5 most terrifying places in the universe
8th of March 2022
5. RXJ 1347
A gas cloud in the constellation of Virgo some 5 billion light years away is the hottest known place in the whole universe. Temperatures regularly reach a simply unfathomable 300 million degrees which is 20 times hotter than the center of the Sun. The cloud surrounds a cluster of galaxies that's approximately 5 million light years wide. It's not like it's a tiny astronomical blip, it's a ginormous searing mass. It is thought that this celestial hot flush was caused by two galaxies swarms colliding together at ridiculous speeds probably over 4000 kilometres a second.
According to assistant professor Naomi Otha of the Tokyo University of Science. if that were the case it would constitute the most violently energetic celestial event since the Big Bang itself.
4. The boomerang Nebula
From one extreme to another this is the boomerang nebula aka the coldest known place in the universe. The nebula is a huge cloud of gas being expelled from a dying star in the constellation Centaurus. Astronomers have found that the temperatures could drop as low as half a degree above absolute zero. If a human were exposed to temperatures this cold, their blood would freeze, all the atoms in their body would stop moving and all the body's processes would cease. So maybe it's not a great idea to choose the boomerang nebula for your next vacation.
Despite being totally frigid and inhospitable, the nebula is actually one of the most valuable locations for Astronomical research that's because it's not yet a fully-fledged planetary nebula as its central star hasn't ionized its surroundings. In simple terms, it's still a dying star and not a dead one. This specific stage in the Stars lifecycle tends to last only about 1,000 years which in the grand scheme of things is just a tiny blinking cosmic time.
We are therefore incredibly lucky to witness an event like this in our lifetime as it could reveal answers to complicated questions about the life and death of stars.
3. Zombie stars
Normally when a star dies, it explodes in a massive supernova and then that's it. But in some very rare cases, there is a way they can be revived from their astronomical grave, they can become zombie stars.
During the final stage of a star's life, they become a white dwarf. This is when all of a star's nuclear energy has been used up and they just cool and fade into nothingness over several billion years. However, on some occasions these dying stars can steal energy from younger neighbouring stars. In fact, they've been known to gobble up enough fuel from a neighbouring star that it triggers an extraordinary nuclear explosion. This can be powerful enough to revive the dying star like a zombie surviving through eating the brains of the living.
Officially known as a type 1a supernova, these zombie stars are not just freaky they're super useful. Because they're so bright and consistent in that brightness, they're really handy for figuring distances in the universe. This means that scientists can track the expansion of the universe, thus furthering our understanding of how gravity and dark energy counteract.
2. Wandering Black holes
It is thought that our galaxy alone contains 100 million black holes and they remain one of the most mysterious phenomena in the universe. At least they're all super far away and happy gobbling up planets.
There exists a special horrifying kind of black hole that moves around space consuming anything and everything in their path, they're known imaginatively as wandering black holes and have been discovered traveling as fast as 5 million kilometres per hour. We don't really know for certain what causes our black hole to go rogue like this one, hypothesis is that they are knocked off course by the collision of multiple couch and are simply sent flying. At least we’re definitely safe here on earth.
A wandering black hole has in fact been discovered within our very own Milky Way. There's no immediate danger as it's currently about ten thousand light-years away, but who knows where it could end up with in the next few millennia.
1. The Great Attractor
Deep in the far reaches of the cosmos system can only be described as an astronomical nightmare- the Great Attractor. The Great Attractor was first theorized in the 1970s when astronomers realized that the Milky Way was slightly warmer on one side than the other and that it was moving through space at the surprising speed of 600 kilometres a second.
The conclusion is that over billions of years something is slowly but surely pulling us and everything near us closer to itself and there's no escape. The only force that connects so powerfully over such great distances and on whole galaxies at a time is gravity. This means there must be something huge out there that's exerting an unrelenting gravitational pull.
One major problem with our understanding of the Great Attractor is that it lays within the so-called zone of avoidance, this is an area of space that sits beyond the Milky Way in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. The zone of avoidance is completely obscured because of all the space junk- stars gas and dust that's cluttering up our own galaxy. We therefore have no way of seeing what could be causing this massive gravitational anomaly.
All universes that you have mentioned here are all new to me😅 so I got interested to read and i was really amazed with all the information that i have learned and read from your article, well done my dear!