The universe has always been a curious place for many of us. We are all fascinated by its elements and always question its various secrets. “Universe” is the name that we use to describe the totality of all things that exist in space. It consists of trillions of stars, galaxies, black holes, huge gas clouds and many other interesting things.
Space continues to amaze and confuse astronomers from expansion and acceleration to dark matter and energy. We present you the 10 most interesting facts about the Universe - the amazing discoveries of modern scientists, the history of the study of galaxies.
10. The development of the relict background determines the future of the Universe
Received by the Planck Space Telescope, was released in 2013 the most detailed cosmic microwave background map ever created is the Big Bang CMBrevealing the existence of features that challenge the foundations of our modern understanding of the universe.
This image is based on data from 15.5 months obtained by Planck, and is the first picture of the sky, which depicts the oldest light in our universe, captured when he was only 380,000 years old.
In general, the information extracted from the new Planck map provides excellent confirmation of the standard cosmology model with unprecedented accuracy, setting a new benchmark in our manifest of the contents of the universe.
But since the accuracy of the Planck map is so high, it also revealed some specific inexplicable features that may require an understanding of new physics.
9. Of all the objects studied, Titan is more similar to Earth than others
Titanium may be far from Earth, but these two bodies have some common characteristics.: wind, rain, volcanoes, tectonics and other processes similar to the Earth - all of them form the features of Titan, but act in an environment colder than Antarctica.
«It's really amazing how close the surface of Titan resembles the surface of the Earth"Said Rosalie Lopez, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who presents the results of two new studies at the annual meeting of the International Astronomical Organization.
8. Copernicus was the first to give ideas about the universe close to the truth
In the early 1500s, when almost everyone believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, a Polish scientist Nikolai Copernicus suggested that the planets revolve around the sun.
Although his model was not completely correct, it laid a solid foundation for future scientists to develop and improve humanity's understanding of the motion of celestial bodies.
Indeed, other astronomers based themselves on the work of Copernicus and proved that our planet is just one world orbiting a single star in vast space.
7. Alcohol cloud
It may seem like a bartender’s dream (or a nightmare), but far beyond our atmosphere there is a gas cloud made from alcohol, about 1000 times the diameter of our entire solar system.
There is enough alcohol for 400 septillion pints of beer (that's 400, then 24 zero!). To show this in perspective, note that "enough alcohol to deliver 300,000 pints of beer every day to every person on Earth for the next billion years».
6. Ursa Major - the most famous constellation
Ursa Major is the largest northern constellation and the third largest constellation in the sky. Its brightest stars form the Ursa Major asterism, one of the most recognizable figures in the sky, also known as the Plow.
Ursa Major is well known in most world cultures and is associated with a number of myths.. It was one of the constellations cataloged by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century. In Greek mythology, it is associated with Callisto - a nymph whom the jealous wife of Zeus Hera turned into a bear.
5. Per second, the Sun loses up to a billion kilograms of weight
The sun is constantly losing weight for two reasons. First of all, radiation. The total solar power can be easily calculated using elementary arithmetic, if you know the "solar constant", the amount of thermal energy received by each square meter of the surface at the distance of the Earth from the Sun: it is approximately 1370 W per square meter, and the distance from the Earth to the Sun is about 150 million kilometers.
If you know how to calculate the surface of a sphere of this radius and multiply it by the solar constant, you will get a little less than four hundred septillion (total 26 zeros) watts.
Remembering Einstein’s famous formula and dividing it by the square of the speed of light, we get about 4.5 million metric tons per second, lost as pure thermal radiation (heat and light).
In addition, the Sun loses matter in the form of the solar wind, mainly hydrogen atoms. The amount varies with solar activity, but a typical average may be just over a million metric tons per second.
4. The first method of studying the structure of the Universe, which is still used, is the method of "stellar calculations"
The method of stellar scoops, also known as the method of stellar calculations, is used to establish the structure of the galaxy or the entire Universe.
The meaning of the method is to select areas in the sky for which observations are made and the distribution of the observed objects is calculated. First used by Herschel to determine the structure of the galaxy.
3. In the universe is a giant bubble of gas
Fermi bubbles are two huge spheres of gas and cosmic raysthat rise above the Milky Way, covering an area approximately the same as the galaxy itself. These giant cosmic bubbles can be caused by a strong outflow of matter from the center of the Milky Way.
In 2010, astronomers working with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope announced the discovery of two giant drops. These clusters were concentrated on the core of the Milky Way galaxy, but they extended above and below the plane of our galactic home for more than 25,000 light years.
Their origin is still a mystery, but whatever they are, they emit a large amount of high-energy radiation.
More recently, the IceCube array in Antarctica reported 10 superpopular high-energy neutrinos obtained from bubbles, which led some astrophysicists to suggest that some crazy subatomic interactions are in motion. The end result: Fermi bubbles are even more mysterious than we thought.
2. The most common element is hydrogen
Hydrogen is considered the most common element in the universe., but why? To answer this question, "we need to get back to the big bang"Said May Nyman, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon.
According to Nyman, hydrogen - with one proton and one electron (this is the only element without a neutron) - is the simplest element in the Universe, and this just gives an explanation of why it is also the most common. (However, the hydrogen isotope, called deuterium, contains one proton and one neutron, and the second, known as tritium, has one proton and two neutrons).
In stars, hydrogen atoms melt, thereby creating helium - the second most common element in the universe.
1. 20th century - the time of birth of modern cosmology
Humanity's understanding of the universe has changed significantly over time. In the early history of astronomy, the Earth was considered the center of all things around which planets and stars revolved.
In the 16th century, the Polish scientist Nikolai Copernicus suggested that the Earth and other planets of the solar system actually revolve around the sun, creating a deep shift in understanding of the cosmos. At the end of the 17th century, Isaac Newton calculated how forces interact between planets, in particular, gravitational ones.
The dawn of the 20th century brought further insight into the vast universe.. Albert Einstein proposed the unification of space and time in his General Theory of Relativity.