- news
- Science News
- Terrifying facts about space that will stick with you long after you read them
aa
Text size
- small
- Mediation
- big
1/7
Terrifying facts about space that will stick with you long after you read them
Although many people consider the universe to be a peaceful and amazing environment, the truth behind its appearance presents an incomprehensible universe with extreme events. For example, there are non-dead stars (or zombie stars) that consume energy from their stellar neighbors, and there are massive galaxies that may contain thousands of Milky Way galaxies. The universe therefore operates on a scale of ontological chaos that defies human intuition. While the night sky appears calm, it is a graveyard for “Zombie Stars” and a playground for “Galactic Titans” that defy the very laws of physics and are impossible for humans to understand.
What’s even more terrible is that the more objects related to deep space we discover, the more supergiants we will find that dwarf the Sun and end up drifting in the dark, infinite void of outer space. The facts listed below provide a frightening truth about how incredibly vast and terrifying the universe is.
2/7
There is a galaxy 60 times wider and thousands of times more massive than the Milky Way
The massive elliptical galaxy IC1101 is located more than a billion light-years away. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across, while IC1101 is about 6 million light-years across. There is enough space within the confines of IC1101 to hold thousands of galaxies the same size as the Milky Way, and they hold an estimated 10 trillion stars, creating a large, dense golden mass of ancient light.
Computer: Wikipedia
3/7
There’s a dead man on the moon
The surface of the Moon is also where Eugene Shoemaker (pioneer of planetary science) is buried. In 1998, NASA sent the Lunar Prospector module with a small polycarbonate capsule containing Eugene’s cremated remains to the Moon. When the Lunar Prospector completed its successful mission through a planned crash into a permanently shadowed crater at the lunar south pole, Eugene became the first human to be buried on a celestial body; Thus, the Earth will forever be viewed from silent lunar dust.
4/7
The hexagon star is 100 times more massive than the Sun
The galactic core also contains one of the largest stars known; The hexagon star, a giant blue star located at the center of the galaxy. It has about 100 times the mass of our Sun, but the real terrifying aspect of the hexagon star is its luminosity, which is up to 10 million times brighter than our Sun. Due to its incredibly high mass ejection rate, it created the visually stunning but very violent Pistol Nebula. If the hexagon star were placed in our solar system, it would engulf Earth’s orbital path entirely.
Computer: NASA Science
5/7
One day, the night sky will turn black
As a result of the accelerated expansion of the universe due to dark energy, distant galaxies are moving away from us faster than their light can travel to us. In about 100 billion years, every galaxy outside our Local Group will disappear beyond the cosmic horizon. Any future civilization would therefore look up at a completely dark sky with no knowledge or memory of the existence of other stars and galaxies in its local universe.
Computer: NASA Science
6/7
Dead stars can come back to life
Known as a Type Ia supernova, this occurs when a white dwarf, the remains of a dead star, reignites as a Type Ia supernova when it steals gas from one of its companion stars. This process causes the remaining fuel in the dead white dwarf to re-ignite as a “zombie” star, thus producing an explosive event called a supernova, with a brightness exceeding that of galaxies.
Computer: NASA Science
7/7
It takes 13 quadrillion ground balls to fit Stevenson’s 2-18
Stevenson 2-18 is another extremely massive star (red hypergiant) that challenges theoretical limits on stellar sizes and masses. The radius of Stevenson 2-18 is about 2,150 times the radius of our Sun, and it is so massive that you could fit nearly 13,000,000,000,000,000 (13 quadrillion) Earths within its volume. If Stevenson 2-18 replaced our Sun, its outer edge would extend beyond Saturn’s orbit and thus consume the entire inner solar system within a second.
Computer: Wikipedia
Follow us on social media
