50+ Space Facts That Baffle Even NASA

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Transcript

00:00:00On August 20, 1977, the most ambitious space mission took off from Earth.

00:00:16The main goal of Voyager 2 was to study the outer Solar System up close.

00:00:21It became possible because of a rare alignment of planets.

00:00:25Voyager 2 was supposed to study all the gas giants of the Solar System – Jupiter, Saturn,

00:00:30Uranus, and Neptune.

00:00:32Astronomers also hoped it would be able to find and explore the edge of the Solar System.

00:00:37Since Voyager 2 was built for interstellar travel, the probe was equipped with a large

00:00:4112-foot-wide antenna.

00:00:43It allowed the spaceship to send the data it gathered back to Earth.

00:00:47During its journey, the space probe discovered a 14th moon of Jupiter.

00:00:51Voyager 2 was the only spaceship to study all four giant planets from up close.

00:00:56It was the first human-made object to fly past Uranus, where it found two new rings

00:01:01and ten new moons.

00:01:03Voyager 2 also flew by Neptune and noticed its great dark spot.

00:01:07That's a colossal spinning storm in the planet's southern hemisphere.

00:01:11The storm is the size of Earth and moves at a speed of 1,500 miles per hour.

00:01:16These winds are the strongest ever recorded on any planet of the Solar System.

00:01:21In the history of space exploration, only five spacecraft have managed to leave the

00:01:25gravitational pull of the Solar System.

00:01:28Those were Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and New Horizons.

00:01:34People launch thousands of objects into space.

00:01:37These objects easily overcome Earth's gravity.

00:01:39But the Sun is around 300,000 times as massive as our home planet.

00:01:44That's why its gravitational pull is way more difficult to find.

00:01:48And more impressively, Voyager 2 is the second human-made object in history to reach the

00:01:53space between stars after passing through the heliosphere.

00:01:58That's a bubble of magnetic fields and particles produced by the Sun and protecting the Solar

00:02:02System.

00:02:03Two years after its launch, Voyager 2 started transmitting the first images of Jupiter.

00:02:09The space probe provided scientists with much-needed information about Io and Europa, some of the

00:02:14largest of Jupiter's moons.

00:02:16In the space mission passed by the gas giant itself, the distance between the spacecraft

00:02:21and the planet was around 400,000 miles.

00:02:24That's when the probe noticed some changes in the shape and color of the great red spot.

00:02:29It's an enormous, long-lived storm system, like a hurricane on Earth, but much, much

00:02:34larger.

00:02:35Two years later, Voyager 2 reached Saturn.

00:02:38It discovered spokes and kinks in some of the planet's rings.

00:02:42While the spacecraft was flying behind and up past the gas giant, it passed through the

00:02:46plane of Saturn's rings.

00:02:48At that time, Voyager's speed was around 8 miles per second.

00:02:52For several minutes, the probe was hit by thousands of micron-sized grains of dust.

00:02:57This kept shifting the probe's direction, and its control jets had to fire many times

00:03:01to stabilize the vehicle.

00:03:05After Voyager 2 explored Uranus and Neptune, it headed out of the Solar System.

00:03:10Its instruments were put in low power to save energy.

00:03:13In August 2007, the spacecraft passed the terminal shock.

00:03:17It's the boundary marking the outer limit of the Sun's influence.

00:03:21Here, the solar wind slows down.

00:03:24In the summer of 2013, the probe reached interstellar space.

00:03:29Now, when it comes to sending and receiving signals in space, there are three factors

00:03:33you should keep in mind – distance, power, and time.

00:03:38The farther away a spacecraft is, the farther a signal has to travel before it reaches it,

00:03:43and the longer it takes for this signal to catch up with the spacecraft.

00:03:47And when it finally gets there, it's extremely weak.

00:03:50Another problem is that once the spacecraft is launched, it can't be upgraded.

00:03:54It's literally stuck with the technology it was outfitted with.

00:03:58Plus, such spaceships as Voyager 2 are powered by radioactive fuel.

00:04:03When special material radioactively decays, it releases heat that gets converted into electricity.

00:04:09Unfortunately, the more material decays away, the less power the spacecraft has for receiving

00:04:14and transmitting radio signals.

00:04:17Despite this issue, we haven't lost the connection with Voyager 1 and 2.

00:04:21That's because new and more powerful technologies appear on Earth.

00:04:26Signals people send can reach much farther than before.

00:04:29That's why it was possible to stay in touch with Voyager 2, which entered interstellar

00:04:33space in 2018 and has already traveled almost 12 billion miles away from Earth.

00:04:39But in March 2020, the main piece of equipment that allowed scientists to exchange signals

00:04:44with the spaceship was switched off.

00:04:47After the communication with the spacecraft stopped, NASA spent around 11 months upgrading

00:04:52its deep space network and installing new hardware.

00:04:55The DSN is an international array of huge radio antennas that help astronomers on Earth

00:05:01communicate with interplanetary missions.

00:05:03These antennas are located in California, Madrid, and Canberra.

00:05:07The one used to keep in touch with Voyager 2 is a 230-foot-wide dish in Canberra.

00:05:13This is the only equipment that can send commands that can reach the probe.

00:05:17This antenna, known as DSS-43, started operating in 1972, five years before Voyager 2 and 1

00:05:25were launched.

00:05:26At that time, it was only 210 feet across.

00:05:29Since then, the dish has received a lot of repairs and upgrades.

00:05:33But these 11 months were the longest the antenna was offline.

00:05:37In October 2020, the antenna was finally ready for a trial after all the upgrades and repairs.

00:05:43The mission operators sent a set of commands to Voyager 2.

00:05:47And after many months of radio silence, the spacecraft returned the signal.

00:05:51The probe confirmed it had heard the call.

00:05:54After that, the spacecraft carried out the commands.

00:05:58While the dish was offline, the mission operators could actually receive scientific data and

00:06:02health updates from Voyager 2.

00:06:05Astronomers kept getting data from interstellar space, the region outside the Sun's heliosphere.

00:06:11But they couldn't send any commands to the probe, since it had traveled too far away

00:06:15from Earth.

00:06:16The upgraded antenna received two new radio transmitters, and it was done just in time.

00:06:22One of the transmitters, that was used to communicate with Voyager 2, hadn't been replaced

00:06:26in almost 50 years.

00:06:28The antenna also got new cooling and heating equipment, and other electronics necessary

00:06:33to support the advanced transmitters.

00:06:35Now, a curious thing about the Deep Space Network is that its radio antennas are positioned

00:06:40in a very precise way.

00:06:42They're spaced equally around the globe.

00:06:45This way, almost any spacecraft can stay in touch with at least one facility at all times.

00:06:50Voyager 2 is an exception.

00:06:53In 1989, it made a close flyby of Triton, Neptune's moon.

00:06:57It was the only close encounter people had with the 8th planet of the Solar System and

00:07:01its moon.

00:07:02By the way, Triton is the largest known object that is believed to be born in the Kuiper

00:07:07Belt.

00:07:08That's a donut-shaped ring around the Sun full of icy objects.

00:07:12Voyager 2 discovered Neptune's ring system and its tiny inner moons.

00:07:17The probe also gathered a lot of amazing information about Triton.

00:07:21For example, it became clear that the moon is covered in cryovolcanoes.

00:07:26Instead of spewing molten rock, these volcanoes spit ice consisting of water, ammonia, and

00:07:31methane.

00:07:32When the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto more than 25 years later, it discovered

00:07:37the same phenomenon on the dwarf planet.

00:07:40Anyway, to make this detour, Voyager 2 had to travel over the gas giant's North Pole.

00:07:47This changed the probe's trajectory, deflecting it southward relative to the planes of the

00:07:52planets.

00:07:53Since then, Voyager 2 has been moving in that direction.

00:07:56And now, the spacecraft is so far away that it's out of reach of the radio antennas in

00:08:00the Northern Hemisphere, those in Madrid and California.

00:08:04This makes DSS-43, which is located in the Southern Hemisphere, the only dish powerful

00:08:10enough and broadcasting just the right frequency to send commands to Voyager 2.

00:08:15Voyager 1, the probe's faster-traveling twin, didn't change its trajectory.

00:08:20After passing by Saturn, it took a different path.

00:08:23That's why now it can easily communicate with the two facilities in the Northern Hemisphere.

00:08:28The upgrade the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex has gone through can also benefit

00:08:33other space missions.

00:08:35For example, the Mars Perseverance rover that landed on the Red Planet on February 18, 2021.

00:08:42The dish will also be crucial for exploring other planets and the Moon.

00:08:49Have you heard about a diamond star that could put all the riches on Earth to shame?

00:08:54Or how about twinkling stars with surfaces made of solid iron?

00:08:59So let's take a look at these weird stars and try to unravel their mysteries.

00:09:06There's a star in the Centaurus constellation that was nicknamed Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

00:09:11Yes, it was named after a Beatles song, because it basically is a Beatles song.

00:09:17You see, the star was discovered to have a massive diamond at its core.

00:09:24Now you may be wondering how big this diamond really is.

00:09:28Well, it's estimated to be about 10 billion trillion trillion carats.

00:09:34That's a one followed by 34 zeros.

00:09:37To put that into perspective, the Hope Diamond, which is one of the largest diamonds on Earth,

00:09:42is a measly 45.5 carats in comparison.

00:09:47Can you imagine the size of the ring you could make with this star diamond?

00:09:51And it's about the same mass as our sun.

00:09:56But don't get too excited about the prospect of owning this diamond just yet.

00:10:00Even if you were Jeff Bezos, you wouldn't be able to afford it.

00:10:04According to Ronald Winston, CEO of Harry Winston, Inc., the diamond is so big that

00:10:10it would likely depress the value of the market.

00:10:13So you'd have to settle for a much smaller diamond engagement ring.

00:10:19One interesting thing about the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds star is that it's incredibly

00:10:25dense.

00:10:26In fact, it has the mass of the sun crammed into an object only a third the diameter of

00:10:31Earth.

00:10:32It's like trying to fit an elephant into a shoebox.

00:10:35And yet, despite its massive size, it's actually quite cool, with a core temperature of only

00:10:41about 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:10:44By comparison, the core temperature of our sun is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.

00:10:53Since the discovery of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, several other crystallized stars

00:10:57have been found, some with diamond hearts the size of Earth.

00:11:02It just goes to show that the universe is full of surprises, and you never know what

00:11:07kind of treasures you might find out there in the vast expanse of space.

00:11:13And this isn't the only weird star we've discovered so far.

00:11:17There are many strange, unexplained things in outer space.

00:11:23For example, let's take Vega.

00:11:25Vega, also known as Alpha Lyrae, is a bright star located in the constellation Lyra.

00:11:32It's one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and is easily visible to the naked eye

00:11:36from most parts of the world.

00:11:39Now, Vega may look like a beautiful, bright star to us Northern Hemisphere folks, but

00:11:46little do we know, it's hiding a secret.

00:11:49It's actually quite squashed.

00:11:53You see, Vega's high spin rate causes it to bulge at the equator, kind of like a cosmic

00:11:59belly.

00:12:00It rotates once every 12.5 hours, which is pretty fast for a star, and it throws material

00:12:06out around its waistline.

00:12:08It's almost like the star is hula hooping.

00:12:11This material is further from the center of the star, so it experiences less gravity,

00:12:17causing it to cool and darken, leading to a gravity darkening effect.

00:12:24So Vega is basically a cosmic fitness guru's worst nightmare.

00:12:29Although for us stargazers, it still looks round because we're looking at it from Earth's

00:12:34pole end.

00:12:35However, if we saw it from a different angle, we'd get a very different view, one that might

00:12:41make us wonder if Vega has been sneaking some cosmic donuts behind our backs.

00:12:48But while we might joke about its equatorial waistline, there's no denying that Vega is

00:12:53still one of the brightest and most fascinating stars in our galaxy.

00:13:00But if you want something actually bright, then how about a supernova?

00:13:07Supernovas are giant space booms that occur when stars reach the end of their life cycle.

00:13:13It's like the grand finale of a firework show, but on a cosmic scale.

00:13:18They release more energy in a few seconds than our sun will produce in its entire lifetime.

00:13:26And this is exactly what happened to the next star of our show.

00:13:30This celestial object with a weird name, IPFT-14HLS.

00:13:37But there's a catch.

00:13:38It isn't your average supernova.

00:13:41Even though this star made a blast in 2014 and started to fade away like usual, recently

00:13:47it made an unexpected comeback and brightened once more.

00:13:52Talk about a dramatic entrance.

00:13:55And if that wasn't enough, this thing continued to fade and brighten at least 5 times in total,

00:14:01which is a bit like a yo-yo.

00:14:03It's like the star just couldn't make up its mind about whether it wanted to stay bright

00:14:08or fade away into the abyss.

00:14:12Also, when scientists measured the supernova's spectrum, they found that it was evolving

00:14:1710 times slower than other stars.

00:14:20Maybe it's a supernova that just wants to enjoy its golden years.

00:14:27All in all, this object is a real mystery.

00:14:32But this is not the only star suffering from the two-in-one syndrome.

00:14:37At first glance, MY Camelopardalis appears to be a fairly common star.

00:14:43But after a closer look, astronomers concluded it was actually two stars in one.

00:14:51These two stars are orbiting each other at over 600,000 miles per hour.

00:14:56It's a contact binary star system, which means that the stars are so close together that

00:15:01they share a common envelope.

00:15:04In other words, they're so close to each other that they're practically smooching.

00:15:10These celestial Romeo and Juliet are one of the most massive known binary stars out there.

00:15:16Each of them individually weighs in at a whopping 32 and 38 solar masses, respectively.

00:15:25Astronomers also think that they might be on the brink of a stellar merger, which means

00:15:30that one day, they might just combine into one giant superstar.

00:15:34Wow, who knew space could be so romantic?

00:15:39Next, introducing another long name, HD 140283, also known as Methuselah's Star.

00:15:49This little guy in the constellation Libra has been around for a while.

00:15:54And by a while, I mean a really long time.

00:15:57Actually, scientists used to think it was older than the universe itself.

00:16:04Just imagine if it turned out to be true.

00:16:07But eventually, they figured out that it's actually around 14.8 billion years old, a

00:16:13peer of our universe.

00:16:15That's still pretty impressive, though.

00:16:17This star is so old, it remembers when the Milky Way was just a baby galaxy.

00:16:25But despite all that, this star still has some life left in it.

00:16:29It's just starting to expand into a red giant, which is kind of like when you hit your 30s.

00:16:35Talk about aging well.

00:16:39But if all these things are somewhat comprehensible, then how about a star that was literally named

00:16:44WTF Star by scientists?

00:16:47No, I'm not kidding.

00:16:49At least it used to be.

00:16:51Now it's called Tabby's Star.

00:16:53It also has a more scientific name, but that one is a bit of a mouthful.

00:17:00But what's really bizarre about this star is its irregular dimming.

00:17:04For some reason, it doesn't glow like a normal star, but blinks, as if someone turned on

00:17:10and off a flashlight.

00:17:12And it's not just a little dip, we're talking up to a 22% drop in light.

00:17:17So it's not because it sometimes gets blocked by a planet or something.

00:17:24Scientists have come up with all sorts of explanations for this strange behavior, from

00:17:28comets to dust to even an extraterrestrial megastructure.

00:17:33That's right.

00:17:34But before your imagination runs too wild, it's important to note that the most likely

00:17:38explanation is just plain old dust.

00:17:41Perhaps the star is surrounded by some kind of dust cloud, and sometimes it prevents us

00:17:46from seeing it clearly.

00:17:50Although this explanation is still not 100% confirmed, there are still plenty of mysteries

00:17:55surrounding Tabby's Star.

00:17:58One thing's for sure, it may be a bit of an oddball, but that's what makes it so fascinating.

00:18:05So there you have it, folks.

00:18:07We're left in awe of the incredible diversity and strangeness of the cosmos.

00:18:12There's so much more to discover out there.

00:18:15So let's keep exploring and keep being amazed by the wonders of the universe.

00:18:20Now did you know that there's an astronomical object in which space and time actually swap

00:18:25places?

00:18:26How does that work?

00:18:28And what exactly does swapping space and time mean?

00:18:31Well, let's figure it out.

00:18:33Imagine that you're on a spacecraft.

00:18:35The vehicle can only move straight.

00:18:37Your path leads to some inevitable point, and you have no idea what lies ahead.

00:18:42You can only hope that it won't be too bad.

00:18:45Meanwhile, everything around you is complete madness.

00:18:49A chaotic collage of many historical events.

00:18:52What do you see?

00:18:53Ancient humans and dinosaurs?

00:18:55The birth of the universe?

00:18:56A future?

00:18:58Who knows?

00:18:59That's what the universe would look like if we swapped time and space.

00:19:04And theoretically, this is what you would see if you fell into a black hole and somehow

00:19:08were able to survive.

00:19:10But how is something like this even possible?

00:19:14First of all, let's discuss time and space.

00:19:17Imagine drawing a light bulb on a sheet of paper.

00:19:20Then grab one more sheet and draw how it lit up.

00:19:23Right now, it's just a small circle of light.

00:19:26Another sheet, the circle of light is growing.

00:19:29It gets bigger and bigger in size, until finally, it turns into a giant circle.

00:19:35In real life, the bulb lights up in the blink of an eye.

00:19:38That's because the speed of light is the fastest in the universe.

00:19:42But here, on our drawings, we capture the propagation of light frame by frame.

00:19:47We see how over time the light has grown from a small dot to a large circle.

00:19:52But if you connect these circles, doesn't it remind you of some shape?

00:19:57For example, a cone?

00:19:59Yes, exactly.

00:20:01This is called a light cone.

00:20:03And time is the central axis of this cone.

00:20:06Why?

00:20:07Because light turns from a small dot into a large circle over time.

00:20:12To remember it, let's draw a time vector, an arrow inside the cone.

00:20:16It goes from the past to the future.

00:20:18Meanwhile, the circles are space.

00:20:21In space, we can move however we want, in any direction.

00:20:25We can move up or down, in zigzags and so on.

00:20:29But no matter what zigzags we draw, along the timeline, we're always moving forward.

00:20:34We can't turn back in time, and we can't stop it.

00:20:37This helps us define time and space.

00:20:41Time is the direction in which the light cone is oriented.

00:20:44This is the direction where all our paths lead, and where our future inevitably lies.

00:20:49And space is the whole variety of directions perpendicular to the timeline.

00:20:55This is a straightforward graph.

00:20:57If it could be applied to the entire universe, then time would flow the same everywhere.

00:21:02However, if you've watched at least some popular sci-fi movies, you know that this

00:21:07isn't the case.

00:21:08In reality, time can be crazy.

00:21:11For example, if you're chilling near a black hole, what will be two hours for you may turn

00:21:16out to be 20 years for your friend on Earth.

00:21:19But why?

00:21:20Well, take a deep breath.

00:21:22Now gravity comes into play.

00:21:24Oh, I know about gravity.

00:21:26It's that thing that helps me to stand on the ground, you may think.

00:21:29But it's much, much more complicated than that.

00:21:33Gravity is one of the basic physical forces in our world, and it's incredibly powerful.

00:21:38In fact, she's such a girl-boss that she can distort space and time.

00:21:43She can literally influence the speed of time like an almighty wizard.

00:21:47How?

00:21:48Well, let's take something slightly bigger than a light bulb.

00:21:51For example, a supernova.

00:21:54Somewhere in the Universe, a star has just made a boom.

00:21:57How do we know about it?

00:21:59Well, nothing in the Universe, no sound, no radio waves, nothing, travels faster than

00:22:05light.

00:22:06So we'll know about the birth of a supernova only when we see it.

00:22:10And this will happen only when its light cone grows enough and reaches our planet.

00:22:15So the light cone grows and grows.

00:22:18So far, everything is fine.

00:22:20And finally, it reaches our planet.

00:22:22But there's a catch.

00:22:23You see, our planet is very massive.

00:22:26Very massive.

00:22:27And it has pretty strong gravity.

00:22:29What happens then?

00:22:31Gravity changes the direction of the light cone.

00:22:34It begins to attract the cone to the center of our planet.

00:22:37And with it, it also attracts our arrow of time.

00:22:41That means it slows the time down.

00:22:43And the closer the light cone is to us, the more the arrow bends and the slower time goes.

00:22:49What does it mean?

00:22:50Well, for example, the fact that the watch on your ankle will lag behind the watch on

00:22:55your wrist.

00:22:56That your head is aging faster than your legs.

00:22:59And that astronauts in Earth's orbit age a little slower than people on Earth.

00:23:04This is what scientists call general relativity.

00:23:07Right.

00:23:08But how does this relate to our topic?

00:23:11How can we understand what will happen if we swap space and time?

00:23:15Don't worry, we're almost there.

00:23:17Now imagine a cosmic body with incredibly strong gravity.

00:23:22It bends time and space so much that it feels like they swap.

00:23:26This is a black hole.

00:23:28A black hole attracts absolutely everything to its center.

00:23:31No stars, planets, no light can escape from there.

00:23:35Let's say our light cone is approaching it.

00:23:38First, as usual, time begins to bend toward the center of the black hole, attracted by

00:23:43its gravity.

00:23:44The gravity is very strong, so it bends more and more.

00:23:48And time goes slower and slower the closer you're to the center.

00:23:53In the end, the light cone crosses the boundary of the black hole, the so-called event horizon.

00:23:59At this point, it gets so distorted that now it's literally pointing downwards.

00:24:04We can say that time has changed its direction.

00:24:07Time is pointing downwards.

00:24:09What kind of nonsense is that, you may ask?

00:24:11It'll be easier to explain in a real example.

00:24:15Imagine you're a crazy astronaut who decided to jump into a black hole.

00:24:19And there's an observer in the spaceship who watches you doing this for some reason.

00:24:24At first, for you, nothing changes.

00:24:26You look at your watch, you see that 5 minutes have passed, and everything's okay.

00:24:31But for the observer?

00:24:33First of all, you'll fall for a very long time.

00:24:36The observer has been sitting there for 50 years, and you're still falling.

00:24:41All because your time has slowed down.

00:24:44Secondly, since space is also distorted near the black hole, the observer will see how

00:24:49you'll begin to stretch like spaghetti.

00:24:52This is a scientific term, by the way.

00:24:54It's called spaghettification.

00:24:57And then you finally cross the event horizon.

00:25:00The observer doesn't see you anymore.

00:25:03Light cannot escape from a black hole, so your image won't reach the observer even

00:25:07if you're still inside.

00:25:09And what about you?

00:25:11What if you somehow survived?

00:25:12Remember, the time arrow is pointing to the center of the black hole.

00:25:16What does it mean?

00:25:18It means that now, the center of the black hole is your future.

00:25:22It isn't a place, it's a fate that you can't change.

00:25:26And wherever you came from, as well as the rest of the Universe, no longer exists for

00:25:31you.

00:25:32Because now, it's not a place, but an event from the past.

00:25:36And since you can't turn back time, you'll never be able to come back.

00:25:41But what is around you?

00:25:43Complete chaos.

00:25:44The rays of light now move in all directions, forward, backward, and so on.

00:25:49The rays depicting the events of the past, the future, the present, all this is moving

00:25:54around you.

00:25:55In reality, space and time didn't swap places, but it feels like they did.

00:26:01Because in space, you can now only move forward, as if along a straight line.

00:26:06And time, reflected in the light rays, surrounds you everywhere and moves in all possible directions.

00:26:13And here we go back to the beginning.

00:26:15This horrifying example helps us imagine what it would feel like if time and space got reversed.

00:26:22Of course, all this is just theories and guesses.

00:26:24The very idea that we're moving in some one direction, the one we haven't chosen,

00:26:29and there's complete time chaos around, sounds quite frightening.

00:26:34And yet, it would be a very interesting experience.

00:26:38Sounds dangerous.

00:26:39Why don't you go first?

00:26:42No one will hear your cry in space.

00:26:44Or something like that.

00:26:46We've all heard this famous chilling phrase.

00:26:48And it's actually true.

00:26:49Space, for the most part, consists of a giant nothingness.

00:26:53There's a lot of, you know, space in space.

00:26:56But this doesn't mean there are no sounds in space.

00:26:59In fact, there are plenty of them.

00:27:01And some of them can even make you shiver.

00:27:03Let's take a look at the scariest space sounds.

00:27:07First of all, how are cosmic sounds even recorded?

00:27:10Sound is just the vibration of molecules.

00:27:12When you scream, you make the molecules push each other furiously until they reach the

00:27:17ear of the person you're yelling at.

00:27:19Then these vibrations get transmitted to the brain, and we recognize them as something

00:27:24that you might need to apologize for.

00:27:27In other words, to hear something, we need molecules.

00:27:30And that's where things get complicated.

00:27:32There aren't any of them in space.

00:27:34The entire universe almost completely consists of a vacuum.

00:27:38No, not a hoover.

00:27:40Absolute nothingness.

00:27:41However, the wizards from NASA still record space sounds somehow.

00:27:45So how do they do it?

00:27:47The thing is, there are some types of waves that don't care about molecules.

00:27:51We regular folk can't perceive them without some special devices.

00:27:56These waves include, for example, radio waves.

00:27:59We'll need a radio or something like that to recognize them.

00:28:02And that's exactly what NASA's satellites do.

00:28:05They catch random radio waves.

00:28:07Thanks to their heroism, we can find out how different cosmic bodies sound.

00:28:12These satellites record a variety of waves, fluctuations of plasmas, magnetic fields,

00:28:17and other, you know, stuff.

00:28:19And then scientists from NASA transform all this into normal soundtracks.

00:28:24And some of them sound quite frightening, to put it mildly.

00:28:28Let's take our magnetic field, for example.

00:28:31It surrounds our planet like an invisible shield, protecting us from all sorts of nasties,

00:28:36like radiation and solar winds.

00:28:38At the same time, we can neither see it, feel it, nor hear.

00:28:42Oops.

00:28:43Well, the last one is outdated.

00:28:45Scientists from the Technical University of Denmark took magnetic waves recorded by the

00:28:50ESSA Swarm Satellite, they converted them into an audio track, and got a pretty creepy

00:28:55result.

00:29:00Now to be honest, it sounds more like an eerie entity stalking you in the middle of

00:29:03the night.

00:29:05And if you remember the maps of Earth's magnetic field, it starts to feel like a spider

00:29:10crawling nearby.

00:29:12And this isn't the first strange sound that we caught on Earth.

00:29:15Recently, we caught another weird radio emission from space.

00:29:19Scientists found out that the repeating signal came from somewhere very far away, like billions

00:29:24of light-years away from us.

00:29:26Such fast radio bursts usually lasted no longer than a few milliseconds, but this one was

00:29:31unique.

00:29:32It lasted about 3 seconds, basically thousands of times longer than usual.

00:29:37And at the same time, the signal was very precise, so much so that scientists even compared

00:29:43it to a heartbeat.

00:29:46Scientists believe that this signal is caused by pulsars, or neutron stars.

00:29:50One time, Nikola Tesla caught something similar.

00:29:53But unfortunately, at that time, we didn't know about such things as pulsars, so Tesla

00:29:58was sure that he had caught a message from some extraterrestrial life.

00:30:03It's a pity that the truth turned out to be much more boring.

00:30:07But let's move on from the Earth to the Moon.

00:30:09In 1969, the astronauts of the Apollo 10 mission, the spacecraft that made the final test flight

00:30:15to the Moon, flew past its surface.

00:30:18And then they caught some strange signals coming from the dark side of the Moon, the

00:30:22side that we never see because the Moon is tidally locked to us.

00:30:27The sound was so weird that the astronauts weren't even sure whether to report it to

00:30:31NASA.

00:30:32They were afraid they wouldn't be taken seriously, and maybe even not allowed to participate

00:30:37in the next space missions.

00:30:38Here's what it sounded like.

00:30:44But according to NASA, it's not some creepy extraterrestrial music at all.

00:30:48These may just be some radio waves that affected each other because of their proximity, although

00:30:54the astronauts who heard it for the first time probably felt a little creeped out.

00:30:59Let's move to the other planets.

00:31:01Now 40 years ago, scientists actively explored the surface of Venus.

00:31:05They sent as many as 10 probes there, which were supposed to capture audio and video shooting

00:31:10from the surface.

00:31:11Now we know what Venus, which could easily destroy us at any attempt to even get close

00:31:16to it, sounds like.

00:31:19Horrifying.

00:31:20And you wouldn't expect anything else from the most dangerous planet in the Solar System.

00:31:27Unfortunately, Venus is even more toxic than the average Twitter user.

00:31:32So these probes didn't last too long.

00:31:34They heroically arrived on a planet and soon broke down.

00:31:38Next one is Jupiter.

00:31:40This space giant, which is 11 times larger than the Earth, never fails to scare us.

00:31:46One of NASA's probes, Juno, flies around Jupiter every few weeks.

00:31:50The probe is moving at a tremendous speed – 130,000 miles per hour.

00:31:55One day, Juno caught one of the strongest invisible signals it had ever encountered.

00:32:01This was the point at which the mad solar wind came into conflict with the magnetic

00:32:05field of Jupiter.

00:32:07It kind of sounded like a cosmic boom.

00:32:10The original sound lasted 2 hours, but it was compressed to a few seconds.

00:32:15It actually sounds more like a collision of a sea wave and a rock.

00:32:19But here, in terms of horror, Jupiter surprisingly loses to one of its small moons, Ganymede.

00:32:26In 2021, the Galileo space probe flew past Ganymede, and during its flight, it received

00:32:32a rather strange recording.

00:32:39These sounds are satellite radiation, and it's unclear whether it sounds like a cozy

00:32:44sunny day in the jungle, or like thousands of bats waiting for you in the night.

00:32:50Next one is Saturn.

00:32:51This signal was caught by the Cassini-Huygens Automatic Interplanetary Station, which was

00:32:56launched into space in 1997.

00:32:59When flying past Saturn, Cassini recorded a pretty scary sound.

00:33:05This terrifying cry of thousands of souls is actually just some radio waves.

00:33:10They aren't too different from what the auroras emit on Earth.

00:33:13A little later, Cassini received another recording.

00:33:16The sound's made by lightning and thunderstorms on Saturn.

00:33:20They sound pretty interesting too.

00:33:25More like popping corn or a Geiger counter, right?

00:33:28That's just because these lightning strikes have a crazy frequency.

00:33:32Moving on from the Solar System to outer space.

00:33:35The famous Voyager 1 was launched back in 1977, and continues to send us data even 40

00:33:42years after its launch.

00:33:43In 2012, it left the Solar System and entered interstellar space.

00:33:49And then, while abandoning its home, Voyager 1 detected the sound of plasma waves.

00:33:54The original recording lasted 7 months, but fortunately, scientists felt sorry for us

00:34:00and reduced it to 12 seconds.

00:34:03It isn't really eerie, but is still kind of unsettling.

00:34:07And although it feels like nothing can beat Saturn's horrors, let's end this tournament

00:34:12with one of the scariest objects in the Universe – a black hole.

00:34:16This sound was recorded by the Chandra Space Telescope.

00:34:20While studying a cluster of galaxies in the constellation Perseus, they discovered something

00:34:25strange.

00:34:26Some undulating movements appear from the center of the cluster.

00:34:30They spread out in all directions, like circles on the water.

00:34:35Scientists have suggested that this was caused by a supermassive black hole.

00:34:39The thing is, black holes don't always devour space objects entirely.

00:34:44Sometimes they kind of spit them out.

00:34:47This causes vibrations of gases, which we can convert into soundtracks.

00:34:52What's interesting is that the oscillation of each such wave actually lasts about 10

00:34:57million years.

00:34:58You're just listening to a very accelerated recording.

00:35:02Scientists have reduced the delay between oscillations by about 144 quadrillion times.

00:35:08So let's check it out.

00:35:10This is probably the eeriest sound from the whole list.

00:35:14When you look at photos taken from spaceships or the International Space Station that show

00:35:35sunlit objects like Earth or the Moon, something seems wrong.

00:35:40Space looks too empty.

00:35:42No magical scenery of a nighttime sky full of stars.

00:35:45It would be incredibly boring to go stargazing in space since the sky is always dark.

00:35:52During the daytime, the sky on our home planet is blue because of the diffusion of light.

00:35:57It happens when sunlight goes through the atmosphere.

00:36:00But if you were on the Moon or somewhere else in space, there would be no atmosphere to

00:36:04spread this light around.

00:36:05That's why the sky there would always appear black.

00:36:10But it doesn't mean less bright out there.

00:36:12If you were looking out the window of the space station, you'd see just as much direct

00:36:16sunlight as you would gazing out of your apartment window during a cloudless day.

00:36:21Maybe even more.

00:36:23When taking a picture on a sunny day, you'll probably use a short exposure, together with

00:36:28the narrow aperture setting on your camera.

00:36:30This way, just a short burst of light will get in.

00:36:33That's similar to how our pupils contract in sunlight so that they don't have to deal

00:36:37with too much light.

00:36:39And since it's just as bright up there in space, the process is the same when you take

00:36:43pictures of sunlit objects there.

00:36:46Using short exposure, you can get good, bright pictures of Earth or the surface of the Moon.

00:36:51But it also means there will be no stars in the picture.

00:36:54Even up there, stars are relatively dim.

00:36:57They don't emit enough light to show up in photos taken with such settings.

00:37:02Our home planet has a blue sky that slowly transforms into a beautiful orange-red palette

00:37:07at dusk and dawn.

00:37:09But if you ever get a chance to watch a sunset on Mars, you should expect the opposite, an

00:37:14orange-brown daytime sky that gets a bluish tint at sunset.

00:37:19First of all, Mars is farther away from the Sun than our planet.

00:37:23So when you're looking at the Sun from the Martian surface, of course, it looks fainter

00:37:27and smaller.

00:37:28And not just that.

00:37:29The Sun observed from Mars is just a bluish-white dot surrounded by a blue halo.

00:37:35The thin atmosphere of the red planet contains large dust particles.

00:37:39They create an effect called Mie scattering.

00:37:41It occurs when the diameter of particles in the atmosphere is almost the same as the wavelength

00:37:46of the scattered light.

00:37:48This effect filters out the red light from the Sun's rays.

00:37:51So only the blue light would reach your eyes on Mars.

00:37:56How come Earth doesn't have rings?

00:37:59All gas giants in our solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have such rings.

00:38:05Whereas the rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars don't.

00:38:10There are two theories about how rings can appear around a planet.

00:38:14They might be just some material left from the times when the planet was forming.

00:38:18Or they may be the remains of a moon that got destroyed by a collision with some space

00:38:22body or torn apart by the strong gravitational pull of its parent planet.

00:38:27The gas giants formed in the outer regions of our solar system, while all the rocky planets

00:38:32are in the inner part.

00:38:33So maybe the inner planets were more protected from potential collisions that could have

00:38:37formed their rings.

00:38:39There are also more moons in the outer regions of our solar system, which could be another

00:38:44reason why the planets there have rings.

00:38:47Also, bigger planets have stronger gravity.

00:38:50It means that they can keep their rings stable after they form.

00:38:54Some experts believe Earth used to have a ring system a long time ago.

00:38:58A Mars-sized object might have collided with our home planet, which probably created a

00:39:03dense ring of debris around it.

00:39:06Some scientists think that this debris formed not a ring but what we know today as the moon.

00:39:12There's probably a giant planet lurking at the edge of the solar system, far beyond Neptune.

00:39:19Scientists call this mysterious hypothetical world Planet 9.

00:39:23If it does exist, it's probably similar to Uranus or Neptune and 10 times more massive

00:39:28than our home planet.

00:39:30It's likely to circle around the Sun, but in the outer reaches of the solar system,

00:39:34about 20 times farther than Neptune.

00:39:38Another interesting theory says that Planet 9 could actually be a black hole the size

00:39:42of a grapefruit that warps space in a similar way a large planet would.

00:39:49Even though we once thought it was a rare substance in space, water exists all over

00:39:53our solar system.

00:39:55For example, you can often find it in asteroids and comets.

00:39:59It's also in craters on the moon and Mercury.

00:40:03We still don't know if there's enough water to support potential human colonies if we

00:40:07decide to move there, but some amount of water is definitely present there.

00:40:12Mars has water at its poles too.

00:40:15It's mostly hidden in the layers of ice and probably under the planet's dusty surface.

00:40:20Europa, Jupiter's moon, has some water too.

00:40:23This is the most likely candidate we know about to host life outside Earth.

00:40:27There's probably a whole ocean of liquid water under its frozen surface.

00:40:32It might actually contain twice as much water as all of Earth's oceans combined.

00:40:38Neptune is unexpectedly warm, even though it's 30 times as far from the Sun as our planet

00:40:43and receives less sunlight and heat.

00:40:46But it still radiates way more heat than it gets.

00:40:49It also has way more activity in its atmosphere than you'd suspect, especially if you compare

00:40:54it to its neighbor, Uranus.

00:40:57Both of these planets emit the same amount of heat, even though Uranus is much closer

00:41:02to the Sun.

00:41:03No one knows why.

00:41:05Neptune has extremely strong winds that can reach a speed of up to 1,500 miles per hour.

00:41:11Can they produce this heat?

00:41:13Or maybe it's because of the planet's core or its gravitational force?

00:41:18There's a monster black hole hurtling through space at a speed of 5 million miles per hour.

00:41:24Scientists located it with the Hubble Space Telescope.

00:41:27They believe it weighs as much as a billion suns.

00:41:30It was supposed to stay put in the center of its home galaxy, but some gravitational

00:41:34forces are pushing it around.

00:41:37At one point, this black hole is going to break free from its galaxy and continue roaming

00:41:42the universe.

00:41:43Luckily, it's still 8 billion years away from us.

00:41:47Solar storms are so powerful that they could leave us in complete darkness.

00:41:52Back in July 2012, the strongest solar storm in over 150 years narrowly missed Earth.

00:42:00Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are large bubbles of ionized gas.

00:42:05They tore through our orbit back then.

00:42:07If they had caught our planet in the crosshairs, we would have literally been in the firing

00:42:12line.

00:42:13We'd have faced solar matter hurtling towards Earth, damaging computers and causing power

00:42:17outages that would have lasted for months.

00:42:21A surprise solar storm hit us on June 25, 2022.

00:42:25One photographer even managed to capture stunning bright auroras that flashed across the dawn

00:42:29sky in Calgary, Canada, and lasted for 5 minutes.

00:42:33They were caused by the storm.

00:42:37Vampire stars are a real thing.

00:42:39They're part of a binary star, and they can literally drain the life out of the other

00:42:43star in the system.

00:42:45They do it to keep burning for a longer time.

00:42:48It works like this.

00:42:49A smaller star with a lower mass steals its sibling's hydrogen fuel to increase its

00:42:54own mass.

00:42:55This vampire star then becomes hotter.

00:42:58Plus, its color changes to striking blue.

00:43:01This way, it looks much younger.

00:43:03How sneaky!

00:43:06The color of the universe is dubbed Cosmic Latte.

00:43:09The light coming from our galaxies and stars within them, as well as clouds of gas and

00:43:14dust in the observable universe, have a specific color.

00:43:18It's an ivory tint, pretty close to white.

00:43:21The universe is beige because there are a bit more areas that produce green, yellow,

00:43:26and red light than those that emit blue.

00:43:32Our Sun is an average-sized star, and still, it could fit 1,300,000 Earths.

00:43:39The star is also 333,000 times as heavy as our planet.

00:43:44NASA has translated radio waves created by planets' atmospheres into audible sounds.

00:43:50That's how astronomers found out that Neptune sounds like ocean waves, Jupiter like being

00:43:56underwater, and Saturn's voice resembles background music to a horror movie.

00:44:02Here on Earth, it's bebop jazz.

00:44:05Now I made that up.

00:44:07The Sun's surface is scorching hot, but a bolt of lightning is five times hotter.

00:44:13Earth gets struck by 100 lightning bolts every second, which results in 8 million lightning

00:44:19strikes a day and around 3 billion a year.

00:44:25If you manage to go to the Moon one day and see fresh footprints, that doesn't mean there's

00:44:29someone else there with you.

00:44:33Footprints or similar marks can last for a million years over there.

00:44:37Because the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere.

00:44:39There are no winds, not even a breeze, that can slowly erase those footprints.

00:44:46Astronomers have found the largest hole we've ever seen in the Universe.

00:44:50It's the giant void that spreads a billion light-years across.

00:44:54They found it accidentally.

00:44:56One of the research team members was a little bored and wanted to check how things are going

00:45:01in the direction of the cold spot.

00:45:03That's an anomaly in the Cosmic Microwave Background Map, or CMB for short.

00:45:09It's a faint glow of light that falls on our planet from different directions and fills

00:45:13the Universe.

00:45:14It's been streaming through space for almost 14 billion years as the afterglow that occurred

00:45:20after the Big Bang.

00:45:23So you'll fall right into the heart of the black hole and prepare for a sad end.

00:45:28Well, you don't have to.

00:45:30Falling into a black hole won't necessarily destroy you or your spaceship.

00:45:34You have to choose a bigger black hole to survive.

00:45:39If you fall into a small black hole, its event horizon is too narrow, and the gravity

00:45:43increases every inch down.

00:45:46So if you extend your arm forward, the gravity on your fingers is much stronger than on your

00:45:50elbow.

00:45:51This will make your hand lengthen, and you'll feel some… discomfort.

00:45:56Rather significant, to be honest.

00:45:58Things change if you fall into a supermassive black hole, like the ones in the center of

00:46:03galaxies.

00:46:04They can be millions of times heavier than the Sun.

00:46:07Your event horizon is wide, and the gravity doesn't change as quickly.

00:46:11So the force you'll feel at your heels and at the top of your head will be about the

00:46:16same.

00:46:17And you can go all the way to the heart of the black hole.

00:46:20This myth is busted.

00:46:23If you watch a very touching movie in space and start crying, your tears won't run down.

00:46:29They will gather around the eyeballs.

00:46:32Your eyes will get too dry, so you'll feel like they're burning.

00:46:36Any exposed liquid on your body will vaporize, including the surfaces of your tongue.

00:46:41Speaking of burning, that's one thing fire can't do in space.

00:46:45Fire can spread when there's a flow of oxygen, and since there's not any in space, well…

00:46:52Once they explode, stars aren't supposed to come back to life.

00:46:56But some of the stars somehow have survived the great supernova explosion.

00:47:01Such zombie stars are pretty rare.

00:47:04Scientists found a really big one called LP40365.

00:47:08It's a partially burnt white dwarf.

00:47:12A white dwarf is a star that burned up all of the hydrogen, and that hydrogen was previously

00:47:17its nuclear fuel.

00:47:19In this case, the final explosion was maybe weaker than it usually is, not powerful enough

00:47:25to destroy the entire star.

00:47:27It's like a star wanted to explode but didn't make it, which is why part of the matter still

00:47:33survived.

00:47:35If you ever go into space, don't take off your spacesuit unless you're on a spaceship.

00:47:40Air in your lungs would expand, as well as the oxygen in the rest of your body.

00:47:44You'd be like a balloon, twice your regular size.

00:47:49Good news, the skin is elastic enough to hold you together, which means you wouldn't explode.

00:47:54Small comfort.

00:47:56When something goes into a black hole, it changes shape and gets stretched out just

00:48:00like spaghetti.

00:48:02This happens because gravitational force is trying to scratch an object in one direction

00:48:07but at the same time squeeze it into another, like a pasta paradox.

00:48:12Speaking of, a black hole that's as big as a single atom has the mass of a really

00:48:17big mountain.

00:48:20There's one at the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A. It has a mass like for

00:48:25a billion suns, but luckily, it's far away from us.

00:48:31If you made a big boom on an asteroid, you'd never be able to hear its loud sound.

00:48:36Yes, we often hear the sound of spaceships and battles in space in the movies, but that's

00:48:41just a myth.

00:48:43Sound is a wave that spreads because of the vibrations of molecules.

00:48:47A person claps a few feet away from you, the sound wave begins to push the first air molecule

00:48:53next to the clap, then the second, third, and so on, until the wave reaches your ear.

00:48:59So to spread sound, we need molecules like air or water.

00:49:03In our atmosphere, sound waves spread out just fine.

00:49:06But space is a vacuum, so it's nothing here.

00:49:10You can clap your hands loudly there, but there just won't be any molecules that can

00:49:14vibrate and carry that sound.

00:49:16So to carry on a conversation, you'd either need a radio or really good lip-reading skills.

00:49:24Astronauts orbit the Sun, while the majority of human-made debris orbits our planet.

00:49:30For example, we launched almost 9,000 spacecraft around the world from satellites to rocket

00:49:36ships.

00:49:37Even the tiniest pieces can damage a spacecraft at such high speeds.

00:49:41Galaxies, planets, comets, asteroids, stars, space bodies are things we can actually see

00:49:48in space.

00:49:49But they make up less than 5% of the total universe.

00:49:54Dark matter, one of the biggest mysteries in space, is the name we use for all the mass

00:49:58in the universe that's still invisible to us.

00:50:02And there's a lot of it, it may even make up 25% of the universe.

00:50:06Dark energy makes the other 70% of the universe.

00:50:11That adds up to 100, right?

00:50:14Now let's look at the Moon.

00:50:15It always looks at us with one side.

00:50:18This means the Moon has a dark side, and the Sun's rays never get there.

00:50:23Well, that's a myth.

00:50:24The whole point is that the Moon is gravitationally locked to the Earth.

00:50:29There are days and nights there too.

00:50:31It's just that this rotation is perfectly aligned with the rotation of the Earth.

00:50:36So whenever you look at the Moon, you only see one side.

00:50:39Although there are days when the Sun shines there too, so it's not the dark side, it's

00:50:44the far side.

00:50:46And we even have pictures of this place.

00:50:48And there's one of the biggest craters in our entire solar system.

00:50:52The South Pole-Aitken Basin is as wide as two states of Texas.

00:50:57Yeehaw!

00:50:58One myth that turned out to be untrue is that people have never actually been on the Moon.

00:51:05This is the original space suit of the first astronauts who were there.

00:51:09Look at the sole of the shoe.

00:51:11Some people claim there's no way they could've left footprints like this there.

00:51:15Actually they could.

00:51:17On the Moon, the astronauts wore extra boots over their suits, and their soles matched

00:51:21the footprints on the Moon perfectly.

00:51:24The astronauts didn't need them when they left the Moon and tossed them when the Moon

00:51:28walk was over.

00:51:30They left a lot of stuff there too.

00:51:32They even tossed the armrests of the seats in the lunar module to reduce the weight.

00:51:37Now counting all the Apollo lunar missions, the total weight of rubbish on the Moon is

00:51:41approximately 187 tons, including several lunar rovers, spacecraft debris, 6 lunar modules,

00:51:50and all the experiments left behind.

00:51:52That's like 3 Boeing 737s.

00:51:55Another myth about the Sun is that it's yellow.

00:51:58Let's send you into space for this one.

00:52:00You look out the window, and… it's white!

00:52:03The Sun only appears yellow to us through the filter of our atmosphere.

00:52:07The composition of the air and its thickness just distorts the light of the star.

00:52:12But stars do come in different colors.

00:52:15Cooler stars have bright orange and red colors.

00:52:18These are usually very old stars, older than our Sun.

00:52:22But young and very hot stars are bright blue.

00:52:25The Sun is about in the middle of this spectrum.

00:52:28Oh, one more myth about asteroids.

00:52:31We need to fly a little farther than Mars' orbit.

00:52:34Whoa, we're in an asteroid belt, and we constantly have to dodge giant rocks and blocks

00:52:40of ice.

00:52:41We got in some dense asteroid clouds… not true.

00:52:45The fact is that space is huge, and the distances are incredible.

00:52:50All the rocks and debris in the asteroid belt are only 4% of the weight of the Moon.

00:52:55So there really aren't that many of them there.

00:52:58To understand the dimension of the emptiness in space, look at the collision of two galaxies.

00:53:04There are billions of stars in each of them.

00:53:07If we mix them up, it's unlikely there will be any collisions even here.

00:53:13It's normal for planets to be a bit tilted on the side.

00:53:18The Earth is tilted at a 23-degree angle.

00:53:21That's why we have seasons.

00:53:22It's summer when the part of the world where you are leans closer to the Sun.

00:53:26It works the opposite way too – it's winter when you lean away from it.

00:53:30But Uranus is tilted more than normal.

00:53:33It lies at a 98-degree angle, which has a huge effect on its seasons.

00:53:38Each season on Uranus takes 21 years to play out.

00:53:42Something to think about the next time we complain that winter lasts forever.

00:53:46Here on Earth, we measure distances in minutes and hours, maybe even days.

00:53:51It takes 10 minutes to walk to your best friend's house, or 15 minutes to drive to your favorite

00:53:56cafe.

00:53:57But in space, it's different.

00:53:58It's vast, which means we measure how long it takes to get to a certain point in years,

00:54:03or in most cases, light-years.

00:54:06So if you want to walk to the Moon one day, that would take you 9 years to span the 239th

00:54:11thousand miles.

00:54:13Perhaps you'd like to take a ride to the nearby star, Proxima Centauri.

00:54:17Maybe if you kept the pedal to the metal at a constant speed of 70 mph, you'd get there

00:54:22in about 356 billion hours, or around 40.5 million years.

00:54:28Trust me, after the first 20 million years, you'd be second-guessing yourself as to

00:54:32why go there in the first place.

00:54:34Mars contains the biggest valley, Valles Marineris, we've discovered so far.

00:54:39It's a pretty impressive system of canyons, 2,500 miles long.

00:54:44It's five times longer than the Grand Canyon.

00:54:47Researchers first spotted it back in the 1970s.

00:54:50A bank of volcanoes located on the other side of the canyon ridge probably helped form this

00:54:55valley.

00:54:56We haven't discovered a planet completely made of diamonds yet, but on some planets,

00:55:00it actually rains diamonds.

00:55:02On Jupiter and Saturn, gas giants of our solar system, lightning storms turn abundant methane

00:55:08into soot, which we also know as carbon.

00:55:11The soot falls and transforms into graphite.

00:55:14Further graphite transforms into diamonds with a diameter of about 0.4 inches.

00:55:20Before you start figuring out how to book a diamond-collecting field trip, know that

00:55:24these diamonds don't last.

00:55:26After they enter the planet's core, they melt.

00:55:29Ever notice how when you're stargazing two nights in a row at the same time, let's say

00:55:339 pm, the stars stay in the same place, but the moon doesn't?

00:55:38Well, there are two reasons for that.

00:55:40First, it depends on what time you go stargazing.

00:55:43For instance, if you go outside at 8 pm, and tomorrow you look for it at 11 pm, you'll

00:55:48see the moon in two pretty different places.

00:55:51In this case, even the stars take different places in the sky since our planet is spinning.

00:55:57As you know, it takes 24 hours for it to make one full circle.

00:56:00That means, from our point of view, it seems like both the sky and everything up there

00:56:05is just moving around us one time per 24 hours.

00:56:08In the same way, the sun changes its position, rising and setting every day.

00:56:13So, if you went outside two nights in a row at the same hour, in most cases, you'll

00:56:18have to wait for an extra half-hour or more until the moon gets back to the same position

00:56:23as the night before.

00:56:24The stars are pretty much standing still.

00:56:26It seems like they're moving, but that's because the Earth is spinning.

00:56:30The moon is actually moving around our planet and goes through different phases.

00:56:35For example, a new moon is when it's completely dark in the sky.

00:56:38A full moon is when its day side is facing the Earth.

00:56:42It takes approximately a month for it to finish one circle around the Earth.

00:56:46Maybe you'd be luckier on a diamond-collecting expedition on this next planet, 40 million

00:56:51light-years away from Earth.

00:56:53Scientists used to call it a super-Earth.

00:56:54Now, a super-Earth is generally a planet way bigger than ours.

00:56:59This planet, for example, is double the Earth's size.

00:57:02It's so close to its star that it makes a full circle around it in less than 18 hours,

00:57:07which means a year there is pretty short.

00:57:10Since it's so close to its star, its temperature goes up a whopping 4,900 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:57:17Because of the heat, in combination with the planet's density, scientists have the theory

00:57:21that its core is made of carbon in the form of graphite and diamonds.

00:57:26Over 10 years ago, astronomers discovered a huge water-vapor cloud.

00:57:31It was 12 billion light-years from our home planet.

00:57:34That cloud is the biggest source of water we know of.

00:57:37It's also the oldest, dating back to when the Universe was only 1.6 billion years old.

00:57:42Now it's 13.8 billion years old.

00:57:45Man, if only I had started a savings account 12 billion years ago!

00:57:50With compound interest, I'd have made quite a pile of cash by now.

00:57:54But I wasn't around then.

00:57:55Anyway, this cloud is so large, it holds 140 trillion times the amount of water in

00:58:01all the oceans on our planet.

00:58:04This cloud kinda feeds a black hole.

00:58:06It may also contain enough gases, such as carbon monoxide, to encourage the black hole

00:58:11to grow 6 times bigger than it is at the moment.

00:58:15The average temperature of our planet is about 57 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:58:19And the highest temperature ever measured was 134 degrees.

00:58:23Sound too hot?

00:58:24Well, on Venus, it can go up to 900 degrees, which makes it the hottest planet in our solar

00:58:29system.

00:58:30It's not hot enough to melt steel, though.

00:58:33It would need to be higher by 2,500 degrees to get there.

00:58:37But it's hot enough to melt lead.

00:58:39And it's way too hot to sustain life, at least not in any form that we know.

00:58:44Venus is not even the closest to the Sun, it's Mercury.

00:58:47But it has a super-thick atmosphere that traps greenhouse gases.

00:58:51It's like you covering yourself with a pretty thick blanket in the middle of the summer.

00:58:56Now we're used to seeing volcanoes spewing hot molten lava.

00:59:00After all, that's what they mostly do on Earth.

00:59:02But in space, volcanoes tend to spew methane, water, or ammonia.

00:59:07And these materials freeze as they erupt and eventually transform into frozen vapor and

00:59:12something called volcanic snow.

00:59:14I'm talking about cryovolcanoes here.

00:59:17You can find them on Jupiter's moons, Io and Europa, Saturn's moon, Titan, and Pluto.

00:59:23These volcanoes are especially active on Io, which has hundreds of vents.

00:59:28NASA vehicles have even captured some of these erupting in real-time.

00:59:32Plumes of frozen vapor coming out of them extended for about 250 miles.

00:59:36Hey, by the way, they just discovered another moon around Jupiter that might actually be

00:59:42good for farming someday.

00:59:44It's named E-I-E-I-O.

00:59:47Now what exactly happens to the light after it disappears inside of a black hole?

00:59:52Well, photon is a particle of light.

00:59:54The event horizon is the boundary of a black hole.

00:59:58When something, say, a photon, crosses the line and enters those boundaries, it can't

01:00:02escape anymore.

01:00:04But it doesn't mean a black hole destroyed it.

01:00:06It pulls the photon in rapidly towards its center, where an enormous mass is packed into

01:00:11an infinitely small space.

01:00:14But we're not sure what happens to photons in such extreme conditions.

01:00:18It's still one of the biggest mysteries.

01:00:20Does a black hole destroy the light or not?

01:00:23Saturn has 82 moons we know about, 53 confirmed and 29 more that are still on the waiting

01:00:29list to be confirmed as actual moons before they get their official names.

01:00:34And one of the coolest moons might be a 914-mile-wide hunk of rock called Aepetus.

01:00:41It's dark on one side and bright on the other.

01:00:44Its lighter half is 20 times more reflective than the other one.

01:00:47As it turned out, the bright side is ice.

01:00:50The dark side is a bit more complicated.

01:00:52One theory says it's dark because of particles coming from another moon, the one named Phoebe.

01:00:58Another theory says it could be because of heat.

01:01:01Since the moon is rotating really slowly, its dark material is absorbing heat, which

01:01:06makes it even darker.

01:01:08Now how big do you think a black hole can become?

01:01:11In theory, we can't find an upper limit to its mass.

01:01:14But astronomers believe the ultramassive black holes, or UMBHs, located in the cores of certain

01:01:20galaxies are mostly up to 10 billion solar masses big.

01:01:24Recently, they even discovered these UMBHs physically can't grow much more than this

01:01:29because, in that case, they would start to disrupt the accretion disks that feed them.

01:01:35That way, they would kind of stuff the source of new material.

01:01:39Most people pictured the universe as somewhere between aquamarine and pale turquoise.

01:01:44Even some researchers thought that was the case.

01:01:46They managed to determine the cosmic color by combining light from more than 200,000

01:01:51galaxies within 2 billion light-years of our planet.

01:01:54But the real color is actually closer to beige.

01:01:58Researchers got it all wrong because there was a bug in the software.

01:02:01No, really?

01:02:03It converted the cosmic spectrum into the color our eyes would see if we were exposed

01:02:08to it.

01:02:09So, the team defined this color as a cosmic latte.

01:02:12Ooh, make that a double-shot low-fat large to go, please!

01:02:16Wow!

01:02:17The James Webb Telescope has been fully deployed!

01:02:20If you're interested in astronomy or space, you've got to be excited about the James

01:02:24Webb Space Telescope.

01:02:25Here's why.

01:02:27For starters, it's huge.

01:02:28How huge?

01:02:29The primary mirror of the JWST is over 21 feet wide.

01:02:34The Hubble Space Telescope, the previous largest eye in space, has a mirror of about

01:02:387 feet, 10.5 inches.

01:02:41By comparison, if you placed the two telescopes side-by-side, it'd be like putting a horse

01:02:45next to an elephant.

01:02:46And elephants are enormous.

01:02:48There's a perfect reason why the Webb, as it's affectionately called, is massive.

01:02:53It has to be huge because it's not an optical telescope in the traditional sense that most

01:02:58telescopes are.

01:02:59The JWST is an infrared telescope.

01:03:03It sees heat.

01:03:05Infrared light has a longer wavelength than visible light, so it needs a larger mirror

01:03:09to focus that light.

01:03:11So what do we have here with the James Webb Space Telescope?

01:03:14We have two never-before things going on.

01:03:18We have incredible technology and incredible science missions.

01:03:22Both the missions and the technology are out-of-this-world cutting edge.

01:03:27The Webb is a classic example of engineering in the service of science.

01:03:31Because of its greater light-gathering power, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able

01:03:35to take images of things that we were never able to see before, but have always wanted

01:03:40to see.

01:03:41Things like exoplanets, and the first galaxies in the universe, and stars and planets forming

01:03:46inside nebulae.

01:03:48And you can bet that there'll be plenty of surprises, too.

01:03:51The James Webb Space Telescope has several technological tricks up its sleeve, which

01:03:56promise to provide its greatest scientific discoveries.

01:03:59The Webb has a coronagraph, and a very special coronagraph at that.

01:04:04The coronagraph is the tool that will allow the first real pictures of exoplanets.

01:04:10The coronagraph blocks out the bright pinpoint light of stars, which we already know have

01:04:14planets orbiting around them.

01:04:16Without the coronagraph, the starlight would make things too bright to see these planets,

01:04:21because planets are hundreds of thousands of times dimmer than the star.

01:04:25With the coronagraph blocking the starlight, the exoplanets come into view.

01:04:29And the JWST coronagraph can block the light from up to a hundred stars at once.

01:04:35We can expect a swarm of exoplanets.

01:04:38This brings us to the next high-tech gadget the JWST has up its sleeve, a no-slit spectrograph.

01:04:44Usually, an ordinary spectrograph will have a slit to allow a sliver of light to enter

01:04:49and be diffracted.

01:04:51Diffraction is the scattering of light to reveal the spectrum of the light's component

01:04:55wavelengths.

01:04:56But the James Webb Space Telescope's work is so sensitive that a sliver of light would

01:05:01overwhelm the optics.

01:05:03So a no-slit spectrograph was installed.

01:05:06The starlight gathered from the big mirror is sent into a fiber-optic cable to send only

01:05:11a single spot of light into the spectroscope.

01:05:14And that's where the grism takes over.

01:05:17Sir Isaac Newton used a prism to discover the spectrum of sunlight.

01:05:21Roy G. Biff, as you may recall.

01:05:23But the Webb uses a grism.

01:05:26That's a compound word, like smog, which is smoke and fog.

01:05:30A grism is a graded prism.

01:05:33That means it has itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny grooves that diffract the spot of light the big mirror

01:05:38sends down the fiber-optic cable and into the spectrograph.

01:05:41The science of reading a spectrum of light is called spectroscopy.

01:05:46By analyzing the spectra of light from the exoplanets, the JWST will determine what gases

01:05:52are in the planet's atmospheres, as well as their density and even their temperature.

01:05:56It's an incredible advance in our knowledge.

01:05:59We'll be able to tell if a planet has oxygen or nitrogen or methane and other gases that

01:06:04may or may not indicate that the planet is habitable.

01:06:08Another Earth, perhaps.

01:06:10Presently, the JWST is parked in its permanent location.

01:06:15Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits the Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope

01:06:20orbits the Sun.

01:06:21It orbits the Sun at one of the gravitational balance points between the Earth-Sun system.

01:06:26It just stays there, without having to use much or any fuel to hold its position.

01:06:31So as the Earth orbits the Sun, the James Webb remains parked at a spot that is also

01:06:36orbiting the Sun.

01:06:38There are five gravitational balance points between the Earth and Sun.

01:06:42They are called Lagrange points, after their discoverer Joseph-Louis Lagrange in the 18th

01:06:47century.

01:06:48The Webb is parked at L2, the second of the five Lagrange points which lies 932,000 miles

01:06:55out into space, way beyond the Moon.

01:06:58All this to observe a spot of infrared light.

01:07:01But first, the engineers must get, or acquire, that spot of light.

01:07:06To get a spot of infrared light, the 18 hexagonal mirrors had to be unfolded from their position,

01:07:12inside the Ariane rocket that sent the Webb into space.

01:07:16Once the mirrors have unfolded, their positions must be adjusted to microscopic level accuracy

01:07:21so that all 18 mirrors produce a single image.

01:07:25Several tiny motors are attached to each mirror segment to make these adjustments.

01:07:29These motors, which must be activated individually, will gradually pull the honeycomb-like mirror

01:07:34segments into alignment.

01:07:36It's a critical part of the mission, and takes months to complete.

01:07:40To align the mirrors to produce a single spot of light, the James Webb Space Telescope

01:07:44can't be jiggling around.

01:07:46The telescope must be kept absolutely motionless, and that requires two other cutting-edge technologies,

01:07:52the sunshield and the cryo-cooler.

01:07:55In space, direct sunlight is very hot, and shadow is very cold.

01:08:01Therefore, the James Webb Space Telescope brought along its own high-tech sunshield.

01:08:06It's huge too, as big as a tennis court huge.

01:08:09Comprised of five individual layers of Kapton film only a millimeter thick, each layer of

01:08:15the sunshield has to be remotely deployed individually using a system of eight motors

01:08:20and 139 actuators with thousands of parts.

01:08:24The purpose of the sunshield is to help the JWST stay cold.

01:08:28The colder the better.

01:08:30And colder is what the cryo-cooler is for.

01:08:33Temperature can be measured three different ways, in degrees Fahrenheit, where water freezes

01:08:37at 32 degrees and boils at 212, in degrees Celsius, where water freezes at zero degrees

01:08:43and boils at 100 degrees.

01:08:45But neither of these thermometers have a starting point.

01:08:48So Lord Kelvin, in the 19th century, devised a third temperature scale, the Kelvin scale,

01:08:54which starts at absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible.

01:08:59The onboard cryo-cooler will cool the JWST to just 7 degrees Kelvin, 7 degrees above

01:09:06absolute zero.

01:09:08At this temperature, virtually all heat from motors is removed, and the telescope will

01:09:13be able to focus the light to a point without any noise, basically any motion interfering

01:09:18with the quality of the image.

01:09:20Finally, after all this incredible technology functions, remotely, as planned, we are almost

01:09:25ready to observe the infrared images from the giant multi-segmented mirror of the James

01:09:30Webb Space Telescope.

01:09:32Almost ready.

01:09:33A telescope can collect all the light it wants, but in the end, it must also be able

01:09:38to detect what it's collected.

01:09:40If the light is not detected, it's not truly observed.

01:09:44Enter the piece de resistance, the infrared detectors.

01:09:48The Webb has 15 of them.

01:09:50The specially fabricated semiconductor material produces a slight electrical charge when struck

01:09:55by a photon of infrared light.

01:09:57The Webb's infrared detectors can produce a million pixel high-def image.

01:10:02A few of the detectors can produce a 4 million pixel image.

01:10:06They must be durable enough to last 10 to 20 years without warping or corrupting, all

01:10:11while working at 7 degrees above absolute zero.

01:10:15In themselves, the infrared detectors on the JWST are an engineering marvel.

01:10:20But what are they going to take pictures of?

01:10:23Ah, the missions of the JWST.

01:10:25Well, they're cutting edge too.

01:10:28Seventy of the first 280 target observations are exoplanets.

01:10:32Is there another Earth?

01:10:34Which exoplanets seem habitable?

01:10:36The Webb Telescope will provide detailed spectroscopic analysis of the atmospheres of thousands of

01:10:41known exoplanets.

01:10:42For the first time, we will see images of exoplanets as they appear in infrared light.

01:10:49Cosmology, the study of the universe, is perhaps the primary mission for the Webb.

01:10:54Galaxies receding away so fast that their light is stretched into the infrared will

01:10:59be a prime target for observation.

01:11:02Hundreds of hours of observations are necessary to collect the faint infrared light from these

01:11:06first galaxies formed after the Big Bang.

01:11:09The JWST will give us a picture of what the infant universe looked like.

01:11:15Astronomers will learn new information about the dark energy that is driving the expansion

01:11:19of the universe and what role, if any, black holes play in the formation of galaxies.

01:11:25Star formation in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies is also part of the mission of the

01:11:29James Webb.

01:11:31By imaging hundreds of solar systems forming around newborn stars, astronomers will establish

01:11:36a definite history of solar system development.

01:11:39Now fact will replace theory, and a big step forward will be taken in our understanding

01:11:44of space.

01:11:46The James Webb Space Telescope is a bold endeavor that will mark an epoch time in scientific

01:11:52history.

01:11:53Venus most likely used to be covered with oceans, from 30 to 1,000 feet deep.

01:11:58Also, some water was locked in the soil of the planet.

01:12:02On top of that, Venus had stable temperatures of 68 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, which, you

01:12:08have to admit, was quite pleasant and not that different from the temperatures on Earth

01:12:12nowadays.

01:12:13So, what I'm getting at is that for 3 billion years, right until something irrevocable happened

01:12:19700 million years ago, Venus could've been habitable.

01:12:23But now it's not.

01:12:25The Moon is the second brightest object in our sky.

01:12:29At the same time, among other astronomical bodies, it's one of the dimmest and least

01:12:33reflective.

01:12:34Our natural satellite only seems bright because it's so close to Earth.

01:12:38For comparison, our planet looks much brighter when you look at it from space.

01:12:43That's because clouds, ice, and snow reflect way more light than most types of rock.

01:12:48Triton, Neptune's moon, has all its surface covered with several layers of ice.

01:12:54If this satellite replaced our current moon, the night sky would get 7 times brighter.

01:13:01Neutron stars are some of the smallest, yet most massive objects in space.

01:13:05They're usually about 12 miles in diameter, but are several times heavier than the Sun.

01:13:10Oh, and they also spin about 600 times per second, far faster than your average figure

01:13:16skater.

01:13:19Saturn is the least dense planet in the Solar System.

01:13:22It has one-eighth the average Earth's density.

01:13:25And still, because of its large volume, the planet is 95 times more massive than Earth.

01:13:32A transient lunar phenomenon is one of the most enigmatic things happening on the Moon.

01:13:37It's a short-lived light, color, or some other change on the satellite's surface.

01:13:41Most commonly, it's random flashes of light.

01:13:45Astronomers have been observing this phenomenon since the 1950s.

01:13:49They've noticed that the flashes occur randomly.

01:13:52Sometimes they can happen several times a week.

01:13:54After that, they disappear for several months.

01:13:57Some of them don't last longer than a couple of minutes, but there have been those that

01:14:01continued for hours.

01:14:03The year was 1969, one day before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.

01:14:09One of the mission participants noticed that one part of the lunar surface was more illuminated

01:14:14than the surrounding landscape.

01:14:15It looked as if that area had a kind of fluorescence to it.

01:14:19Unfortunately, it's still unclear if this phenomenon was connected with the mysterious

01:14:24lunar flashes.

01:14:26Trash isn't just a problem in Earth's oceans, cities, and forests.

01:14:29There is a thing called space junk, which is any human-made object that's been left

01:14:34in space and now serves no purpose.

01:14:37There's also natural debris from meteoroids and other cosmic objects.

01:14:41There are currently over 500,000 pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth at speeds

01:14:46high enough to cause significant damage if they were to collide with a spacecraft or

01:14:51satellite.

01:14:52NASA does its best to track every single object to ensure that missions outside Earth can

01:14:57reach their destination safely.

01:14:59Our Sun is insanely massive.

01:15:02Want some proof?

01:15:0499.86% of all the mass in the Solar System is the mass of the Sun.

01:15:09In particular, the hydrogen and helium it's made of.

01:15:13The remaining 0.14% is mostly the mass of the Solar System's 8 planets.

01:15:19The Sun's temperature is hotter than the surface of a star.

01:15:22The surface temperature reaches 10,000°F, but the upper atmosphere heats up to millions

01:15:28of degrees.

01:15:29If someone could dig a tunnel straight into the center of the planet and out the opposite

01:15:33side, and you were adventurous enough to jump into it, it would take you 42 minutes to fall

01:15:40to the other side.

01:15:41You'd speed up as you fell, reaching maximum speed by the time you reached Earth's core.

01:15:47After the halfway point, you would then fall upwards, getting slower and slower.

01:15:52By the time you reached the opposite surface, your speed would be back to zero.

01:15:56Unless you managed to climb out of the hole, you'd immediately start falling again, back

01:16:01down or up to the other side of the planet.

01:16:04This trip would go on forever, all thanks to the weird effects of gravity.

01:16:08A might be a fun way to spend an afternoon!

01:16:13There might be more metals, for example, titanium or iron, in lunar craters than astronomers

01:16:19used to think.

01:16:20The main problem with this finding?

01:16:22It contradicts the main theory about how the Moon was formed.

01:16:26That theory says that Earth's natural satellite was spun off from our planet after a collision

01:16:31with a massive space object.

01:16:33But then, why does Earth's metal-poor crust have much less iron oxide than the Moon's?

01:16:39It might mean the Moon was formed from the material lying much deeper inside our planet.

01:16:45Or these metals could've appeared when the molten lunar surface was slowly cooling down.

01:16:50Or maybe, as they've been saying for centuries, it's made of green cheese.

01:16:56Earth could've been purple before it turned blue and green.

01:17:00One scientist has a theory that a substance existed in ancient microbes before chlorophyll

01:17:04– that thing that makes plants green – evolved on Earth.

01:17:08This substance reflected sunlight in red and violet colors, which combined to make purple.

01:17:13If true, the young Earth may have been teeming with strange purple-colored critters before

01:17:18all the green stuff appeared.

01:17:21The highest mountain in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars.

01:17:25It's three times as high as Mount Everest, the Earth's highest mountain above sea level.

01:17:30If you were standing on top of Olympus Mons, you wouldn't understand you were standing

01:17:34on a mountain.

01:17:36Its slopes would be hidden by the planet's curvature.

01:17:41Astronomers have found a massive reservoir of water in space – the largest ever detected.

01:17:46Too bad it's also the farthest – 12 billion light-years away from us.

01:17:50The water vapor cloud holds 140 trillion times as much water as all the Earth's oceans

01:17:56combined.

01:17:57What are we supposed to do with that information?

01:18:00Venus spins at its own unhurried pace.

01:18:03A full rotation takes 243 Earth days, and it takes the planet a bit less than 225 Earth

01:18:09days to go all the way around the Sun.

01:18:12It means a day on Venus is longer than a year.

01:18:16There's very little seismic activity going on inside the Moon.

01:18:20Yet many moonquakes, caused by our planet's gravitational pull, sometimes happen several

01:18:25miles below the surface.

01:18:27After that, tiny cracks and fissures appear in the satellite's surface, and gases escape

01:18:32through them.

01:18:33Hey, they sometimes escape from me, too.

01:18:37Now Mars is the last of the inner planets, which are also called terrestrial since they're

01:18:42made up of rocks and metals.

01:18:44The red planet has a core made mostly of iron, nickel, and sulfur.

01:18:48It's between 900 and 1,200 miles across.

01:18:52The core doesn't move.

01:18:53That's why Mars lacks a planet-wide magnetic field.

01:18:56The weak magnetic field it has is just 1,100% of the Earth's.

01:19:03When the planets in the Solar System were just starting to form, Earth didn't have

01:19:08a moon for the longest time.

01:19:10It took 100 million years for our natural satellite to appear.

01:19:14There are several theories as to how the Moon came into existence, but the prevailing

01:19:18one is the fission theory.

01:19:22Somebody went fishin' and caught the Moon?

01:19:25Actually no.

01:19:26The fission theory proposes that the Moon was formed when an object collided with Earth,

01:19:31sending particles flying about.

01:19:33Gravity pulled the particles together, and the Moon was created.

01:19:37It eventually settled down on the Earth's ecliptic plane, which is the path that the

01:19:41Moon orbits.

01:19:42So, looks like the green cheese is off the table now.

01:19:47The largest single living thing on Earth turns out to be a mushroom in Oregon.

01:19:51This enormous honey mushroom lives in Malheur National Forest and covers an area of 3.7

01:19:57square miles.

01:19:58It could be as much as 8,500 years old.

01:20:02You could be forgiven for missing it, though, since most of it's hidden underground.

01:20:08When the roots of individual honey mushrooms meet, they can fuse together to become a single

01:20:13fungus, which explains how this one got so big.

01:20:16If you could gather all that mushrooming stuff into one big ball, it could weigh as much

01:20:21as 35,000 tons.

01:20:24That's about as heavy as 200 grey whales.

01:20:26Hey, that's a whale of a mushroom!

01:20:30The largest asteroid in the Solar System is called Vesta, and it's so big that it's

01:20:35sometimes even called a dwarf planet.

01:20:38A trip to the nearest star, apart from the Sun, would take you 5 million years on a commercial

01:20:43airplane.

01:20:44That's what I call a long-haul flight.

01:20:47Space isn't supposed to be black.

01:20:49There are stars everywhere.

01:20:51Shouldn't they light up everything around?

01:20:52Well, you don't see stars wherever you look because some of them haven't existed long

01:20:57enough for their light to reach Earth.

01:21:00A day on Uranus lasts 17 hours, 14 minutes, and 24 seconds.

01:21:05But get this, the planet has a tilt of around 98 degrees, and that makes a season on the

01:21:11gas giant last 21 Earth years.

01:21:15Some scientists believe that our planet used to have an additional satellite.

01:21:20According to their research, a small celestial body about 750 miles wide orbited Earth like

01:21:26a second moon.

01:21:27It most likely crashed into our main satellite later on.

01:21:31Such a collision could explain why the two sides of the moon look so different from each

01:21:35other, one being heavily cratered and rough.

01:21:38Or it could be the green cheese.

01:21:47At a distance of 640 light-years from the Sun, scientists discovered planet WASP-76b,

01:21:53where it rains iron.

01:21:55The planet is very close to its Sun and always turned to it in the same side.

01:22:00The term is tidally locked.

01:22:02The temperature on the sunny side is so high that metals melt and evaporate there.

01:22:07The other half of the planet is cool enough so that metals condense again and fall down

01:22:12as rain.

01:22:13Speaking of tidal locks, our Moon is the same way.

01:22:16There's no dark side to our satellite, it's just always turned to us with one side.

01:22:22When the Moon happens to be in between the Earth and the Sun, what we call its dark side

01:22:26becomes brightly lit.

01:22:28We just can't see it from our planet.

01:22:30Figures.

01:22:31A recent study claims that the Moon has a tail.

01:22:35And every month, it wraps around our planet like a scarf.

01:22:38A slender tail made up of millions of atoms of sodium follows Earth's natural satellite.

01:22:44And our planet regularly travels directly through it.

01:22:47Astronomers' strikes blast these sodium atoms out of the Moon's surface and further

01:22:51into space.

01:22:53You won't believe it, but the Moon seems to be shrinking.

01:22:56Earth's natural satellite is now 150 feet smaller than it used to be hundreds of billions

01:23:02of years ago.

01:23:03The reason for this phenomenon might be the cooling of the Moon's insides.

01:23:08It could also explain the quakes shaking the surface of our planet's natural satellite.

01:23:13Astronomers have recently found out that Mars is seismically active.

01:23:17Earthquakes occur there on a regular basis.

01:23:20For several days every month, the Moon remains between the Sun and our planet.

01:23:25That's when Earth's gravity picks up that sodium tail.

01:23:28Our planet drags it into a long stripe that wraps around its atmosphere.

01:23:33This lunar tail is totally harmless.

01:23:36It's also invisible to the human eye, 50 times dimmer than what you can perceive.

01:23:41But on those rare days, high-powered telescopes can spot its faint yellowish glow in the sky.

01:23:47The tail looks like a gleaming spot that's 5 times the Moon's full diameter.

01:23:53Turns out there are plenty of planets in the Universe, and even in the Milky Way galaxy,

01:23:57that have liquid or frozen water on them.

01:24:00The closest one is within our solar system.

01:24:02It's Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.

01:24:05Scientists are almost sure that, underneath its frozen surface, there's an actual ocean

01:24:10of water.

01:24:11But it's too soon to be hyped about possible life on such planets.

01:24:16Liquid water is only one of many things that have to come together for life to appear on

01:24:20a planet.

01:24:21A star in the galaxy GSN 069 is likely to turn into a planet the size of Jupiter in

01:24:28the next trillion years.

01:24:29It might happen because of the stars' regular encounters with a black hole.

01:24:34First, astronomers noticed unusual X-ray bursts that were strangely bright.

01:24:39They went off every 9 hours.

01:24:41After studying this phenomenon for some time, the scientists realized it was a star moving

01:24:46in a unique orbit around a black hole.

01:24:49The dazzling flashes?

01:24:51It was the material getting slurped off the star's surface by the black hole.

01:24:55It turned out that over millions of years, the black hole had already transformed the

01:25:00red giant into a white dwarf, and the process isn't going to stop whatsoever.

01:25:06Astronomers have found some traces of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus.

01:25:10On our planet, this gas, colorless and flammable, is often found where microbes live.

01:25:16No wonder a new theory suggests that there might be life on Venus.

01:25:20But even if there was some life on the evening star, it could have only appeared in its atmosphere.

01:25:26Probably no living organism would be able to survive the planet's extreme environment.

01:25:31Venus's surface is extremely dry, there's no liquid water on the planet, and the pressure

01:25:36there is 90 times greater than that on Earth's surface.

01:25:39The temperatures often rise higher than 900°F, that's hot enough to melt some metals.

01:25:45As for vacations there, I'll pass.

01:25:48In fact, there's a place millions of light-years away where there's a whole floating space

01:25:53cloud made entirely of water.

01:25:56There's so much of it that we could fill all our oceans 140 trillion times over.

01:26:01Slightly more than what we need.

01:26:03Water on Earth is actually a puzzle shrouded in mystery and covered with riddles.

01:26:08The most popular theory is that it was brought to our planet by icy comets and asteroids

01:26:13that left behind not only mighty craters, but the liquid substance thanks to which we

01:26:18can now thrive.

01:26:19But in space, there's a whole lot of organic matter, and under specific conditions, it

01:26:25could yield so much water, it would be enough to fill our oceans thousands of times over.

01:26:31Researchers conducted an experiment in which they heated this organic matter and obtained

01:26:35clear water and oil.

01:26:37If this is confirmed in future studies, it could mean that even oil appeared on Earth

01:26:42not only thanks to fossilized remains of living beings, but came from outer space as well.

01:26:49And yet, there might just be about 6 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy

01:26:53alone.

01:26:54The latest data has shown that every fifth Sun-like star can have at least one planet

01:26:59in its habitable zone.

01:27:01And not just any planet, mind you, it has a rocky core and surface, and it's of comparable

01:27:06size to the Earth.

01:27:08Being inside the habitable zone of its star, such a planet would have high chances of becoming

01:27:13home to living creatures, microbes at least.

01:27:16And if there are billions of these planets in our galaxy, you could safely say that at

01:27:21least one of them is not only habitable, but inhabited already.

01:27:26And now, multiply this by the number of galaxies in the universe, also considering that many

01:27:31of them are much bigger than the Milky Way.

01:27:34This gives us billions upon billions of Sun-like stars and Earth-like planets, and some of

01:27:39them are surely more like ours than others.

01:27:42And get this, we might be able to walk upright because of supernova explosions.

01:27:47About 2.5 million years ago, a supernova sent cosmic rays to our planet.

01:27:52They triggered a series of electrical storms in the Earth's atmosphere, which turned into

01:27:57thunderstorms.

01:27:58These storms, in turn, caused wildfires in Northeast Africa, where our earlier ancestors

01:28:03lived.

01:28:04Fires turned the forest area into a savanna, the atmospheric pressure changed, and our

01:28:09ancestors had to stand on two legs to survive.

01:28:12The biggest explosion since the Big Bang was registered in 2019.

01:28:17This happened in the Ophiuchus Cluster, which unites thousands of galaxies.

01:28:21According to scientists, the blast was equal to 20 billion billion – that's 18 zeros

01:28:26– megaton explosions happening once a millisecond for 240 million years.

01:28:31Um, I'll have to trust that, my math is not that good.

01:28:35In 2019, NASA's InSight lander, whose goal was to study the interior of Mars, registered

01:28:41the first Mars quake ever.

01:28:43These quakes were coming fast, about two per day.

01:28:46Most of them were tiny, you wouldn't even feel them if they happened on our planet.

01:28:50So far, more than 300 Mars quakes have been detected.

01:28:54Those are the first quakes on any space body other than Earth and the Moon.

01:28:59Another mysterious phenomenon discovered by the mission was bizarre magnetic pulses.

01:29:04They occurred every midnight around the lander.

01:29:06It's still unclear what those pulses were.

01:29:09Maybe after midnight, they're going to let it all hang out, or something.

01:29:13Pluto's atmosphere rises much higher above the surface of the dwarf planet than, let's

01:29:18say, Earth's.

01:29:19It also has more than 20 layers, all of them freezing cold and extremely condensed.

01:29:25Remember the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth?

01:29:27Hey, I wasn't around then.

01:29:29But who could forget?

01:29:30There might've been another space show that ended badly for at least 75% of all life on

01:29:35our planet in the past.

01:29:37Roughly 360 million years ago, a supernova explosion occurred about 65 light-years away

01:29:43from us, and the cosmic rays sent by it swept away the ozone layer of our pretty blue ball.

01:29:50Wow, tough neighborhood.

01:29:55Many people would like to fly into space.

01:29:57Zero gravity, a stunning view of Earth from one side, and the boundlessly frightening

01:30:02black area from the other.

01:30:03Yeah, it's all cool.

01:30:05But don't forget that this journey can turn into a nightmare.

01:30:09Lack of oxygen, floating in outer space and staying in a spaceship for a long time without

01:30:14understanding when you can return home.

01:30:17This last thing happened to a Russian cosmonaut.

01:30:21His stay in space is one of the longest in the world.

01:30:2433-year-old flight engineer Sergei Krikalev spent 311 days in zero gravity on the Mir

01:30:30space station.

01:30:32But that's not the most interesting part of this story.

01:30:34Sergei's long journey began on May 18, 1991.

01:30:39That day, he boarded a transport ship and went into space to the Mir space station.

01:30:44On May 20, the docking with the station was completed.

01:30:47There, together with another engineer, Sergei performed his space duties.

01:30:52They went on spacewalks several times, did repairs, took care of the station, and conducted

01:30:57scientific experiments.

01:30:59When you have company and a lot of work, living in space is not so hard.

01:31:03But things got worse on the day when Sergei was supposed to return home.

01:31:07According to the plan, the mission should have lasted for five months.

01:31:11A new astronaut was supposed to replace the old ones.

01:31:15The transport ship had finally docked with the station.

01:31:18But on October 10, only one astronaut returned to Earth.

01:31:21Sergei was left alone at the Mir station.

01:31:24He continued to work as the sole flight engineer of the crew.

01:31:27The station couldn't remain empty.

01:31:29They had to send someone to replace Sergei.

01:31:32He wasn't ready for such a long stay in space.

01:31:34He hadn't trained for it.

01:31:36But there was no choice.

01:31:37He couldn't just leave the station.

01:31:40One month passed.

01:31:41They informed Sergei that he would return home soon.

01:31:44But something happened that no one expected.

01:31:47They contacted Sergei and said he couldn't return, since the country that promised to

01:31:52bring him home no longer existed.

01:31:54During this time, a big crisis began in Russia.

01:31:58The cosmonaut's return was impossible, since no one had the money for it.

01:32:02Just imagine Sergei's condition.

01:32:05You are hundreds of miles from home, in black outer space, completely alone, and have no

01:32:10idea how many days you have left to be there.

01:32:13The days passed slowly, weeks, then a month passed.

01:32:17It would have been much easier if being in space was not harmful to your health.

01:32:22But in conditions of zero gravity, the human body takes serious damage.

01:32:26First, it's a weakening of the muscles.

01:32:29The body doesn't receive the necessary load it needs, and the muscles are constantly in

01:32:33a relaxed state, leading to dystrophy.

01:32:36Yes, astronauts do a set of exercises every day.

01:32:40But this is not enough to keep the body in shape.

01:32:42In addition to muscles, bones begin to weaken, and a person becomes weak.

01:32:47Even after six months of such a life, any astronaut needs a long time to get back into

01:32:52their previous shape after returning home.

01:32:55Also, there's a lot of radiation in space, which is dangerous for people.

01:32:59It comes from several sources at once.

01:33:02The main radiation comes from the sun.

01:33:04On Earth, we're protected from it, thanks to the planet's magnetic field.

01:33:08Almost all radiation accumulates in the upper atmosphere and doesn't reach us.

01:33:13This accumulation of radiation in the atmosphere is also bad for astronauts.

01:33:18But the worst radiation is the galactic one.

01:33:21It comes from distant stars and galaxies, and has a powerful effect on all living things.

01:33:27Radiation provokes many unfavorable conditions and destroys the body at the cellular level.

01:33:32Now, all spaceships and the ISS are equipped with shields and coatings that reflect radiation.

01:33:38But still, it doesn't provide 100% protection.

01:33:42In space, the astronaut's immune system changes.

01:33:46There are no conditions under which immunity could improve.

01:33:49It seems that there's nothing wrong with the absence of many bacteria and microbes.

01:33:53But the body's defense is weakening.

01:33:56A person becomes more vulnerable to microbes that can be brought by another astronaut.

01:34:01You also have serious food restrictions.

01:34:04Food in tubes doesn't contain as many useful vitamins as it does in natural products.

01:34:09Without vitamins, the body weakens even more.

01:34:13And sometimes, astronauts have to go on spacewalks, which aren't easy.

01:34:17A spacesuit is a huge and uncomfortable outfit.

01:34:21It constrains your movements and puts pressure on your body.

01:34:25Spacewalk in space can last up to several hours.

01:34:27During this time, you sweat a lot.

01:34:30One of the suit's filters may be broken, and all the fluid released by your body can

01:34:34spread throughout the suit and reach your face.

01:34:37Your eyes may water.

01:34:39The drops could interfere with your vision.

01:34:41Thousands of dangers can await an astronaut during a mission in outer space.

01:34:46Imagine that you do some repairs, and something goes wrong.

01:34:50The wrench jumps off the bolt, and it flies out, for example.

01:34:53You try to catch it, and unconsciously push off from the ship.

01:34:57You catch the bolt, but your body is already flying away.

01:35:01You have nothing to hold on to.

01:35:02But fortunately, you have a safety rope.

01:35:05Anyway, it can break off from your spacesuit because you attached it incorrectly.

01:35:10As soon as the rope breaks, your body changes the angle of flight.

01:35:14Now you're not just flying away.

01:35:15Your body is spinning at this moment.

01:35:18The Earth and black space flash in your eyes.

01:35:21So you get it.

01:35:22There are definitely risks, but nothing like that happened with Sergei.

01:35:27All astronauts spend many hours training to be ready for any troubles.

01:35:31They gain good physical shape and lose it during the mission.

01:35:35Add to this the psychological factor.

01:35:37Your body weakens.

01:35:39You don't breathe fresh air.

01:35:40You can't see your friends, and you don't have the opportunity to return home.

01:35:44A small layer of wall separates you from the cold vacuum of space.

01:35:49All this causes stress, which also weakens your immunity and harms your nervous system.

01:35:54Fortunately, astronauts also get through serious psychological training.

01:35:59They can maintain self-control in the most stressful situations.

01:36:03But when you're alone in space for more than six months and don't know when you'll return,

01:36:08you can get seriously nervous.

01:36:10Fortunately, Sergei didn't panic.

01:36:13He performed his daily duties, trained, and of course, missed home.

01:36:17A month later, he received the same response.

01:36:20We can't bring you back yet.

01:36:22The country is in a difficult situation.

01:36:24He felt worse every day.

01:36:26His strength was leaving him.

01:36:28He wasn't sure if he'd be able to survive.

01:36:31The most interesting thing is the station had a capsule developed to return to Earth.

01:36:36But Sergei didn't use it because no one would have served the station.

01:36:40Russia sold the station seats to other countries.

01:36:43Also, they hoped to sell Mir.

01:36:46This meant that Sergei had to keep the station working.

01:36:49Sergei's mission lasted twice as long as planned.

01:36:53As a result, he spent 10 months, or 311 days, in space and set a world record.

01:37:00During this time, he flew around the Earth about 5,000 times.

01:37:05Finally, he received the long-awaited message.

01:37:08He's coming home!

01:37:09Germany paid about $24 million for a ticket to the station.

01:37:13They were going to replace the astronaut.

01:37:16Krikalev got into the capsule and flew to Earth.

01:37:19Many people were waiting for his return down there.

01:37:22The cosmonaut landed, and everyone rushed to help him.

01:37:25He looked very thin, sweaty, and exhausted.

01:37:29Four men helped him out of the capsule.

01:37:31They helped him stay on the ground, gave him a fur coat, and brought a bowl of broth.

01:37:36It seemed that such a flight would leave an imprint on his life forever.

01:37:40But the cosmonaut's mood was excellent.

01:37:43Two years later, he went into space again and became the first Russian cosmonaut to

01:37:48fly on a NASA shuttle.

01:37:50And two years later, he was one of the first to live on the ISS.

01:37:55In 2005, he made his sixth and last flight.

01:37:59He went to the ISS, where he spent about six months, after which he returned home on the

01:38:05lander.

01:38:06After this flight, he set a world record for the total duration of stay in space, at 803

01:38:12days.

01:38:13Only ten years later, someone managed to break that record, but that's a different story.

01:38:20People stop their cars on the highway, get out of them, and lift their heads in wonder.

01:38:25In the cities, everyone takes to the streets.

01:38:28Balconies and rooftops of houses are full of people staring at the moon in shock.

01:38:33It's red.

01:38:35Some people scream that it's the end of the world.

01:38:38Some seek shelter.

01:38:39Indeed, the usual white moon now looks like it's been doused in red paint.

01:38:45There's no need to be afraid if you see such a thing.

01:38:47On the contrary, enjoy the view, because you have witnessed a rare astronomical phenomenon.

01:38:53This is a total lunar eclipse.

01:38:57Here's the sun.

01:38:58It's in the center of our solar system.

01:39:00Mercury, Venus, and here's Earth and the moon.

01:39:03The Earth takes 365 days to orbit around the star.

01:39:07At the same time, the moon revolves around the Earth and completely orbits our planet

01:39:12in 27 days.

01:39:14The Earth creates a shadow zone, and sometimes the moon passes through it.

01:39:18The shadow is cone-shaped and gradually narrows.

01:39:22The moon is 238,000 miles away.

01:39:25That's like nine lengths of the equator.

01:39:28At this distance, the width of the shadow is about 2.6 times the width of the moon.

01:39:34When the moon is in this zone, direct sunlight doesn't reach it.

01:39:38That is, it should have disappeared, but instead, it becomes red.

01:39:43All because the sun's rays pass through the Earth's atmosphere.

01:39:47They scatter, and most of the blue light disappears.

01:39:50But the red and orange rays continue and hit the surface of the moon.

01:39:55Voila!

01:39:56You see a phenomenon called the blood moon.

01:39:59By the way, this curvature of light occurs at sunsets and dawns.

01:40:04The atmosphere scatters the blue light, and you see a red and orange sky.

01:40:09If you were standing on the surface of the moon during a total lunar eclipse, planet

01:40:14Earth would be exactly between you and the sun.

01:40:17So you would be able to observe the solar eclipse.

01:40:20The surface of the Earth would become entirely dark for you.

01:40:23All you'd see would be the sun's corona illuminating the edges of the planet.

01:40:28The Earth from the surface of the moon is almost the same size as the moon from the

01:40:33surface of the Earth.

01:40:35Such a red eclipse of the moon is rare because several factors must coincide.

01:40:40One of them is that the moon must be full.

01:40:43Usually, you can see two total lunar eclipses a year.

01:40:47In 2038, you'll be able to see four such eclipses.

01:40:51And the eclipse itself can last up to 108 minutes.

01:40:55But this is rare, and the last time such a long blood moon was seen was in 2000.

01:41:01Many years ago, people didn't know so many facts about our satellite, and the sight of

01:41:05a red moon frightened them.

01:41:08It was a bad sign and a harbinger of trouble.

01:41:11People who knew the schedule of eclipses could take advantage of it.

01:41:15For example, Christopher Columbus had an astronomical almanac and knew when the next lunar eclipse

01:41:21would occur.

01:41:22He frightened the inhabitants of the Caribbean islands when he predicted the red moon.

01:41:29Once upon a time, the moon used to be a red ball of lava.

01:41:33This was way back in time, 4.5 billion years ago.

01:41:36Now this is our solar system.

01:41:38It's full of dust and asteroids.

01:41:40They're constantly bumping into each other, playing space billiards.

01:41:44This is Earth.

01:41:45It's just beginning to cool off from the constant asteroid and comet impacts.

01:41:50But then, Theia appears on the horizon, a planet the size of Mars.

01:41:55It had a chaotic orbit and was approaching Earth in a spiral.

01:41:59A collision was inevitable, and at one point, one of the biggest crashes in our solar system

01:42:04occurred.

01:42:05Theia struck the Earth at an angle.

01:42:08It ripped out part of the Earth's crust and threw it into space.

01:42:12The Earth, in turn, absorbed part of the planet that rammed it.

01:42:15The debris from the collision circled the Earth for a long time.

01:42:19They were a kind of ring, almost like Saturn's.

01:42:23Debris in orbit collided and piled up around a common center of gravity.

01:42:28And that's how the Earth got the moon.

01:42:30There's a theory that this collision helped give birth to life on our planet.

01:42:34Theia hit the Earth at a perfect angle.

01:42:37If the crash had been head-on, both planets would likely have been destroyed in a massive

01:42:42explosion.

01:42:44If the impact had been tangential, then there wouldn't have been enough debris in Earth's

01:42:48orbit to form the moon.

01:42:50But we got the lucky ticket.

01:42:52The moon stabilized the Earth's rotation.

01:42:55The collision shattered the planet's solid crust and allowed oceans to form.

01:42:59Remember, water is the basis of life.

01:43:02When the cores of Earth and Theia merged, we got a powerful magnetosphere.

01:43:07This protects all living organisms from solar radiation.

01:43:11The moon, along with the sun, controls the tides.

01:43:15Its gravity seems to draw water to it from the Earth's surface.

01:43:19The sun does the same thing.

01:43:21That is, if we imagine the Earth as a ball of water, there would be two mountains, one

01:43:26on the moon's side and one on the sun's side.

01:43:29And as the moon moves around the Earth, this mountain of water moves with it.

01:43:34If you were in the open ocean with a tape measure, you would see that the moon is attracting

01:43:38water to itself by about 4 to 6 inches.

01:43:42The moon is gravitationally locked with the Earth.

01:43:45That's why it's always turned to us with one side, like Mercury and the sun.

01:43:50The moon doesn't stand still.

01:43:52It's gradually moving away from our planet, about 1.5 inches a year.

01:43:57Not quickly, but in about 600 million years, it will have shrunk in our sky so much that

01:44:03we won't be able to see lunar eclipses anymore.

01:44:06Do you see this crater?

01:44:07It's Tycho.

01:44:09It's visible during a full moon because of these bright rays that extend thousands of

01:44:13miles from its epicenter.

01:44:15This is the youngest crater on the moon.

01:44:18Scientists say it appeared there due to a meteorite impact about 109 million years ago.

01:44:23At that time, dinosaurs were roaming the surface of our planet, and they may have seen the

01:44:28impact.

01:44:29It was most likely accompanied by a big explosion and looked like a salute in the night sky.

01:44:35Humanity loves to explore the moon.

01:44:38We've sent a bunch of missions there.

01:44:40A total of 12 people have set foot on the surface of the moon.

01:44:44The gravitational force there is six times less than on Earth.

01:44:48So if the average person on our planet weighed about 180 pounds, on the surface of the moon,

01:44:53the scales would only show 30 pounds, like the weight of an average dog.

01:44:58That's why the astronauts moved, jumped, and fell so strangely there.

01:45:04And you would be six times stronger on the surface of the moon.

01:45:07Here on Earth, the average person could lift about 130 pounds, but on the moon, you could

01:45:12raise a big motorcycle or a grizzly bear.

01:45:16The surface of the moon is covered with regolith.

01:45:19This is the lunar dust that covers the solid ground.

01:45:22Such dust is good at preserving footprints.

01:45:25Here's the most famous footprint, which gave birth to many crazy theories.

01:45:31Here's the footprint, and here's the shoe that left it.

01:45:34But the shoe is completely flat.

01:45:36This is explained simply.

01:45:38The astronauts wore extra boots for walking on the lunar surface.

01:45:41They have exactly the kind of soul that left these marks.

01:45:45In addition to the footprints, we left many fascinating objects on the moon.

01:45:49Several lunar rovers, a golf ball, flags, and human waste.

01:45:54There's also a lot of broken satellites and rocket parts.

01:45:58All in all, about 413,000 pounds of human-made objects are there.

01:46:03That's the weight of three passenger planes or 31 adult elephants.

01:46:08In the future, we plan to resume missions to the moon.

01:46:11New landers will explore the surface of our satellite to find natural resources there.

01:46:16It's also a great place to test new rovers.

01:46:19We're even going to build something like the International Space Station in the moon's

01:46:23orbit, the Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway.

01:46:26It'll be a convenient platform for exploring our satellite and launching spacecraft into

01:46:31distant space.

01:46:32If you start from here, the spacecraft won't need to spend almost all its fuel to overcome

01:46:37the force of Earth's gravity, so such a station would save fuel and money.

01:46:43Scientists hope that we'll be able to mine water from the moon's surface.

01:46:47It's been proven that there's ice there, mostly at the bottom of craters where the sunlight

01:46:51doesn't reach.

01:46:52Perhaps we'll send a rover there that can drill down a few feet into the surface, searching

01:46:57for water.

01:46:58Humanity already has the technology to build a full-fledged colony there.

01:47:02It would take up to three days to get there.

01:47:05We just need to get enough solar panels and building materials to the moon.

01:47:10There's no atmosphere on the moon, so potential lunar inhabitants would be defenseless against

01:47:15solar radiation.

01:47:16We would have to build houses underground to provide protection.

01:47:20Modern 3D printers will help make construction easy and fast.

01:47:24However, food and water supplies can only be maintained by constant supplies from Earth.

01:47:29The same goes for oxygen.

01:47:31Each rocket launch costs millions of dollars, so for now, colonization of the moon is in

01:47:37question.

01:47:38The moon could also become an object for space tourism.

01:47:42Imagine a spaceship launches from Earth.

01:47:44Three days on the road, and you're orbiting the moon.

01:47:47The lunar module undocks, and you land on the surface.

01:47:51You ride the rover, explore the craters, then return to the lander.

01:47:55The engines start.

01:47:57The lander returns you to orbit.

01:47:59You dock with the ship, and return to Earth.

01:48:01Sounds like some pretty great plans for a week's vacation.

01:48:05Hey MythBusters, today we're debunking some classic space myths.

01:48:10Hop on the next space shuttle, and let's get to the bottom of these tales once and for

01:48:14all.

01:48:17Picture this.

01:48:18You're floating weightlessly in space, sipping on a cup of delicious hot chocolate, when

01:48:23a peculiar thought pops into your head.

01:48:25Can you scream in outer space?

01:48:28And if yes, would anyone hear that scream?

01:48:31If you've watched the movie Alien, then you know the answer to this one.

01:48:38You can't hear sounds in outer space.

01:48:40It's not that sounds don't exist, it's just that you can't hear them.

01:48:45There's no one better to clarify this myth than Chris Hadfield.

01:48:49He's been on a couple of spacewalks during his life as an astronaut.

01:48:54And once you're out there in the darkness of space, you can't hear anything.

01:49:02But hey, just around the corner is a massive ball of explosion, aka the sun.

01:49:09We just can't hear the explosions happening because there's no medium for sound to travel

01:49:13through.

01:49:14It would be quite uncomfortable for an astronaut though if they could hear all the noises going

01:49:18on in outer space.

01:49:21Now imagine you're zipping through space, feeling like a futuristic superhero, when

01:49:26a shooting star passes by your side.

01:49:29But wait, is it really a star?

01:49:31Unfortunately, shooting stars are not stars at all.

01:49:35They are small space rocks known as meteoroids, entering Earth's atmosphere and creating a

01:49:41stunning light show.

01:49:43Oh, and since we're debunking myths, let's head straight for another one.

01:49:48You've probably heard that meteors only crash into Earth on extremely rare occasions, like

01:49:54once every dinosaur extinguishing apocalypse.

01:49:57That's not true.

01:50:00Scientists estimate that about 48 tons of meteoritic material fall on Earth each day.

01:50:06But almost all of this material is vaporized in Earth's atmosphere.

01:50:10The bright trail we see in the night sky is what we popularly call a shooting star.

01:50:15Next time you make a wish upon a shooting star, remember, you're actually hoping on

01:50:19a tiny piece of space debris.

01:50:21It's not so romantic after all!

01:50:26Can we or can we not fly into the stratosphere on air balloons?

01:50:30Apparently, we can!

01:50:32The Earth's stratosphere starts relatively close to the ground, about 7 or 8 miles up

01:50:37from the Earth's surface, but it continues a long way up.

01:50:42If you were to fly yourself all the way into the stratosphere with some type of air balloon,

01:50:47just make sure you have really good equipment at hand.

01:50:50You'll need a special suit and some breathing devices, because air starts to get pretty

01:50:55thin the higher you get.

01:50:57Of course, if you do go all the way up, you need to get a picture of the Earth's curvature.

01:51:02So take a chest harness with you where you can put a special camera or something like

01:51:06that.

01:51:07And how about you live stream the whole thing?

01:51:10Would be a first!

01:51:13Imagine it's been 102 days since you left Earth.

01:51:16You've adapted well to life in outer space, but something weird is happening to your body.

01:51:22You're getting taller.

01:51:24How is that even possible?

01:51:25Don't stress about it, it's completely normal.

01:51:29The truth of the matter is, you're not getting taller.

01:51:31This is what happens to your body when it's not under the effect of gravity.

01:51:36Our body has natural space between vertebrae and joints.

01:51:40On Earth, this space is almost completely squeezed due to the force of gravity.

01:51:45But in space, your body gets some time off of the pushing force of gravity and begins

01:51:50to stretch more and more.

01:51:53So yes, astronauts can grow up to 3% taller when they're on long missions.

01:51:58And here's a curiosity, NASA has that all covered when they're tailor-making spacesuits

01:52:02of course.

01:52:03This way, astronauts will always have extra space in their suits.

01:52:07Once astronauts are back on Earth, the anti-gravity effect will wear off.

01:52:12So maybe they'll spend a few days wearing capri pants before it fits perfectly on their

01:52:16bodies again.

01:52:19Never have I ever pictured an airplane door bursting open mid-flight and a bunch of passengers

01:52:24being sucked into the atmosphere like flying feathers.

01:52:27Well, I'm betting most of you have had similar thoughts when getting inside a plane.

01:52:32Now imagine if this were to happen in outer space.

01:52:36Common knowledge says that if an astronaut is sucked out of an airlock, this person would

01:52:40be burnt to a crisp.

01:52:42Brace yourselves, because this is not only true, but the reality of it is way worse.

01:52:48According to astronaut Chris Hadfield, this is what would happen.

01:52:52The part of your body in the shade of the sun would experience temperatures of negative

01:52:56418 degrees Fahrenheit, while the part of you getting sunlight would burn at around

01:53:01480 degrees Fahrenheit.

01:53:05Your lungs would collapse, and your blood would start to boil like tea water.

01:53:10So you would burn, freeze, lose your ability to breathe, and boil.

01:53:16Yikes!

01:53:17How many times have you heard that astronauts have to work out every second of every day,

01:53:22otherwise they'll pass out?

01:53:24This is a complete myth.

01:53:26Remember we talked about gravity earlier?

01:53:29Due to the lack of gravity in outer space, our bodies don't have to do any heavy work.

01:53:34Our torsos don't have to sustain the weight of our heads, and we don't have to make any

01:53:39effort to move our legs because, essentially, there's no walking in outer space.

01:53:44Now imagine living like that for 6 months, or even a year of your life.

01:53:51Your muscles could turn into jello.

01:53:53That's why astronauts work out.

01:53:55They'll strap themselves and run on a treadmill, or they'll do some weight lifting in a special

01:54:00machine.

01:54:02This way their muscles won't feel the lack of gravity too much.

01:54:05They do need to keep hydrated though.

01:54:09You know what?

01:54:10If I was an astronaut, I'd ask NASA if I could take my super soft water flask up into space

01:54:16with me.

01:54:17You've probably heard that space smells like burnt steak or barbecue sauce.

01:54:22Now as much as this sounds absurd, this myth is more true than it is false.

01:54:29Astronauts obviously can't smell space when they're in it because they can't take off

01:54:32their helmets.

01:54:34They usually smell it once a space vehicle docks and they open up a hatch.

01:54:38Apparently, what causes this smell is the presence of hydrocarbons that float around

01:54:43in space.

01:54:44Who would have thought, huh?

01:54:47Hey smart people, let me ask you a question.

01:54:49Do you really think that if astronauts fly at the speed of light, they won't age a single

01:54:54second?

01:54:55I knew you'd say no!

01:54:57Let's get a few things straight.

01:54:59First of all, we haven't figured out how to operate vehicles at the speed of light.

01:55:04This would require an immense amount of energy and we don't have the technology to do that.

01:55:09Second, even if we managed to send a human inside a spacecraft that traveled at the speed

01:55:15of light, this person would still age.

01:55:18They would age differently than the people who remained on Earth, that's a fact, but

01:55:21they would still age.

01:55:23Do you lot really think there's such a thing as immortality?

01:55:27Nah.

01:55:28If you've seen the first Avatar, then you certainly remember that humans only managed

01:55:32to get to Pandora because they traveled in cryosleep.

01:55:36In other words, they froze their bodies, put them in a cryo bed, and traveled for years

01:55:41without aging.

01:55:42Yes, this sounds amazing, but we still don't have the technology to do that.

01:55:47Our bodies are mainly made out of water, right?

01:55:50And when you freeze water, it expands.

01:55:53That's why you should never leave soda cans unattended in your freezer.

01:55:57Right now, if we froze a person's body, the water inside of it would expand, harming tissues

01:56:02and organs.

01:56:04So no, we can't cryosleep our way into interstellar travel.

01:56:08Not yet at least.

01:56:10Here's a crazy thought.

01:56:12What would happen if an astronaut took a drone with him on one of their spacewalks?

01:56:17Unless it's a NASA-designed drone, maybe the thing would freeze and burn like humans would

01:56:22if they went into space without a suit.

01:56:24But hey, a person can dream, can't they?

01:56:47Maybe one of the Chosen Ones.

01:56:49Now how about we take a look at that list together.

01:56:56Pencils.

01:56:57I guess I never would have thought of that, but it makes sense.

01:57:01Legend has it that the U.S. spent millions of dollars trying to design a pen that worked

01:57:04in space.

01:57:05You know, since the lack of gravity is a huge, I mean, inescapable, factor of life in outer

01:57:11space, pens don't work.

01:57:14The ink won't flow down as it does here on Earth.

01:57:16It turns out that pencils will do the trick.

01:57:19This way you can play word puzzles with the other space tourists, or even make some drawings

01:57:23of your adventure.

01:57:25You'd never forget to pack a toothbrush, of course.

01:57:28According to veteran astronauts, toothbrushes are so simple, yet their technology is enough

01:57:32for space.

01:57:33If you were to squeeze a water bottle inside a spacecraft, the molecules of water would

01:57:37float around in small bubbles.

01:57:40But if you wet your toothbrush, it naturally holds the water in it, keeping it moist to

01:57:43receive your toothpaste.

01:57:45Oh, I was going to say funny socks.

01:57:48Glad that you beat me to it.

01:57:49Here are two things.

01:57:50First, there's not a lot of walking that goes on in space.

01:57:54People don't tend to touch the ground too much up there.

01:57:57And second, space isn't the best place to showcase your fashion style.

01:58:02Astronauts tend to use special clothes while they're out there, and it will be no different

01:58:05for you as a space vacationer.

01:58:07So socks will keep your feet warm and fuzzy, but they'll also speak for your fashion interest.

01:58:12Maybe one day you'll wear a smiley face sock, while the other day you'll go for a Grinch-themed one.

01:58:17Of course, socks are pretty helpful on board an aircraft.

01:58:20They'll make you slide through stuff more easily.

01:58:23Next time I go to the convenience store, I'll remember to buy some wet wipes for your space travel.

01:58:27Experienced space travelers do love them.

01:58:30And it wasn't even NASA that invented them, huh?

01:58:33Since water is a no-go inside a spaceship, the best option is wet wipes.

01:58:37Better yet, if they're scented.

01:58:39Astronauts even use different kinds of wipes.

01:58:41They buy the disinfecting ones and the ones to use on their bodies.

01:58:45Just make sure you know how to tell the difference between them when you're up there.

01:58:49There's a popular myth that says that NASA invented Velcro.

01:58:52But the truth is, we tend to think that everything that's used in space was invented by NASA

01:58:56for a very intelligent and specific purpose.

01:58:59It wasn't, though.

01:59:00Velcro was invented for mundane reasons back in the 1950s by a Swiss company.

01:59:05They were adopted by space travelers because they work as anti-gravity props.

01:59:09They don't erase gravity, of course.

01:59:11But you can glue Velcros into daily stuff and then hang them on the Velcro attached

01:59:15to the spaceship's walls.

01:59:17It's a very smart system, but best to take your own pair, right?

01:59:21If you're spending a long time in outer space, photographs from back home might come in handy.

01:59:26Choose them well, though.

01:59:27Since the spacecraft isn't all that big, the rest of the people on board will know which

01:59:31pictures you decided to bring along.

01:59:34Best to keep that Harry Styles poster back in your earthly bedroom, right?

01:59:38Just bring real pictures of people that you know and love.

01:59:41Did I hear pizza?

01:59:44A huge part of traveling and exploring new places is being able to taste different flavors

01:59:48of food.

01:59:49In outer space, that's a bit more complicated.

01:59:53But hey, at least you can take some pizza with you.

01:59:55Well, actually you'd have to have it delivered to you in a cargo ship.

01:59:59This way, ingredients would come fresh and ready to eat.

02:00:02It wouldn't be the first time that people in space tried eating earthling junk food.

02:00:06Some astronauts have even eaten crepes and hot dogs.

02:00:09Perhaps the best part of this pizza party would be that your food could float.

02:00:13Now isn't this a super nice way to enjoy some earth delicacies?

02:00:17As much as I understand your desire to pack a toilet with you on this space trip, that's

02:00:20virtually impossible.

02:00:21I mean, I understand you.

02:00:23Some people are attached to the toilets in their homes, and a space toilet is far from

02:00:27the ideal experience.

02:00:29But NASA has been improving their toilet system, and it's the best it's been over the years.

02:00:35So that will have to do, here's something I would take as well.

02:00:38A laptop.

02:00:39But what good would it do in outer space, you might ask?

02:00:43Apparently there is internet all over the International Space Station.

02:00:47So even if you're not spending most of your trip docked at the ISS, you could enjoy some

02:00:50Netflix on the days you spend over there.

02:00:53There is internet all over the ISS, apparently.

02:00:56Crazy, huh?

02:00:57And speaking of leisure, I love that you would take a yo-yo.

02:01:00I'm not sure how efficient it would be in space, since there's no gravity to bounce

02:01:03it back and forth.

02:01:05But it would be nice to see how a yo-yo reacts in a gravity-free environment.

02:01:08Oh, I love jigsaw puzzles.

02:01:11This would definitely be on my list as well.

02:01:14Imagine trying to build a jigsaw puzzle that keeps floating in the air.

02:01:18Maybe you'll have to create a system to avoid the separate pieces floating aimlessly through

02:01:22the spacecraft.

02:01:23But imagine once you finish that turtle puzzle, it will look like it's swimming around the

02:01:27craft.

02:01:28You can't pack a window, but they sure are an important part of life in outer space.

02:01:32Let's keep in mind some of the rules of the trip.

02:01:35Each traveler will have the opportunity to do one spacewalk during their time in space.

02:01:43This is already huge.

02:01:44Consider yourself lucky.

02:01:46Some elite astronauts only get to do one spacewalk during their entire career.

02:01:50That is so because spacewalks are risky and require a lot of training.

02:01:54But you'll get your training once you're up there.

02:01:56The thing is, all other days you'll be stuck inside a floating tin can.

02:02:00So windows will come a long way.

02:02:04They'll help to remind you where you are.

02:02:06They'll give you some perspective of space and Earth.

02:02:09Of course, you should take your camera.

02:02:11How else will you be able to register for this once-in-a-lifetime experience?

02:02:15Just make sure it works inside an aircraft or the ISS, and you're good to go.

02:02:20Hmm?

02:02:21Coffee?

02:02:22Don't worry.

02:02:23You don't need to pack your own.

02:02:24Up until recently, astronauts had to rely solely on instantly brewed cups of coffee when they

02:02:28were in space.

02:02:30You're lucky that coffee experts have already solved this issue.

02:02:33Nowadays, there's the ISSpresso machine.

02:02:37The machine itself is similar in size to an earthling espresso machine.

02:02:41But to drink it, space travelers have to use a zero-gravity coffee cup together with a

02:02:45straw.

02:02:46If you tried drinking it regularly, you wouldn't get hot coffee to hit you directly in your

02:02:50face.

02:02:51Instead, the coffee would be glued to the bottom of your cup.

02:02:54I have to say I really stand this invention.

02:02:57Last, but not least, why not pack your guitar with you?

02:03:00I noticed you were missing a musical instrument.

02:03:03If this was a conventional flight, you might have to pay extra for luggage.

02:03:07But since it's all included, don't be shy and take your guitar.

02:03:12Astronauts such as Chris Hadfield take their musical instruments with them when they're

02:03:14in space.

02:03:16He even became famous for his version of Bowie's Space Oddity.

02:03:19Up to the point that Bowie himself told him he lived Chris's version of it.

02:03:23It helps to pass the time, but it's also great for socializing.

02:03:26Can you imagine a pretend bonfire happening in the void of space?

02:03:30I can.

02:03:31And it looks super cool.

02:03:32Well, I think you're set to go.

02:03:34I'll personally call NASA and ask them to pick you as one of the lucky space travelers.

02:03:39See you in outer space, amigo.

02:03:41That's it for today!

02:03:44So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your

02:03:49friends.

02:03:50Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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