The Cosmic Talk #4

Hey nerds, and welcome back to The Cosmic Talk! In this month’s entry, we’ll be discussing a knowledge bending black hole, the newfound dangers of space travel, and to get in the festive spirit of the holidays, we’ll be discussing galactic filaments, and how they bind our universe together.

In our past edition of The Cosmic Talk, I talked about an object in the universe that defied our understanding, and frankly, shouldn’t exist. This strange object was known as a Super Spiral Galaxy, an object that spins so fast that it should fall apart, but because of the massive amounts of dark matter that we theorize is holding it together, it doesn’t. Tying into our theme of extreme galactic objects, we focus on another one that shouldn’t exist, which recently caught the eyes of a few Chinese astronomers.

This time, the object in question is a black hole. The vast majority of black holes are created by supernovas, but in some cases, when stars of a certain size explode, they leave behind nothing. This is known as a Pair Instability Supernova. Stars that normally create black holes are either 65 masses of the sun or 130, and if a star with a mass of the sun that is anywhere between these numbers explodes, it shouldn’t possibly be able to leave one behind. It will only create a powerful supernova. If the star gets any bigger than this though, of course a black hole will form. Recently, a paper was released dating the discovery of one of these theoretically impossible black holes. Its name is LB-1. It is located about 15,000 light years away from Earth and is 70 masses of the sun. We discovered the black hole using a rather difficult technique known as Astrometry, which is where instead of observing light, astronomers study the path and movements of a star effected by a nearby object with a strong gravitational pull. The star would orbit LB-1 every 79 days.

There has been speculation about this discovery, of course, because it was originally theorized to be impossible. Some scientists believe this black hole may have formed after two other smaller black holes collide. This would mean two stars of the same star system would have had to undergo a supernova, which would leave the question, “Well, what about the third star?” Surviving the explosion and maintaining a stable orbit doesn’t seem very possible. Follow ups on this new study are definitely needed, but for now, the discovery in itself is certainly an interesting one.

For our next topic, we’re touching on something a bit more grim. Space travel is something that is known to be especially dangerous. The human body does not deal very well with zero gravity conditions. There are many factors that go into how it can affect humans, such as loss of eyesight. Astronauts have reported having blurry vision, or in worse cases, going completely blind. This is because our eyes require gravity to function correctly. Another issue is that a lack of gravity causes the water content in our lungs to rise, which can potentially damage them, of which dust can do as well. When in zero g, the dust gets embedded deeper into the lungs and becomes difficult to expel outwards, which can cause lung disease in the long run. And of course muscle weakness is an obvious fault in zero g as well. A recent study though, shows that the scariest problem we are just now noticing might be blood flow. Past astronauts were studied, and it was discovered that the blood inside their necks had completely stopped or even reversed direction. No effects have been seen yet, but this creates a risk for them to pass out or even die, which would make for a pretty big issue if an astronaut were up in space. Some light on the news though, is the information is attempting to be found, and the exploration of space is helping to figure out how to stop this from happening. Such studies may potentially spread to fields such as health and medicine also. 

Everyone, it’s that time the year.. A time of joy and celebrating festivities. This holiday season, The Cosmic Talk wants to bring everyone together, to be thankful and share the happiness that comes along with the season. What better way to do that, than talk about what holds the entire universe together as a whole? New research suggests that everything in the universe is connected. Of course, gravity plays a role in this. We can see this sort of connection within globular clusters, and even on larger scales, galaxies. All the galaxies are then held together by invisible, but very present, links. These links can be observed by the physical streams of gas holding the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds together in a physical stream. The local group, a collection of nearby galaxies, is also gravitationally connected. Scientists believe it could be dark matter, and evidence supports this, but the connections don’t end within the local group, they grow larger and larger, involving clusters and superclusters. Even then, the connections grow beyond this. There are more connections to be found. When scientists looked at galaxies nearby and compared them to ones farther away, they all seemed to be connected. They noticed that the galaxies would spin in similar patterns. Galaxies in a different direction would have the same spin and move away from them, and galaxies opposite of that would do vice versa. This can be related to something known as galactic filaments. Formed by gas and dark matter, they connect all the galaxies. We can only observe their existence by the effects. The patterns of galaxies movements is good in supporting their existence as well. The phenomenon is strange nonetheless, but creates a whole new meaning for the word together. Across the vastness of the universe, planets, stars, and galaxies are all being held together by the same thing. A bonding, that can never be broken. 

These new found studies are certainly some early Christmas presents to the world of astronomy you could say, and they definitely are stirring some excitement. May we uncover more mysteries as we bring in the new year, and let discovery awaits. This has been The Cosmic Talk, until next time!

Oh, and happy holidays nerds.