Freakish wonders of the universe

The universe is full of deep mysteries and even the fraction of what we know is too fascinating for words. This month let’s take a look at some of the amazing yet scary inhabitants out there.

I’m coming to visit you

Black holes form when huge stars collapse and grow, taking up other objects around them. Think of them as giant invisible blenders that can tear apart planets even thousands of miles away. There aren’t black holes anywhere close to our solar system, but did you know that they can actually travel through space? And scarier still, rapidly-moving black holes cannot be detected! Scientists have assured us that space is a big place and black holes are quite rare – so sit back and relax!

A big show off!

Ever heard of gamma ray bursts? Well, they are considered as the brightest electromagnetic events to occur in the universe, so much so, that they can be seen billions of miles away! Are you also wondering how powerful they are? Apparently they emit as much energy in a few seconds that our sun can in 10 billion years! We’re glad that, like black holes, they are rare and far, far away from us.

Lone travellers

We imagine planets going around a star, endlessly orbiting it as long as they live. It turns out that not all planets exist this way. Astronomers have discovered a few Jupiter-sized planets drifting alone, without a place to call home or a star as a boss. They are thought to have been ejected out of their star system due to some massive explosion event. As long as they are not on a trajectory towards Earth, it’s dreamy fun to think about these lonely nomadic travellers.

What a blast!

Earth is like a magnet but its magnetic field is quite weak; an MRI machine can produce a magnetic field thousand times stronger. Since we can put our head in through the MRI machine, we can obviously put up with that magnetic field. But imagine a magnetic field that is a trillion times stronger than that of Earth. That’s the

kind of power that a magnetar possesses! Come within 1000 kilometres of a magnetar and the very molecules that make you up can dissolve! Here’s a fun fact to freak you out in 2004, a magnetar located halfway across the Milky Way (500 quadrillion kilometres away) quaked and its effect was felt on the Earth’s upper atmosphere!

Mission Impossible

What if you stepped too close to a black hole but not quite? That’s exactly what hypervelocity stars did! They bolted away from the black hole at superfast speed. Hypervelocity stars were originally binary stars, of which one was captured and gobbled up by the black hole at the centre of our galaxy while the other lucky star was sent rocketing off at a very high speed, obviously very, very glad to escape.

Picture Credit : Google 

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