THE MOST

INTERESTING
THINGS IN
THE
UNIVERSE
By : Benabid Mhamed Djahid
Group : 03
The universe is 13.8 billion years old and
over 7 trillion light years(1) wide , which
allows is to hold very interesting cosmic
objects , from stars , to planets , to black
holes . In this piece I will try to cover with
as many details as possible the peculiar of
each , and maybe give a sense of how
amazing god’s creation is .
The first cosmic object that I will address is
stars , with their glowing radiation and
heat , our sun was one of the first things
that early astronomers studied .We have
come a long way since , discovering and
studying many more stars apart from our
own . There are more stars in the universe
, then there are grants of sand , a 100
billion to be exact , and the biggest of
them is called UY Scuti .
UY Scuti is what scientists call a “red
hyper-giant “ , red due to its color , and
giant is because UY reaches a radius of
1708 solar radii(2) . The star is so massive ,
it’s diameter would reach half way
through Saturn’s orbit , and would take a
plane more than 1100 hundred years to
circle it once .
Stars reach the end of their life cycle when
the pressure coming from the gazes
(pushing outwards) can no longer sustain
the massive pull of the star’s core (pushing
inwards) and that’s when the star starts
to collapse on its self . When this happens
to stars like our sun it leaves behind only
the core , and thus becoming what we call
a white dwarf(3) . But when stars are so
massive , such as UY Scuti , the
gravitational pull is so huge that it creates
what the world knows as Black Holes .
Black holes , are basically ex-stars that
have all their weight smashed into one
point , these heavenly object are very very
dense , meaning that they have a huge
gravitational pull , so huge in fact that
once an object crosses a limit that we call
The Event Horizon (4) , it can no longer
come back , not even light ( with its
300000 km/s ) can escape this
phenomenon . One thing that should be
pointed out is that although they are
called holes , Black Holes are 3-
dimentional , meaning they can be
accessed from every direction .
One of the most mysterious questions that
puzzled scientists is what would happen
to an object if it crosses the Event Horizon,
One of the theories is that the object, right
before entering would omit a red light
(due to the high gravity , the light waves
would get stretched ,becoming red) , once
the object passes through it will be pulled
from each side thanks to a phenomenon
called “spaghetification” and then get
destroyed .
The late Steven Hawking proved that
Black Holes also omit a radiation called
“Hawking radiation” , meaning that they
will get smaller and smaller . Although the
process is very slow , this means that
every Black Hole will eventually die .
The last cosmic wonder that I will try to
expand on is planets . Planets , are the
only objects in the universe that can
sustain life , although that is true , we
know only of one planet that is currently
doing just that ,Earth. And although we
have searched the galaxies for planets that
can imitate our own , we have been
unsuccessful .Since the late 1990s a
special devision of scientists have been
looking for planets that orbit stars in the
goldilocks region(5) , these are called X-O
planets , we have discovered over a 1000
of them and hope by the end of 2018, with
the launch of the new James Webb space
telescope by NASA , it will help us find out
more about them and their composition.
No need to say that our journey into
unraveling the mysteries of space is still in
its infancy , but with ambition such as ours
, sky is only the limit (pun intended) .
(1)
: a light year is the unit of
measurements of distances in space ,
it’s equivalent to 9461 billion
kilometers .
(2)
: a solar radius (radii in plural) is the
unit used to compare the sizes of
stars , 1 solar radius = 695 842 km .
(3)
: a White dwarf is what’s left of a star
after it’s explosion , some scientists
say it will be the last object in the
universe , because it dies out very
slowly .
(4)
: the Event Horizon is a fictional line
put up by scientists to know where
the huge gravitational pull of the
Black Hole starts .
(5)
: the goldilocks region , happens
when a planet orbiting it’s star is
neither too far , nor too close to said
star , meaning it could possibly
sustain life in it’s different forms .