Mysteries of Space. Amazing facts (11 photos). Puzzles from space Space puzzles

Despite active study and exploration, space is still full of mysteries for humanity. Only recently gravitational waves were considered only a theory, but today their existence has already been scientifically proven.

Despite active study and exploration, space is still full of mysteries for humanity. Only quite recently, gravitational waves were considered only a theory, but today their existence has already been scientifically proven. Who knows what secrets are hidden in these dark, dark depths of the Universe. However, even among what has already been discovered by scientists is full of extremely amazing things, the existence of which is difficult to believe...

Alcohol

This discovery was recently made by an international group of scientists working on a 30-meter telescope in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. They found that Comet Lovejoy, codenamed C/2011 W3, contains as many as 20 types of different organic molecules, including sugar and alcohol molecules. This periodic comet was discovered in November 2011. By all indications, its diameter should be at least 500 meters. In addition, she is one of the brightest of all known to science comets It is not yet entirely clear where all this organic matter came from in the gas and dust tail of Comet Lovejoy. It is quite possible that they were “picked up” somewhere during the comet’s journey through space.

Another version says that these compounds could have arisen from a huge interstellar molecular cloud that formed the Solar System.

Planet made of diamonds

An exoplanet with the complex name PSR J1719–1438 b was discovered in 2009. It is located in the constellation Serpens at a distance of 3900 light years from ours. solar system. But what is remarkable about this planet is that, according to all calculations, it consists almost entirely of crystalline carbon. PSR J1719−1438 b was one of the first of its kind, but far from the only one. To date, scientists know of at least five similar carbon planets. It is assumed that they also have an iron-containing core, but the basis of their surface is mainly silicon and titanium carbides, as well as pure carbon. According to scientists, on such planets there may be areas completely covered with kilometers of diamonds.

Huge rain cloud

And here, without any metaphors, this is truly a gigantic accumulation of moisture, which can conditionally be called a cloud. This cloud is located 10 billion light years away and is believed to be enveloping a supermassive black hole. Moreover, when the term “huge” or “giant” is applied to something in space, this should be understood on a completely different scale. No, this cloud is not the size of the continent of Eurasia, for example. It is so huge that it is approximately 100,000 times the size of the Sun.

Cold stars

A hot ball that, using a thermonuclear reaction, produces a huge amount of energy, light and heat. In any case, our native Sun is exactly such a star. But the truth is that some stars can have conditions that are completely unusual for them. Such stars, for example, are brown dwarfs. These are, so to speak, dying stars, whose reserves of nuclei are almost completely used up. Thermonuclear reactions they still walk in them, but not with such activity and not with such strong heat release.

For example, the star WISE 1828+2650. It is the coolest of all known brown dwarfs. Its surface temperature is only 25 degrees Celsius. Quite comfortable to walk around the star in shorts and a T-shirt.

Possible ocean of life

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is the most likely candidate for discovering an entire ocean of extraterrestrial life. At least that's what NASA scientists think. Conditions on the surface and in the atmosphere of this satellite are extremely harsh. The average temperature is minus 170–180 degrees Celsius. In some places, methane-ethane rivers flow and even lakes form. And most of the surface consists of water ice. However, in the conclusions of researchers, Titan is very often compared with our native Earth in the early stages of its development. It is possible that the simplest forms of life may exist on the satellite, in particular in underground reservoirs, where conditions can be much more comfortable than on the surface.

Lightning

Modern science It is already well known that lightning is not only an earthly phenomenon. Electrical discharges have been recorded in the atmospheres of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and other planets. But few people know that the strongest lightning occurs not on planets, but around black holes. Those same relativistic jets or jets that erupt from the centers of quasars, black holes and radio galaxies can, in fact, also be considered lightning. Extremely powerful, huge. Their nature is still very little studied. Scientists believe that such discharges are formed due to the interaction of magnetic fields with the accretion disk around black hole or a neutron star.

Real hell

If there is a real hell somewhere, then it definitely has to be the planet CoRoT-7 b. It orbits the star COROT-7 in the constellation Monoceros, which is approximately 489 light-years away. The problem of the planet is that it is too close to its star and always faces only one side towards it. Due to such conditions, a huge ocean of hot lava has formed on the illuminated side of the planet. Its temperature is +2500-2600 degrees Celsius, which is higher than the melting point of most known minerals. Therefore, on the “warm” side of the planet, almost everything melted.

Moreover, the entire atmosphere of CoRoT-7 b mainly consists of this evaporated rock, which then falls onto colder areas in the form of rock sediments. It is assumed that this planet was once a gas giant the size of Saturn, but the star literally “evaporated” it to the core. Now it is only one and a half times larger than the Earth.

Magnetars

Our Sun rotates on its axis in about 25 days, gradually distorting the magnetic field around it. Now imagine dying star, which in its death throes collapses and shrinks into a tiny lump of matter. A huge, gigantic star, sometimes larger than the Sun, turns into a ball with a diameter of only a few tens of kilometers. All this time it is spinning faster and faster. Like a spinning ballerina who presses and spreads her arms, this star also spins along with its magnetic field.

According to scientists' calculations, sometimes the magnetic field of a magnetar can be a million times stronger than the earth's. By comparison, a magnetic field of this strength could destroy your phone at a distance of hundreds of thousands of kilometers. It would seem that what’s so terrible about it is that you just need to keep your electronic devices away from magnetars. But this magnetic field is so strong that it can influence matter itself, twisting atoms into thin cylinders.

Orphan planets

Ever since school, everyone knows that there are stars around which planets revolve, around which, in turn, their satellites can revolve. However, there are exceptions to all rules. Imagine that in the vast cold space there are planets that are not tied by gravity to either the stars or other planets. They are usually called orphan planets or wanderer planets. Interestingly, if an orphan planet is located in a galaxy, then even if it is not tied to the stars, it still revolves around the galactic core. Of course, the circulation period in such cases is very long. But it may also be that the planet is in completely empty intergalactic space and then it does not orbit anything at all.

Time machine

In general, the entire cosmos and the entire Universe are imagined as one big time machine, in which even distance, for clarity, is measured in years, light years, of course. However, given that the size of our galaxy is about 100,000 light years, any event that happens on one edge of it will be noticeable on the other only after 100,000 years. But this does not mean that the speed of information propagation in the Universe is limited only by the speed of light. If you look at space in the infrared range, you can see something that has not yet happened for us. A simple example: the famous “Pillars of Creation” - a region in the Eagle Nebula. According to the Spitzer infrared telescope, the Pillars of Creation were destroyed by a supernova explosion approximately 6,000 years ago. But since the nebula itself is located at a distance of 7,000 light years from Earth, we will see them for about a thousand years, although they themselves have been gone for a long time.

Space is a real territory of mysteries: there are phenomena there that are completely inexplicable. They do not fit into the accepted picture of the world and cannot be deciphered in any way. It turns out that either a person does not understand the laws of nature, or someone from above is constantly changing these laws.

In 1989, a research apparatus was sent into space towards Jupiter. Scientists planned to use it to study the distant planet from literally all sides. But the research results exceeded all experts' expectations.

The spacecraft, the first and only one to enter Jupiter's orbit, managed to discover four new satellites of the giant planet. For this, scientists named the device after the great scientist: in 1610, Galileo Galilei discovered the four satellites of Jupiter.

Auto spacecraft"Galileo"

However, the probe itself presented specialists with many surprises. To give it acceleration, scientists used a well-known technique: the probe approached the Earth twice so that it could be “pushed” by the planet’s gravity, giving additional acceleration.

Imagine the surprise of the specialists when they discovered that, contrary to calculations, Galileo began to move faster. The engineers shrugged their shoulders: before this, all the devices overclocked normally.

On February 17, 1996, NASA launched the new NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft to the asteroid Eros. The probe's mission was to cover a distance of 316 million kilometers and get as close as possible to Eros, located beyond the orbit of Mars.

Automatic interplanetary station “NEAR Shoemaker”

To give the research vehicle acceleration, experts resorted to a proven gravity maneuver, the same one that was tested on Galileo. The result was repeated: the final speed was higher than the calculated one.

The same thing happened with Rosetta, which flew to explore the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and with Cassini, with which it was planned to study Saturn. Subsequent launches of probes went according to plan, without surprises. Scientists still cannot explain what was happening in space during that period. Who needed to additionally accelerate four spacecraft?

Previously, it was believed that the Earth and the Sun are located at a distance of almost 149,600 thousand kilometers from each other. And suddenly a sensation: according to the latest measurements, the distance between the star and our planet is increasing. This was discovered in 2004. Since then, the Sun has been moving away from us by 15 centimeters per year every year. It's a small thing, but unpleasant.

Rosetta probe

How can one not remember science fiction films? They describe terrible events: the Sun is moving away from the Earth in a matter of months, the planet is getting colder and colder, people are trying to escape, but there is no salvation. Will this scenario become a reality after some time?

Of course, if the speed of “separation” does not change, then the two celestial bodies will “diverge” after hundreds of millions of years. What if the speed increases? Or, conversely, will the Earth begin to move closer to the Sun? Scientists cannot yet understand the nature of this phenomenon; there are only versions.

Among the possible hypotheses were the loss of mass by the star as a result of emissions and solar wind, as well as the action of mysterious dark matter. A new Japanese study explains the mysterious phenomenon by the effects of gravity.

But the latest hypothesis concerns the theory of a diverging Universe: since entire galaxies are diverging from each other, then why not celestial bodies within the same solar system?

Astronomers have long puzzled over why our Earth is so close to the Sun? If you turn your gaze to others star systems, you can notice the following pattern: the larger the planet, the closer it is to the star. There is no order in our solar system.

The giants Saturn and Jupiter are located in the middle, letting the little ones go ahead - Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The system is also closed by the relatively small planets Uranus and Pluto. Why the planets are arranged in this order is a mystery. However, maybe it was precisely thanks to this confusion that life arose in our system?

Why does Uranus rotate “lying on its side”? If other planets can be compared to spinning tops, then Uranus is more like a rolling ball: the plane of Uranus's equator is inclined to the plane of its orbit at an angle of 97.86 degrees. As a result, the process of changing seasons there is different from other planets in the solar system. Each pole spends 42 Earth years in darkness and another 42 years under the light of the Sun.

Another mystery: all planets rotate counterclockwise. And only one Venus distinguished itself - it rotates clockwise. That is, if we have sunrise in the east and sunset in the west, then on Venus it’s the other way around. There is a theory that its reverse rotation is associated with a collision of the planet with a huge cosmic body. But for now this is just a theory.

In 1972, the Pioneer 10 space probe was launched, followed by Pioneer 11. According to scientists' calculations, they should have already crossed the solar system and gone beyond its limits. But something strange is happening to them. The ships have deviated from the given trajectory and do not want to leave their “native land”.

Automatic interplanetary station "Pioneer-10"

It seems as if some unknown force is keeping them “at home” and does not want to let them into the forbidden zone. There are many versions: the influence of solar wind, fuel leaks, errors in calculations. Surely there is some good reason, but something else is surprising: why are different devices launched in different times, like robots, act exactly the same?

Not so long ago, another universal mystery was discovered - the planemo. This celestial body has both the properties of a planet and a star. Planemos are born in the same way as stars, but never become stars - they are too cold to become one.

The mass of planemos is comparable to the mass of the giant planets located outside the solar system, but they are not solid enough to be classified as planets. In general, neither this nor that. But another phenomenon is even more striking: for the first time, cosmic twin planemos were discovered outside the solar system - two at once mysterious object located nearby.

The Planemo twins orbit each other, not the star. Researchers believe that both cosmic bodies arose about a million years ago. The distance between the planes is six times greater than the distance between the Sun and Pluto. But this does not prevent them from “sticking” to each other.

By the way, the “twin brothers” are located at a distance of about 400 light years from Earth. The existence of such stellar duets has brought confusion into the minds of scientists, but surely over time they will explain the nature of this phenomenon.

Materials used from the article by Andrey Palko from the site

Website “Mom can do anything!” collected 30 of the most interesting riddles about space for children. Invite your child to guess them. They will come in handy for Cosmonautics Day, as well as for any other holiday dedicated to space.

These riddles will help children understand space concepts and learn more about the planets of the solar system.

Flashing a huge tail in the dark,
rushes among bright stars in the void
She is not a star, not a planet,
The mystery of the Universe...
(Comet)

This interstellar
Eternal wanderer
In the night sky
Just introduce myself
And flies away
For a long time afterwards,
Farewell to us
Twitching tail.
(Comet)

A fragment from the planet
Rushing somewhere among the stars.
He has been flying and flying for many years,
Space…
(Meteorite)

Lights the way at night,
Doesn't let the stars sleep.
Let everyone sleep, she has no time for sleep,
There is light in the sky for us...
(Moon)

At night with the Sun I change
And I light up in the sky.
I sprinkle soft rays,
Like silver.
I can be full at night,
Or I can use a sickle.
(Moon)

The astronomer is a stargazer,
He knows everything inside out!
Only the stars are visible better
The sky is full...
(Moon)

Outrunning night and day, a deer runs around the earth.
Touching the stars with his horn, he chose a path in the sky.
You can hear the clatter of his hooves, he is a pathfinder of the Universe.
(satellite)

Milky galaxy,
in which we live
Scattered into space
Sparkling rain.
We can fly around
her someday
Calling our galaxy
We just...
(Milky Way)

Planet blue,
Beloved, dear.
She's yours, she's mine,
And it's called...
(Earth)

Wanders alone
Fiery eye.
Everywhere it happens
The look warms you.
(Sun)

Bottomless ocean, endless ocean,
Airless, dark and extraordinary,
Universes, stars and comets live in it,
There are also habitable, perhaps planets.
(Space)

A yellow plate hangs in the sky.
The yellow plate gives everyone warmth.
(Sun)

A yellow circle is visible in the sky
And the rays are like threads.
The Earth revolves around
Like a magnet.
Even though I'm not old yet,
But already a scientist -
I know that it’s not a circle, but a ball,
Intensely hot.
(Sun)

Peas are scattered across the dark sky
Colored caramel made from sugar crumbs,
And only when the morning comes,
All the caramel will suddenly melt.
(Stars)

Blue ceilings
They are nailed down with gold nails.
(stars in the sky)

The grain scattered at night,
And in the morning there is nothing.
(Stars)

The carpet is spread out, the peas are scattered,
You can’t lift a carpet, you can’t pick peas.
(Starry sky)

These stars are like sparks
They fall and go out quickly.
Light up in the middle of the night
There's a shower of stars in the sky,
Like these lights
Painted by an artist.
(Meteorites)

From which ladle do they not drink or eat, but just look at it?
(Big Dipper)

Run. to run - not to reach,
Fly, fly - not reach.
(Horizon)

A man sits in a rocket.
He flies boldly into the sky,
And at us in his spacesuit
He's looking from space.
(Astronaut)

There are no wings, but this bird
It will fly and land on the moon.
(Lunokhod)

Miracle bird-scarlet tail
Arrived in a flock of stars.
(Rocket)

The astronaut, checking the cable,
He puts something on
Those clothes will provide
Both warmth and oxygen.
(Spacesuit)

There is a window in the ship -
"Challenger", "World".
But not like on Earth -
In the house and in the apartment.
That window is in the shape of a circle,
It is very durable.
(Porthole)

To equip the eye
And be friends with the stars,
To see the Milky Way
Need a powerful...
(telescope)

At Grandma's over the hut
A piece of bread is hanging.
The dogs bark and they can’t get it.
(month)

Telescope for hundreds of years
Study the life of planets.
He will tell us everything
Smart uncle...
(Astronomer)

A bird cannot reach the moon
Fly and land on the moon,
But he can do it
Do it quickly...
(Rocket)

The rocket has a driver
Zero gravity lover.
In English: "astronaut"
And in Russian...
(Astronaut)

Riddles about the planets of the solar system

Take a quick look through the telescope
He walks in orbit.
There he is the boss over everyone,
More than all other planets.
In our solar system
There is no one bigger.
(Jupiter)

Planet blue,
Beloved, dear,
She's yours, she's mine,
And it's called...
(Earth)

Lush gas giant
Brother of Jupiter and dandy
He loves to be close
Rings of ice and dust.
(Uranus)

On a distant tiny planet,
There is no status of a “Big” planet.
And she was offended,
Not visible through telescopes
(Pluto)

All planets with poles,
Everyone has an equator.
But planets with belts
You won't find another one.
He is alone in these rings,
Very important gentleman.
(Saturn)

I often glow in the sky,
Your next door neighbor.
I am Mercury's sister,
And I'm always hot.
(Venus)

This is the red planet
Next door to us.
It is in winter and even in summer
Freezing above the ice.
It's strange that you don't say -
The ice is not on top, but inside.
(Mars)

Here is the planets little brother,
The size is too small.
He is closest to the sun,
That's why it's hot.
(Mercury)

On the planet blue-blue
The wind is blowing very strong.
It's very cold there -
Consists of water, gas and ice
(Neptune)