Day 3: The final frontier
by Chris Smith
“Space: the final frontier.” Some of you may remember this quote from the original Star Trek show. From the early times of Aristotle to Galileo and Descartes, to Leibniz and Newton, to Einstein and NASA, we have been exploring this final frontier – and we have barely scratched the surface.
Black Holes
Take, for example, black holes. After Einstein published his theory of gravity in 1916, black holes have remained one of the most studied, but not fully understood, cosmic mysteries. The black hole’s surface, the event horizon, has a gravitational pull that is so powerful, that not even light can escape its grasp. There are two classes of black holes. Stellar-mass black holes are three to 12 times the mass of the Sun. The second is supermassive black holes which are 100,000 to a billion times larger and at the center of most big galaxies such as the Milky Way. Some other black hole facts:
The first direct visual evidence of the supermassive black hole in the centre of Messier 87.
By Event Horizon Telescope, uploader cropped and converted TIF to JPG - This file has been extracted from another file, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77925953.
The closest black hole is 1,500 light years away and is called Gaia BH1.
The furthest is called QSO J0313-1806 and is about 13 billion light-years away.
The largest observed was TON 618 and is 66 billion times the mass of the Sun.
While the smallest is just 3.8 times larger than the Sun and is paired with a star.
If matter gets too close to a black hole, it will be stretched vertically and squeezed horizontally and resemble a noodle. That phenomenon is called spaghettification.
New Exoplanets
Is there life on other planets? Well, we know that there are other planets than what are in our orbit. These planets are called exoplanets. While the planets in our orbit are pretty amazing – the ring of Saturn or the size of Jupiter, these exoplanets are equally amazing. For example, about 3,000 light-years away is Kepler-7b. This exoplanet is about 60% larger than Jupiter but only half its mass. This makes Kepler-7b about the same density as Styrofoam. There are worlds covered in lava and worlds that are dominated by ice or water. Even planets shaped like an egg!
Rovers on the moon/Mars
For planets a little closer to home, we are able to send unmanned vehicles to a planet’s surface to gather valuable information. We have sent these rovers to both the moon and Mars’ surfaces. These rovers come in different sizes and shapes. Each with specific types of explorations. For example, NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) will be in search of ice and other resources. The VIPER is 8 feet tall and 5 feet in length and width. VIPER is also equipped with an ice drill among other instruments and features to complete its mission.
Several rovers have visited the Red Planet, also known as Mars, as well. Known as the Adventure Twins, NASA’s rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004. Both lasting past their planned 90-day mission, they both found evidence that Mars had a wet past opening the possibility that Mars could have sustained microbial life.