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Space is a very big place, and as such, it’s full of mysteries that scientists can’t explain. Some of this is simply because it’s impossible to fully observe, thanks to its sheer size and the limitations of physics. After all, it’s really hard to hazard a guess about the conditions of the Andromeda galaxy today, since the light we see from there right now is roughly 2.5 million years old … and that’s the galaxy closest to us.
Still, humanity is tenacious, and we’ve managed to witness some pretty amazing miracles in the parts of space we’ve been able to keep tabs on. Scientists have observed the biggest structure in the known universe, and discovered a strange interstellar space boundary. They’ve also managed to crack numerous previously unsolvable conundrums in our very own solar system. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest secrets about the planets in our solar system that we’ve managed to figure out.
AI debunks a long-standing Mars mystery
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The colonization of Mars has gone from a sci-fi concept to a prospect that NASA is seriously looking into, with an intention to potentially send astronauts to visit the red planet in the 2030s. This next step of the space race also involves billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, which aspires to set up a vast Mars colony. Since the planet is a hotter piece of cosmic real estate than it’s ever been, there’s a keen interest to find if Mars has water, which would obviously help the colonization process greatly.
In 2025, researchers at the University of Bern and Brown University decided to use artificial intelligence to look into one of the most encouraging signs about water on Mars: several mysterious streak formations on the planet’s Olympus Mons region. Patterns like these were first discovered by NASA’s Viking project in the 1970s. They’re present in several parts of Mars, and their constantly evolving look has caused scientists to theorize that they might be watercourses created by H2O that’s salty enough to flow on the planet.
Unfortunately, the results of the study indicate that briny water doesn’t have anything to do with the streaks. After the researchers fed a massive amount of data and images from various agencies’ eyes on Mars to a machine learning algorithm, analysis of the streaks’ changing patterns indicated that they’re most likely the result of wind and other environmental factors moving the dust around.
One plucky probe uncovered Mercury’s mysteries
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Many aspects of Mercury are still a complete mystery to science. Thanks to its sheer vicinity to the sun, the planet is absurdly hard to reach and observe to this very day.
Sure, humanity has known about Mercury for at least 5,000 years, since there are records about the ancient Sumerian civilization being aware of the first planet from the sun. Despite this, we haven’t really known many details about it until we quite literally crashed a probe on it. In 2004, NASA’s Messenger (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) mission launched a probe that orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015, at which point it quit the job rather dramatically and crashed on the planet. During this time, it was able to record and transmit information that shed light on many aspects of the planet that have mystified researchers since the 1970s, when the Mariner 10 probe performed the first Mercury flyby.
Scientists already knew that Mercury, like all other planets, is slowly cooling, but the Messenger data revealed that it does so at a comparatively fast-paced rate and that the cooling process has shrank the planet’s diameter by some 8.5 miles over its lifespan. We also now know that Mercury has its own, skewy magnetic field, and that the planet’s strange patchwork surface is a combination of “newer” surface terrain and older parts of the planet’s center that have been pushed to the surface.
Scientists find water on Mars
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Interestingly enough, that earlier Mars entry doesn’t mean that there’s absolutely no water on Mars. In fact, a group of geophysicists who analyzed data from NASA’s InSight lander have found evidence that the planet might have an abundance of H2O.
The InSight mission lasted from 2018 to 2022 and focused on studying the depths of the planet, including its tectonic activity and structural makeup. InSight also found signs of water deep within the planet — enough of it to bury the entire surface under a planet-wide, mile-deep ocean. The evident existence of this gargantuan body of water up to 13 miles under the planet’s surface suggests that Mars didn’t simply lose all its water when its surface went dry some 3 billion years ago.
From a habitability standpoint, such depths unfortunately mean that the reservoir is virtually unreachable for prospective settlers. While that might be disappointing, it’s worth noting that the water discovery has plenty of potential to one day answer another interesting scientific question: Whether there’s life on Mars. “Establishing that there is a big reservoir of liquid water provides some window into what the climate was like or could be like,” Professor Michael Manga of the University of California, Berkeley told BBC. “And water is necessary for life as we know it. I don’t see why [the underground reservoir] is not a habitable environment.”
Data from Voyager 2 solves long-standing Uranus mysteries
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Voyager 2 is one of the great success stories of space exploration and an ongoing treasure trove of information about Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune — all of which it has flown by and observed.
Speaking of Uranus, the 1986 Voyager 2 flyby introduced numerous mysteries about the icy planet’s atmosphere, such as a distinct lack of plasma and wild radiation belts with no apparent energy source. This made it seem like the planet’s protective magnetosphere was all out of sync, which puzzled scientists for decades until the same data that introduced the mysteries ultimately provided a solution. In 2024, a new examination of the 1986 data revealed that the timing of the Voyager 2 flyby simply happened to be incredibly bad. Just ahead of the probe’s visit, a powerful solar wind had hit the planet and briely thrown its magnetosphere in disarray, leading to skewed data.
Dr. Linda Spilker of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory was one of the scientists analyzing the 1986 data, and as she told the NASA website, she was happy to see the explanations that the 2024 data-mining managed to dig up. “The flyby was packed with surprises, and we were searching for an explanation of its unusual behavior,” she said. “The magnetosphere Voyager 2 measured was only a snapshot in time. This new work explains some of the apparent contradictions, and it will change our view of Uranus once again.”
Scientists finally figure out Jupiter’s pulsating aurora phenomenon
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Even on Earth, auroras are an impressive sight that tourists flock to Nordic countries like Finland to witness. The phenomenon takes place when solar winds carry particles released by the sun’s electromagnetic activity into Earth’s atmosphere. There, they collide with nitrogen and oxygen atoms, releasing energy that makes the atoms glow with pretty colors. It may sound tricky, but the science is simple enough … at least, on Earth. Other planets in our solar system have auroras, too, and Jupiter’s are particularly complex and tricky to understand.
Jupiter’s poles have peculiar, pulsating auroras that feature strong X-ray emissions. They occur often and are far more powerful than their cousins on Earth. They can be different on the North and South pole, and generally go against the common knowledge of how auroras function … not least because science couldn’t figure out the mechanic behind these X-ray pulses.
In 2021 — four decades after they were first spotted — a study was finally able to figure out the way Jupiter’s X-ray auroras work by combining data from NASA’s Jupiter exploration craft, Juno, and the European Space Agency’s space telescope XMM-Newton. As it turns out, an interaction between solar winds and changes in the planet’s magnetic field create a curved, electromagnetic ion cyclotron wave, which guides the charged ions to the planet’s atmosphere in the polar regions. The impact of their speedy arrival creates a burst of x-rays that, in turn, makes up the aurora.
Jupiter’s geometric storms can likely be solved by a 19th-century scientific experiment
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Jupiter’s most famous storm is its Great Red Spot, a massive anticyclone that is as mysterious as it is large. However, it’s not the only strange thing happening on the planet’s surface.
One of the more recent mysteries on this list are Jupiter’s geometric cluster storms, which were found in 2019 courtesy of NASA’s Juno mission. The planet’s poles are surrounded by large cyclones that can be up to 4,350 miles in diameter, but the really interesting thing about them isn’t their size — it’s that they interact. The cyclones, which can last for months, often seem to form various geometric patterns that pack them close together.
A major mystery, potentially. Yet, it turns out that science may already have solved the dilemma of the geometric cyclones … in the 19th century. According to Juno mission team member and Caltech professor Andrew Ingersoll and his fellow researchers, Jupiter’s geometric storms bear a striking similarity to a 1878 experiment conducted by physicist Alfred Mayer, who found that magnets floating in water configure themself in geometrical patterns. Mathematical physicist Lord Kelvin turned this into a mathematical model, and in 2020, the experiment became an important building block in solving one of Jupiter’s mysteries. Granted, the theory isn’t 100% confirmed, and we still don’t know all the secrets behind the geometrical storms, but at least we now have a decent idea of why they might like synchronized dancing.
NASA figures out the secrets of Jupiter’s volcanic moon
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For a long time, one of Jupiter’s satellites was one of the most mysterious celestial objects in the solar system. Jupiter’s moon Io is a scarred, scalding place with a surface that’s full of hundreds of volcanoes. Io’s volcanic activity is off the charts … and for decades, we had absolutely no idea how it functions. Is a giant hidden reservoir of magma feeding the scores of volcanoes on the surface? Is Io pock-marked by a case of planetary acne, with every volcano’s bursts fueled by its own underlying pool of magma?
Linda Morabito of NASA’s Jet Propulsion-Laboratory discovered Io’s volcanic turmoil all the way back in 1979, but it took until the Juno fly-bys of 2023 and 2024 for us to truly understand the reasons behind it. The secret is dramatic, to say the least; Io travels around Jupiter in a tight, elliptical cycle that takes just 42.5 hours. This causes the gas giant’s gravitational pull to constantly squeeze the moon and release the proverbial grip.
Such force generates massive amounts of heat, which in turn literally melts parts of the planet and keeps its volcanic activity going, with each volcano indeed having its own magma reservoir. It’s actually pretty surprising that Io has managed to avoid the “sea of magma under the surface” scenario despite the forces involved, and researchers are eager to apply this discovery to their studies of other celestial bodies.
The waters of Venus may have evaporated into space
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Scientists have long suspected that Venus, like Earth, once had water. At some point, something happened, turning it into the hot and hellish planet it is today … but what?
In 2024, a study posited a convincing (and horrifying) sequence of events that could have rendered the second planet from the sun to its current state. According to it, the large bodies of water that Venus may have had at some point fell victim to a truly terrible version of the greenhouse effect — the phenomenon where various greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide) of the atmosphere trap heat near the planet’s surface, warming it dramatically.
On Earth, the natural version of the greenhouse effect is a life-sustaining force that maintains a comfortable surface temperature, but greenhouse gas emissions caused by humanity have thrown the process out of sync and led to rising surface temperatures. Venus, according to the study, may have experienced a far more extreme variety of this: Over time, the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide levels rose to absurdly high levels, heating the planet until all the water simply evaporated. The evaporated water reacted with HCO+ ions in a reaction called HCO+ dissociative recombination, which broke the evaporated water molecules, built them again as carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and finally threw the hydrogen atoms out of the atmosphere at a high speed. This would have removed a crucial building block of water, thus stripping the planet of its H2O.
Saturn’s Earth-sized white spot storms are likely kept in check by moisture
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We’ve already mentioned Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which is without doubt the most powerful player in the solar system’s planetary storm game. However, it’s not the only participant in the supersized storm category.
Saturn experiences periodic “white spot” storms that are roughly the size of Earth (but can stretch quite a bit), occur roughly every 20 or 30 years, and can last for months. Researchers found them in 1876, and they immediately entered the mystery category because no one could figure out why they take actual decades to develop.
In 2015, researchers discovered that the most likely “control system” behind the white spot storms is one that’s very familiar to us Earthlings: water. Most of Saturn consists of light helium and hydrogen, so the heavier moisture hangs out lower than them in the gas giant’s atmosphere. This moisture layer, researchers think, serves as a sort of filter that prevents warm gas from freely rising up in the convenction process that’s crucial in the atmospheric movements that lead into a storm. Without the moisture, the planet’s gases could move more freely, and storms would develop more easily.
The very existence of Neptune as a planet was solved with math 200 years after its discovery
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There are many planetary secrets that we’ve managed to solve with careful application of scientific tools and knowledge. However, Neptune is the only planet in our solar system that was discovered with the power of good, old mathematics.
After Pluto got demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006, Neptune inherited the title of the solar system’s most faraway planet. Unlike its seven siblings, it can’t be seen without special equipment, and its location and 165-year orbit can make it so deceptively stationary that early astronomers mistook it for a star. That’s how astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei classified Neptune in 1612 and 1613, and that’s how it remained (as far as humanity was concerned) until 1846.
Neptune’s “origin story” as a planet came when scientists started noticing that Uranus — which itself had been discovered in 1781 — had an inconsistent orbit around the sun. Suspecting that other forces were in play, mathematician Urbain Joseph Le Verrier calculated the size and location of an unknown celestial object that could affect Uranus’ path. After Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin Observatory received the calculations from Le Verrier, he almost immediately found the eighth planet from the sun.
Saturn’s rings may have been formed when the planet’s gravitational pull tore a moon apart
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Saturn isn’t the biggest planet in our solar system, but its impressive rings certainly earn it a place in the conversation for the prettiest one. Perhaps understandably, said rings are also the most enticing mystery Saturn has to offer. These seven rings around the gas planet have remained an enigma for hundreds of years, even though their makeup is no more mysterious than countless, different-sized pieces of rock and ice that just happen to orbit the planet in an aesthetically pleasing formation.
Some scientists believe that the rings are an assortment of comets and other small, passing celestial objects that Saturn’s gravity had caught and broken down at some point between 100 and 400 million years ago. Some have also suggested that the rings could be roughly as old as the planet itself — 4.5 billion years.However, a 2022 study provided another, extremely interesting explanation which — unlike other theories about the rings — would also explain the peculiarities of Saturn’s relatively large axial tilt.
By analyzing gravitational data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, a MIT team determined that Saturn’s rings are “just” 100 to 200 million years old, and are actually comprised of a bygone moon that got broken into tiny pieces when it ended up too close to the planet’s pull. Such an event could also be responsible for throwing Saturn’s tilt slightly out of sync with Neptune.
The 13 Biggest Mysteries About Black Holes Science Still Can’t Explain
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One of the most awe-inspiring parts of our universe is the black hole. Up until a few years ago, we weren’t even sure they actually existed, but thanks to the dogged drive of astronomers, physicists, and scientists, we learned the phenomenon is not only real but is more widespread than we originally thought.
Despite collecting definitive proof black holes actually exist, we’re not much further than we were before in terms of learning how they form or understanding their cause and effect on our Milky Way. However, for all of the nebulous guessing games researchers spend their time solving, some questions stick out the most. Answering any of these 13 questions listed below would not only give us a better understanding of black holes, but of the way our universe works, too. That’s why you’ll be able to read about latest leading theories for each question and why they’re such a hard cases to crack. So get out your telescope, put on your favorite Einstein wig or Nye bowtie, and let’s dive in.
What is a black hole?
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It seems like a silly question to ask, but we’re still not entirely sure what a black hole’s composition is or what its main functions are. Some theorize our universe may even be inside a black hole. Right now, the most accepted theory is that they’re a clump of matter so dense that its gravity can affect all celestial objects near it. The challenge is that we can only observe them from a great distance, which limits our data collection and testing methods to being nothing but best guesses.
This also adds another layer to the frustration; if we don’t understand what they are, then how can we solve any black hole-related problem? Luckily, in April 2024, a research paper published in Physical Review D gave us a new, exciting hypothesis. One of the co-authors, João Luís Rosa, told Live Science that his team’s research shows that black holes possibly aren’t their own category but instead may be a type of gravastar. Rosa explains, “Gravastars are hypothetical astronomical objects that were introduced [in 2001] as alternatives to black holes … [and] can be interpreted as stars made of vacuum energy or dark energy: the same type of energy that propels the accelerated expansion of the universe.”
Which black hole is closest to Earth?
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One might assume that, since we haven’t observed any black holes in our solar system’s neighborhood, Earth is probably in a safe zone that’s far enough away from a black hole that we won’t risk being sucked in by it. But we just aren’t entirely sure because of, well, the color of black holes; it’s hard to observe black objects against the darkness of space. Also, there are no uniform size requirements black holes need to stick to — some have been discovered to be a couple times the mass of our sun, a relatively small celestial object. Meanwhile, an ultramassive black hole discovered in 2023, known as Abell 1201, is approximately 33 billion times the mass of the sun.
So you probably see the problem here — Abell 1201s are easier to find than smaller black holes, but even its discovery took 20 years from our first noticing its arc to getting the full picture. Trying to do that for something 33 billion times smaller in a black sky, with no direction on where to start, makes finding a needle in a haystack seem easy. Right now, the closest black hole we know of is Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way.
Is there a singularity at the center of a black hole?
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One of the most migraine-inducing aspects that physicists deal with is “singularity.” A singularity is the point at the center of the black hole, where its density is the highest. How high? Scientists believe it’s infinite. But physics teaches us that there are no infinities, and if that’s the only explanation, then either the math is inaccurate or incomplete. It becomes a paradox that pushes the boundaries of what we think we know and what we can prove.
One potential solution is for João Luís Rosa and his team’s theory to be correct about black holes being gravastars, incredibly dense objects filled with dark energy but lacking a singularity. His team looked for spots of gas bubbles orbiting black holes and modeled what should happen to the bubbles if black holes worked as a gravastar. Their findings showed that if they were right, it would solve the paradox because the black hole would be confined to the same rules that Albert Einstein’s general relativity says all objects must abide by.
However, their work isn’t a smoking gun, as there are still subtle differences in how gravastars and black holes emit light, which could be a significant reason to consider them separate celestial objects. So, for now, a singularity’s infinite denseness is still up for debate.
How do supermassive and ultramassive black holes form?
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Currently, there are five categories astronomers use for black hole sizing: primordial, stellar-mass, intermediate-mass, supermassive, and ultramassive. Primordials were believed to be the first black holes in the universe and may have been tiny but probably have long since evaporated. Stellar-mass black holes form when the core of a star around 20 times the mass of our sun collapses. Intermediate-mass black holes are currently just a theory, as only one potential candidate has been observed, but scientists rationalize there are probably a few black holes that fall between stellar-mass and supermassive. Supermassive holes, like our friend Saggitarius A*, have a mass ranging from tens of thousands to billions of times our sun. Finally, most researchers believe ultramassive black holes start at around 10 billion times the mass of the sun, but there’s no standardized starting point yet.
But here’s the problem: If a stellar-mass black hole needs a star around 20 times the mass of the sun, how could something requiring a minimum of tens of thousands of times more mass exist? Right now, the two leading theories think there’s an evolution that allows a black hole to grow to these inconceivable sizes. The first, published by Guang Yang and colleagues from Penn State, believes a massive black hole requires a massively sized host galaxy which allows the black hole to expand even more quickly. The other, published by Mar Mezcua and colleagues from the Institut of Space Sciences in Spain, theorizes that black holes grow as they age, with the ultramassive ones possibly getting at least a billion year head start.
What is the relationship between supermassive black holes and galaxy formation?
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Which came first, Sagittarius A* or the Milky Way? Did Sagittarius A* make its way over to the Milky Way, or did the Milky Way form around Sagittarius A*? These “chicken or the egg” questions baffle astronomers, and it’s easy to understand why. Not only are there no good answers, but the amount of time it would take us to observe one scenario or the other could take at least a millennia for just one formation, let alone the multiple confirmations scientists would want to prove which theory is right.
The closest working explanations we have focus more on explaining the after-effects of the black hole and galaxy anchoring than the cause. First, some context: Astronomers believe there are two types of galaxies – one that’s rapidly forming stars, and another that’s “quiet” and seems as though it’s done growing. A team of scientists from Nanjing University discovered a correlation between the mass of a black hole, the amount of cold gas in its galaxy, and the number of stars being created. The bigger the black hole’s mass, the more cold gas that’s purged from the galaxy, while the less cold gas, the fewer stars are birthed. So, it’s possible that a galaxy forms on its own, and its initial rapid expansion attracts a black hole. As the black hole makes its way into the center (or thereabouts), it begins feeding on the galaxy’s resources, depleting the essential ingredients it may need to form more stars.
How do some galaxies end up with black holes that seem too large for their size?
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In many ways, nature appears to prefer a balance. So, how is it that some supermassive black holes make their way into a galaxy that’s too small to sustain itself and the black hole? If Guang Yang’s team’s theory is true, then a galaxy and its black hole should grow in tandem. But Jonelle Walsh, an astronomer at the University of Texas in Austin, noticed a galaxy about one-fourth the size of our Milky Way called NGC 1277 with a central black hole approximately 4,000 times the size of Sagittarius A*. Did it start out as too big for its galaxy, or did the black hole continue to grow while NGC 1277 stopped?
Right now, there are no easy answers. Walsh’s team is searching the universe for possible inverses where the galaxy is much too large for its small black hole. Not only could a discovery like that help give us a better understanding of how black holes interact with their hosts, but it may shed deeper light into what the metrics need to be and stay at for both objects to grow in tandem.
Are there mini black holes?
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One of the worries pop culture popularized upon the release of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was that it would create a miniature black hole that would destroy us all once it was turned on. It became one of the more popular black hole myths, really. Luckily, that wasn’t the case (uh, spoiler alert?), but it made scientists wonder if baby black holes were even possible. If so, where are they, and what size of star would it take to create one?
Our planet and solar system are in a Goldilocks-type zone where there are no stars close enough to our cosmic neighborhood that are big enough to turn into stellar-mass or supermassive black holes. As for the opposite side of the size spectrum? Well, the jury is still out. The aforementioned primordial black holes, if they existed, were probably tiny since there wasn’t a lot of mass yet formed in the early years of the universe.
We do know that if super tiny black holes were possible, like the ones the LHC might cause, they would be too small to have any negative impact. But if they do actually exist, we’re not able to definitively tell, thanks to the problem of trying to observe something black in the sky. Our best way to test it is probably not what you want to hear: using the LHC to form them in a controlled environment. Science isn’t there yet, so for now, no black holes are capable of forming on Earth.
What happens to information that falls into a black hole?
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Stephen Hawking coined the “black hole information paradox” problem — the theory that black holes destroy all information, also known as the Hawking information paradox — which leaves scientists scratching their heads. “Information,” in this case, refers to anything that gets sucked into the black hole. If physics says that information cannot be destroyed, then what happens to it inside the black hole where it can never escape? Does it still exist? Physics says it must, but black holes tend to break all the rules physics has, so it’s just as possible that it disappears. Thankfully, we may have a glimmer of hope for an answer soon.
Black holes aren’t just flat circles; they have peaks and valleys. The peaks, known as “islands,” could possibly reach so high beyond the black hole that we could measure them and collect data without succumbing to the hole’s gravitational pull. There’s also the possibility that “entanglement islands,” a type of particle pair, could be living on the surface of the event horizon, giving us another place to collect data on what’s going on. But these entanglement islands require a certain type of black hole that is currently only hypothetical. Sorry, scientists, back to the melatonin for you.
How do black holes produce powerful jets that extend beyond their galaxies?
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One of the most breathtaking images astronomers talk about is a black hole shooting powerful light beams from both sides of its galaxy’s disc. Not only are they surely a sight to see, but they tell us crucial information about the black hole. These light beams are millions of light years long and aren’t typically smack dab in the middle, so there’s a bit of a wobble to them. This wobble is one thing that lets us definitely determine the spin axis of the black hole, while the length of the beams helps us estimate its size. But if nothing can escape a black hole’s gravity, how are these jets forming, and how can they be so powerful?
Luckily, we’ve found a behemoth pair of jet beams that may give us more clues. In 2024, scientists at Caltech observed the longest light beams yet discovered in the universe with an outflow of energy so powerful it would take trillions of our sun to match them. They’ve named the beams “Porphyrion” as an homage to a mythological Greek giant and span 23 million light years, or about 140 Milky Ways. Despite being 7.5 million light years away from Earth, scientists are hoping they’ll be able to unlock mysteries around how these types of jets form and how they interact with both their host galaxy and black hole.
What is the nature of Hawking radiation, and how does it affect the universe?
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When it comes to jet beams, it’s also important to talk about Hawking radiation. Named after Dr. Stephen Hawking, who theorized its existence in 1974, this is a type of energy leak that stems from light particles orbiting in a black hole’s gravitational field. Previously, Hawking radiation was thought to only come from matter caught in this orbit, but new studies reveal that it’s stemming from any type of mass over a certain size. Hawking theorized that this radiation would force a black hole to completely evaporate over time, but now scientists are wondering if its effects are bigger than that.
Originally, researchers believed that this energy leak was caused by the event horizon, but new research is showing that event horizons aren’t as impactful as originally thought. Now, leading research is instead theorizing that this loss of energy that all masses over a certain size experience means that it’s possible everything in the universe could eventually lose its “resistance,” for lack of a better phrase, to collapsing in itself and becoming its own black hole, eventually destroying the entire universe. However, we know so little about the mechanics behind the quantum powers necessary for black holes to function, so these hypotheses are only conjecture.
How do the laws of quantum mechanics apply to black holes?
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There’s also the frustrating world of quantum mechanics and how it’s a constant thorn in the side for astronomers. Quantum mechanics is the law for how particles smaller than atoms operate, as opposed to general relativity (one of Albert Einstein’s major breakthroughs), which focuses on much larger objects, like planets and black holes. This sounds simple enough, except for quantum mechanics to be true, it has to allow for rules that general relativity says aren’t possible. For example, general relativity says that all objects have a continuous gravity that curves spacetime. This is why you’ll often see gravity portrayed as a sort of grid paper that “dips” when a planet is positioned above it. Quantum mechanics says this isn’t possible; gravitational fields are not continuous but instead happen intermittently like chunks, and there is no standard set of rules (just probabilities) for how those chunks affect objects.
So, how does this relate to black holes? It’s quickest to spare you the math and sum it up like this: General relativity says there must be a singularity to the black hole because gravity is a constant, and the dense gravity of a black hole should crush any information that enters it. But quantum mechanics says that a singularity is not possible and that information cannot be destroyedd. So which one is it? No one yet knows. String theory is a possible solution that can reconcile both laws, but the “chunky” ways quantum mechanics work throw a wrench into it being a perfect answer. There’s also loop quantum gravity that theorizes the chunks are a standardized size, albeit very small. So then it’s not that small chunks of gravity act intermittently, but instead are a sort of path an object “walks” along.
What happens at the event horizon?
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You’ve most likely heard the theory that if you were able to get to a black hole’s event horizon, you’d meet the disturbing fate of anyone who falls into a black hole: You’d get turned into a vaguely human-shaped spaghetti noodle due to the difference in gravity affecting your feet versus your head. While scientists mostly believe spaghettification to be a real phenomenon, they believe that it doesn’t happen quite like that and that the event horizon isn’t as definitive as it seems. In fact, we’re not even sure what role an event horizon actually plays with a black hole.
Some scientists believe that the event horizon is a sort of gate to a firewall, an unimaginably hot wall of energy that would destroy any particle (or person) that touches it. If this were true, it would solve the black hole information paradox. But other scientists believe firewalls aren’t possible, so we’re back to square one. The problem breaks down to this: We’ve only just begun to find ways to observe event horizons, so we’re only just now scratching the surface on what they are and how they work.