Surprises In Space

There are a lot of surprises waiting for us in space. We have seen a few of them already and they were astounding. One of those surprises has long term ramifications for life and it came about when we launched a TEXUS-49 rocket. Someone got the idea of putting DNA on the outside of the rocket before it blasted off into low orbit around the earth. The flight didn’t last long, only 13 minutes, but the DNA survived, to the surprise of everyone concerned. This raises a very important question. The question is can DNA travel through space and survive. If it can this means the DNA in our bodies might have come from space and there may be other beings who have the same DNA we do. Perhaps the talk about aliens visiting the earth who look like us is true and the reason is we share the same DNA.

Since I am talking about DNA I would like to mention the fact there is a formation in space which looks like our DNA’s Double Helix. I have to wonder what the odds are of finding something like this. The formation is a nebula made up of red giant stars and supergiants along with dim stars. This nebula is unique and so far nothing else like it has ever been found. I have heard some people say this is a sort of message to us and who am I to say they are wrong? The nebula is about 80 light years in size and one of the biggest coincidences is it appears in our own galaxy where we are located. Some people think this is just too much of a coincidence and to tell you the truth it does seem like a stretch. There is a photo of it on Space.com. Here is an address and you can copy and paste into your browser’s address bar: http://www.space.com/2157-cosmic-dna-double-helix-spotted-space.html. Sorry About Facts doesn’t use live links.

A Brazilian astronomer has claimed several objects in the Kuiper belt, including a dwarf planet named Sedna are orbiting something. The astronomer is Rodney Gomes and he works at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. He believe there is another planet in our solar system which is yet to be discovered and he thinks this is what they are orbiting. When he presented his findings it interested other astronomers, but most believe more evidence is necessary. Gomes had run computer simulations of 92 objects in the Kuiper belt showing how they would act if there was a large planet there and did the same without there being a planet. It is believed if there is another planet it would be about four times the size of the earth. The Kuiper belt is a region in space in the outer solar system and is beyond the orbit of Neptune and extends out to about 50 astronomical units. There are thousands of small bodies there. An astronomical unit is the average distance between the earth and the sun.

A dust cloud exists near the center of our galaxy. It is named Sagittarius B2. There are gas clouds in space, but this one might be unique. It has been under study for quite some time and scientists have found out something amazing about it. They have determined it smells of rum and tastes like raspberries. It contains a chemical called ethyl formate and this is what gives raspberries their flavor and rum its smell. Unfortunately it can never be harvested because it also contains propyl cyanide.

I always said diamonds are kept artificially high in price and if 55 Cancri e is ever reached, diamonds will be worth nothing.Β  This planet has over 7 times the mass of earth and is twice the diameter. The most important fact is it is completely constructed of diamond. Apparently the object was made of carbon and it was heated to a high enough temperature by its star to turn at least one-third of it into a huge diamond.

Scientists have discovered an electrical current in space and it is incredibly powerful. It is said it has the power of over a trillion lightning bolts and it is believed it comes from a large black hole. It is believed the black hole has a strong magnetic field and this created the electricity. Scientists believe the electricity is able to travel a distance of one hundred and fifty thousand light years. There is an implication here which I am sure hasn’t escaped the scientists and it is we might be able to tap into this power someday giving us free energy on a scale so enormous we would be able to do things we can only dream about now.

There is a rule in astrophysics that something can only be of a maximum size and yet scientists have found something which violates this rule, it is the Large Quasar Group. It is so big it would take 1.2 billion light years to travel across it. Our galaxy is one hundred thousand light years across. The cluster contains 74 quasars. A quasar is a compact object which is so bright one quasar can be hundreds to several thousand times brighter than our entire galaxy. Some of the most distant objects are Quasars and are believed to be a form of active galactic nucleus. Scientists are yet to figure out how this large group formed. They had believed if we viewed the universe from a distance it would look uniform, now we know this violates that theory.

We used to think water might be scarce in the universe then we found the largest accumulation of water we have ever seen and it is floating in space. There is a cloud of water located about 12 billion light years away and it is near a black hole. It is estimated the cloud holds 140 trillion times more water than all the water in earth’s oceans. Could there be life in it?

When we think of stars we think of objects which are extremely hot and could melt a ship far before it ever got very near one, but a new discovery has been made and it is incredible. It is of a star which has a temperature so low we could land on it, come out of our ship and walk on it if it were not for the fact the gravity would crush us. The temperature of this star is only 89 degrees Fahrenheit. The star is a brown dwarf and is named CFBDSIR 1458 10b.

I guess I would have to say the strangest thing we discovered was antimatter. It is believed there was more matter produced in the big bang which created the universe than antimatter and that is why our universe is mostly matter. Before the 20th century some scientists suggested there could be solar systems created entirely of antimatter. We no longer believe this, but we think the reason our universe is made of matter and not antimatter is the antimatter was eliminated by collisions with matter and since matter outnumbered antimatter the result was what we have now.