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Top Ten Mysteries of the Universe

What are those burning questions about the cosmos that still baffle astronomers today?

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  • By Joseph Stromberg
  • Smithsonian.com, May 08, 2012, Subscribe
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Milky Way
One of the many mysteries baffling astronomers is how galaxies such as the Milky Way are able to form new stars at an unsustainable rate. (NASA / JPL)

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Fermi Bubbles

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1. What Are Fermi Bubbles?

No, this is not a rare digestive disorder. The bubbles are massive, mysterious structures that emanate from the Milky Ways center and extend roughly 20,000 light-years above and below the galactic plane. The strange phenomenon, first discovered in 2010, is made up of super-high-energy gamma-ray and X-ray emissions, invisible to the naked eye. Scientists have hypothesized that the gamma rays might be shock waves from stars being consumed by the massive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

2. Rectangular Galaxy

“Look, up in the sky! It’s a…rectangle?” Earlier this year, astronomers spotted a celestial body, roughly 70 million light-years away, with an appearance that is unique in the visible universe: The galaxy LEDA 074886 is shaped more or less like a rectangle. While most galaxies are shaped like discs, three-dimensional ellipses or irregular blobs, this one seems to have a regular rectangle or diamond-shaped appearance. Some have speculated that the shape results from the collision of two spiral-shaped galaxies, but no one knows for now.

3. The Moon’s Magnetic Field

One of the moon’s greatest mysteries—why only some parts of the crust seem to have a magnetic field—has intrigued astronomers for decades, even inspiring the buried mythical “monolith” in the novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey. But some scientists finally think they may have an explanation. After using a computer model to analyze the moon’s crust, researchers believe the magnetism may be a relic of a 120-mile-wide asteroid that collided with the moon’s southern pole about 4.5 billion years ago, scattering magnetic material. Others, though, believe the magnetic field may be related to other smaller, more recent impacts.

4. Why Do Pulsars Pulse?

Pulsars are distant, rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation at regular intervals, like a rotating lighthouse beam sweeping over a shoreline. Although the first one was discovered in 1967, scientists have for decades struggled to understand what causes these stars to pulse—and, for that matter, what causes pulsars to occasionally stop pulsing. In 2008, though, when one pulsar suddenly shut off for 580 days, scientists’ observations allowed them to determine that the “on” and “off” periods are somehow related to magnetic currents slowing down the stars’ spin. Astronomers are still at work trying to understand why these magnetic currents fluctuate in the first place.

5. What Is Dark Matter?

Astrophysicists are currently trying to observe the effects of dark energy, which accounts for some 70 percent of the universe. But it's not the only dark stuff in the cosmos: roughly 25 percent of it is made up of an entirely separate material called dark matter. Completely invisible to telescopes and the human eye, it neither emits nor absorbs visible light (or any form of electromagnetic radiation), but its gravitational effect is evident in the motions of galaxy clusters and individual stars. Although dark matter has proven extremely difficult to study, many scientists speculate that it might be composed of subatomic particles that are fundamentally different from those that create the matter we see around us.


1. What Are Fermi Bubbles?

No, this is not a rare digestive disorder. The bubbles are massive, mysterious structures that emanate from the Milky Ways center and extend roughly 20,000 light-years above and below the galactic plane. The strange phenomenon, first discovered in 2010, is made up of super-high-energy gamma-ray and X-ray emissions, invisible to the naked eye. Scientists have hypothesized that the gamma rays might be shock waves from stars being consumed by the massive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

2. Rectangular Galaxy

“Look, up in the sky! It’s a…rectangle?” Earlier this year, astronomers spotted a celestial body, roughly 70 million light-years away, with an appearance that is unique in the visible universe: The galaxy LEDA 074886 is shaped more or less like a rectangle. While most galaxies are shaped like discs, three-dimensional ellipses or irregular blobs, this one seems to have a regular rectangle or diamond-shaped appearance. Some have speculated that the shape results from the collision of two spiral-shaped galaxies, but no one knows for now.

3. The Moon’s Magnetic Field

One of the moon’s greatest mysteries—why only some parts of the crust seem to have a magnetic field—has intrigued astronomers for decades, even inspiring the buried mythical “monolith” in the novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey. But some scientists finally think they may have an explanation. After using a computer model to analyze the moon’s crust, researchers believe the magnetism may be a relic of a 120-mile-wide asteroid that collided with the moon’s southern pole about 4.5 billion years ago, scattering magnetic material. Others, though, believe the magnetic field may be related to other smaller, more recent impacts.

4. Why Do Pulsars Pulse?

Pulsars are distant, rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation at regular intervals, like a rotating lighthouse beam sweeping over a shoreline. Although the first one was discovered in 1967, scientists have for decades struggled to understand what causes these stars to pulse—and, for that matter, what causes pulsars to occasionally stop pulsing. In 2008, though, when one pulsar suddenly shut off for 580 days, scientists’ observations allowed them to determine that the “on” and “off” periods are somehow related to magnetic currents slowing down the stars’ spin. Astronomers are still at work trying to understand why these magnetic currents fluctuate in the first place.

5. What Is Dark Matter?

Astrophysicists are currently trying to observe the effects of dark energy, which accounts for some 70 percent of the universe. But it's not the only dark stuff in the cosmos: roughly 25 percent of it is made up of an entirely separate material called dark matter. Completely invisible to telescopes and the human eye, it neither emits nor absorbs visible light (or any form of electromagnetic radiation), but its gravitational effect is evident in the motions of galaxy clusters and individual stars. Although dark matter has proven extremely difficult to study, many scientists speculate that it might be composed of subatomic particles that are fundamentally different from those that create the matter we see around us.

6. Galactic Recycling

In recent years, astronomers have noticed that galaxies form new stars at a rate that would seem to consume more matter than they actually have inside them. The Milky Way, for example, appears to turn about one sun’s worth of dust and gas into new stars every year, but it doesn’t have enough spare matter to keep this up long-term. A new study of distant galaxies might provide the answer: Astronomers noticed gas that had been expelled by the galaxies flowing back in to the center. If the galaxies recycle this gas to produce new stars, it might be a piece of the puzzle in solving the question of the missing raw matter.

7. Where Is All the Lithium?

Models of the Big Bang indicate that the element lithium should be abundant throughout the universe. The mystery, in this case, is pretty straightforward: it doesn’t. Observations of ancient stars, formed from material most similar to that produced by the Big Bang, reveal amounts of lithium two to three times lower than predicted by the theoretical models. New research indicates that some of this lithium may be mixed into the center of stars, out of view of our telescopes, while theorists suggest that axions, hypothetical subatomic particles, may have absorbed protons and reduced the amount of lithium created in the period just after the Big Bang.

8. Is There Anybody Out There?

In 1961, astrophysicist Frank Drake devised a highly controversial equation: By multiplying together a series of terms relating to the probability of extraterrestrial life (the rate of star formation in the universe, the fraction of stars with planets, the fraction of planets with conditions suitable for life, etc.) he surmised that the existence of intelligent life on other planets is extremely likely. One problem: Roswell conspiracy theorists notwithstanding, we haven’t heard from any aliens to date. Recent discoveries of distant planets that could theoretically harbor life, though, have raised hopes that we might detect extraterrestrials if we just keep looking.

9. How Will the Universe End? [Warning, Potential Spoiler Alert!]

We now believe the universe started with the Big Bang. But how will it end? Based on a number of factors, theorists conclude that the fate of the universe could take one of several wildly different forms. If the amount of dark energy is not enough to resist the compressing force of gravity, the entire universe could collapse into a singular point—a mirror image of the Big Bang, known as the Big Crunch. Recent findings, though, indicate a Big Crunch is less likely than a Big Chill, in which dark energy forces the universe into a slow, gradual expansion and all that remains are burned-out stars and dead planets, hovering at temperatures barely above absolute zero. If enough dark energy is present to overwhelm all other forces, a Big Rip scenario could occur, in which all galaxies, stars and even atoms are torn apart.

10. Across the Multiverse

Theoretical physicists speculate that our universe may not be the only one of its kind. The idea is that our universe exists within a bubble, and multiple alternative universes are contained within their own distinct bubbles. In these other universes, the physical constants—and even the laws of physics—may differ drastically. Despite the theory's resemblance to science fiction, astronomers are now looking for physical evidence: Disc-shaped patterns in the cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang, which could indicate collisions with other universes.


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Comments (15)

If scinetist Want to know abt the universe,then they hv to read and follow quran .otherwise, the research seems to be useless and waste of time.

Posted by Manu on September 27,2012 | 07:04 AM

http://www.geckzilla.com/apod/LEDA074886.jpg is an image attempting to explain the rectangular system. Two ovals merged at an incline. We're finding these strange things because at some point in the distant past, others first saw them -- and restricted their possibilities. Nature doesn't give her answers quite so easily.

Posted by Phil E. Drifter on June 9,2012 | 07:43 AM

"2. Rectangular Galaxy" I can tell you why. Someone started paying more attention to it. We are bound by what we observe. Life is a chain reaction across planetary stars. Start the evolution clock the moment you see a new planet.

Posted by Phil E. Drifter on June 9,2012 | 07:33 AM

I know the answer and it's sooooo obvious! 1. there is nothing outside of our known universe. 2. there is no 'edge' to the universe; there is nothing outside it 3. you CAN'T 'theoretically' think you're way out the edge of the universe to question where you would be 4. by the time you've imagined you're way to a foot inside the edge of what we know... you'd see another sea of stars you know absolutely nothing about; evolution is a chain across planets. when planets are found (by US) we start the clock; what we know inhibits what we will find, for whatever we find, it must conform to what we already know. Life is a chain reaction that spreads across planets, moving infinitely in both directions; should the first naturally evolved species obliterated themselves, it would not matter because their skyward glances caused millions of other clocks to start. People may theorize that the universe will exhaust its ever-expansion, but it wouldn't matter, really. If they found tomorrow the universe were contracting and we'd be dead in 500,000,000,000 years... that doesn't affect you personally and although you may argue 'well it may cause panic' well ... it's not gonna happen anyway. Life begets life, across the stars, byway of natural evolution and the rolls of AN INFINITE number of dice (stars). So the question becomes 'how' the universe came to be, and my argument is for the string/superstring theory.

Posted by Phil E. Drifter on June 9,2012 | 07:29 AM

it's because WE'RE OBSERVING it/them! Before we looked, there may or may not have been matter (at each location) but *after* we looked, we found out IF there was matter there or not; if there WAS it was THEN defined to have properties: total mass, direction of spin, etc. So this 'rectangular' galaxy is the result of someone observing it (the first time) while not able to take account of its spin; when someone *else* verified it, it became 3-dimensional. Imagine you are a line on a sheet of paper: all you know is width, and height. it's not until you look up to the sky that you see the 3rd dimension. The amount of anti-matter in today's universe is exactly equal to the amount of black holes in the universe. Makes sense, right? Collapsed stars become black holes, all the matter becomes anti-matter.

Posted by Phil E. Drifter on June 9,2012 | 05:57 AM

i think universe is not as amazing as we think but as amazing as we can't think

Posted by pinal on May 23,2012 | 04:56 AM

Hmm, I wonder if Apple has sued that rectangular galaxy yet, since they have apparently invented the rectangle.

Posted by Michael Schaap on May 20,2012 | 08:48 PM

I am no scientist yet have a passion for learning. When I was in high school, I read a sci-fi book based on the Universe compacting into a Big Crunch and then later a Big Bang occurs birthing a new Universe. Fascinating stuff! The more we know, the more we realize there will always be more we don't know.

Posted by Lauren on May 17,2012 | 02:06 PM

NEAR ZERO SPACE TIME, THE SOURCE OF DARK ENERGY. In the core of the Black Hole, all quanta form a super massive Bose-Einstein Condensate. In this compression the flow of time (Entropy), is brought to a near stop. However, the quanta seek to expand and return to their normal state. The quanta in the core of the Black Hole are like tiny quantum springs, pushing outward agaisnt the compression of gravitation. The Big Bang (which Relativity Theory tells us is impossible), is the result of the LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS upon the Gravitational compression. Eventually the Black Hole sucks in so much mass, that the increase in the gravitational begins to diminish relative to the expansive force of the quanta. This leads to the Point of Negative Returns, a Big Bang! At this point the forces at work are merely those that apply to ordinary force and motion. The outtermost layer of quanta are rocketed out of the Big Bang by their expantion agaisnt the second layer of quantum particles, which are doing the same against the third layer of quantum particles in the core, and so on. Each layer of quantum particles are getting a boost from the inner layers of quantum particles pushing outward. So the outter layers have a much greater kinetic energy(speed). The inner layers of quanta will fall back into the black hole in a mini Big Crunch (not having enough speed to escape the gravitation), while the outter layers will have the energy needed to escape. The outter most layers speed is so great that gravity is diminishing at a rate greater than their Kinetic energy is diminishing. Their speed therfore is increasing as they move farther from the Black Hole! This effect was confirmed in 1999, when it was shone that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing as predicted by my theory.

Posted by Wm. Masters on May 13,2012 | 05:17 PM

STRETCHED, and NEAR ZERO SPACE-TIME. In the decade before Einstein's Relativity Theory, Max Plank hypothesized STRETCHED SPACE. He claimed gravity stretched out space. Einstein agreed, but added Warpage as a second effect of gravitation. By the mid 1990's it was accepted BY Astro-physisists that Space is actually a phisical fabric, and that planets moving through Space create waves and eddys in space, much like a boat or submarine does. In 1998,this led me to theorize Space "DENSITY". I held that by stretching space as Plank and Einstein believed gravity did, the desity of space was reduced. Thus I held, gravitational pull was actually an ordinary displacment! As a bubble in water is pushed up due to the lessor density of water above it, we are pushed down due to the lessor space density at our feet. Moreover, as you get nearer to the gravitational mass, stretching of space, and so the lessening of space-time density, increases exponentionally. Thus, Mercury's speed increasses as it nears the Sun due to the lessoning of drag upon its surface, due to the decrease in space density, due to greater stretching of space. At the Event Horizon, the stretching effect is so great, electrons are pulled away from their protons, and so too the neutrons from the protons. All things are ripped apart until all that remains are its basic quantum particles.

Posted by Wm. Masters on May 13,2012 | 05:08 PM

This piece reveals the complete inability of astrophysics to cope with observed phenomena. Its death-knell is the observation that we are possibly part of a multiverse, and that in other parallel versions of ourselves, different physical laws may apply. This is the end of science. Everything hypothesized is based on abysmal ignorance, in the presence of which, chimerical concepts are created to "explain" the observations, eg "axions". Dark Matter is said to comprise 25% of the Dark Energy which, we are informed, fills the universe, but we learn that it is inexplicable how new stars are forming without there being enough matter in our galaxy to create them. Contradictory assertions? Allow me to help out. Firstly, most of these errors can be overcome if we abandon the idea that the universe is held together by gravity; it is not; it is held together by electromagnetic forces. See The Electric Universe theory, which resolves the issues, and removes the need for dark matter/energy, neutron stars, black holes, rotating pulsars, etc. Secondly, we should realise that the concept of a Big Bang, and a vast and unimaginably ancient universe, and the probable presence within it of alien life forms, is the offscouring not of science, but of the Kabbalah, a religious text dating from two millenia ago. This is the dirty little secret of science, ie that at its heart it is a religion. If you doubt this assertion, then if you can stomach it, read the Talmud, from which the Kabbalah springs. We are clearly informed by the Creator that "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth". This is the point at which astrophysics begins its descent into folly. If, once more, you doubt the truth of the Divine statement, then please visit the website "The Other Bible Code", where the mathematicians amongst you will be treated to a two and three-dimensional and unanswerable exposition of the absolute wisdom, power, and majesty of that One with whom we have to do.

Posted by Tim Webb on May 10,2012 | 02:57 AM

This is the type of writing I've come to know and love at Smithsonian Magazine.

Posted by The Lorax on May 9,2012 | 10:38 AM

How about a more philosophical look at the beginning, biological life, the end, and rebirth? After the Blast The cosmic brew percolates, scatters elements across time and space. Celestial signals of immense scale broadcast patterns—spin gas into stars, dust into planets, unify galaxies, invoke gravity’s pull. Unchecked the universe stretches, fulfills its decree— formulates water, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen . . . produces Socrates, Marie Curie, Einstein, Picasso, rain forests, and the foals of Man o’ War. Planet Earth, so slight within the heavens, so large among men—the remarkable, the ordinary, the wicked, the righteous, the wretched, and the merry, co-destined, translate as one into history. What then of terminus, a return to inception, a reality beyond man’s reach? Who stays, who goes, who will have been witness at the beginning and the end? Who renders a verdict—who seals the archives? Who waits and watches, who keeps a vigil until somewhere a youthful new universe surges in fresh dimensions, restless, in search of its boundaries? Lou Jones May, 2012

Posted by Lou Jones on May 9,2012 | 09:44 AM

Re: How will the universe end? IMPLOSION Exhausted the universe falters strains against its tether energy spent journey’s end triggers return the cosmos shudders glows a dull red pauses before yielding its mandate gravity tightens its grip the universe recoils design shatters collapse starts slowly cause and effect invert time runs backwards the past now future the implosion feeds on itself consumes the oldest star clusters swallows super giants and white dwarfs gorges on mighty pulsars and nebulae rips away planetary atmospheres gulps down massive quasars devours galaxies inhales neutrino-rich darkness black holes converge explode vaporize white-hot plasma ravages the void a cosmic furnace a trillion miles across energy densely packed heat at billions of degrees three minutes atomic nuclei disintegrate the universe a shambles a raging vortex 10 billion miles in radius at terminal velocity gravity at infinite power seconds remain the ferocious inrush obliterates space and time a billion billion years now a microsecond the fireball claims the last particles matter flames out of existence the ravenous sphere spins down a billionth of a second from its genesis quiescent singularity opaque silence requiem history is extinguished time and space never were the universe is gone save for a subatomic speck hovering in nothingness with a secret. From my collection of poems: "From Microbe to Consciousness." Lou Jones

Posted by Lou Jones on May 9,2012 | 09:16 AM



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