The Planet That Vaporizes Metal And Burns at 4,000 Degrees

With every discovery we make in space, we add another piece of the mosaic to the overall picture of the universe. Together with you, we would like to take a look at the eight most exciting space discoveries of the recent past. Get ready for scorching hot planets, mysterious signals, and a gigantic black hole that is very different from its known counterparts.

1431b Toi

Because of this scorching hot nature, Toi 1431b is easily capable of melting most metals. The average temperature of the celestial body, which is about twice the size of Jupiter, is an incredible 4900 degrees Fahrenheit.

1431b ToiCredit to https://teknoliz.net/

For comparison, the temperature of boiling lava is usually not more than 2200 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of this red hot nature, Toi 1431b in turn is easily capable of melting most metals. Because of this extreme natural condition, it's understandably impossible that Toi 1431b could harbor living things.

However, if you thought that the average nighttime temperatures would cool significantly, you were mistaken. Nighttime temperatures of about 4 200 degrees Fahrenheit prevail here.

The Galactic Jellyfish

What sounds like the title of a low-budget science fiction movie? It's a puzzling mass of charged particles that extends over a width of more than a million light-years since the formation of this structure remotely resembles tentacle-shaped objects.

A composite image of the USS Jellyfish in Abell 2877 showing the optical Digitised Sky SurveyCredit to Torrance Hodgson, ICRAR/Curtin University.

It's also called a jellyfish in the ranks of experts. The fact that the tangled structure emits radio waves seems particularly odd. Torrance Hodgson is responsible for the discovery of the galactic jellyfish. The Australian came across the unusual structure during his diploma thesis.

Currently, experts are working at full speed to find out the origin of this structure, which is located in the galaxy cluster label 2877. Early conjectures suggest that the jellyfish structure consists of the remnants of matter that were ejected by black holes around 2 billion years ago.

Mysterious Gamma-Ray Burst

This year, experts recorded an extraordinary phenomenon that left them completely baffled. The event involved an intense burst of gamma rays in our native Milky Way.

An artist’s impression of a gamma ray burst triggered by a supernova explosion in which a doomed star’s core collapses to form a black holeCredit to NASA, ESA and M. Kornmesser

This radiation is produced when streams of cosmic rays chase through the endless expanses of the universe. These rays are composed of protons and other particles that originate in stellar explosions or black holes. As soon as the ejected particles collide with galactic dust, they cause nuclear reactions that result in ultra-high-energy gamma rays.

The recently discovered gamma-ray burst is one of the most record-breaking of its kind in terms of intensity. For comparison, the beams of the particle accelerator at the Cern nuclear research center reach maximum energies of just 6.5 teraelectronvolts.

A Unique Black Hole

Recently, an unusual entry was added to the list of known black holes. Scientists located a black hole about 1500 light-years away from our home planet that differs markedly from its counterparts discovered up until now.

A Unique Black HoleCredit to ESA advanced concepts team; S. Brunier /ESO

In the run-up to the galactic find, a team of researchers from Ohio State University had set themselves to the task of searching for bright stars in the vicinity of black holes. Since the most massive formations in the universe have the natural property of absorbing practically everything, including light, it is extremely difficult to locate the small black holes.

The unicorn christened the unicorn because of its rarity in its home constellation finally caught the researcher's attention because of the weak gravitational pull it exerted on a nearby red giant star. The prevailing forces caused a slight distortion of the affected celestial body.

A Supermassive Black Hole on the Loose

For several decades, researchers agreed that supermassive black holes could not move. Thus, they were firmly convinced that the galactic colossi were enthroned rigidly and immovably in the hearts of larger galaxies.

A Supermassive Black Hole on the LooseCredit to https://www.wionews.com/

A recently published discovery by a Harvard and Smithsonian center research team seems all the more sensational. These experts discovered a supermassive black hole that moves at a speed of almost 3 000 miles per hour since The question arises as to which galactic forces make it possible for such a huge object to move at all.

The mobile black hole has a mass that is almost three million times greater than that of the sun. Currently, experts are discussing two different theories about this mystery. The first thesis follows the approach that the mobile black hole was formed when two other black holes collided with each other and subsequently merged.

This process could have produced a kind of recoil that still drives the newly formed object through the horizons of the universe. In contrast to this is the hypothesis that the supermassive object is only a part of a binary system.

According to this hypothesis, there would be another black hole in the vicinity of the black hole with both objects orbiting around a common center of mass

Disappearing Stars

When some scientists studied the Hyades star cluster, they could not believe their eyes. It appears that some stars from the parent cluster are simply disappearing. By the way, the Hyades is one of the closest star clusters to the sun.

Disappearing StarsCredit to Tobias Roetsch

The collection of about 350 individual stars is only 153 light-years away from our host star. The experts busied themselves with the question of what could be causing the mysterious star disappearances. A thesis published in April of this year advances the idea that the Hyades star cluster is affected by another cosmic structure.

According to this theory, a narrow strip of stars known as a "title tail" was practically torn from its original position. This circumstance ultimately led to the fact that stars that were previously visible now elude our terrestrial view.

But which forces could have set this event in motion? It's thought that the Hyades encountered a so-called dark matter halo. This accumulation of dark matter can possess a mass that exceeds that of our sun by about 10 million fold.

Galactic Gas Pipelines

A few billion years after the big bang, the universe was a vast compound of massive galaxies, while the giant star systems that graced the firmament were surrounded by hot atmospheric gases.

The imposing structures also required cooler gases as galactic fuel. A recently published study could now help to solve this time-honored mystery once and all for all within their research, experts at the University of Iowa confirmed a thesis that has been discussed for some time in the ranks of scientists.

Galactic Gas PipelinesCredit to ArtEvent ET

This thesis says that galaxies are supplied by interconnected structures made of cold gas and dark matter. You might think of these structures as galactic pipelines. Using a special detector located in the Atacama desert on South America's Pacific coast experts studied a galaxy that, in all likelihood, was formed when the universe was 2.5 billion years old.

During their work, the scientists ultimately came across certain chemical traces that suggest that there was once a gigantic stream of cold gases in the galaxy in question. A deeper investigation revealed that the gas did not originate in the galaxy in question, but was pumped in from elsewhere, providing significant new support for the theory of galactic gas pipelines.

Fascinating Radio Waves

In the world of experts, it's a real sensation to discover radio signals from such remote regions of space. In all probability, the corresponding waves originate from a quasar, or in other words, the active nucleus of a galaxy which appears in the firmament as a point-like structure and emits large amounts of energy.

Fascinating Radio WavesCredit to CSIRO/A. Cherney

The received signal is thought to have been emitted when the universe was practically still in diapers. Now it's your turn. Which recent space discovery amazed you the most?