Strangest Mysteries of the Universe

 

do you ever look at the night sky and wonder what's beyond the stars or what could be lurking in the darkness of space it seems like every day we are one step closer to unlocking the mysteries of the universe some of these discoveries prove that truth really is stranger than fiction welcome to fact nominal and today we're going to shine some light on 10 strange secrets of the universe number 10 image of the invisible

 it's easy to look up at the night

 sky and be convinced that the universe

 is made up of stars planets and moons

 well believe it or not those things only make up about five percent of the universe yet of those five percent captain kirk found at least one woman on every planet to sleep with so what makes up the other 95 well according to nasa about 68 of the universe is made of something called dark energy and about 27 of that is made of something called dark matter so what is it well we aren't entirely sure even nasa the american agency that first put a man on the moon and a probe on mars doesn't quite know themselves it's easier for them to say what it isn't what we do know about dark matter though is that it's well dark there are no visible signs of it anywhere in space no clouds of it or anything like that but since the 1920s it has been theorized to exist the basic theory is that there must be more that exists in space beyond what we can see consider it like the space equivalent to air on earth we can see it but we know it's there in the context of outer space theory dark matter is more or less the same thing that binds the universe together with evidence being that if not for some form of unseen dark matter galaxies would fly apart or would not have formed like they have personally i like to think of it as i would water in the ocean this is a mystery that continues

 to baffle even the greatest minds

 number nine time travel by starlight it's no secret that the stars in the night sky are far away from us i mean really far the closest stars to us are about 4.3 light years away while others are over 600 light years away that sounds impressive right but what does it mean what does it have to do

 with time travel here's what

 the light from a star 25 light years ago took about 25 years to get from its source to earth the farther away the star is from earth the longer the light takes to reach us

 so the light from the star over 600 light years away took over 600 years to get to us imagine turning on a light in your room and the time between you flicking the switch and seeing light is ours this also means that we might be seeing light from things that no longer exist stars do burn out and by the time the light in a star gets to us the star may be dead so in effect the light we see is a form of time travel number eight the ghost of universe past it should come as no surprise that the universe is incredibly old over 13 billion years old the formation of the universe came from what we know as the big bang the start of it all ever since then where it started from has been giving off as a parked veil of radiation this type of radiation is harmless to humans and virtually undetectable the european space agency's planck mission mapped the entire sky in microwave light to piece together clues about how the universe began this radiation basically acts like an echo or almost a homing beacon leading us all back to the center of the universe so we can see how it all began pretty cool right number 7 gangster's paradise we've all watched that scene in a heist movie right whether it's in classic movies like ocean's 11 the original or remake or under love gems like the movie hudson hawk seriously give it a watch and thank us later there is always the scene that involves breaking into a secure location and stealing the most valuable thing there well it turns out that in the constellation of centaurus sits a big diamond that would make any jewel thief salivate just how big is it you ask the diamond named v886 centauri or bpm37093 is 2 2485 miles across that would give it an estimated weight

 of 10 billion trillion trillion carats

 as mentioned the diamond sits in the middle of the constellation of centaurus which is only about 4.3 light years away so as long as they could find a solution to the 165 thousand year commute someone could wind up committing the most expensive jewel heist in history admit it you would totally watch that movie number six black holes black holes are a lot like dark matter in that we can actually see them we just know they are there based on what happens around them for example many things around them are drawn in their direction so it's obvious that something unseen like a black hole is the source we know that a stellar black hole forms in a supernova explosion in which the core of a star implodes we also know that whatever goes into them doesn't come out kind of like they are intergalactic garbage shoots they have been popular in sci-fi since their discovery and continue to fascinate us to this day number five before the big bang we all know that the big bang is where it all started but what happened before the big bang did anything exist before it well according to a discovery in 2007 the answer is maybe radio waves containing as much energy as our own sun were discovered while going through archived data we know that a stellar black hole forms in a supernova explosion in which the core of a star implodes and almost every large galaxy including our own has a supermassive black hole at its galaxy center so what does this all mean simple it means the big bang the start as we know it may not have been the actual beginning but rather a start to this cycle of existence number 4 the most hated tv show i'm sure you've most likely heard of the sitcom big bang but that's not what we're talking about here as previously mentioned the big bang left an ever-reaching trail of radiation this radiation was actually kind of visible on all television sets if you're old enough to remember a time when you would see black and white static on tv you were actually seeing a small part of the big bang about one percent of that crackly static was made up of what is known as cosmic radiation the type of radiation that emanated from the big bang itself in case you were wondering no getting a bunch of old tvs together and tuning each one to a channel where you get static will not eventually give you powers like that of the members of the x-men funny enough though advances in home entertainment have kind of robbed us of seeing a part of the universe's foundation number three a star fell to earth wait

 what it turns out that all life is actually made up of stardust and away it sounds

 like the stuff of fantasy novels right

 don't worry this has nothing to do with midichlorians or anything simply put everything in the universe is made of hydrogen atoms the same types of atoms that were created by the big bang in the words of carl sagan the nitrogen in our dna the calcium in our teeth the iron in our blood the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars we are made of star stuff so shine on you shining star number two human habitat this is a bit of a paradox for you all the planets and stars in the universe are both the same and different but of all of them earth is one of a kind we are the only planet with our exact collection of plant and animal life in short we have yet to find a planet that compares to ours anywhere you go on earth you will find some commonalities in terms of simple things like all places have food water air and animal life but out in the rest of our galaxy it's completely different for example a day on the planet venus takes 243 earth days and a year on venus is the span of 225 earth days there has been speculation for centuries on what it is about it that makes our planet's physical placement in the galaxy unique enough to exist there are of course countless factors that go into that from our physical distance to the sun and other planets the exact type of star our sun is and so on so far though we are the only known human life-bearing planets in the universe number one alternative life forms

 are we alone in the universe

 this is the question that has confounded mankind since we first looked up at the stars i live in a city of 3 million people and are times i'm rarely alone in my own home so do we really have a universe packed full of more beings the simple answer is we don't know and why is that why even with all of our technology and advancements we have not found the existence of alien life that is comparable to ours there again are tons of different answers for this for myself i believe there has to be

 other forms of intelligent life out there heck at times it's hard enough finding intelligent life on earth but the reason i believe this is the same reason why scientists agree that we haven't found life on other planets yet simply puts the universe is extremely huge keep in mind what makes up the known universe is very small in our galaxy alone there are estimated to be well over 400 billion stars and over 500 million planets on top of that it's estimated that there are over 170 billion other galaxies out there so trying to find a planet with alien life is like trying to find a single specific grain of sand in the desert but if movies like aliens and predator have taught us anything maybe the lack of alien contact isn't a bad thing so what do you think did we miss any other strange secrets of the universe let us know in the comments also be sure to leave our article a like and subscribe to fact nominal for more great content like this thanks for reading we'll see you next time