile per second, carry this

rock vapor to the planet's night side.

The vaporized magma cools down, becomes liquid again, and falls as a rocky rain.

Wow!

Looks like we're going to need a bigger bumbershoot.

A star in the galaxy GSN-069 might turn into a planet the size of Jupiter in the next

trillion years or so.

All thanks to the star's regular encounters with a black hole.

First at astronomers noticed bizarre x-ray bursts.

Those were super bright and went off every nine hours.

After examining this phenomenon, the researchers realized it was a star getting flung in a unique

orbit around a black hole.

And the flashes they saw were the material being slurped off the star's surface.

It happened every time the star darted past its greedy host.

Over millions of years, the black hole is already transformed the red giant into a white

dwarf, and the process isn't going to stop anytime soon.

Astronomers have recently discovered some traces of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere.

On Earth, this colorless and flammable gas is often found near microbes.

That's why a new theory claims there might be life on Venus.

If there is, it could only appear high in the clouds, because no living organism would

be able to survive the planet's extreme environment.

Its surface is incredibly dry with no liquid water, and the pressure 90 times greater than

that on Earth's surface.

The temperatures there reach almost 900 degrees, hot enough to melt certain metals.

So that's a no?

Methane, a gas that's usually produced by living things, was found on Mars

in 2013.

European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft detected it in Gale Crater near the Martian

Equator.

This discovery might one day answer the question if there's life on Mars.

Asteroid 2019-OK, scared scientists by sneaking up on our planet in July of 2019.

This rather large rock, up to 400 feet across, appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

It traveled uncomfortably close to the Earth, a mere 45,000 miles away.

That's less than one-fifth of the distance to the Moon.

The Sun's outer layer is way hotter than its surface.

The temperatures vary from 10,000 degrees close to the surface and a mind-boggling 1 million

degrees in the corona.

That's the Sun's outermost layer.

The reason for this phenomenon might be nanoflares.

Those are regular, powerful bursts of heat from the star.

Another theory blames the layer that lies just beneath the Sun's surface.

It seems to generate a weak magnetic field.

That's why, when the energy from this layer leaves the Sun, it heats the corona through

a mesh of magnetic branches and roots.

The Moon might still be shrinking.

Our planet's natural satellite has become 150 feet skinnier than it used to be several

hundred million years ago.

If it's inside, keep cooling.

It might explain the quakes shaking the Moon's surface.

In 2019, NASA's Insight Lander, whose goal was to study the interior of Mars, registered

the first Mars quake ever.

These quakes were coming fast about two per day.

Most of them were tiny.

You wouldn't even feel them if they happened on our planet.

So far, more than 300 Mars quakes have been detected.

Those are the first quakes on any space body other than the Earth and the Moon.

Another mysterious phenomenon, discovered by the mission, was bizarre magnetic pulses.

They occurred every midnight around the lander.

It's still unclear what those pulses are.

Maybe, after midnight, they're going to let it all hang out, or something.

Pluto's atmosphere rises much higher above the surface of the dwarf planet than

let's say Earth's.

It also has more than 20 layers, all of them freezing cold and extremely condensed.

Oh, by the way, our Moon also has some sort of atmosphere.

Called an exosphere, it consists of helium, neon, and argon.

It's 10 trillion times less dense than Earth's atmosphere.

Or, you know, really thin.