New Discoveries in Space What is the strangest place you can think of? Would you say it was the darkest regions of the Amazon, the South Pole or some other exotic place? You would be wrong. The strangest place is outer space, if you can call that a place. It seems like every time I turn around something new and unusual is being found in it. Over the years I have read a lot about space, but truthfully it is hard to define. It reminds me of what the definition of what electricity actually is. No one knows the answer to that and I don’t think we have ever had an adequate definition of what space is and where it came from. At first, I had the idea space was nothingness, but found out later this was not true because space can produce power. That power is called Zero Point energy. Space is not really empty even when it seems so. We have been looking at space for hundreds of years through our telescopes and yet we are far from having all the answers to its complexity and may never have. We are also continuing to find out about the existence of things which seem mysterious to us and just recently we made a couple of discoveries. Astronomers have discovered what they call Ghost Galaxies of a great wall behind the Milky Way galaxy where our planet is located. You have to wonder why we are just discovering this now. Could it be because of the increase of computer power which employs software to search the universe or perhaps the advent of far more powerful optical telescopes? Artificial Intelligence has made searching for unknown objects in space easier. I guess none of this matters to the average person, but I can’t help being interested in these things. As our devices get more powerful will we find even more objects in space we didn’t know existed and what will we find when we actually get a chance to do human exploration of space? Some people don’t believe human exploration will ever take place and claim the human body requires too much equipment on a spaceship as far as the environment goes. They think robotic exploration will be how we explore space. I don’t agree, because human curiosity will drive us to get out there. Back to Ghost Galaxies and the great wall. What the heck are these guys talking about, what did they find? First let me say astronomers always have believed the older a galaxy the further away it would be. Some how this discovery seems to violate that rule. What they claim to have found is a massive object along the southern border of the galaxy about 700 million light years away. It is said inside that object is the oldest “Ghost” galaxy in the universe. The scientists claim they didn’t discover it before because it was hidden by millions of stars along with dirt and debris. Why, when there are billions upon billions of galaxies in space would our galaxy just happen to have the remains of an incredible huge galaxy near us and how can we be sure it is the oldest in the universe? I for one can not believe in a coincidence like this because the odds are far to enormous. How do we know there are not more of these objects near other galaxies and lastly, how do we know if they exist, they aren’t older? Astronomers have called the area where the wall is the zone of avoidance. Supposedly the wall is composed of very dense material and can’t be seen through optically. Scientists say they know the wall was created by galaxies packed together, but they are not able to observe them, but know they are there because of their gravitational effects. Since the galaxies making up the wall can’t be seen I would like to know what the scientists rate their chances of being correct when they say the wall is full of galaxies? In case you are wondering the size of the wall has been estimated at being one million billion times the size of the sun. The wall is not the only object in space to recently make the news. There are four objects which can not be seen by an optical telescope which were discovered by a radio telescope. They are sort of circular and brighter along the edges. Scientists have called them odd radio circles or ORCs. This sounds like the creatures from Lord of the Rings, which by the way are spelled the same. The objects are not very big if we are seeing them in their entirety being about 1/31 the size of the moon. Scientists are having a problem defining the objects because no matter how hard they try, nothing they say so far fits all four objects. The best consensus so far is they are shockwaves left over from some event. While many of the astronomers think the objects could be shockwaves, they could also be some unknown phenomena. When astronomers discover something new using a radio telescope, they like to confirm the find with a different radio telescope to make sure the object is not an anomaly. Since the objects were found by two different radio telescope arrays in different countries scientists know the objects are real. The four objects were found during a survey known as the EMU survey. Astronomers expect to find other unusual and maybe unknown objects as the survey continues. As more advanced instruments for examining the sky are invented who knows what we might find. Maybe someday astronomers might be able to do their sky surveys with an instrument which has the capabilities of both optical telescopes and radio telescopes. It might not end there; instruments might be produced in the future which will be able to somehow see around objects or through them. The field of astronomy is becoming more technical every day. Years ago, astronomers had to sit inside a cage in their large telescopes to do their viewing, today they can be in comfort in a warm room and view what the telescope detects on a monitor. As we explore space, we might set up telescopes along the way which could send back signals of what they see, giving us a better perspective on the universe. Some of the secrets we discover might even change our lives in ways we can’t imagine now.
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