All About Space - Complete History of The Universe

• Searching for alien life
W • How stars explode

NE
• Birth of a planet
COMPLETE
HISTORY
OF THE
UNIVERSE
Explore
the edge
of the
universe
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Welcome to the
COMPLETE
HISTORY
OF THE
UNIVERSE
If you’ve ever wondered how we came to be or what lies
beyond our own Solar System, you’ll ind answers to those
questions here. This book spans the vast unknown beyond
our own home as well as delving into what we do know
about our planet’s creation. We have spoken to some of the
most prominent experts in astronomy about the phenomena
that we still don’t quite understand, including dark matter,
wormholes and black holes, and fuelled debates about some
of the most contentious subjects, including the elusive edge
of the universe and the existence of alien life. You’ll also ind
out about the most fascinating discoveries from the irst 25
years of the Hubble telescope. Get ready for an epic journey,
from the moment it all began, to the edge of ininity.
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COMPLETE
HISTORY
OF THE
UNIVERSE Imagine Publishing Ltd
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Complete History of the Universe Fourth Edition © 2016 Imagine Publishing Ltd
ISBN 978-1785462269
Part of the
bookazine series
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Contents In the beginning
10 Birth of the universe
The answers to how our universe began
18 Big Bang: not just a theory

The project that has conirmed the Big Bang
theory of cosmic inlation
22 How planets form

How Earth and other planets formed from
dust and gas
30 Creating a galaxy
Find out what exactly makes up the galaxies
in which we live
Secrets of the universe

40 100 wonders of space
Discover the most unusual things in space
54 Edge of the universe

Is there an end to ininity?
64 10 biggest things in space

Get to know the universe’s biggest players
74 The new search for

alien life
The hunt for intelligent alien civilisations
82 Hubble’s greatest
discoveries
Learn about Hubble’s most amazing
discoveries from the last 25 years
“Dark matter has been

confounding and
fascinating astronomers
Reidar Hahn/Fermilab
for more than 80 years”

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Space science
98 What is dark energy?
A mission to ind out more about this
mysterious force that has boggled even the
greatest minds
108 50 amazing facts about

black holes
Delving into these awesome time-bending
gravitational chasms
120 How do planetary

orbits work?
Learn about the force that keeps the planets
in the path around the Sun
122 Dark matter

Understanding the invisible, yet important
entity known as dark matter
130 Super galaxies

What inluence do these cosmic giants have
on their surroundings?
140 How stars explode

Looking at the powerful and catastrophic
explosions that mark the end of a star
148 The search for wormholes

Science attempts to uncover the truth
behind science iction
158 Hypergiant stars

Get a closer look at these cosmic monsters
and the destruction they can cause
168 Giant space storms

Witness the power of Jupiter’s giant red eye
and other cosmic weather
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In the
beginning How the universe and everything in it came to exist
10 Birth of the universe
The answers to how our universe began
18 Big Bang: not just a theory

The project that has conirmed the Big Bang theory
22 How planets form

How Earth and other planets formed from dust and gas
30 Creating a galaxy
Find out what exactly makes up the galaxies in
which we live
10
Birth of
the universe
©NASA; ESA; Wikimedia Commons
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“The black hole in the
centre of the Milky Way
is four million-times more
massive than the Sun”
30
Creating a
galaxy
22
How planets
form
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In the beginning
UNIVERSE
We speak to the scientists who explore the science and seek
the answers to how our universe began
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Birth of the universe
Meet the
experts
Name: Richard Davis
Role: Professor
Head of technology at
Jodrell Bank. Led his
institution’s involvement
in the Planck mission.
Name: David Evans
Role: Professor
Leads the University of
Birmingham team on
ALICE at CERN’s Large
Hadron Collider.
Name: Dan Coe
Role: Astronomer
Staff astronomer at the
STScI, studying galaxy
clusters, gravitational
lensing and dark matter.
“The evolution of
the world can be
compared to a display
of fireworks that has
just ended; a few red
whisps, ashes and
smoke” Georges Lemaître
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In the beginning
The universe almost seems to have come out of

nowhere: a concoction of high temperatures and a
thick gloop of exotic particles, which would go into
an overdrive of expansion through several phases of
varying conditions, to create the universe as we see
it today, some 13.8 billion years later. The Big Bang,
creator of time and space – or at least that’s what our
current understanding of how our universe sprang
into existence leads us to believe.
But what we have come to learn about the
cosmos’s somewhat mysterious past wasn’t always
as tacked down in the days of Georges Lemaître,
who would later become dubbed the father of the Our view of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has improved greatly
Big Bang theory. What the Belgian priest, astronomer since its initial discovery in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson
and professor of physics suspected in 1927, based
on his solutions to Albert Einstein’s equations, was Milton Humason were busy at the eyepiece of a effect causes the soundwaves to bunch up, making
that the universe must have sparked into life from a 2.5-metre telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory the pitch go up. As the police car moves away the
single point at the beginning of time before driving in California, surveying so-called spiral nebulae. soundwaves become more stretched and the pitch of
headlong into an expansion. “The evolution of the These used to be thought of as part of our own the siren falls. In space, objects moving towards us
world can be compared to a display of fireworks Milky Way galaxy, but Hubble showed that they have the wavelength of their light rays compressed
that has just ended; some few red wisps, ashes and were island universes in their own right, galaxies into bluer wavelengths, which astronomers term
smoke,” Lemaître said, on the subject of how we like our own millions of light years away. He did blueshift, while objects moving away have their light
were thrown into existence. “Standing on a cooled this by measuring their redshift. This is just like the stretched into redder wavelengths, hence redshift.
cinder, we see the slow fading of the suns, and we screaming pitch of a police siren racing past you. Amazingly, Hubble found that almost all the galaxies
try to recall the vanishing brilliance of the origin of As the police car speeds towards you the Doppler had redshifts, meaning that they were all moving
the worlds.” However, Lemaître wasn’t recognised as
the genius he was until later; he published his work
in an obscure Belgian scientific journal where few
“The picture that the CMB provides is
scientists saw it. As such Lemaître’s chance to go
down in history was lost.
one of the baby universe – it’s like we’re
Instead, in America one astronomer in particular
was gathering the data that would strongly support
looking back to when time and space
Lemaître’s theory. Edwin Hubble and his assistant first shuddered into existence”
How it 4. Parting company
After some 380,000
5. The first galaxies
Gravitational attraction between
all began years, the opaque soup
began to clear and,
atoms brought them into faint
clouds of gas which pulled in
since the temperature more and more material from
1. The Big Bang of the universe had their surroundings. At one billion
The event that is said to have dropped to 3,000 Kelvin years after the Big Bang, the first
created time and space is (2,727°C/4940°F), photons stars and galaxies were born.
thought to have occurred were travelling through the
some 13.8 billion years universe, free from matter.
ago. Here the universe was
infinitely hot and dense before
cooling and inflating. 7. Today’s universe
In comparison to the turbulent
changes that it went through
when growing up, the universe
we see today – and that’s
pinpointed with galaxies, stars
and planets among other
structures – is much calmer.
2. Quark soup 3. Big freeze out

One trillionth of a second after One hundred seconds
the Big Bang, the weak and after the Big Bang, the
electromagnetic forces separated, temperature dropped to 6. Racing away
leaving us with the four major the point where protons The universe is expanding,
forces that we know today – and neutrons could meaning that galaxies are racing
strong, weak, electromagnetic and stick together without further and further apart. Today,
gravity. Quarks, leptons and their being torn apart. when we look out into space,
antimatter particles were also Conditions were ripe for most galaxies are continuing to
whizzing around and colliding. hydrogen to form. move away from us.
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Seeing
the start Astrophysicist Richard
Davis explains how The now-defunct Planck
mission surpassed expectations
we measured the in its study of the CMB
Big Bang
And then there was light. That’s pretty much how
our universe sprang into existence; as a point that
contained everything and continued to expand
through to today, building the first stars and
galaxies and stretching light years of distance
between them. Despite its name, the Big Bang
wasn’t some kind of explosion that spat out matter,
energy, time and space. It is imagined almost like a
balloon that continues to stretch, originally holding
an incredibly hot and dense primordial soup that
cooled and thinned out over the space of millions to
billions of years.
As ever, such an event has opened up a whole
deluge of questions. And the only way to attempt to
look back in time is to lift missions off the ground to
seek answers; providing us with the holy grail that Planck’s image of
the famous CMB (cosmic
is the snapshot of our newborn universe. Several
microwave background)
missions have stepped up to the challenge, most
notably the recently retired Planck mission – which
communicated its final signal of what it knew “Planck surpassed its expectations and
about the ancient universe in October this year –
under the joint efforts of ESA and NASA. Planck in some cases even exceeded its goals,
built upon and improved observations returned
by its complementary mission, NASA’s Wilkinson so it has been stunning” Richard Davis
Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which, after
a good nine years of service, rests in its heliocentric involvement in one of the instruments on board Indeed, a couple of the many achievements that
graveyard orbit. the craft. “It also had the lowest noise detectors the space mission has in its arsenal is an all-sky
Planck’s main aim was to measure the cosmic ever made and are lower than anything detected survey that has provided us with our best view of
microwave background (CMB) – the afterglow of before.” An important feature of the CMB is that it the oldest light in our universe to now as well as
the Big Bang, that’s encoded with how the universe is, by no means, smooth – it is a mess of different a better measurement of the age of the cosmos,
appeared some 400,000 years after the event. And temperatures and it was from soaking up this relic dated at 13.8 billion years old – 100 million years
to get the best measurements possible, the mission radiation from its orbit around the Sun that Planck more than previously thought. And even though
had to be kept to freezing temperatures. was able to pick out even the most subtle blips the mission has since been deactivated, Davis
“[Planck had] a passive cooling and three in temperature; something that Davis admits the assures us that Planck could still wield the key to
refrigerators taking it to -273.05 degrees Celsius mission did incredibly well. “The fluctuations go understanding more about our infant cosmos. “We
[-460 degrees Fahrenheit] which made it the down to as low as 2 micro Kelvin,” he says. “Planck will go on analysing the data for at least the next ten
coolest place in the universe,” says the University surpassed its expectations and in some cases even years so there is much to come,” he says. “We will
of Manchester’s Richard Davis, who led the UK’s exceeded its goals, so it has been stunning.” release the data in the next few years.”
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In the beginning
The eLISA spacecraft will attempt to test

the complex art of gravitational wave
detection. Gravitational waves create
the ripples in space-time thought to be
additional evidence for the Big Bang theory
away from us according to what became known as The CMB was emitted about 380,000 years after
Hubble’s Law. But if the galaxies are all moving apart, The cosmic relic the Big Bang, when temperatures in the universe fell
could they once upon a time have been much closer And the universe is certainly telling us things about to below approximately 3,000 degrees Celsius (5,400
together, coming out of a big bang? its past. The CMB was not the stealthiest of beasts degrees Fahrenheit). At this temperature atomic nuclei
In 1931 Lemaître’s work was brought to people’s when it generated interference on the experiments were able to soak up all of the free electrons that
attention when Sir Arthur Eddington discovered it, of Bell Laboratory astronomers Arno Penzias and whizzed around the universe. With the electrons out
but by then Hubble had already made his discoveries. Robert Wilson in 1965. Their device was called of the way light and radiation were allowed to freely
At first Einstein did not believe it, but later changed the Holmdel Horn Antenna, a radio telescope that pass through space without bouncing off electrons,
his mind when he saw Hubble’s evidence. A more listened in on the universe. Everywhere they pointed and this is the light that we see now as the cosmic
vocal critic was astronomer Fred Hoyle at Cambridge it, they detected an unwanted hiss, kind of like the microwave background. So although it doesn’t quite
University, who came up with the name ‘Big Bang’ in low level of electrical noise that produces ‘snow’ on show us the moment of the Big Bang, the appearance
derision of the idea, and favoured his own Steady State a TV screen. Only after they had ruled out every of the CMB is heavily influenced by what happened
model describing an eternal universe. The Big Bang possible alternative did they finally accept that the in the Big Bang, such as a brief period of inflation
name stuck, though. unexplained signal could be coming from space. that moved parts of the universe apart faster than the
Today, the Big Bang is a widely accepted theory. What’s more, it was coming from all directions. They speed of light. The picture that the CMB provides is
However, we don’t have a photo album of how the realised it was the sought-after cosmic microwave one of the baby universe – it’s like we’re looking back
universe grew from an infant into the veteran of background radiation, that scientists suspected might to when time and space first shuddered into existence.
cosmic evolution that it is today. Astronomers realised exist. If our universe had a beginning then there was
that they had to be resourceful, grabbing hold of any likely to be some kind of residue left over, flavoured
evidence that our universe was willing to give up and in a static of microwave bands; a relic radiation, the Mapping the sky
combining it with mathematical models. Of course, cosmic microwave background. And at a temperature Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for
these clues are communicated to us in the cosmos’s of 2.7 degrees above absolute zero (about -270 degrees their discovery, but there was still much to learn about
own way; ranging from the crackling of its background Celsius or -460 degrees Fahrenheit) it's quite cold, the microwave background – we wanted a map. The
noise – the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – to making today’s universe a chilly place to be as this first mission to attempt this was the NASA-owned
gravitational waves that ripple between its many radiation fills every corner of space. It was once quite Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) probe, which
various galaxies. hot, but has cooled as the universe has expanded. began snapping pictures of the CMB as soon as it was
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launched in 1989. Offering four years of service, COBE

announced the very first map of hot and cold spots “Planck imaged the cosmic microwave
within the CMB brought about by the early universe’s
gravitational field that would later form the seeds of
gigantic clusters of galaxies that stretch for hundreds
background in unprecedented detail”
of millions of light years across the universe. COBE’s prominent point in time when the event began. The scale experiment called the Laser Interferometer
lead scientist, George Smoot, also won the Nobel Prize, truth of the matter is that this microwave background Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), haven’t gone
but hot on the heels of COBE came the Wilkinson isn’t the only feature of the universe that’s telling us unnoticed but have sadly been fruitless. We need
Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). It boasted an how it began – there’s more tantalising evidence and something better and while ‘advanced LIGO’ is in the
improved resolution and got to work mapping the we’re making sure that we’re taking advantage of it. works for next year ESA has been thinking outside
entire sky, logging the differences in temperature of And these extra telltale signs are the ripples in our Earth’s atmosphere and straight into the thick
the microwave radiation down to 25 millionths of a space-time – gravitational waves. These elusive of space. The plan is to build a mission that has the
degree. What WMAP also uncovered told astronomers oscillations represent one of the missing pieces of ability to deal with such a slippery character. Scientists
about the shape of the universe; they figured that Einstein’s theory of relativity. Gravitational waves can think they might have that pegged with the help of
since the boldest and brightest bursts in the map be created by all kinds of massive objects, but some a planned mission, the evolved Laser Interferometer
were a mere one degree across, then we must be were also believed to have formed in the Big Bang Space Antenna (eLISA) – a large-scale space mission
living in a flat universe. By 2010, WMAP had sniffed and could still be rippling through the universe today. that will not only detect this elusive phenomenon, but
out its last microwave, producing over nine years of The problem is that it’s not easy to directly detect will also be able to survey the entire universe directly
information. WMAP had laid down some important them but their elusive behaviour means that the with these waves, giving us more information on the
foundations, making the mission a huge breakthrough. universe also has difficulty influencing them under formation of galaxies, how stars grow and the early
Meanwhile, as WMAP was put into retirement, a new its will. This is good news for us as they are the only universe. Planned for launch in the future, the people
space observatory was waiting in the wings, ready known form of information that’s able to reach us behind the craft proudly proclaim that it will also be
and willing to build on our knowledge of the early undistorted from the time of the Big Bang. The trick able to tell us more about the structure and nature
universe thus far – ESA’s Planck. Operating in a range is catching them as you need incredibly sensitive of space-time. There will also be the opportunity for
of microwave and infrared frequencies, the spacecraft detectors. Not put off by their shyness, scientists have uncovering more about black holes as well as other
promised an even higher level of accuracy, putting its been intent on pinning these waves down. Unlike unknown objects. Before it can begin to achieve its
instruments into overdrive in an attempt to lock down the common electromagnetic radiation that we’re goals, an advance scout named LISA Pathfinder will
any answers given away by the deepest recesses of used to, gravitational waves, which are the result of launch in 2015, paving the way for eLISA to test the
the universe. And Planck gave as good as it got from massive events such as the merging of supermassive complex art of gravitational wave detection.
the universe, imaging the CMB in unprecedented black holes, like to work their way through all types of As we understand it, from the reams of data
detail. It might have ended its mission in October, matter – whether it be gas or dust. brought about by the teamwork between missions
but we are now the proud owners of a more accurate Previous attempts to grab gravitational waves and theories, we think we’ve put together a pretty
picture of an almost perfect universe as well as a more by the tail, which includes the likes of a large- robust photo album – or timeline – from the universe’s
How it will end

There are thought to be three possible ways the universe will end. One is the Big Crunch, where gravity takes over and compresses it to one point. Another is
the Big Rip, where the expansion of the universe gets faster until galaxies, stars, planets and space itself is torn apart. Then somewhere between these extremes
is the likely scenario where the universe’s expansion is not great enough for a Big Rip and gravity is not strong enough for a Big Crunch. Instead the universe
will continue to expand, growing cold and lifeless – the Big Freeze.
Closed universe Open universe Flat universe

The density of the universe is more than five atoms If space is open and curved, the universe will continue With no dark energy, a flat universe will expand
of hydrogen per cubic metre. There’s no repulsive to expand forever. Dark energy will help to drive the forever at a decelerating rate. With dark energy
effect of dark energy and gravity eventually halts the expansion. The result? Heat death, the Big Freeze or the expansion initially slows thanks to gravity, then
universe’s expansion. With contraction, all the matter the Big Rip is imminent. Here the universe’s density speeds up. The universe’s ultimate fate is the same as
in the universe collapses to a point – the Big Crunch. is less than the critical density. if it were open. Density and critical density are equal.
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In the beginning
A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) is one of seven

detector experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at
CERN. Colliding lead nuclei, the resulting smash-up is
thought to be enough to produce a quark soup
Re-creating
the Big Bang David Evans, who is heavily involved
with the ALICE experiment at CERN,
examines the inside of its chamber
Professor of high and, for a brief instant, create a super hot and dense that the quark-gluon plasma seems to behave like
sub-atomic fireball.” the most perfect liquid ever produced. So it seems
energy physics David What these results show is that the tiny fireballs the universe was born of a perfect liquid.”
Evans is making – which are a lot smaller than a single atom – Another surprise was just how strong the forces
that Evans speaks of, reach temperatures of a are in this plasma where high-energy particles,
baby universes scorching six billion degrees Celsius (10.8 billion usually found to barge their way through metres of
Tucked away in the highly populated city of degrees Fahrenheit). That’s over 300,000 times thick detector material, find themselves absorbed in
Geneva in Switzerland, the particle-smashing Large the temperature of our Sun and, what’s more, the incredibly small distances not much bigger than the
Hadron Collider (LHC) – built by the European density that results is 50 times that of a neutron star. nucleus of an atom.
Organisation for Nuclear Research, which is more “Such extreme temperatures and densities would At the moment, the LHC has been shut down for
commonly known as CERN – has been hard at have last existed just about a millionth of a second several important upgrades but, when it’s up and
work accelerating particles to breakneck speeds after the Big Bang and, under these conditions, running again in early 2015, Evans and his team plan
close to the speed of light. The aim? To attempt protons and neutrons (which make up the nuclei of to put it to even more good use. “We will be able
to re-create what the early universe might have atoms) ‘melt‘ into a soup of fundamental particles to collide lead nuclei at double the energy, creating
been like just a few minutes after it was born. The called quarks and gluons,” adds Evans. “This even hotter and denser fireballs,” he explains.
particle accelerator, which houses two detectors primordial soup is called a quark-gluon plasma.” “We are really just at the beginning of an exciting
dedicated to pinpointing the moments during our Evans believes that the plasma they produce endeavour to discover the properties of the quark-
universe’s growth (LHCb and ALICE), works as a Big in ALICE is fairly representative of the early gloop gluon plasma, I am expecting to find many surprises
Bang-making machine. The differences are that this of the early universe. “However, the fireball we along the way.”
‘explosion’ is on a much smaller scale and scientists create is much smaller than the one in the early Meanwhile, the team behind the LHC experiment
have a bit more control over it. universe and, hence, will cool much quicker,” he will get back to trying to work out why there were
For ALICE, the aim of the game is to smash says, before adding that the results brought about unequal amounts of antimatter and matter. Of
particles of lead into each other to create a plasma by the detector are indicative of breakthroughs in course, the Large Hadron Collider has also done us
that existed some ten millionths of a second after our understanding of the early cosmos. “Although proud by unearthing the Higgs Boson – the particle
the Big Bang. “Lead atoms have all of their 82 it’s still early days,” Evans tells us, “our results show that is responsible for all of the mass in the universe.
electrons stripped off and the positively charged
nuclei are accelerated to over 99.9999 per cent the
speed of light in the LHC,” says the University of
“The quark-gluon plasma seems to
Birmingham’s David Evans, who leads the team behave like the most perfect liquid
working on the ALICE experiment. “The lead nuclei
then smash together inside the giant ALICE detector ever produced” David Evans
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birth all the way through to its 13.8 billion-year-old
Observing
self. Shortly after its sudden appearance, there was
nothing except for a plasma soup. The universe was
incredibly hot with particles of both matter and
antimatter – the opposite of matter – rushing apart
in all kinds of directions. Then it began to cool,
the aftermath
producing equal amounts of matter and antimatter,
which swiftly annihilated each other. Lucky for us,
for some reason that nobody yet understands, there
was extra matter leftover and, as the universe began
to peter out, cooling further, particles – the building
blocks of matter – began to take shape. The first stars
formed around 400 million years after the Big Bang,
Astronomer Dan its journey to our telescopes to red or even
infrared wavelengths.”
followed by the first galaxies – the oldest galaxies we Coe is looking at The advent of a new infrared camera on board
have seen so far are a whopping 13.2 billion years old.
As much as we are sure the Big Bang happened,
the Big Bang’s deep Hubble saw astronomers take the opportunity to
look into the universe’s past and to reveal ever
the nature of the universe still raises a host of space consequences more distant galaxies with greater redshifts. “Even
existential questions. Where did the universe come Around 13.8 billion years later, here we are. As if our eyes were as large as Hubble’s, these galaxies
from? Why did it appear in the first place? Why the stars, galaxies, planetary systems and other would remain invisible to us,” says Coe. “We
was there more matter than antimatter in the early bodies are silently suspended in an endless void believe the most distant galaxy detected in the
universe? Why is dark energy causing the expansion of blackness, it is difficult to believe that there was Ultra Deep Field dates back to 500 million years
of the universe to accelerate? What we do know, a time in the universe’s life that conditions were after the Big Bang, over 13 billion years ago.”
however, is that the Big Bang was not an ‘explosion’ chaotic and ever-changing. But there is evidence But Coe and his colleagues are looking further
into anything, it happened everywhere, which is why everywhere and in all directions; the Hubble Deep still. “The Hubble Ultra Deep Field was about
everywhere is filled with the CMB. And we also know Field – snapped by the long-serving Hubble Space twice as big as the original,” he says. “We are now
that the ultimate destiny of the universe depends Telescope – made sure of that. embarking on a large new Hubble programme to
on what wins the great cosmic battle over the fate “The Hubble Deep Field revealed distant galaxies observe 12 more Ultra Deep Fields in different parts
of the cosmos: will gravity tug the universe back, or which appear very different from nearby galaxies,” of the sky.” The programme Coe is referring to is a
will dark energy keep it expanding forever? These explains Dan Coe, an astronomer at the Space new venture called Frontier Fields and will tell us
questions remain unanswered. Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, USA. how similar other patches of sky look to the Ultra
“They are generally smaller, more clumpy and less Deep Field; that way we can confirm whether the
orderly than nearby galaxies and yet to form spiral cosmos is expanding in all directions. “It will also
patterns or settle into elliptical balls.” use cosmic zoom lenses known as gravitational
Constructed from a series of observations over lenses to magnify the distant universe and observe
Missing pieces a period of ten days, this tiny snapshot – which
is equivalent in size to a 65-millimetre tennis
even more deeply.” The Spitzer and Chandra space
telescopes will also take images of the Frontier
It might be the king of theories when it comes to
ball held at a distance of around 100 metres Fields, in infrared and X-ray.
explaining the birth of the universe, but the Big
away – holds 3,000 objects, most of which are Coe reminds us that terrestrial telescopes
Bang theory still hits a few snags.
galaxies. Several of these structures are among that have surveyed wide areas of the night sky
1. Disappearing antimatter the youngest and most distant known – providing have found that the universe looks similar in all
In the beginning, there were equal amounts of a pathway that allows us to look back to when directions. “Over billions of years, gravity has
matter and antimatter – two materials that, when the universe was young. “Distant galaxies appear woven a ‘cosmic web’ of dark matter that funnels
they come together, annihilate each other. Why, redder,” says Coe. “This ‘redshift’ is due to the gas in to form stars and galaxies and draws
then, does our universe now contain mostly matter? expansion of the universe. As the universe galaxies together to form large clusters of galaxies,”
expanded over billions of years, it stretched light he explains. “The original Ultra Deep Field may
2. The horizon problem along with it into longer, redder wavelengths. have landed on a dense cosmic knot or a cosmic
Are the widely separated regions of the sky too far
Ultraviolet starlight emitted billions of years ago void. That’s why we need more Ultra Deep Fields,
apart to communicate with one another? If they’re
from distant galaxies has been stretched along to sample more of the distant cosmos.”
unable to communicate, scientists are unsure how
they know to have the same temperature.
3. The flatness problem “The Hubble

Evidence suggests that the present universe is
pretty much flat. Experts think that its current form Ultra Deep Field
© ESA; John Vogel; STFC; NASA AEI/MM/exozet GW simulation: /C . Henze;
is a very unlikely result of the universe’s evolution

from the Big Bang. was about
4. Galaxy formation twice as big as
Random bumps in the expanding universe may not
be enough to form galaxies. In a rapidly expanding
universe, gravitational attraction loses the fight and
the original”
is too slow for these structures to form. Dan Coe
5. The monopole problem
The Big Bang predicts that a large number of
‘magnetic monopoles’ should have been made in
the early universe. But they’ve never been seen, so,
if they exist at all, they’re much rarer than predicted!
Coe and his colleague Jennifer Lotz, an

assistant astronomer also at the Space
Telescope Science Institute, who leads the 17
Frontier Fields programme
posted: MAXIMUS
In the beginning
Big Bang: not

just a theory
It’s the biggest announcement in science since the Higgs Boson:
We speak to one of the founders of the project that recently
confirmed the Big Bang theory of cosmic inflation
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Big Bang: not just a theory
“It gave a factor of

ten improvement
in how quickly we
could make these
measurements…
BICEP2 was in
the field for three
years, so if we had
kept going with
INTERVIEWBIO
BICEP1 it would
Prof James Bock
Professor Bock is co-leader
of BICEP and, as one of the
have taken 30!”
founders, has been with the You were based at the South Pole. Could you have
project since its inception in made these crucial observations anywhere else?
2001 over a game of tennis
Well, it’s possible that you could observe at different
with astrophysicist Professor
places on Earth, but for us the South Pole is really
Brian Keating. He has worked
as a researcher at NASA's perfect. It’s got a remarkably stable atmosphere.
Jet Propulsion Lab and The first thing you worry about when it comes to
specialises in experimental millimetre wave observations is water vapour in
cosmology at the prestigious the atmosphere, so you want to go to a high site.
California Institute of On Earth, a high site in the South Pole is good for
Technology (Caltech). that, as it has about [3,048 metres] 10,000 feet of
elevation. Also, because the air’s so cold there, most
of the water vapour has frozen out of it. The skies
are very transparent and it’s also very stable, because
at mid-latitudes the atmosphere gets churned up by
diurnal variations of sunlight and dark. Also, at the
poles the Sun goes down for months at a time, so the
atmosphere’s very stable.
The other thing about the poles is that the field
we want to observe is always up. The sky just goes
around in a circle all the time – so if we move our
telescope with it we can observe it all the time.
The Dark Sector Laboratory is home Finally, the South Pole is all set up for scientific
to the BICEP2 telescope (left) and observation; there are facilities, there’s a gym… it’s
South Pole Telescope (right) really a top-notch place from that viewpoint as well.
When you started using BICEP2 you discovered a

Could you tell us a bit about the BICEP2 project? Is that what distinguished the BICEP instruments? signal that was much stronger than you expected.
What exactly was it you originally set out to do? With BICEP1 we thought that was a very novel What did you expect to see and why was this
How did it differ from the original experiment, approach, as it hadn’t been done before. I was gravitational wave signature such a surprise?
BICEP, that if followed? also working on the next generation of detectors – I think there are two things: first there is the indirect
BICEP2 is a step in a larger programme. We originally futuristic devices that didn’t exist at the time, called recognition from the Planck satellite. It’s not using
started an experiment back in 2001 called BICEP, antenna-coupled bolometers. We designed the polarisation, but rather the structure of the intensity
which was designed to go after this polarisation experiment so that we could put in these detectors variations in the background… It could have been
signal exclusively. The idea emerged from my talking when they were ready, but we used somewhat old- telling us something about inflation, it may be
with a post-doc in the group, thinking that this would fashioned detectors. that statistically, but this is something that gets
be an interesting signal to go after. The original BICEP1 got out into the field in Antarctica and resolved, worked out. There was that result going in
BICEP experiment was this small, custom-designed observed for three years, but it didn’t have the [to BICEP2]. Then there was this expectation in the
telescope with an angular resolution of about half a sensitivity to detect the signal that we’re recording community, and I’m as subject to this as anyone, that
degree – a similar size to the full Moon and enough now. Then, after BICEP1, we fielded BICEP2 and the we should really be designing these experiments to
sensitivity to resolve the expected structures. It was only difference really was the fact that we used these go very deep to look for the signal.
really a specialised experiment with a lot of light- new detectors. It gave us a factor of ten improvement So, we were all geared up to even more powerful
gathering power, which meant that, in spite of the in how quickly we could make these measurements. experiments, to find incredibly low numbers. When
small telescope diameter, it had an enormous field of That makes a huge difference: BICEP2 was in the the results initially came out – I became aware of it
view. The focal point of the telescope is just packed field for three years, so if we had kept going with about a year ago from our data – I was sceptical. We
with detectors to give it maximum sensitivity. BICEP1 it would have taken 30 years spent the past year just looking at every possible way
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posted: MAXIMUS
In the beginning
The original BICEP the instrument could produce a false signal. We had
project team, plus many turns and zig-zags through this process, but
the telescope body every time we would come up with a mechanism,
generally we would find that after going through it,
we would learn a few things about the data and it
would get even more consistent. The data would still
be present – we were able to find an explanation for
the signal. The thing that pushed us over was that we
compared our data with BICEP1, which itself doesn’t
have the sensitivity to produce the signal, so we
could do a cross-comparison. That cross-comparison
was consistent with what we were getting.
So, it gradually dawned on the team that you

might be on to something? How exactly did that
feel, being so close to something so significant?
Well, you know, it’s funny how these things emerge
and, as I said, people have different reactions… We
have four leaders of the overall programme who
would sit down and talk every so often just among
us asking, ‘Do we believe it?’
Different people would have different levels of
confidence. But that wasn’t good enough – just to
sample people’s opinions, so we’d ask, ‘If you think
this is wrong, what specific test should we do next?’
Then we would talk about the strategy for the next
two weeks, discussing what tasks we could do
that would confirm or open up a line of inquiry
that would tell us what was happening. We just
systematically went through all the objections and
thoughts of our team, taking one at a time.
The funny story is that last year, in the spring,
we had actually been trying to get an upper limit
paper out because we had all this great data. We just
assumed that we’d be putting a maximum value on
the signal level and we couldn’t get any answer that
was just noise. We kept seeing this extra signal – it
was statistically significant and we didn’t see it in
any of our other tests and actually, we were pretty
frustrated that we had this signal and we couldn’t
get rid of it! Then we had this meeting where we
compared our data with [findings] from Caltech and
they agreed. Suddenly, for me it was this watershed
moment: 'It’s real!' I thought.
What exactly is B-mode polarisation and how did

it help you to finally verify the theory of cosmic
inflation and in so doing the Big Bang theory?
You can mathematically decompose a pattern of
polarisation into two kinds. There’s one called the
E-mode pattern, which has a particular kind of
signature… it doesn’t have a curl. You can take any
pattern of polarisation and it has an E-mode part,
which is basically curl-free and a B-mode part, which
only has curls.
Cosmic inflation sets up density waves that
are a big source of the polarisation pattern in the
microwave background. In fact, that’s most of the
“We spent the past year looking at every signal we can actually see – mostly E-modes. Density
waves cannot make a B-mode pattern, so if you see
possible way the instrument could one it cannot be made by density waves: you’re led to
a source that has a handedness. Gravitational waves
produce a false signal. We had many have left- and right-handedness. Scientists have
known about this since around the 1990s and there
turns and zig-zags… but every time the have been a number of papers released proposing
data would get more consistent” that we look for this B-mode pattern as a signature of
inflationary gravitational waves.
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Big Bang: not just a theory
How can this signal be recognised for what it is

after such a long time?
The gravitational waves from inflation – they’re kind
of the analogue of the microwave background. The
microwave background is this afterglow of the Big
Bang made up of the oldest photons we can see,
it’s just that they’re scattered. They were created in
the early universe at an earlier time from matter-
antimatter annihilation. At that time the universe
was very hot and those photons were bouncing
around against the electrons.
Then there was this time when the universe
cooled down as it expanded, when the free electrons
paired up with protons and the neutral hydrogen.
Next the universe became transparent. So ever
since that time, which was about 380,000 years
after the Big Bang, the universe was pretty much
transparent to optical light. That’s what we’re seeing
in the background, but we can’t see the earlier times
directly because the photons have been strongly
scattered. Gravitational waves are kind of the same
analogue; they’re a background made from the early
universe. They’re much harder to detect than photons
and haven’t been observed directly – we’ve inferred
them from things like orbiting pulsars.
These gravitational waves in the background don’t
interact with the universe from the time that it was
created to a very good approximation. So it’s basically
been free-streaming to us from the time that inflation
happened, some 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang.
If we could see these gravitational waves directly,
presumably we would detect them and we could
map out their structure and all that.
By using the microwave background, we’re
basically using the universe as a gravitational
wave-detector. The squeezing and stretching of the
gravitational waves produces this polarisation pattern
that we’re seeing in the background.
Where do you go with BICEP now that you have

made the announcement?
In the near-term the field is going to be active trying
to test our instrument to see if it’s verified or not.
We’ll be participating in that as well.
There's been a lot of talk of Nobel Prizes in the

media – would you care to comment on that?
[Bock laughs] No.
Will you be going back to the South Pole for

further work any time soon?
Yes. Right now the Sun has set in the South Pole, so
we’re in winter mode. We’re collecting data with the
Keck Array, two focal points running at a different
© NASA; BICEP2 Collaboration; Steffen Richter, Harvard University;
colour, at 95 gigahertz instead of 150 gigahertz. That

data, in two months, should be more powerful than
Robert Schwarz, University of Minnesota; Anthony Turner
what we used in our paper.

In October, the season opens again for summer
time and we have a new experiment called BICEP3,
which will be the most powerful instrument of its
kind. Once the station opens we basically have from
mid-October until February to bring our experiment
down, get it running, calibrate, test and prepare it for
Clockwise from the top: A graduate tests the electronics of the BICEP2 instrument inside the Dark Sector Laboratory;
cosmological observations. In the meantime we will the BICEP2 B-mode signal, showing a signature curl that verifies the theory of cosmic inflation; the focal plane of
be servicing and calibrating the Keck Array. It’s going the BICEP2 instrument, which uses the highly specialised bolometer detectors Professor Bock worked on at JPL;
to be a busy Antarctic summer. I’m really looking liquid helium, coolant for the superconducting BICEP2 telescope, is delivered to the laboratory during the grip of the
forward to it. freezing Antarctic winter where in some areas darkness can preside for six months
21
posted: MAXIMUS
In the beginning
HOW
PLANETS
FORM
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posted: MAXIMUS
How planets form
Discover how our home, along

with our Solar System neighbours
and every other planet in the
universe, was born from a chaotic
cloud of dust and gas
In a sense, planetary birth is a side explains why solar systems take the
effect of a larger birth: the formation form they do. The planets all revolve
of a star. Stars form from nebulas, in the same direction around a central
massive clouds of gas and dust star, in the same plane, because that’s
dominated by hydrogen and helium. how the material disc originally
Now and then, a disturbance in swirled around the protostar.
a nebula concentrates an area of Exactly how it all comes about is
gas and dust into a denser knot of still up for debate, and there may
material. If the knot is big enough actually be many different planet
and dense enough, it will exert formation processes. The prevailing
enough gravitational pull to collapse understanding, called the accretion
in on itself. The huge volume of model, is that planet formation begins
super-dense gas concentrates at the when individual bits of matter in
knot’s centre, and the gravitational the disc clump together into bigger
energy heats it up to form a protostar. chunks. The accretion model seems to
With sufficient mass, the energy of be correct at least in the case of rocky
the protostar increases, eventually terrestrial planets, like Earth and
initiating a nuclear fusion reaction Mars, which form from silicates and
and graduating to a proper star. heavier metal, such as iron and nickel.
Meanwhile, according to the solar Astronomers generally agree
nebula theory, surrounding gas and that a planet like ours begins
dust form a protoplanetary disc, or with an invisible piece of dust.
proplyd, around the protostar. When Microscopic grains in the disc grow
the protostar first begins to form, by condensation, the same process
the surrounding material is still an behind snowflake formation. In
unordered, slowly churning cloud. But condensation, individual heavy gas
the protostar’s growing gravitational atoms or molecules stick to a grain,
pull accelerates the cloud’s movement, rapidly expanding its size into a more
causing it to swirl around the centre. substantial solid particle.
As the swirling mass speeds up, it When the particles are very small
flattens out, forming a thin disc, and light, turbulent gas motions stir
packed with all the material that will them up, swirling them outside the
eventually coalesce into planets. flat plane of the proplyd. But when
As well as explaining how planets they reach sufficient mass they’re
form, the solar nebula theory also heavy enough to settle into the
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posted: MAXIMUS
In the beginning
Origins of a
relatively thin rotating disc. In the
crowded disc, particles collide more
frequently, speeding up the growth of
larger and larger chunks.
At about the point a chunk of solid
solar system
matter grows to a kilometre across,
it graduates to a planetesimal. A
planetesimal is massive enough that
its gravitational pull attracts smaller
chunks of matter, accelerating the rate
of growth. The result is a relatively
small number of planetesimals steadily
capturing the smaller chunks and
particles in the disc.
When a terrestrial planetesimal
Gas giant, the accretion model
grows large enough, the energy of
many collisions along with radioactive
material it’s accreted heat everything
to melting point. As a melted mass, the
planetesimal’s structure can reform.
In a process called differentiation,
the force of gravity concentrates the
melted metals into an inner core,
surrounded by an outer crust of 1. Dirty snowballs 2. Capturing gas 3. Too big to fail
lighter rocky silicates. The result is Dust grains and bits of frozen Some planetesimals grow so big The gas giants grab a huge supply
a protoplanet, an asteroid-like mass hydrogen compounds condense and that their gravitational pull captures of the disc’s hydrogen and helium
then collide and stick together, forming hydrogen and helium gas in the gas. Their massive gravity pulls in or
with distinct layers. Over time, gravity
bigger and bigger icy planetesimals. protoplanetary disc. scatters remaining planetesimals.
evens out the protoplanet’s shape,
forming it into a sphere.
A terrestrial planet might form an
atmosphere layer through outgassing.
Essentially, heat from the planet’s
interior core unlocks gases trapped
in the planet’s solid and molten
interior. Planets might then add to this
atmosphere through encounters with
other solar system bodies.
As the diversity of our own Solar
System demonstrates, atmospheres
vary a great deal. Any particular
atmospheric recipe requires not only
the right mix of planetary matter, but
also a precise balance of planetary
size and proximity to the central star.
When a smaller planet orbits very
close to a star, like Mercury, the sun’s
heat blasts away any atmosphere,
leaving a barren rock. Meanwhile, a
planet like Mars is so far from the Sun
that all its water is locked up in ice.
But just a bit further in, you get Earth
– a planet that’s the right size and in
the right position to form a robust
atmosphere that could support life.
Gas giant, gas collapse model
While there is general agreement
among astronomers that terrestrial
planets formed along these lines, the
origins of Jovian gas giant planets, like
Jupiter and Saturn, are less certain.
One possibility is they start out the
same basic way as terrestrial planets,
steadily accreting solid matter to form
a massive protoplanet. If it grows large
1. Concentrations in the disc 2. ‘Instant’ planet 3. Glutton for gas
enough – about 15 times the size of In the disc of gas and dust that forms A clump of dense gas collapses under As the planet makes its way around
Earth – such a protoplanet exerts a around a protostar, the dynamics of its own gravity to form a gaseous the disc, its strong gravitational pull
strong enough gravitational pull to the rotation cause uneven distribution planet. The new planet picks up dust sweeps up more gas, making it bigger
capture hydrogen and helium gas in of hydrogen and helium gas. and ice, which collect into a solid core. and bigger.
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How planets form
A star is born
Astronomers believe
a solar system begins
when part of a nebula
– a molecular cloud of
gas and dust – collapses
under its own gravity,
forming a dense, hot core
that becomes a star.
Terrestrial planets
Closer to the star, dust particles of
heavier metals and minerals like
iron and nickel clump together into
larger and larger chunks, slowly
forming rocky planets.
Gas giants
Further away, hydrogen
compounds form ice, providing
much more planet-forming
material. The gravitational pull of
much larger planets holds on to
hydrogen and helium gas, forming
a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn.
The protoplanetary disc

As the star forms, its gravitational
pull accelerates and flattens
the surrounding molecular
cloud, forming a spinning disc
of material, which gradually
coalesces into planets.
A terrestrial world is born
1. Let’s stick together 2. Running with the crowd 3. Forming a planetesimal 4. Graduating to a protoplanet
Mineral and metal dust particles As trillions of these particles rotate When a rocky chunk grows to about Intense heat melts the rocky material.
throughout the molecular cloud collide around the developing star, they’re 1km across, its gravitational pull is able During melting, elements like iron and
and clump together, forming larger constantly colliding, forming bigger to attract other pieces, speeding up nickel concentrate at the centre of the
rocky particles. asteroid-like pieces through accretion. the accretion process. planet, giving it distinct layers.
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In the beginning
The frost line explained Hot and rocky

Closer to the centre of a protoplanetary
disc, the developing star makes it too
Mainly gas hot for gases to freeze into a solid.
A protoplanetary disc is primarily made up Forming from a limited supply of metals
of hydrogen, helium and various hydrogen and rocky material, inner planets tend
compounds, such as water and ammonia. to be smaller.
The frost line

The frost line marks Hydrogen and helium gas Icy planets
the distance from Hydrogen and helium gas exists Beyond the frost line, gaseous
the star where throughout the protoplanetary disc, but hydrogen compounds like
temperatures drop low temperatures never drop low enough for methane and ammonia
enough for hydrogen it to solidify. Only immense gravitational condense into icy solids, which
compounds to freeze. pull can condense it into a planet. may form planetesimals.
the proplyd. The gaseous mass then solids. They remain in gaseous form to the Sun, while the outer planets, reactions likely produced powerful
sweeps up more material, growing into and so do not accrete to developing Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, solar winds that would have cleared
a Jovian behemoth. planetesimals. But if you move far are much larger. out the remaining gas in the proplyd.
There is a relatively small supply of enough away from the hot protostar, The chief argument against the That’s a tight window for Jovian gas
heavy metals and silicate in a proplyd, past what’s called the frost line, the accretion model for Jovian planets is giants to form.
making it unlikely that a protoplanet temperature drops low enough that timing. In well-supported models of And neighbouring stars may
could accumulate enough metal hydrogen compounds can freeze. solar system evolution, there simply lead to the window shrinking even
and rocky material to reach the size With a much more abundant supply isn’t enough time to grow the massive further. Astronomers believe that
necessary to hold on to hydrogen and of solid material, large icy protoplanets icy cores before the developing solar stars generally form in clusters that
helium gas. Instead, this model says, can form and capture the swirling system loses the bulk of its hydrogen contain massive, hot stars. Calculations
the initial planetary core of a Jovian hydrogen and helium gas. and helium gas supply. While the say radiation from these stars would
planet forms out of frozen hydrogen The organisation of our Solar lighter gases are the dominant accelerate the evaporation of gaseous
compounds, such as methane, System supports this theory. The material during the proplyd’s early life, material in nearby proplyds, shrinking
ammonia and water. Near the centre inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth their days are numbered. In the case of the period of plentiful hydrogen and
of a proplyd, the developing protostar and Mars are all relatively small and our own Solar System, some 10 million helium to between 100,000 and 1
makes it too hot for hydrogen rocky, suggesting forming giant icy or years after the Sun first formed as a million years. That doesn’t appear to
compounds to condense into frozen gaseous planets wasn’t possible close protostar, the energy of nuclear fusion be enough time for a Jovian gas giant
Types of planets
Terrestrial Gas giant Dwarf planet
Terrestrial planets like At a further distance Smaller than a true planet,
Earth and Mars are rocky from their orbiting star, the difference between
planets with metal cores gas giants are able to an asteroid and a dwarf
and high densities. accrete more matter in planet comes down to
They are smaller than their formation, giving its shape. To be a dwarf
gas giants and have them a large size and planet, a body must
slower rotation periods. mass. For example, have sufficient mass
In addition, their smaller Jupiter is 11 times larger to achieve hydrostatic
size means they are less than Earth, and has a equilibrium, when it will
likely to have moons. volume 1,300 times greater. become spherical.
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How planets form
Planet
formation
in action
Our nearest star-forming region is
the Orion Nebula, a massive cloud of
132-1832 gas and dust around 1,500 light years
Developing far from away. The striking nebula is visible
Theta1 Orionis C, 132- to the naked eye – and positively
1832 is one of the darker
breathtaking as seen through the
proplyds in the nebula.
Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble’s
sharp images, like this one from 2009,
have revealed 42 protoplanetary discs
(proplyds) where planet formation is
now in progress. Theta1 Orionis C, the
206-446 nebula’s brightest star, heats nearby
Astronomers believe proplyds, giving them a bright glow.
this bright proplyd’s Proplyds forming further away are too
distinctive ponytail-style dim to see, but their dark dust blocks
plume is a jet of matter
out parts of the bright nebula in the
streaming out from the
disc’s centre. background, creating silhouettes
astronomers can study.
180-331
Proplyd 180-331,
another bright disc
near Theta1 Orionis C,
also sports a flowing
106-417 jet of matter, giving it a
Stellar wind from tadpole shape.
the massive Theta 1
Orionis C interacting
with gas has formed a
shockwave around this
ear-shaped proplyd.
181-825
But the best shockwave
sculpture has to be 181-
825’s distinctive galactic
jellyfish form.
“The origins of Jovian gas 231-838

Like 106-417, the
giant planets, like Jupiter bright proplyd 231-838

is surrounded by a
and Saturn, are less certain” shockwave, giving it a

boomerang shape.
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posted: MAXIMUS
In the beginning
Discovering
to form through the accretion model,
yet observations of distant solar
systems show that these gas giants are
very common.
a protoplanet
An alternative theory, known as the
gas collapse model, presents a faster
formation scenario. According to this
model, gas giants form directly from
the swirling hydrogen and helium
in a developing proplyd. As the
material revolves around the protostar,
Dr Simon Casassus of the University of Chile talks
turbulence in the disc distributes it
unevenly. This unevenness forms
us through fascinating images of a protoplanetary
knots of dense gas. When enough disc in action more than 450 light years away
gas is concentrated tightly enough,
its dense mass causes it to collapse In January, the University of Chile is about one millimetre. The rest of such cavity-crossing flows. The other
in on itself, forming a giant gas ball. published images showing a the colours are gaseous. In green, we first is the (darker) blue, the diffused
To put it another way, the gas giant protoplanetary disc in action around see the Formyl ion molecule and in carbon monoxide, which is slightly
is like a failed star. It forms the same HD 142527, a young star over 450 blue we have carbon monoxide. In a less dense material, more rarified gas.
basic way as the protostar, but doesn’t light years away. Can you describe lighter blue, there are two filaments We think that (gas) giants have
have sufficient mass and energy for a the data shown in the image? crossing the cavity that converge on formed first through a rocky core…
nuclear fusion reaction. This is a protoplanetary system seen the centre where the star would be. a super-Earth exoplanet, something
The embryonic planet’s gravitational face-on. In red is the thermal emission Those filaments are faint compared like ten times the mass of the Earth,
pull takes over from there, sweeping from rocks or tiny pebbles or sand to the rest of the nebula, but they are which is massive enough to attract
up massive amounts of gas, as well grains. The size of these particles there. This is the first time we’ve seen and hold the gas in the disc, so it
as any solids in the vicinity, quickly
adding to its bulk. Collected ice and
metals condense at the planet’s centre,
forming a solid core after the gas
has accumulated, rather than before. Thermal emissions
The whole process might happen as Rocks, tiny pebbles or
quickly as a few hundred years. sand grains, anything in
Observations of Jovian exoplanets red is about 1 millimetre.
(planets located outside our Solar
System) have given some credence to
this model – or at least challenged the
Jovian accretion model. In the wave
of exoplanet discoveries over the past
25 years, one of the biggest surprises
has been the so-called ‘hot Jupiters’,
Jovian gas giants that orbit very close
to their suns. These planets would
seem to contradict the notion that
gas giants only form beyond the frost
line. However, they may have formed
further out, but then migrated towards
their suns.
A host of exoplanet discoveries have
given astronomers a better picture of
the range of possible planets, which
has yielded new clues about how
planets form. But examining the end
results can only tell them so much.
Fortunately, we’re likely entering a
new era of direct proplyd observation,
thanks to advances in telescopic
technology. The new Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array
(ALMA) radio telescope in Chile, which
should be fully operational in March,
has already yielded unprecedented
images of planet formation in progress.
As new discoveries follow, astronomers
expect to fill in more pieces of the Filaments
puzzle, taking us ever closer to The lighter shade of
understanding how our planet, and by blue are two filaments
extension all of us, came to be. crossing the cavity.
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How planets form
sucks away a cavity, which goes into

the body of the planet. So the planet
Does this reflect something that
happens in most cases of planet “This is the first time we
grows at the expense of the disc and
clears away a cavity. The size of the
formation or is this a special case?
We don’t know. Before we can extrapolate have seen these radial flows
cavity we see in this system suggests
it’s been carved out by several planets.
to other planetary systems, and before we
can conclude that for sure the early Solar inside a planetary cavity”
This is what the hydro-simulations System looked like this, we have to find
tell us. The race is on to detect those some other examples. millions of years, and this one is about migrate. It is possible for a gaseous giant
protoplanets and confirm the theory. This is the first time we have seen two million years. to migrate from the outer regions at
The planet is growing and at these radial flows and this residual gas 100AU down to 5AU.
the same time clearing away this inside a planetary cavity, and we detected Is it possible that our own Solar System
cavity. The way it manages to keep the features at the limit of the capabilities followed a similar sequence of events? Are there other theoretical
on growing is by sucking material for ALMA in its first year of operations. Could be. That’s what’s so astonishing. phenomena that you’re looking to see
from the outer regions. This material So we now need to study it in more detail If you consider this nebula, it’s a in future observations?
falls on to the star and crosses the and collect similar data around other protoplanetary disc around the star Yes. There are proto-lunar discs, the
planets as they fall, because they’re young stars. called HD 142527. In this system the circumplanetary discs, which we hope to
being perturbed by the gravitational protoplanets are formed really far out detect. This would be a way to pinpoint
interference from the planets. They Was there any data in your findings from the star. Our hydro-simulations tell the location of protoplanets.
catch some of the falling material. that challenged existing models of us that the protoplanets form around
But the rest of it just overshoots and planet formation? 100AU from the star, whereas Jupiter is What’s next for your team?
reaches the inner disc, which is the That’s a hard question because there at 5AU [from our Sun]. So, is this system We are still analysing this data. Then I’m
other side of the cavity. The rate of are so many different models of planet comparable to our Solar System? At first, expecting the rest of the ALMA data and
inflow of material here is right to formation. But there are some versions of you would say, no, because it’s so much complementary infrared observations.
sustain the continuous growth. planet formation which predict very late bigger. But you also have to think about We applied a variety of techniques in the
formation of planets, slower than tens of planet migration. Newborn planets hope of detecting the protoplanets.
Outer disc
This artist’s impression
shows the gas streams
flowing from the
outer disc.
© Science Photo Library; NASA
Central star
Gas streams flow to the
star in the disc’s centre.
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In the beginning
Creating a
GALAXY
The making of these billion-star structures
has been puzzling astronomers for
decades. We put together the pieces
for building a galaxy
The universe is packed with galaxies. Everywhere

we look and at almost every point in history we
see galaxies crammed into the cosmos, grouped in
clusters and great sheets that criss-cross through
space-time. The most distant galaxies ever seen have
been identified by the Hubble Space Telescope as
being 13.2 billion light years away. Yet these are not
even the most distant galactic structures out there.
It’s the first galaxies that hold the record for being
the furthest away from us. However, we’re yet to see
them. To do so we will need the infrared prowess of
the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will
be able to see galaxies as they are forming just 300 or
400 million years after the Big Bang – the event that
threw the cosmos into existence.
Understanding how galaxies form is a bit like
trying to put a jigsaw together. Think of each galaxy
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Creating a galaxy
31
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In the beginning
as being a piece of that puzzle. Because galaxies are

so old and evolve so slowly, when we see a galaxy “He built his diagram so that its handle
in the night sky we are just seeing a single snapshot
of their long lives. However, the galaxies are all at is made up of elliptical galaxies… which
different stages of their evolution, so if we can put all
these snapshots together, like the pieces of a puzzle,
formed the prongs of his tuning fork”
we can build an overall picture of how galaxies like
our own Milky Way grew into the star, dust, gas and lower as it moves away since the sound waves this that he created his famous tuning fork diagram.
dark matter packed structures we see today. become compressed and then stretched. He built his diagram so that its handle is made up
We’ve actually only known that there are galaxies In 1925, Edwin Hubble announced he had of elliptical galaxies, which are galactic structures
in the universe beyond our own Milky Way for less discovered that the spiral nebulae were all galaxies, with ovoid shapes. Hubble referred to these as early-
than a hundred years. Before that time astronomers or island universes far beyond our own. He achieved type galaxies because he believed that all galaxies
thought that the weird objects they dubbed ‘spiral this thanks to the biggest telescope in the world at began their lives as ellipticals before evolving into
nebulae’ were actually part of our galaxy. Their the time, the 2.5-metre (8.2-foot) mirrored Hooker one of two types of spiral galaxy, which formed the
telescopes were not powerful enough to resolve Telescope at Mount Wilson in California. Hubble was prongs of his tuning fork. One type are the regular
individual stars in these objects, although when able to resolve individual stars, including a specific grand design galaxies with their graceful spiral arms
astronomers looked at the light coming from them, type called a Cepheid Variable. This type of star curving away from a small central bulge, while the
they had all of the evidence they needed to confirm throws out light, which varies according to its true second type are the barred spirals, whose spiral
that these blobs in the night sky were made up of brightness and from this observation astronomers arms are connected with a long, straight bar running
many stars. In 1912, American astronomer Vesto can work out their distance. It was the Cepheids through their glowing centres. In fact, today it’s
Slipher found that the very light being thrown out found in our neighbouring galaxy of Andromeda that believed that our very own galaxy has a bar running
by the spirals was Doppler shifted toward redder allowed astronomers to measure the distance to our through its centre.
wavelengths, meaning the spiral nebulae are moving closest spiral as 2.5 million light years away. Coupled Hubble thought that the elliptical galaxies were
away from us and take on a red tint. with Vesto Slipher’s discovery that the galaxies are all the bulges of spiral galaxies but without the arms,
Doppler shift is the compression or stretching moving away from us, scientists quickly realised that which he assumed grew later. Astronomers changed
of light waves as an object moves toward or away once upon a time they must have been much closer their minds about this after studying galaxies in
from us. You might not have realised it, but you together than previously anticipated. more detail throughout the 20th century. They found
have experienced a Doppler shift before since it also Hubble’s next step was to classify all that elliptical galaxies form when two or more spiral
happens with sound waves. When a police car or of the galaxies in an effort galaxies collide and merge. It is the spiral
ambulance has raced past you with its siren blaring, to understand them as galaxies that are really the early ones.
the pitch of the sound it makes changes depending much as he could. So how do the spirals form?
on its distance. At first it is higher and then becomes It was from The main ingredients are gas
The filaments that

make up the large-
scale structure of the
universe can be broken
down into clusters and
superclusters of the
various galaxies
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Creating a galaxy
The stars in galaxies

are made from the
collapse of clouds of
gas and dust under
their own gravity
(predominantly hydrogen) and that mysterious

substance called dark matter. Nobody knows what
dark matter is, but we know it comes in the shape of
giant blobs scattered throughout the universe. Some
of these dark matter blobs are large enough to hold
clusters of thousands of galaxies. The dark matter
came first, forming these blobs, or haloes, very
soon after the Big Bang. The gravity of these haloes
began to attract hydrogen gas toward them, which
began to flow like rivers along gravitational inclines
created by the influence of dark matter into the cores
of the blobs. There the hydrogen formed enormous
spinning clouds and the hydrogen and dark matter
formed the embryo of a galaxy. Think of the white
and the yolk of an egg as the dark matter with the
hydrogen at the core.
Because the dark matter and hydrogen mixture
was spinning so fast, it flattened into a pancake
shape, taking on the characteristics of a spiral
galaxy’s flat disc. Meanwhile, small pockets of
hydrogen gas in the cloud collapsed to form the
very first stars. These stars were gigantic, hundreds
of times more massive than our relatively puny It's thought that
galaxies are made from the
Sun and they exploded very quickly as powerful
collapse of protogalactic clouds
supernovae. Stars are able to create elements in their
of dense hydrogen and helium
cores, while the violence of exploding stars, known gas in the early universe
as supernovae, can form even more new elements.
When the first stars detonated, they spilled their
guts into the baby galaxy around them, enriching
it with these heavy elements. Over time, enough of
“The black hole in the centre of the
these elements would build up to form asteroids, Milky Way galaxy is four million-times
moons and planets. When we look at galaxies today,
including our own Milky Way, we see vast lanes of more massive than the Sun”
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posted: MAXIMUS
In the beginning
Galactic evolution
How their different sizes can affect how galaxies form
The making of stars

Small galaxies Under gravity the cloud will
collapse because there’s not
enough pressure from the gas
itself to fight against this force
pressing it down. Baby stars
are made in the fight between
gravity and pressure.
A lonely cloud of gas

In order for, what astronomers
call a 'small galaxy' to be made,
a relatively large and isolated
gas cloud is needed.
Large galaxies
A team of gas clouds
Small clouds of gas
collapse early on to form
the galaxy’s very first stars.
Gaseous add-ons
There isn’t much spinning going
on during the making of a large
A party of stars galaxy. Instead, the merging
These gas clouds with of nearby gas clouds stop any
their newly formed stars chances of a disc-like structure
clump together to make a from forming.
larger cloud with a party
of stellar populations.
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Creating a galaxy
Forming a disc
The matter spins quickly,
causing a flattened disc-like
structure. At the centre is a black dust. This dust is comprised of elements made
bulge, where the older first- inside the nuclear furnaces of stars, dating back to
generation stars can be found.
the first stars that existed about 13.5 billion years ago.
The rest of the disc is teeming
with younger stars. Today we find that the oldest parts of spiral
galaxies are their bulges. In these central regions
most of the gas has been used up and the stars
A galaxy with arms that exist there are crammed together and more
Internal processes make red than the combined light of the stars in the
the arms and bars found in spiral arms, which are dominated by hot, young
spiral galaxies. However, stars. The exception is in the few tens of light years
if conditions are more immediately around the supermassive black hole that
favourable, a lenticular
lies in the middle of every large galaxy, where the gas
galaxy – an intermediate
between an elliptical and a is dense enough to keep forming new star clusters
spiral – is made instead. made of massive stars.
The black holes in the centres of galaxies are
enormous. The black hole in the centre of the Milky
Way galaxy is four million-times more massive than
the Sun. In other galaxies, black holes can be tens or
even hundreds of millions of times more massive.
The biggest galaxies of all, the giant ellipticals found
in the centres of galaxy clusters, have central black
holes with masses up to a billion-times that of the
Sun, as is the case with the galaxy M87 in the heart
of the Virgo galaxy cluster.
Everyone knows that black holes like to consume
matter, that’s how they grow so big. But black holes
can’t eat everything that is served their way and
sometimes they spit out their food. What happens is
that as gas flows toward a black hole, it whirls around
into a disc of material spiralling into the it. However,
the gas brings magnetic fields with it that become
wrapped up around the black hole by the swirling
gas. Eventually the magnetic fields become so strong
that they can actually begin to funnel away charged
particles, atoms, protons, electrons and ions into jets
that are so energised they race away from the black
hole at almost the speed of light. We can even see
A gigantic galaxy one of the jets coming from the black hole in M87.
Since most of the gas needed The level of black hole activity can depend on
to make a new generation of many factors, such as the mass of the black hole
baby stars was mopped up, no
and the amount of gas falling into it. Our Milky
more can be made. What’s left
Way’s supermassive black hole, for instance, is very
is a gigantic elliptical galaxy
that’s dominated by old stars. quiet with hardly any gas falling into it. Other spiral
galaxies have more activity in their centres, with
some emitting strong radio waves. However, the most
active black holes are called quasars. The closest to us
is 2.4 billion light years away, but the majority existed
in the universe over 10 billion years ago.
Quasars are fed by gas in two different ways: one
is simply clouds of intergalactic gas falling onto a
black hole in the centre of a galaxy. These clouds
are clumps of gas and dark matter left over from the
process of building galaxies over 13 billion years ago.
The other way that quasars light up is more exciting,
when two galaxies come hurtling toward each other
and collide, it causes huge clouds of interstellar gas
and stars to fall into the black hole.
Sometimes the collision is a hit and run. The
gravitational forces of each galaxy tear stars and gas
out into long streamers that astronomers call tidal
streams. These streams can sometimes be many
hundreds of thousands of light years long.
When galaxies collide it changes the future of
the structures involved. Going back in time by 13
billion years, Hubble is able to see the first galaxies
growing by consuming smaller galaxies. This galactic
cannibalism continues even today, although at a
35
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In the beginning
Lighthouse of the cosmos

Quasars blaze radiation that can be seen from the other side of space
The ‘calm’ black hole

If a black hole is calmly sitting
at the centre of its galaxy, it
generally distorts the fabric of
the universe around it. It leaves
a dent in this sheet of space-
time from which nothing – not
even light – can escape.
Heating up
A swirling disc of When the material falls
dust and gas into the black hole
An accretion disc made of and reaches the event
gas and dust circles the horizon – the point
black hole. If the black of no return – a lot
hole isn’t particularly of friction is created,
active, then the matter superheating atoms
won’t fall into it. and tearing them apart.
Galactic arithmetic
The basic space formula for creating galaxies
much slower rate. Even the Milky Way is eating
smaller galaxies at this very moment but they are
not going near our black hole, so the centre of our
galaxy is not active. For example, the Canis Major
+ = dwarf galaxy is only 25,000 light years from Earth

and is merging with our galaxy. It contains few stars
because the gravity of the Milky Way has stripped
most of them away.
Astronomers call such collisions minor mergers
and the end result is that the smaller galaxy is
Elliptical swallowed up, increasing the mass of the larger
Spiral galaxy Galaxy galaxy. At the other end of the scale are the major
Spiral galaxy mergers, between two large galaxies of around the
Enhanced same size. When two spiral galaxies collide like this,
Spiral galaxy Dwarf galaxy spiral galaxy it destroys their spiral structures and they merge
into a giant elliptical galaxy – the opposite of what
Hubble’s tuning fork suggests. Amazingly, during a
galaxy collision no stars actually collide, because the
space between the stars is so large that the chances
+ = of two stars coming within each other’s gravitational

sphere of influence is very small. That means that
when our Milky Way galaxy undergoes the next
phase of its growth and merges with the Andromeda
galaxy in 4 or 5 billion years, our Sun will not collide
with another star from Andromeda. What will collide
will be the huge clouds of interstellar gas that inhabit
the spiral arms of both galaxies, igniting in a huge
36
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Creating a galaxy
An active galaxy
Combine the intense magnetic
field of the supermassive black
hole with the ripping of atoms
and super high temperatures
and you get a extremely active
galaxy. Electrons torn from the
atoms find themselves gathered
by the magnetic field.
Galactic jets
The active black hole Funnels made by the black hole
When a black hole begins twisting the space-time fabric
spinning into motion, it drags suck up particles, which are
the fabric of space-time, or accelerated by electric currents,
the universe, with it. This before being blasted out into
sheet gets twisted up inside space as focused beams of
the black hole. charged particles and radiation.
burst of star formation. We call this a starburst and

they can use up all the gas in a galaxy. This is why
“When two spiral galaxies collide, it
most elliptical galaxies, which form from mergers,
have no star forming gas left and haven’t made any
destroys their spiral structures and they
new stars in a very long time. All their short-lived,
young stars exploded long ago, leaving ellipticals
merge into a giant elliptical”
dusty and red with older, cool stars.
No galaxies are being made today. All that galactic
construction happened over 13 billion years ago and
ever since it has been a case of galactic evolution
rather than galactic formation. There are still some
crucial pieces of the jigsaw missing, such as whether
supermassive black holes formed before the galaxies
that exist around them or vice versa, why the disc
turns into spiral arms and why these arms do not
wind up as they rotate around the centre of the
galaxy. Some scientists think that the spiral arms Galaxies can merge
are not actually rigid appendages, but density waves
© Alamy; ESA; NASA; Sayo Studio; Tobias Roestch
to form unusual
where stars and gas are bunching up. This is a bit shapes just like Arp
like a traffic jam on a motorway and as soon as some 142, which looks
stars hit the brakes and slow down all the other stars like a penguin
and gas clouds bunch up behind them. guarding an egg
Although some of the pieces are missing, the
jigsaw of how galaxies are made, grow and evolve
is becoming clearer. We might not be able to see
everything, but we can see enough to understand
when and where galaxies came from.
37
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Secrets of
the universe
Uncover the most intriguing aspects of our universe
40 100 wonders of space
Discover the best and unusual things in space
54 Edge of the universe

Is there an end to ininity?
64 10 biggest things in space

Get to know the universe's biggest players
74 The new search for alien life

The hunt for an intelligent alien civilisation
82 Hubble’s greatest discoveries

Learn about Hubble’s most amazing discoveries
from the last 25 years
84
Hubble’s greatest
discoveries
© NASA; JPL-Caltech
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74
The search
for alien life
64
Biggest things
in space
“The search for extraterrestrial

intelligence, or SETI, has
always been a fringe science”
39
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1
Saturn’s
Rings
The rings of Saturn are extraordinary. First
observed by Galileo Galilei in 1610, these structures
are incredibly thin, measuring just one kilometre
100
(0.62 miles) from top to bottom. They’re made up of
billions of particles of ice and rock, some as large as
mountains and others too small to be seen with the
naked eye. It’s not known for sure how old the
rings are, or exactly how they formed, but it
is thought possible that the fragments are
pieces of shattered moons, smashed to
bits by collisions in the not too
distant past.
wonders
of space
From giant craters to
supermassive black holes
and alien planets: explore
our favourite parts of
the cosmos
40
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100 wonders of space
6 Life
As far as we know, Earth is the only
planet to harbour living organisms,
but chances are there are many
2 Andromeda more planets out there like our own.
Currently sitting at just over 2 million 7 Great Red Spot

light years from Earth, our closest spiral The width of two Earths, Jupiter’s
galaxy Andromeda, and its 100 million Red Spot is by far the biggest storm
stars, are rapidly getting closer. They in the Solar System, and is given its
are rushing towards us at a speed of red colour by the effects of UV light
402,000 kilometres (250,000 miles) per on the clouds.
hour, on a course for collision 4 billion
years from now.
8 Leonids
meteor shower
3 The Moon 4 The Pillars of These meteors shower the
atmosphere every November as we
The Moon is a space wonder right on our own doorstep. As

Creation
These iconic columns of gas and dust were first
pass through a trail of dust and gas
left by comet Tempel-Tuttle as it
nears the Sun.
it orbits the Earth, its gravity tugs on the oceans, creating a imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, and
measurable bulge; as the oceans swell, we see the effects on the in 2015 the pictures were retaken in high definition.
ground as tides. The Sun has a similar, but smaller, effect, and Lit by ultraviolet radiation released by massive, young 9 Methane seas
when the Moon and the Sun are in line, the pull on the oceans stars in the Eagle Nebula, the pillars are constantly Weather is not exclusive to water
adds together, creating extra high ‘spring tides’ once a fortnight. being shaped, heated and eroded, and hidden inside worlds like our own; Saturn’s moon
are the infrared traces of brand-new stars. Titan has seas, clouds and rain of
liquid methane.
New Moon
SPRINGS:
10 Giant
moon cliff
The tallest cliff in the Solar System
Sun is on Uranus’s moon, Miranda.
Verona Rupes is 20 kilometres (12
miles) deep, and it would take 12
minutes to fall from top to bottom.
First Quarter
11 Acid
NEAPS:
atmosphere
The atmosphere of Venus is 96
Sun
5 Sombrero per cent carbon dioxide, and the
pressure at the surface is 90 times
Galaxy that on Earth. It has little water,
and the clouds are made from
Named for its hat-like appearance, the Sombrero
corrosive sulphuric acid.
is a galaxy within a galaxy. The flat disc, viewed
almost side-on from the Earth is the most obvious
12 Accretion disc
Full Moon
SPRINGS:
feature, resembling the wide brim of a hat, but if you

look again in the infrared spectrum a much larger Black holes are surrounded by a
elliptical galaxy becomes visible, completely encasing spiralling disc of gravitationally
the central disc. trapped matter. It keeps swirling
Sun until something disturbs the disc
and it tumbles into the void.
13 Vesta's giant
mountain
Last Quarter
Rheasilva peak at the centre of the

NEAPS:
Rheasilvia crater on the asteroid

Vesta is 22 kilometres (13 miles)
Sun high, rivalling Mars’s Olympus
Mons volcano as the tallest peak in
the Solar System.
41
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Valles
14
Marineris
Valles Marineris is Mars’s answer
to the Grand Canyon, but on a
grander scale. It extends for 3,000
kilometres (1,800 miles), and cuts an
eight-kilometre (five-mile) deep scar
into the planet’s surface. Measuring
600 kilometres (370 miles) across, this
canyon is thought to have formed 3.5 18
billion years ago.
Hellas
15
Planitia
Hellas Planitia is an ancient impact 16
crater measuring over 2,000
kilometres (1,200 miles) in diameter,
and extending down for four
kilometres (2.5 miles). This enormous
scar on the southern hemisphere is
the largest complete crater on the
surface of Mars, created by an asteroid
impact around 4 billion years ago.
Olympus
16
15
Mons
This imposing mountain is the tallest
volcano in the Solar System; standing
at an incredible 25 kilometres (16
miles) tall. It easily eclipses the
tallest volcano on Earth, Mauna 14
Loa. On Mars, the surface is static,
so lava continues to erupt in one
position, generating a volcano of truly
gargantuan proportions.
Faces on
17
Mars
When Viking 1 made its mission to
17
Mars in the Seventies it was greeted

by a strangely familiar sight; two
faces were staring back from the bare
rocks on the surface. Unfortunately,
high-resolution images of these
features revealed both to be natural
landforms, and not sculptures
created by intelligent life.
Utopia
18
Planitia 19
The crater of this Martian impact
basin contains landforms known
Mars
as ‘thermokarst’, with geometrically
shaped lines and depressions with
haboobs
Mars is coated in a layer of fine
scalloped edges. When Viking 2 magnetic dust, and experiences some
arrived in 1979, it found a thin layer incredibly violent weather; warm
of ice on the surface, and the lines in air in the deep Hellas Basin can
the ground are thought to have been generate storms that engulf
formed by wedges of subsurface ice. the entire planet.
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24 Dark nebulae
These clouds are so dense that
no light can pass through; it is
all absorbed, making it appear as
though there are gaps in space.
25 Shooting stars
These wonders of the night sky
20 Red Square Nebula 21 The diamond ring have long fascinated humanity.
They happen when chunks of
The unusual geometric shape of this nebula found in the At first glance, this photograph captured by the European dust and rock burn up as they
constellation of Serpens remains an astronomical mystery, Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope might look like pass through the atmosphere.
but the leading hypothesis is that we are looking at the side a single object in the form of a cosmic diamond ring, but in
of several cones of gas released by the star or stars sitting reality, it is the result of an interaction between two objects.
at the centre. The cones are at right angles to one another, The ring itself is formed by the blue bubble of a planetary 26 Stellar
producing the shape of a square, but if we looked from a nebula known as Abell 33, created when the atmosphere of a magnets
different angle we would be able to see directly into one of dying Sun-sized star ballooned into space, and the ‘diamond’
Magnetars are neutron stars with
the cones, and it would appear as a red ring. is a well-positioned bright foreground star.
extreme magnetic fields. They are
rare and unpredictable, suddenly
erupting with gamma-ray bursts
22 Callisto ice spires before going quiet.
Jupiter’s moon Callisto was thought to

be a dead object, an ancient cratered
surface. The icy spikes are coated
in dark dust which absorbs heat
27 Titan
Saturn’s moon Titan is unique in
world coated in a layer of ice, but images from the Sun, causing the
the Solar System; it is the only
captured by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in ice to melt, and gradually
satellite with its own atmosphere,
2001 revealed spires jutting out from the eroding the surface.
and is covered in seas of liquid
ethane and methane.
28 Tea-
temperature star
The nearby brown dwarf star,
CFBDSIR 1458+10B, is part of a
binary system and has a surface
temperature comparable to a
freshly made cup of tea.
29 Hypervelocity
stars
The surface of Callisto is coated in Some stars travel at speeds over
spiky mounds of ice, surrounded 3.2 million kilometres (2 million
by dark puddles of dust miles) per hour, fast enough to
escape the gravitational pull of
their parent galaxy.
23 Subsurface oceans Warm convecting ice
Europa has a magnetic field,
Liquid ocean under ice
Europa is still warm at its core,
Beneath the surface of seemingly
indicating that something is
conducting electricity below
so it is thought more likely
that the water inside is truly in
30 Himiko
frozen moons there are potentially Also known as the Lyman-alpha
its surface; one explanation is liquid form, making up a salty
vast quantities of liquid water. In blob, Himiko is an enormous
partially melted icy slush. subsurface ocean.
the far reaches of the Solar System ancient galaxy; it is so far away
the temperature plummets, but that we are looking 800 million
friction caused by the gravitational years into the past.
interactions between a moon and its
parent planet could melt subsurface 31 Hamburger
ice, resulting in hidden oceans. The
tidal motion of these oceans as the
Galaxy
moon orbits would help to keep Positioned edge-on to Earth, this
the water in liquid form. The best spiral galaxy appears to us like a
candidates for subsurface water in flat red-orange disc of stars and
the Solar System are Jupiter’s moons dark dust, reminiscent in shape of
Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, and a popular American food.
Saturn’s moons Mimas and Enceladus.
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Molten iron core
Secrets of the universe Like Earth, the core of a diamond
planet is thought to be composed 33
of molten iron, or a combination of
iron and carbon (molten steel). Massive
Silicon-based materials
Around the core is a water
second molten layer
containing silicon- reservoir
The quasar APM 08279+5255 hides a black
based materials,
such as silicon hole 20 billion times the Sun's mass, and
carbide (SiC) contains an ancient water cloud. The
or enstatite gas surrounding the black hole
(MgSiO3). contains 140 trillion times
more water than Earth’s
oceans.
34 Gamma-
ray bursts
Once a day, a random point in the sky
blazes with an intense pop of energy
Surface graphite
known as a gamma-ray burst. Each burst is
The lower pressures
at the surface would result thought to be the final firework display of
Diamond layer a massive star as it collapses down to form
in a layer of graphite, and If there is enough pressure
depending on the atmosphere a black hole.
beneath the surface, a
and temperature, there could rigid band of crystals could
also be hydrocarbon weather. form, creating a thick layer
of diamond.
32 Diamond planets
Our own Solar System is dominated by oxygen a diamond planet is a super-Earth known as 55
and the terrestrial planets inside it are made from Cancri E. It is 40,000 light years away, twice the
silicon-based rocks. But elsewhere in the universe size of Earth and almost eight times the mass, and
it is a different story; in carbon-dominated beneath a surface of graphite, planetary scientists
systems, some planets are thought to be made think it could contain a thick shell of precious
from diamond. One of the first candidates for stones and other crystal structures.
35 Cosmic Microwave Background

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the oldest light in the universe; the thermal radiation
evidence of the Big Bang written all over the fabric left over from the Big Bang. The early universe was
of the universe. It was discovered by Bell Telephone hot and dense but over the last 13.7 billion years, it has
Laboratories in the Sixties, and was originally stretched and cooled. As the universe has expanded,
little more than a nuisance, interfering with radio the heat signature expanded with it, leaving behind
communications, but it soon became clear that this a visible fingerprint in the form of a uniform layer of
background radiation was special. The CMB represents microwave radiation spread across the sky.
Very early universe Creation of the CMB Expansion

In the earliest stages of the The first light of the universe As the universe has
universe, it was so hot and was released 380,000 years continued to expand, the
dense that free electrons after the Big Bang, when first light has expanded with
scattered photons, and no the universe had cooled to it, and the thermal signature
light could escape. around 2,700°C (5,000°F). is now just 2.725 degrees
above absolute zero; visible
as microwaves.
36 The Cold Spot

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) (see
wonder number 35), is the afterglow of the Big
Bang, and is relatively uniform across the entire sky,
however there is a strange cold spot in the lower
right-hand corner. The chance of this happening
at random is around 1 in 100, and its presence is
puzzling cosmologists. Possible explanations put
forward include an enormous supervoid, a defect
known as ‘texture’, and even the presence of a
parallel universe.
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Gas and dust

The material surrounding the 40 Dark energy
black hole forms a doughnut We know little about dark energy
shape as it swirls towards the
other than that it is accelerating
centre. It has a corresponding
magnetic field, and clouds of the expansion of that which
charged particles form above followed the Big Bang. It is
and below. thought to make up between 68
and 71 per cent of the universe.
Black hole
The supermassive black
hole at the centre is the 41 Dark matter
powerhouse of the quasar, Between 24 and 27 per cent of
distorting space-time with
its enormous gravitational
37 Quasars the universe is thought to be
composed of dark matter, made up
pull and drawing in the Quasars, or ‘quasi-stellar radio of subatomic particles that interact
surrounding dust and gas. sources’, are some of the brightest only weakly with ‘ordinary’ matter.
and most energetic objects in the
universe; they can release thousands
of times as much energy as the Milky
Way. A quasar is a supermassive black
42 Rare types
hole engaged in a feeding frenzy. As of matter
the black hole at the centre of a large ‘Normal’ atomic matter, made up
galaxy draws in material, it swirls of protons and neutrons makes up
around in a vast disc and the particles just five per cent of the universe.
rub against one another, releasing The remainder is dark matter and
Jets huge amounts of energy as they are dark energy, neither of which have
The magnetic field that ever been directly detected.
torn apart. As they twist towards
surrounds the black hole
channels radiation away the event horizon, magnetic field
in two vast energetic jets, lines funnel enormous quantities of
visible as a quasar or a radiation outwards in two huge jets, 43 Red dwarfs
blazar depending on the creating a dramatic beacon visible These small, dim stars burn so
viewing angle. from the Earth. slowly that they are thought have
lifespans longer than the total age of
the universe, meaning that none are
38 Hubble 39 Stephan’s Quintet

yet old enough to have died.
Deep Field This cluster of five galaxies was discovered in the 19th century
44 Asteroid belt
One of the most astonishing things about space and demonstrates the effects gravity on a monumental scale.
is what appears when you point a telescope at Three of the galaxies are so close that immense gravitational Between Mars and Jupiter lies
nothing. Between 2003 and 2004, the Hubble Space tides have made visible changes to their structure, pulling a band of leftovers from the
Telescope was aimed at an empty portion of the on their spiral arms and distorting their shapes as they twist beginnings of the Solar System;
sky in the constellation of Fornax and in the eight towards an inevitable collision. The bluer galaxy at the bottom either the remnants of a planet
years that followed, it kept returning, creating an left of the image is an interloper, 240,000 light years away that failed to form, or the
even more detailed image of what appeared to be a from the others, it is not actually part of the group. fragments of a broken one.
blank patch of sky. The resulting images revealed a
sea of galaxies, stretching back in space and time 13.2
billion light years, almost to the birth of the universe. 45 Oort cloud
The Solar System is encased in a
sphere of icy objects, collectively
known as the Oort cloud. The
Sun’s gravity at that distance is
so weak that passing objects can
Old elliptical send comets hurtling inwards.
galaxies
46 Backwards
spiral galaxy
The arms of spiral galaxies trail
backwards as they turn, but
Spiral NGC 4622 is turning in the same
galaxies direction that its arms point,
Distant new possibly as the result of a collision
galaxies that upset its spin.
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47 Pulsars
When pulsars were discovered
in 1967, Jocelyn Bell thought
she might have intercepted
communications from an alien
civilisation. While searching for
the high-energy twinkling of
48 Hoag’s
quasars, she noticed a patch of sky
emitting regular pulses of radio
Object
This unusual object is a ring galaxy,
waves every 1.3 seconds. The signal
one of the rarest galaxy types in the
was actually generated by a neutron
universe. At the centre is a spherical
star. Neutron stars are created when a
bulge of old orange-red stars, and
star between eight and 25 times the
around the edges is a ring of bright
mass of the Sun runs out of fuel and
blue hot young stars. Other ring
collapses. As the neutron star spins
galaxies are thought to have formed
its radio jets spin too, sweeping across
following a collision, or due to a
the sky in regular pulses.
rapidly spinning central bar, but the
origin of Hoag’s Object is unknown. If
you look inside, another ring galaxy
is visible far in the distance.
Sun
49 Spirograph
Nebula
The star at the centre of these
geometric swirls used to be like our
own Sun, but a few thousand years
50 Massive star ago it started running out of fuel and

ballooned to become a red dwarf.
VY Canis Majoris is one of the largest stars in our galaxy; 2,000 Since then, its fuel has disappeared,
times the size of the Sun, and between 30 and 40 times the mass. and its envelope has begun
Within just a few tens of millions of years, VY Canis Majoris will expanding. The white dwarf now
collapse, creating a supernova that will spray the surrounding space forming at the centre is unpredictable,
with water, silicone compounds and carbon, giving rise to a new and scientists believe that its erratic
generation of smaller more Sun-like stars. winds could be making these strange
patterns in its nebula.
Hot Jupiter Chthonian planet Water world

HD 189733b Osiris (HD 209458b) Kepler 22b
These enormous gas giants Gas giants orbiting This group of ocean planets
51 Exoplanets orbit close to their parent stars,

blocking the light as they pass
and making their presence easy
close to their stars are
bombarded by radiation
and solar winds, and
are composed mostly of
water. Some are thought
to have thick atmospheres,
Until 1994, the planets of the Solar to detect. Some, like HD 189733b, evaporate rapidly. supporting liquid water on
System were the only planets that we orbit closer than Mercury. Chthonian planets are the surface, but others are
were aware of in the universe. It was the hypothetical rocky
Hot Neptune hot, steamy and unstable.
always thought likely that other stars remnants that will be left Gliese 436 b
behind. These Neptune-sized
had companions. The first exoplanet was
planets orbit close to their
found orbiting a pulsar and, just a year parent stars, and a year on
later, in 1995, another was discovered the surface passes quickly,
orbiting a Sun-like star. NASA’s JPL lists a making them easy to
total of 5,003 known exoplanets. detect from far away.
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52 Horsehead Nebula 100 wonders of space
This remarkable pillar of dense dust and gas is named after
the horse-like head and neck at its tip. It is part of a larger
optical nebula known as Barnard 33, and is visible in pink
silhouette thanks to an extremely bright five-star system,
Sigma Orionis – part of the constellation of Orion. The
Horsehead pokes out of a larger cloud system, and inside its
dark interior new low-mass stars are being born. 57 Supernovae
When massive stars die they go
out with a bang, releasing as much
energy as the Sun will during its
entire lifetime in just fractions of
a second.
53 Einstein Cross
One of Albert Einstein’s greatest ideas was that the 58 South Pole-
universe is made from a fabric called space-time,
and that mass causes this fabric to bend, like balls
Aitken Basin
The south pole of the Moon has
sitting on a trampoline. Incredibly, there is evidence
a spectacular impact crater,
of it happening right before our eyes. The Einstein
covering an area measuring
Cross is a single quasar, but it looks like four
around 2,600 kilometres (1,600
because a galaxy sitting in front of it bends space-
miles), and deeper than the height
time, curving the light as it passes, and acting like a
of Mount Everest.
lens to duplicate the image.
59 Chelyabinsk
54 Caloris Basin meteorite
This enormous impact basin measures 1,500 This 19-metre (62-foot) wide
kilometres (930 miles) in diameter, and is one of asteroid exploded in mid-air
the hottest places on Mercury. Its perimeter is over Russia in 2013; an event
studded by volcanic vents, visible here as bright that happens on this scale
orange hot spots, and its interior is pockmarked approximately once every 30 years.
by hundreds of more recent impacts.
60 Cataclysmic
55 variable stars
Mercury In some binary systems, a white
dwarf and a larger star, like a red
double giant, orbit close to one another.

The white dwarf feeds on its
sunsets companion, creating an accretion

disc that glows.
When Mercury is at its closest point
to the Sun, it travels so quickly that
56 Aurorae
its rotational speed can’t keep The aurora borealis and the aurora 61 Total solar
up, and after the Sun sets it australis are some of nature’s most
spectacular wonders. The Sun releases
eclipse
reappears and sets
a stream of charged particles called These rare events are only
again.
the solar wind, and this feeds into the possible thanks to the chance
magnetosphere around our planet, position of the Moon; at its
dislodging other particles and slamming current distance, the Moon
into the gases that make up the appears the perfect size in the sky
atmosphere. These collisions excite the to completely cover the Sun’s disc
gas molecules, and make them glow. as they line up. Read more about
Depending on the height and the type of them in our feature on page 64.
gas hit different colours are made.
Super-Earth Terrestrial Rogue planet

HIP 116454b 55 Cancri e WISE 0855-0714
These planets have a mass These are the planets Rogue planets do not orbit
greater than Earth, but lower that, like Earth, are composed their parent star. Instead,
than Neptune. Despite the mainly of rocks or metals. It is they orbit the centre of their
name, not all super-Earths are thought that there could be as galaxy directly, still warmed by
Earth-like – some are blisteringly many as 40 billion habitable Brown dwarf their molten cores, but often
hot, others are frozen, and some terrestrial planets in the Milky Teide 1 encased in ice.
are made of gas. Way alone. These objects are larger
Gas giant than planets, but smaller
GJ 540b than stars. With a mass
These enormous planets, just like in between, they were
Jupiter and Saturn, are several unable to sustain a nuclear
times the mass of Earth, and are fusion reactor that makes
composed mostly of gas, with a a star, and are sometimes
molten rocky or metallic core. known as ‘failed stars’.
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Secrets of the universe 62
Neutrons
Inner crust Neutrons are subatomic particles of
Outer crust The matter inside neutral charge, and in normal matter they
The outer layer of a neutron a neutron star has make up part of the atomic nucleus, sitting
star is rigid and incredibly degenerated, and exists alongside positively charged protons. Under
smooth; the tallest ‘mountain’ as neutron dense nuclei, the immense pressure inside a neutron star
on the surface measures just alongside free superfluid however, atoms degenerate and positively
fractions of a centimetre. neutrons and electrons.
charged protons and negatively charged
electrons are crammed together so tightly
that they too start to form neutrons,
making up the bulk of all the
matter contained inside.
64 Ant nebula
This object bears a striking resemblance to the head
and thorax of an ant, but look closely and a dying
star is visible at its core; between the two segments,
a star not unlike our Sun is in the midst of collapse.
The shape of its explosion has puzzled astronomers,
and rather than being uniform in all directions, the
gas is wound up into two symmetrical lobes. It is
thought that there may be another star, stirring the
gas with its gravitational pull, or that the spin of the
dying star could be creating these enormous swirls.
Outer core Inner core

The matter at the base of What lies within the
the crust is crushed into core of a neutron star is
strange patterns of sheets, unknown, but it could
rods and spirals, known as contain exotic particles like
‘nuclear pasta’. unbound quarks.
63 Neutron stars 65 Twin stars

Around 85 per cent of the stars in the Milky Way are
When a massive star runs out of fuel, the outwards stars still retain a shred of their former presence thought to move in pairs, threes, or in larger groups.
explosive force that opposes the inwards crunch in the shape of a neutron star. They are the size They are known as binary or multiple star systems,
of gravity is removed, and in just fractions of a of a city, but contain the mass of around 500,000 and instead of existing alone, the companions orbit
second, the structure collapses. Very large stars Earths, and are so dense that a single teaspoonful around a common centre of mass. Some pairs can
collapse entirely to form black holes, but smaller of their matter would weigh ten million tons. easily be seen through a telescope, while others
look like one bright star, but can be distinguished by
fluctuations in the colour of their light as they orbit,
and some pass in front of one another, producing
66 Orion Nebula measurable eclipses that can be seen from Earth.
The astonishing colours of the Orion Nebula have as the Trapezium. The nebula is just 30,000
made it one of the most famous sights in the sky. years old, and is a place of intense star birth. The
Just 1,500 light years from the Earth, the glowing hot young Trapezium stars have blown a hollow
red cloud of ionised hydrogen is dominated by a in their dust shroud, and are illuminating the
group of three enormous stars collectively known surrounding cloud.
67 Crab Nebula
This five light year-wide nebula is the remnants of
a supernova explosion that lit up the southern sky
in 1054 CE. The gas cloud is expanding at a rate of
around 1,800 kilometres per second (1,100 miles per
second), and the gas creates a glowing rainbow. In
the interior, the blue and green filaments are oxygen
and sulphur, and towards the edges, the orange and
red are hydrogen and oxygen. At the very centre,
electrons glow blue as they circle the magnetic field
of a neutron star.
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72 Globular
clusters
These dense symmetrical spheres
contain ancient red-orange stars,
and are the oldest subsystems
inside galaxies, thought to have
formed between 13 and 15 billion
years ago.
73 Reflection
nebula
These nebulae do not emit any
light of their own, but they reflect
light from nearby stars, revealing
their dusty outlines.
68 Whirlpool Galaxy
This near-perfect swirl is a classic example of a spiral galaxy. 74 Asteroid
Like our own galaxy, bright blue stars are formed within
the enormous arms, twisting around a central bulge of older moons
It is not just planets that have
orange-red stars in the last phases of their existence. The
satellites, around 16 per cent of
spirals are lined with dust lanes composed of dark silicon
large near-Earth asteroids have one,
and carbon, and clouds of hydrogen gas glow red as they are
or even two, moons of their own.
excited by the light from the young stars.
75 Cosmic voids
69 Space 70 Io The structure of the universe
looks something like a three-
volcanoes Jupiter’s third largest moon, Io, is
the most volcanically active place
dimensional web, with most of the
galaxies arranged into clumps and
The Solar System is full of volcanic activity. in the Solar System, capable of filaments. In between, there are
The largest volcano of all, Olympus Mons, jettisoning lava 300 kilometres (190 vast holes.
is located on Mars, and Venus boasts the miles) into the sky. Its atmosphere is
highest number of volcanoes of any planet, thin and sulphurous, and its surface
with over 1,600 major volcanic features, and is constantly being smoothed and
remodelled by lava flows. Incredibly,
76 Wolf-Rayet
tens of thousands of smaller volcanoes. Though
neither planet has seen recent volcanic activity, Io acts as a lightning rod, and as it stars
it is possible that some are still active. Volcanoes dips through Jupiter’s magnetic field These hot, massive stars are
are not just restricted to planets; Jupiter’s moon Io it generates currents of up to 3 million nearing the end of their lives,
is more volcanically active than Earth, and Neptune’s amperes, which zip down towards the and have started losing their
moon Triton and Saturn’s moon Enceladus both harbour surface of the gas giant below. atmosphere at an astonishing rate
cryovolcanoes, which spew not lava but water. The as solar winds blow their gases
gravitational pull of the parent planet of each moon warps out into space.
their shape, causing their internal structure to melt and flex,
and resulting in violent eruptions.
77 Ceres
Ceres is the largest object in
the asteroid belt; its growth was
stunted by the gravity of Jupiter,
and at only 950 kilometres (590
71 Light ‘echoes’ miles) across, it is known as an
embryonic planet.
In early 2002, the star unlike other ageing stars,
V838 Monocerotis suddenly it did not lose its outer
became incredibly bright, layers and instead they 78 Large
and then rapidly dimmed cooled until its surface
again in an unprecedented was almost cold enough quasar group
display that stumped to touch. The light emitted The largest structure in the
astronomers. During the was reflected by dust known universe is a cluster of
event, which is known as that the star had already quasars, the violent nuclei of early
a ‘light echo’, the star grew expelled, revealing layers of galaxies, stretching in a chain that
hugely in diameter, but previously invisible swirls. covers 4 billion light years.
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1996
Secrets of the universe 2006
1997 2005
79
Solar
Flares
The sudden release of magnetic
1998 energy from the Sun’s atmosphere 2004
sends out bursts of radiation,
releasing 10 million times more
energy than an erupting
volcano.
1999 2003
2000 2002
80 Solar Maximum 2001

The Sun is a consistent presence in Earth’s sky, continuously. In areas where the Sun’s magnetic of these spots rises, appearing in two bands one
but it isn’t quite as constant as it might appear. field is at its strongest, the temperature plummets; either side of the equator, and these active regions
Its magnetic flux varies on an approximately this creates visible dark spots, some of which are often associated with solar flares and coronal
11-year cycle, and at its peak, known as the solar can measure 50,000 kilometres (31,000 miles) mass ejections, which start to ramp up as the solar
maximum, sunspots are visible on its surface almost across. During the solar maximum, the number maximum passes.
1948 tune 1961

Nep
1977
Key us
1926 Uran
Halley's Comet
Planet 1921
rn
Satu 1983
iter
Jup
1915 1985
81 Halley’s Comet s
It might only measure a few kilometres in diameter, but Halley’s Mar
Comet is the most famous object of its kind in the Solar System;
records of the chunk of ice date back to 240 BCE, and it was present 1986
during the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It is in orbit around the Sun,
and returns to pass by Earth approximately every 79 years, making Earth
its most recent appearance in 1986 and is expected to return in 2061. Venus
Mercury
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82 Cigar 85 Micro
Galaxy black holes
This edge-on spiral is known
These hypothetical black holes are
as a starburst galaxy, and
thought to have formed early in the
is a hive of star formation
history of the universe, and contain
activity. The new stars are
the mass of a mountain crammed
fuelled by supernovae, and
into the volume of just one atom.
several have been observed
over the last few decades.
The most recent in the area 86 Neutrinos
occurred in 2014. These subatomic particles are made
in violent explosions, but with no
mass and no charge they can travel
83 Heart Nebula through objects, reaching Earth and
pointing us back to their source.
A favourite space object on Valentine’s
Day, IC 1805 bears more than a passing
resemblance to a heart. The clouds 87 Hot ice planets
of dust and gas have been The temperatures on the planet
shaped by a cluster of newly GJ 436b are well above the boiling
formed stars known as point of water, but the pressure
Melotte 15, only 1.5 is so high that it has turned to an
million years old. exotic form of ice.
88 Dune fields
Despite their differences, Earth,
Venus, Mars and Titan all share
a common feature; wind in the
atmosphere of each has swept the
surface dust into rippling dunes.
89 The hole in
space
We’re located inside a hole in the
interstellar medium known as the
Local Bubble, formed by a group of
exploding supernovae around 10
million years ago.
90 Pole stars
Polaris is the current North Star and
is almost lined up with magnetic
north, but the Earth’s axis spins in a
cone-shape every 26,000 years, so
this won’t always be the case.
91 Rum cloud
Sagittarius 2b, a cloud near the
centre of the Milky Way, has 10
billion, billion, billion litres of alcohol,
along with a molecule called ethyl
formate, which smells like rum.
92 Dinosaur
84 Colliding galaxies crater
Chicxulub is a 66-million-year-old
The Antennae Galaxies are in the midst of a violent merger.
The two galaxies are entwined involved a chaotic dance that impact crater in Yucatan, Mexico.
began a few hundred million years ago; their dim orange It is the site of the asteroid impact
cores are still visible and distinct, but their arms are wrapped that let to the mass extinction
together, and bright blue newly formed stars are bursting out event that killed the dinosaurs.
of the chaos, lighting up the hydrogen gas in pink.
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93 Huge canyon 94 Giant river bed

Saturn’s moon Tethys is scarred by a 2,000-kilometre Baltis Vallis is a 6,800-kilometre (4,200-mile) channel
(1,200-mile) long canyon called Ithaca Chasma that on Venus. It is the longest in the Solar System,
runs three quarters of the way around its surface. challenged only by the River Nile in Egypt, which
The history behind its formation is unknown, but measures around 6,650 kilometres (4,132 miles) from
it is thought that the 100-kilometre (60-mile) wide start to finish. At between one and three kilometres
crack could have formed as the moon cooled, or could (0.6 and 1.8 miles) wide, Baltis Vallis is thought to have
have been created during the impact that left the vast been formed by fast-moving lava flows, and resembles
Odysseus crater on its leading hemisphere. a river in the way that it winds across the landscape.
95 Painted
moon
The surface of Saturn’s moon Iapetus is
half black and half white, earning it the
nickname ‘painted moon’. Its strange
colouration is thought to be down to
debris sprayed onto its face by other
moons. As the dark material is heated
by the Sun, any ice trapped with it turns
to vapour, leaving just the sooty debris
behind and preventing the ‘paint’ being
covered with bright ice.
96 Tarantula Nebula 97 Cartwheel Galaxy

The wispy arms of the Tarantula Nebula are made from partially ionised hydrogen This spiral galaxy suffered a head-on collision that created rings of star formation
gas, excited by a supercluster of massive stars called R136. It is the largest star- that rippled out from the centre. Ultraviolet and X-ray light released by new stars
forming region in nearby space: hidden within it are more than 800,000 new and violent black holes are visible in this image as purple and blue, while the green
stars. Their energetic activity blows holes in the clouds surrounding them, giving visible light shows the spokes of the cartwheel, revealing clues about the galaxy’s
the nebula its lace-like structure. shape before the impact.
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98 Jewel box
© NASA; Adam Evans ; Tyrogthekreeper; ESA; ESO; Tobias Roetsch; Planck Collaboration; Ken Crawford; ESO/F. Courbin et al; Arizona
State University; JPL-Calltech; Peter Tuthill & James Lloyd; DLR (German Aerospace Centre); Steveroche; Cassini Imaging Team; SSI;
The NGC 3603 nebula is home to one of
the most massive clusters of young stars
in the Milky Way. Just 20,000 light years
from Earth, the open cluster is described
by NASA as a ‘stellar jewel box’, with three
truly massive Wolf-Rayet stars nestled at its
core. The hot young stars have blown away
their blanket of dust and are blasting the
surrounding hydrogen gas with ultraviolet
light, illuminating the clouds.
99
Giant
Moon
Long thought of as the ninth planet, Pluto was
demoted to ‘dwarf planet’ in 2006. However,
despite its diminutive size, Pluto is still a wonder
in its own right. The tiny ball of rock and
ice would fit inside the United States, but it
manages to hold on to five moons. The
biggest, Charon is almost half its size,
making it the largest moon relative
to its parent body in the
Solar System.
100 Six-star system

The Castor star that makes up the head of one of
the twins in the constellation Gemini, is not quite
what it seems. It is actually a complex system of six
separate stars. Castor A and B are a binary system, a
pair of orbiting stars, but each is orbited by another
dwarf star, Castor Aa and Castor Bb. This system of
four stars is then orbited by another binary pair of
dwarf stars, known together as Castor C.
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54
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Edge of the universe
55
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Towards
In December 1995 astronomers using the Hubble
Space Telescope began a remarkable experiment.
Turning the telescope’s powerful gaze on an
apparently empty patch of sky in the constellation
Ursa Major, they let its cameras soak up rare photons
of light for more than 100 hours. The resulting image
revealed countless galaxies disappearing into the
darkness – it would prove to be the first of several
the edge
Hubble Deep Field images. These awe-inspiring
pictures have revealed the remote universe in ever-
increasing detail.
From our location on Earth, the entire cosmos is an
enormous time machine – light might be the fastest
thing there is, but even its tremendous top speed
of 300,000 kilometres (186,400 miles) per second
Light-stretching
As the microwave background’s
dwindles in comparison with the vast distances of name implies, the long journey across
remote stars and galaxies. Everywhere we look in expanding spacetime has stretched
distant space, we’re also looking back in time and the out the once-incandescent light into
more powerful our telescopes get, the further back the much-longer wavelengths of low-
we can see. energy microwaves.
With larger telescopes and ever-increasing
exposures, we might expect to go on seeing more
and more galaxies stretching on forever – but the
physics of the cosmos put a limit on our ambitions.
Overwhelming evidence suggests the universe was
born in the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago
and has been expanding ever since – no light could
have started its journey before that time. So, from
our point of view, Earth is at the centre of a bubble
of expanding space and time that stretches out in
every direction, to a boundary where light has only
just had time to reach us – the so-called observable
universe. Fortunately, most astronomers view the
cosmic time machine not as a barrier but as a hugely
informative tool, as Dr Daniel Mortlock of Imperial
College London explains. “The reason people put so
much effort into finding such distant objects isn’t
really because they’re far away. Rather, it’s because
we see them as they were so long ago. As far as we
can tell the universe is broadly the same wherever
we look, so what these observations really do is help
us understand how the universe was billions of years
ago. In some ways, this sort of astronomy is rather
like archaeology.”
Searching for such distant objects is a huge
challenge, as Professor Steve Finkelstein of the
University of Texas, Austin, knows well: “These
galaxies are incredibly distant, so no matter what
we do, its going to take a long time to observe them.
Even the brightest galaxies we can observe, less
than a billion years from the Big Bang, are very faint.
The faintest star your eye can see is an incredible
40 million times brighter than the brightest distant
galaxy. That’s why we need very large telescopes.”
Cosmic expansion has another important affect on
our view of distant objects – as space has stretched,
it has also stretched the wavelengths of light rays
travelling through it – the effect known as Doppler Observable universe
shift. “Due to the expanding universe, all of the Thanks to steady cosmic expansion,
ultraviolet and visible light from these galaxies are the edge of the observable universe is 13.8 billion years
Doppler-shifted into the infrared,” continues Professor rather a lot more than 13.8 billion light Present day
Finkelstein. “While we can observe some of these years away. Space has been stretching
apart ever since the most-distant light
wavelengths from the ground, the technology is in its
began its journey. Objects at the edge
infancy.” What’s more, Earth’s own atmosphere glows of the universe, whose light is reaching
at many infrared wavelengths, swamping out the us now, would actually be about 47
faint rays from distant objects and obscuring them billion light years away, if we had
from observation. another means of measuring them.
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Big Bang
No escape
For around 400,000 years after the Big Bang, all
the matter in the universe was so tightly packed
that light could not escape and the entire cosmos
was an expanding ball of incandescent light.
Population III
Hypothetical early Population
III stars are still beyond the
limits of direct observation.
300,000 years
Dark Ages begin
Silver lining
After the era of the CMBR, the
universe plunged into a dark
age that lasted for several
300 million years hundred million years, in which
nothing, it seems, was capable of
Stars and nascent producing light. Huge clouds of
galaxies form gas and dust within the darkness,
however, began to coalesce to
form the first stars and galaxies.
Early galaxies
The most-distant galaxies so far
observed existed around 0.7
1 billion years billion years after the Big Bang.
olve Dark Ages end
s ev
ie
alax
G
Cosmic Microwave
Background
When temperatures fell below
4.5 billion years about 3,000 degrees Celsius (5,432
Sun, Earth and Solar degrees Fahrenheit), the universe
System have formed suddenly cleared and radiation was
able to go racing away through
space. Today that radiation is
detected as a faint glow from all
over the sky – the Cosmic Microwave
Background Radiation (CMBR).
“Even the brightest galaxies we can

observe, less than a billion years from
the Big Bang, are very faint”
Professor Steve Finkelstein, University of Texas
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Observing the edge Spitzer

This infrared telescope often
works in conjunction with
Fermi Hubble to take the deepest
Our furthest observations snapshots of space.
reveal high-energy objects VISIBLE
this telescope can detect.
GAMMA X-RAY ULTRAVIOLET INFRARED MICROWAVE RADIO

Shorter waves (UV) (IR) Longer waves
Thermosphere
Auroras
Hubble
The famous
space telescope
is best known
Mesosphere for its Deep
Meteors burn up Field images.
Chandra
The X-ray specialist can
pick out objects invisible to
Atmosphere
telescopes on Earth.
Stratosphere
Ozone layer at 20-30km
(12-19mi)
Jets fly at 10km (6mi)
Troposphere
Weather
Optical
window
Radio window
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The United Kingdom Infrared Telescope

(UKIRT) is one of the world’s leading ground-
based infrared instruments and plays a key role
in searching for highly redshifted objects
The general shift of light from distant galaxies into

redder, longer wavelengths is an important hint for
“If Population III
astronomers hunting the earliest galaxies. Deep-red
galaxies appear as blobs just a few pixels across in
stars exist, their
long-exposure Hubble images, but are often seen
close to gravitational lenses. These are natural cosmic
light would be
zoom lenses created when a massive galaxy cluster travelling from the
closer to Earth distorts and intensifies light from
more-distant objects. very edge of the
In 2013, Professor Finkelstein and his team
discovered the most-distant galaxy yet identified,
catalogued z8_GND_5296, as part of a special project
known universe”
Galaxy z8_GND_5296 is a tiny red
using the infrared capabilities of the Hubble Space While astronomers like Professor Finkelstein
blob in this image from a Hubble
Telescope. “Spectral observations from Hawaii’s focus on looking for entire galaxies in the early
Space Telescope project
enormous W.M. Keck Observatory soon confirmed universe, they’re not the only possible targets for
an immense speed of retreat, plus a huge distance astronomers hoping to probe the very edge of the
corresponding to an origin about 700 million years cosmos. For instance Dr Mortlock and his colleagues Dr Mortlock’s team identified the ULAS object
after the Big Bang,” he explains. “But that wasn’t all: concentrate on the search for quasars. These are as part of a near-infrared sky survey using the 3.8-
when we used our observations to infer the physical active galactic nuclei in which the giant central black metre (12.5-foot) United Kingdom Infrared Telescope
properties of this galaxy, we found it was forming hole is swallowing up material from its surroundings (UKIRT) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. “The universe has
stars at an incredible rate. Galaxy z8_GND_5296 is and heating it up in the process. This results in an expanded by a factor of eight or so since the light
turning an amount of gas equal to 300 times the intensely bright central region that may be up to we see from ULAS J1120+0641 was emitted, and the
mass of our Sun into new stars every year – that’s a hundreds of thousands of times brighter than its wavelength of this light has been stretched by the
rate of around 150 times that of the Milky Way.” parent galaxy. same amount. So, the ultraviolet light emitted from
Researchers expected stars to form more quickly “This incredible luminosity is also the reason these quasars is now seen by us in the infrared part
in such distant young galaxies, but z8_GND_5296 was we can see quasars so far away,” explains Dr of the spectrum.”
still creating stars 30 times faster than anticipated. Mortlock. “Even the most-distant quasar known, Surprisingly this distant object has turned out to
Finkelstein’s team showed there are many similar ULAS J1120+0641, which is seen as it was when the closely resemble other, relatively nearby quasars: “It
galaxies in the early universe, “Simulations of the universe was just five per cent of its current age of appears to have a very similar mix of elements and
distant universe don’t have such galaxies in them, 13.8 billion years, is a relatively bright astronomical so broadly the same kind of spectrum. This makes
so by observing them we’re learning something source. It’s approximately 10,000 times brighter than it comparatively easy to determine the physical
incredibly new about the distant universe.” normal galaxies at a similar distance.” properties of this object and particularly the mass of
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Beyond the edge Dark flow within

observable universe
Dark flow is a supposed large-
The observable cosmos might mark the edge of what scale pattern or drift in the motion
we can see, but it’s not the edge of everything – the of galaxy clusters, under the
influence of forces beyond our
universe stretches away far beyond what we can see, observable universe.
into invisible and undetectable realms
Limit of the
Spacetime sheet observable universe
To better imagine it The most-distant objects
in a practical sense, that could be observed,
astronomers often but are beyond current
depict spacetime as technology, lie about 47
a 2D sheet featuring billion light years away in
ripples and dents today’s known universe.
caused by large
concentrations of mass.
“Thanks to an automated
alert system, Tanvir’s
team were able to start Observer
Because the edge of the observable
observing the burst universe depends on the time light takes

to reach a particular location, its limits are
within 25 minutes” different for every observer.
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Long-exposure views of
deep space, like the Hubble
Deep Field, reveal countless
galaxies stretching away
towards the edge of space
Source of dark flow
The cause of dark flow could be anything
from a huge and dense super-supercluster
of galaxies beyond our observable
universe, to hypothetical warps in the
large-scale structure of spacetime.
the black hole. From the speed at which the gas is

orbiting, we estimate that it has 2 billion times the
Sun’s mass. This is not the most-massive black hole
known, but it is the earliest supermassive black
hole that has been found.”
The discovery of objects like the ULAS
quasar has some important implications for
ideas about the early universe. Dr Mortlock
points out: “The mere existence of distant
quasars – and particularly the supermassive black
holes that power them – is something
of a conundrum. Simple models
of black hole formation and
growth suggest that such
monsters shouldn’t have formed
so quickly. It’s no surprise to see
them billions of years after the Big
Bang, but 0.8 billion years doesn’t
seem like enough time.”
Intriguingly, galaxies like z8_GND_5296
also seem to suggest an early universe that
matured much more quickly than previously
thought. Professor Finkelstein’s team used the
infrared Spitzer Space Telescope to measure the
spectrum of their record-breaking galaxy, discovering
evidence for surprisingly large amounts of oxygen.
“While it doesn’t contain as many heavy elements
(carbon, oxygen, iron) as our own, there are still
significant amounts. This is surprising given how
close it is to the Big Bang, since heavy elements had
to be created in early generations of stars and that
takes time.”
So how could supermassive black holes and
large amounts of heavy elements have formed so
soon after the Big Bang? An answer might lie in a
hypothetical early generation of short-lived stars
whose primitive composition enabled them to break
the upper limits of stellar mass seen in the present-
day universe. These so-called Population III stars
(with the mass of a thousand Suns or more) could
have rapidly enriched the early universe with heavy
Not the end? elements, and also left-behind enormous black holes,
Today, most cosmologists suspect that to form the seeds of the first galaxies. If Population
the universe as a whole has no edge, but III stars exist, their light would be travelling from
stretches on to infinity. the very edge of the known universe and would
be redshifted far more than even the most-distant
known galaxies. As such, they’re beyond the limits
of current technology, but a prime target for NASA’s
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the enormous
infrared observatory scheduled for launch in 2018.
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At the heart of every quasar lies a

supermassive black hole, feeding
voraciously on its surroundings to create
a brilliant disc of superhot matter that
vastly outshines its host galaxy
Another significant class of objects at the edge of Nial Tanvir of the University of Leicester explains world on a timescale of a few tens of seconds. From
the known cosmos is perhaps the most elusive of all – further: “It seems that when some stars (perhaps this point we have to decide quickly how interesting
the intense but short-lived bursts of short-wavelength those about 30 to 40 times the mass of the Sun) any given burst appears to be, and what telescopes
electromagnetic energy known as gamma-ray bursts run out of fuel and end their lives, they collapse might be able to make rapid observations,” explains
(GRBs). First discovered in the 1960s, they have been due to gravity. In the process of doing this they Professor Tanvir.
the subject of huge speculation amongst experts eject an extraordinarily powerful jet of plasma. It’s The most-distant confirmed burst is known
for several decades. “The luminous output is the thought this energy is ultimately converted into as GRB 090423 – a designation that indicates its
equivalent of capturing the Sun’s entire light output electromagnetic radiation, particularly energetic date of discovery on 23 April 2009. Thanks to an
for its 10-billion-year lifetime as an ordinary star, gamma rays, but also lower-energy light (X-rays, automated alert system, Tanvir’s team were able
saving it all up in a bottle, then releasing it in a single optical, infrared, radio). If the jet is pointing towards to start observing the burst within 25 minutes,
30-second blast of light,” explains Professor Derek us, this results in an extremely bright initial flash using the UKIRT. Fox’s team soon added their own
Fox of Penn State University. followed by a fading afterglow.” observations from the observatory’s bigger neighbour,
GRBs seem to fall into several distinct categories Professors Tanvir and Fox have identified some of the 8.2-metre (27-foot) Gemini North Telescope.
based on the strength and duration of their bursts. the most-distant GRBs so far detected, responding to “For the furthest gamma-ray bursts, one doesn’t get
One major group, the so-called long-duration GRBs rays initially detected by NASA’s Swift Gamma-Ray much clue about their distance from the gamma-
(for which the gamma-ray flash is longer than about Burst mission. “Satellites like Swift communicate new ray data, so it’s critical to make optical and infrared
two seconds) are thought to be produced during the discoveries automatically to the ground, where the observations of the afterglow as soon as possible,
deaths of massive stars. information is forwarded to observers around the preferably within an hour or so.”
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“Right now, these

borderlands may
resemble an old
seafarer’s map, filled
with mysterious
monsterous beings”
So, why optical and infrared? Professor Tanvir
elaborates: “Neutral hydrogen, which is plentiful in
the universe, is very effective at absorbing ultraviolet
light. For very distant explosions, the cosmological
redshift moves this wavelength all the way through
the optical and into the infrared. Hence the signature
of a distant GRB is that it’s invisible in the optical but
visible in the infrared. The step between visibility
and invisibility is what gives us the redshift. In this
case, we finally pinned down the [exact redshift
value], corresponding to a distance of about 13.1
billion light years. In other words, GRB 090423 was a
star exploding only about 630 million years after the
Big Bang itself.”
Remarkably, this record-breaking burst may even
have been bettered just a few days later by another
one, GRB 090429B. “The burst arrived at 1:30am,”
recalls Professor Fox. “My team was in charge of GRB
An accepted model for the formation of many
work with the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea GRBs involves two narrow jets during the death
that night – we quickly saw that Swift had found an of a massive star, channelling particles and
X-ray afterglow, but saw no optical or UV emission, radiation beams into space in a brilliant burst
so that meant we probably wanted to observe in the
red and near-infrared bands to see if we had a high-
redshift burst. Faint, deep-red galaxies are
“Working with Professor Nial Tanvir and his likely to be distant systems
colleagues, we found a relatively bright near-infrared whose light has been stretched
afterglow with no optical light – bingo! The next night on its long journey to Earth
we requested further imaging and used it to confirm
the fading of the source we had seen,” Professor Fox
continues. “That was the burst afterglow for certain,
© UKIRT/JAC; Hubble; Ian Moores; NASA ESA and M. Postman and D. Coe (Space Telescope Science Institute) and the CLASH team
but sadly we were never able to get its spectrum.”
As a result, estimates of GRB 090429B’s distance
remain frustratingly imprecise, but the best estimates
give it an even greater redshift value. This suggests
that it may have exploded around 100 million years
earlier than GRB 090423.
“Even limited information potentially has
important consequences. For instance, the fact
that none of the GRB host galaxies at [similar
redshift values] has been detected by Hubble so far,
suggesting that the large majority of this early star
formation is happening in galaxies that are too small
and faint for even Hubble to see.”
The next few years surely promise to be an
exciting time for researchers probing the edge of
the observable universe. At the moment, these
borderlands may resemble an old seafarer’s map,
filled with mysterious monsters we are only just
beginning to understand. But the launch of the JWST
will help bring the early galaxies and perhaps even
the very first Population III stars into focus, giving
us an unprecedented view both out into the depths
of space and an essential glimpse back to the very
beginnings of the cosmos.
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10 BIGGEST
THINGS IN SPACE
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10 biggest things in space
Walk with us across The biggest thing in space that we're sure of is the
biggest thing we can see, which is the cosmic web
the universe at 93 billion light years. But the problem
is, because it has been expanding since the Big Bang
the staggering of the observable universe, the three-dimensional
scaffold of galactic structures that makes up what
and because of the finite speed of light, we cannot
see the light from objects beyond a certain point.
enormity of space our best instruments are able to observe. A more Some scientists put the size of the universe at an
and witness gigantic precise estimate of just how big this is was recently
returned by the ongoing Planck space mission,
astonishing 100,000 trillion times what we can see,
while others say the universe is actually smaller
asteroids through which aims to provide a complete map of the sky.
By mapping the cosmic microwave background, the
than the observable universe and the light from the
most distant galaxies has wrapped around to create
to mammoth stars, afterglow left over from the Big Bang, scientists have duplicates of nearer galaxies that appear far away.
determined that the furthest objects we can observe Within the known observable upper limit of our
sprawling galaxies and from Earth are around 13.8 billion light years away. celestial sphere though, there are many objects
the biggest thing in So how far beyond that does the universe extend?
The truth becomes muddied when you approach
whose size we can put a definite figure on, which
are still enormous enough to send the mind reeling
the cosmos… the boundary of what we can see and talk about
the size of the actual universe. General scientific
when juxtaposed with the planets, stars and even
galaxies we can more easily relate to. These are ten
consensus puts the distance between either end of of the biggest recorded things in space.
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BIGGEST VOLCANO
Olympus Mons
Let’s start small – relatively – with the the Solar System, including Ascraeus
Aerial shot of Olympus
biggest volcano in the Solar System. Mons and Elysium Mons, which
Mons showing the
Olympus Mons can be found in the are 14.9 kilometres (9.3 miles) and gradient from high
Tharsis Montes region of Mars and 12.6 kilometres (7.8 miles) high (purple) to low (yellow)
rises to a peak of 25 kilometres (16 respectively. The reason why Mars is a
miles) high and 624 kilometres (374 great breeding ground for super-sized
miles) wide with an 80-kilometre (50- volcanoes is down to its geology and
mile) wide caldera. It towers over even its gravity. On Earth, the tectonic plates
the tallest mountains on Earth, Everest are continuously moving over and
at 8.8 kilometres (5.5 miles) and Mauna under each other on top of the mantle,
Kea (which is 10 kilometres/6.2 miles if so that the lava is distributed over a
measured from the ocean floor), while wide area between many volcanoes
dwarfing our biggest volcanoes with instead of just one. On Mars, the crust
around 100 times more volume than doesn’t move in the same way, so the
Hawaii’s Mauna Loa. lava just piles up in the same spot.
The volcanic Tharsis Montes Because of the lower Martian gravity
region of Mars is actually home to and higher rates of eruption, the lava
several of the biggest volcanoes in flows are much longer, too.
Everest Olympus Mons

8.8km high 25km high
8km
Regional topography
of Olympus Mons, shot
by the Mars Orbiter
Laser Altimeter
Olympus Mons
Olympus
Mons is huge,
but has a very France
gradual ascent
5 highest summits on Earth (by continent)
Mount Everest Aconcagua Mount McKinley Kilimanjaro Mount Elbrus

(8,848m/29,029ft) (6,960m/22,837ft) (6,194m/20,320ft) (5,895m/19,341ft) (5,642m/18,510ft)
Earth’s highest mountain is The highest mountain of the North America’s McKinley has This African peak is composed The Caucasus range boasts
part of the towering Asian Americas is nearly a clear the largest base to peak rise of of three volcanoes, two extinct Russia’s highest mountain –
range, the Himalayas. kilometre shorter than Everest. any mountain above sea level. and one dormant. another dormant volcano.
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The Sun
BIGGEST PLANET
WASP-17b
WASP-17b is a huge planet, twice the
size of Jupiter that orbits a yellow-
main-sequence stars. This includes
OGLE-TR-122B, a tiny star with a mass
white dwarf star similar to the Sun, that borders on the lower limit for
around 1,000 light years from Earth. hydrogen fusion in stars. This star
It’s considered a ‘hot Jupiter’ due to is just over half the size of the giant
the extreme proximity of its orbit exoplanet, but 50 times denser.
with its parent star. It has a density WASP-17b was discovered in
WASP-17b
around half that of Jupiter and has 2009 and though its size made it a
one of the lowest known densities compelling subject, its orbit was of
of all the planets. It’s a combination even more interest. Other objects in
of the baking heat it endures as well the same system were orbiting in the
as the tidal forces of its nearby host right direction but WASP-17b was
star’s gravity, which is suspected to travelling contrary to the spin
have caused WASP-17b to inflate to its of its host star. This retrograde
enormous size and low density. orbit may have been caused
WASP-17b has an estimated by a close encounter with
equatorial radius of just over 136,000 another object that caused
kilometres (84,500 miles), which the planet to slingshot in
makes it bigger than some small the opposite direction.
Pallas
544km wide
Vredefort 100km Jupiter Uranus

crater Earth
300km wide
20,000km
Saturn
BIGGEST 3 biggest craters in

ASTEROID the Solar System
Pallas
Of course, like the biggest mountain, the
size of asteroids and the limitation of
An ultraviolet image of
Pallas taken by Hubble
they were once believed to be part of a
much larger ‘missing’ planet that was
Utopia Planitia (3,300km/2,100mi)
Mars’s blasted topography not only claims
the tallest peak, but the widest confirmed
impact crater in the Solar System.
Considering Mars’s proximity to the asteroid
belt, it’s not surprising this crater should be
current observational technology mean thought to orbit the space between Mars found here.
that the biggest asteroids we know of and Jupiter before being destroyed. That
are restricted to those in our own Solar theory has since been debunked and
System. There’s also a technicality in it’s now known that Ceres, Pallas and Hellas Planitia (2,300km/1,400mi)
their definition: with a diameter of 950 their companions, along with the rest Found in the southern hemisphere of Mars,
kilometres (590 miles) and containing of the asteroid belt are the vestiges of a this massive impact structure is the largest
around one third of the total mass of protoplanetary disc that was perturbed visible crater known in the Solar System. A
the asteroid belt, Ceres used to be the by the gravity of Jupiter and failed to detailed composite image of Hellas Panitia
biggest asteroid but was upgraded to accrete into a planet. was taken by the Viking orbiters during
‘dwarf planet’ in 2006, handing fellow Pallas would easily fill the Vredefort their missions in the mid-Seventies.
asteroid belt object Pallas the accolade crater in South Africa, the largest
of biggest known asteroid by default. impact crater on Earth (at around 300
However, with an average diameter kilometres/186 miles in diameter), and
Caloris Basin (1,550km/960mi)
The baking surface of Mercury plays host
of 544 kilometres (338 miles) it’s still a is more than 30 times bigger than the
to the third largest known impact crater
whopper. Its closest contender for the meteorite that created the Sudbury
in the Solar System. Caloris Basin is
top spot is Vesta, which has less volume Basin in Canada over 1.8 billion years
surrounded by a ring of mountains 2km
but greater mass than Pallas. Between ago. It’s 100 times bigger than asteroid
(1.2mi) tall and material ejected up to
them, they make up around 16 per cent 1998 QE2 that flew by Earth in March
1,000km (620mi) around it.
of the total mass of the asteroid belt and 2013, which could have caused wide
along with several other big asteroids, devastation if it had impacted.
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BIGGEST STAR and was once thought to defy theory

on the size and luminosity of stellar
star though, we have to look to the
Wolf-Rayet star R136a1. It’s found
NML Cygni
objects. However, since 2009 an in a cluster of massive stars called
even bigger star has been discovered. R136, 165,000 light years away from
With a diameter of around 2.3 billion Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
kilometres (1.4 billion miles), 400 At a ‘mere’ 30 times the size of the
million kilometres (250 million Sun it’s no NML Cygni, but it has 265
We’re moving into the realms of the gravitational influence they have over miles) wider than VY Canis Majoris, solar masses and is a million times
true giants when we start to look their local environment. NML Cygni is a true intergalactic brighter than the Sun: if placed in the
at the biggest stars in the universe. There are an estimated 100 to 400 heavyweight. Placed at the centre of Solar System it would outshine the
Unlike planets, asteroids and other billion stars in the Milky Way alone our Solar System, this stellar giant Sun by as much as the Sun outshines
celestial objects that are too dark and and because many are fairly easy to would swallow up the entire inner the Moon. R136a1 is thought to have
too small to give away obvious clues spot, we’ve been able to observe some Solar System, including the asteroid been even more massive too, as
to their presence from afar, these serious contenders for the ‘biggest belt, Jupiter and over half the distance much as 320 solar masses but has
colossal balls of fusing hydrogen star’ accolade. VY Canis Majoris is between Jupiter and Saturn. You can lost a significant portion of this since
can bloom up to spheres so big that huge beyond belief: this monster of a fit a billion Earth-sized objects into its birth. But if we’re talking about
they’re difficult to comprehend, star is so big it would make our Sun NML Cygni and still have room left galactic-scale masses, it’s the objects
blazing multi-spectra radiation across seem like a pin-prick next to it. Found over. In terms of mass, too, it’s pretty that are sometimes left behind in the
interstellar space and making their 5,000 light years from Earth, it has a hefty, weighing in at 50 times that death throes of massive stars that
exact location known by the massive radius of 1,420 times that of the Sun of the Sun, more than enough to steal the show.
create a huge supernova at the end
“You can fit a billion Earth- of its life cycle. For the most massive
sized objects into NML

Cygni and still have room”
210 million km
Betelgeuse Mu Cephei VV Cephei A VY Canis Majoris NML Cygni
Size versus mass 101 Neutron stars are extremely

dense, massive objects packed
It can be easy to get confused when its density. For example, the biggest into a tiny volume of space
scientists talk about the size of neutron star discovered (designated
an object and its mass. Enormous PSR J1614-2230) is nearly 200 trillion
celestial objects like stars and black times denser than water, with twice
holes in particular are said to be the mass of the Sun packed into a
so-many solar masses, while their space just 26 kilometres (16 miles) in
physical dimensions often aren’t diameter. Especially big, stellar-sized
referred to. While weight is relative, objects are described in terms of solar
mass is a fundamental property of masses partly because stellar evolution
everything and is a measure of its is better understood this way. Sun-like
total matter, which only changes in stars tend to form red giants and then
exceptional physical circumstances. white dwarves at the end of their lives,
Large mass doesn’t necessarily mean while supergiants in the order of 20
enormous size, though, depending on solar masses form a black hole.
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The black hole at the centre of NGC

1277 is approximately 17 billion
times more massive than our Sun
3.2 light hours

Neptune’s orbit
8.3 light hours wide
BIGGEST BLACK HOLE
NGC 1277
The biggest black hole whose mass has
so far been properly measured lies at
announced their discovery of
‘supergiant’ black holes in relatively
the heart of a galaxy called NGC 1277, small galaxies. NGC 1277 is the most
250 million light years from Earth in impressive of these: the galaxy itself
the constellation of Perseus – and it’s a contains a lot less material than our
real whopper. While our own galaxy’s Milky Way, with an overall mass of 120
central black hole has an estimated billion Suns, so its central black hole
mass of 4.1 million Suns, the black accounts for a staggering 14 per cent of
hole in NGC 1277 is around 17 billion all its mass. At this order of magnitude,
solar masses. it’s probably about four light days
Astronomers discover and assess across – roughly 11 times the diameter
black holes in distant galaxies by of Neptune’s orbit around the Sun.
measuring the orbits of the stars As yet, astronomers are still
that surround them. Many have now struggling to come up with a workable
been found, with masses equivalent theory to explain these supergiant
to millions or even billions of Suns, black holes. However, NGC 1277 may
but they usually follow a fairly strict not hold its record as the biggest black
relationship that limits the black hole hole of all for long. The much larger NGC 1277
to around 0.1 per cent of the host giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4889 4 light days wide
galaxy’s mass – the more massive contains a black hole with a mass of
the galaxy, the bigger the black hole. between 6 billion and 37 billion solar
In 2012, however, a team led by masses, and astronomers will probably
Remco van den Bosch of Germany’s find a way to lock down its mass with
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy more accuracy soon.
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BIGGEST ICE SPHERE

Oort cloud
It’s incredible to think that a black hole can be so big that it would take light four
days to cross from end to end. But far, far out beyond Neptune’s orbit is something
much bigger: the Oort cloud. It’s an enormous region of space encapsulating the
planets that stretches 50,000 AU from the Sun to around 100,000 AU in diameter
at its outer boundaries: from one side to another it’s about two light years long.
It’s made of water, ammonia and methane ice in the form of icy particles and
trillions of larger bodies. It’s suspected that many of the Solar System’s comets
were born here and some trans-Neptunian objects (objects that orbit the Sun at a
R136
This cluster at the centre of the
greater average distance than Neptune) are Oort cloud members too. It’s divided
nebula, is home to the most massive
into two distinct regions, the inner and outer Oort cloud, containing several trillion stars in the known universe.
comets larger than one kilometre (0.62 miles) in diameter. Considering the size of
the Oort cloud (it would take our current fastest spacecraft launch,
New Horizons, around 20,000 years to reach
its outer edge at 58,536 kilometres per
hour/36,373 miles per hour), it isn’t
very massive, just a fraction of
the 100 or so Earth masses
of material ejected
from the centre
of the Solar
System.
The Oort cloud The Oort cloud

2 light years wide 2 light years wide
38 light (relative width to
days Tarantula Nebula)
Black hole
NGC 1277
4 light days wide
BIGGEST NEBULA
Tarantula
The largest known nebula in the
universe is many times larger than
Suns’ worth of star-forming material,
approximately 160,000 light years
the Oort cloud and far more massive, from Earth. It’s so brilliant that, if
with a star cluster at its core which placed in our own galaxy at the
is 450,000 solar masses alone. distance of the famous Orion Nebula, it
The Tarantula Nebula is right on would cover half the sky and be bright
our cosmic doorstep in the Large enough to cast shadows.
Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is one The Tarantula Nebula gets its name
of several satellite galaxies orbiting from the spider-like shape formed by
around the Milky Way itself. With a its brightest regions, and was mistaken
diameter of roughly 1,000 light years, for a star by the first astronomers that
The Oort cloud the Tarantula Nebula (which also viewed it. It lies on the front edge
is found at the goes by the names 30 Doradus and of the irregularly shaped LMC, and
edge of the NGC 2070) is a seething cauldron owes its huge size to compression of
Solar System of starbirth containing millions of the galaxy’s gas and dust as it moves
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The Tarantula Nebula is

located around 160,000
light years from Earth
Hodge 301 Honeycomb Nebula

Hodge 301 is a cluster of stars This region, known as the Honeycomb
around 20 million years old, some Nebula, played host to the explosion of
150 light years from the centre of Supernova 1987A.
the Tarantula Nebula.
Tarantula Nebula
1,000 light years wide
NGC
2060
A supernova
remnant
associated
with an
older and
looser
cluster
of many
young stars.
through the intergalactic medium light-absorbing dust is silhouetted to 2 million years old. It is dominated that astronomers expect it to break
surrounding our own galaxy. The against the brighter background. by rare blue-white stars of a type the normal rules of cluster evolution.
result is an enormous ‘starburst’ Most of the energy that illuminates that are so massive and short-lived Instead of drifting apart, its gravity
region in which star formation is the nebula comes from two major they normally destroy themselves will probably hold it together,
proceeding at a much faster rate than star clusters that lie close to its heart, as supernovas within a few million eventually producing a closely bound
it does in most galaxies. known as Hodge 301 and R136. Hodge years of formation. At the centre of ball dominated by thousands of
Like all star-forming nebulas, the 301 is the older of the pair, and has the cluster, these stars form a tight fainter, more long-lived stars, known
Tarantula Nebula owes its brilliance to drifted some 150 light years from the knot that was once thought to be a as a globular cluster.
fluorescence. High-energy ultraviolet centre in the 20 million years or so single enormous star. In the last few With so many massive stars, it’s
radiation from the hot young stars since it formed. It contains dozens of years astronomers have discovered little wonder that supernovas are
within it energise atoms of hydrogen massive stars whose hot, fast-moving that it is actually a tightly packed relatively common in the Tarantula.
and other gases, and they return to stellar winds are carving out a hollow cluster-in-a-cluster, but its brightest The last naked-eye supernova, seen in
their normal state by emitting visible as it moves through the surrounding single component is our favourite 1987, occurred on its outskirts, and its
light. Darker regions within the gas. R136, meanwhile, lies in the very massive Wolf-Rayet star, R136a1. In gas is sculpted by the still-expanding
Tarantula Nebula are created where densest starbirth region and is just 1 fact, R136 contains so much mass shockwaves from earlier explosions.
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IC 1101 is a giant
BIGGEST elliptical galaxy
50 times wider
GALAXY than our own
IC 1101
The largest galaxies in the universe
are giant ellipticals – huge clouds
containing trillions of stars whose
overlapping individual orbits create
an enormous, fuzzy-edged ball. These
monsters can grow to be ten times
the size of the Milky Way, but even
by these standards, IC 1101 stands out: The Milky Way
it has a diameter more than 50 times 100,000 light years wide
that of the Milky Way, and is roughly IC 1101
2,000 times heavier. 5 million light
IC 1101 lies at the heart of a galaxy years wide
cluster called Abell 2029, over a billion
light years from Earth. The cluster has
an overall mass of around 100 trillion
Suns, though most of this is invisible
‘dark matter’. Only the galaxy’s central
region is bright enough to be seen
in visible light (it was discovered in
1790 by William Herschel). Despite its
relative brightness and early discovery,
however, IC 1101’s true scale was only
realised in 1990 when astronomers
detected the faint stars orbiting in
its outskirts for the first time. More
recent images from the Hubble Space
400,000
Telescope have confirmed that it is
light years
roughly 5 million light years across,
while the Chandra X-ray Observatory
has revealed an extended halo of hot
gas spread across a similar region.
bound in the same way Earth and the universe because the size of
Giants such as IC 1101 are only
found at the centre of old, densely Peter the planets are bound to the Sun, these structures tell us what has
packed galaxy clusters, and
astronomers think they form from Eisenhardt except, there’s not really a central,
dominant equivalent of the Sun.
happened over the history of
the universe.
the collisions and mergers of smaller WISE project scientist
galaxies. Over time, these collisions Can superclusters get bigger Between the clusters are voids:
heat up the star-forming gas within than the LQG? are those truly empty?
the galaxies, giving it enough energy The distribution of galaxies is I would hesitate to say there’s
to escape their gravity. This robs not the same if you look along nothing in them. Voids are
giant ellipticals of the ability to form the distance between here and substantially under-dense.
new stars, so as their more massive, the Coma cluster – 300 million Every[where] in the universe today
shorter-lived stars age and die, they light years. The universe is lumpy there is ionised hydrogen – protons
end up containing only lower-mass, [unevenly distributed] on that and electrons. The density of that
sedate red and yellow stars. The orbits scale, but we know there’s not ionised hydrogen doesn’t vary
of individual stars also become more much lumpiness on a factor of tremendously, so in the voids,
chaotic until the kinds of structure ten larger than this scale, because it’s not vastly less dense than in
seen in spiral galaxies disappear and we’ve been able to probe out for the clusters.
only a ball of stars in overlapping much larger distances than 300
orbits remains. At the centre of the million light years. We can see that What’s ‘big’ for a cosmologist?
galaxy, a supermassive black hole on the scale of a billion light years, 300 million light years isn’t
provides a gravitational anchor around Do clusters and superclusters act the universe is pretty much the an instant, but it’s more or less
which each star orbits. Meanwhile, the as a single entity? same no matter where you look. contemporaneous. A billion light
overall mass of this giant star cloud Groups are gravitationally bound. An important point is that the years is starting to be interesting.
is still enough for its gravity to keep Then you have larger clusters larger structures have been at the The nearest star being four light
a loose hold on the surrounding hot a magnitude of ten bigger than centre of the realisation that most years away is still an awfully long
gas, creating a halo of X-ray-emitting groups, the largest gravitationally of the gravity is coming from dark way. It’s mind-boggling how much
material around the giant elliptical bound structures. When we say matter. And they’re important we know having not gone the
galaxy, at the centre of the cluster. gravitationally bound, I mean for understanding the history of tiniest fraction of that distance.
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BIGGEST VOID
Boötes void
One of the biggest things we Most of the time, there’s relatively metres with 67 zeros after
know of in the universe, weirdly, little distance between them: we’re it. Put another way, we’ve
is nothing. Between galaxies there talking hundreds of thousands of been observing other
is intergalactic space, filled with light years that, in the grand scale of galaxies for hundreds of
gas, dust and ionised particles. the cosmos isn’t so much to make years (even if we didn’t
a big deal of. But there are a few appreciate exactly what
big places in our universe that are they were at the time),
practically a vacuum, huge expanses but if the Milky Way had
of space with near to nothing in been in the centre of the
them. These are the supervoids and Boötes void, we wouldn’t
the biggest of them is the Boötes have even known about any
void, a spherical area in space 700 other galaxies until the Sixties. The LQG model: cach one of
these spheres represents a
million light years from Earth near It’s not completely empty though,
radiant quasar
the Boötes constellation. Its diameter 60 galaxies have been discovered
in the sky is 250 million light years in Boötes, but a space this large
and its volume is a staggering should contain an estimated 10,000
236,000 cubic megaparsecs. To galaxies. By comparison, our galactic
give you an idea of how much that neighbourhood has nearly half the
Scientists are studying this unfeasibly is, a single cubic megaparsec is the number of galaxies of Boötes in a
large, empty hole in space equivalent volume of three cubic tiny fraction of the same volume.
92 million
light years
Huge LQG
Boötes void 4 billion
250 million light years wide
light years wide
BIGGEST SUPER STRUCTURE
Huge LQG
Our final giant is one of many super- in the universe using data from the the scale and concept of the universe
So big, the
LQG defies
scientific
structures that make up the known, Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It stretches around us. To think that ancient theory
observable universe. These galactic 4 billion light years across space Greek philosopher Anaxagoras was
superclusters are made up of smaller and is so huge that it messes with once convicted of ‘impiety’ for saying
clusters and groups relatively near to conventional scientific theory on how that the Sun was a ‘mass of red-hot
each other that, gravitationally, move the universe has evolved. The Large metal larger than the Peloponnesus’
in harmony. Quasar Group (LQG) consists of 73 (a Greek peninsula of around 20,000
A single supercluster typically quasars, incredibly radiant cores that square kilometres/8,000 square
contains thousands of individual surround supermassive black holes at miles)! With the advancement of
galaxies: our own Milky Way galaxy, the centre of enormous galaxies. The observational technology and the
for example, is part of the Local Group LQG, as it’s known, is 9 billion light launch of new telescopes like the
of over 50 galaxies that is part of years away and is several times bigger James Webb Space Telescope, it’s only
the much larger Virgo Supercluster. than the previously understood upper a matter of time before another super-
This contains more than 100 galaxy limit for the largest cosmic structure sized record is smashed and we have
groups and clusters for a total number (1.2 billion light years). It’s thought to revise our understanding of this
of galaxies that number in the tens that these ancient objects might giant universe.
of thousands. The Virgo Supercluster represent an early stage of galactic
spans a respectable 100 million light evolution in the modern universe and
years in diameter and until recently, the LQG itself, a rudimentary part of
© NASA; SXC.hu; ESA; ESO
the biggest known superclusters were supercluster development.

around seven times wider. In the last few centuries and the last
But earlier this year, a team of few decades in particular, we’ve come
scientists discovered the biggest object a long way in our understanding of
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The new search for alien life
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The new search for
ALIEN
LIFE The next ten years could make or break
the hunt for another intelligent civilisation
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI,
has always been a fringe science. Since it began
in the mid-20th century, scientists involved in the
field have had to fight for scraps of funding, often
portfolio, would be funding a $100 million (£65
million) project known as Breakthrough Listen. It
will be the most extensive search for life outside
the Solar System to date. Using the finest telescopes
to ridicule from the public and media alike for what around the world, this ten-year project will be
many consider a fruitless task. But now, thanks to a unprecedented in its scope and scale.
Russian billionaire, SETI is no longer going to be an Considering the numbers, the chances that we are
also-ran – it is about to join the upper echelons of not alone in the universe are looking increasingly
astronomy and, if a positive detection is made, those slim. Hundreds of billions of Earth-like planets likely
scientists once on the fringe could find themselves reside in our galaxy, itself just one of hundreds
propelled into a whole new limelight. of billions of galaxies. Is it possible that only one
In July, it was revealed that investor Yuri Milner, planet, Earth, sustained life? That is the answer we
who has Facebook, Twitter and Alibaba on his want, perhaps need, to know.
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Breakthrough Listen
How this groundbreaking project will search for intelligent life beyond the Solar System
Parkes Radio Telescope Green Bank Telescope
The other major radio The world’s largest fully
telescope is the 64m (210ft) steerable radio telescope, the
diameter Parkes Radio 100m (330ft) Green Bank
Telescope in New South Telescope in West Virginia,
Wales, Australia. US, will be used in the search.
APF Telescope
A third telescope, the
Automated Planet
Finder Telescope at Lick
Observatory in California,
will look for optical laser
transmissions.
That does not mean this search will be successful. success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search, night sky at once. But by the Seventies their interest
Astronomer Sara Seager, a professor at the the chance of success is zero.” had waned, leaving a team of experts in the US to
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), tells Since then, the search for life has been stop-start, take up the reins. They produced a study known as
All About Space that she rates the chances of the and not without its share of problems and false Project Cyclops for NASA’s Ames Research Center in
project finding alien life as “low”. But despite the dawns. 1960 saw American astronomer Frank Drake Mountain View, California, detailing how to search for
odds, she believes that the search for extraterrestrial use the newly built Tatel Radio Telescope at Green intelligent signals. It remains a guideline for much of
life is a “no-brainer”, adding: “Why wouldn’t we do it? Bank in West Virginia to carry out the first direct SETI today.
Imagine if the aliens were everywhere but we were search, known as Project Ozma. This search looked After years of study and planning, NASA finally
too conservative to even try to listen.” around frequencies at the hydrogen end of the had a definitive strategy in place to begin SETI in
And that is precisely why this search for life is spectrum, which Drake thought transmissions would
so important. In fact, that exact sentiment can be edge towards due to the Doppler shift. Of course, it
seen in one of the first papers to propose the search was unsuccessful. The following year, Drake would
for extraterrestrial intelligence, titled Searching devise his famous Drake Equation to predict the
for Interstellar Communications. Penned by probability of life elsewhere - more on that later.
astrophysicists Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison In the rest of the Sixties, the Soviet Union
in September 1959, it stated: “The probability of dominated SETI, observing large chunks of the
“Breakthrough Listen will be the

most sensitive, comprehensive and
intensive search for intelligent life ever
undertaken” Andrew Siemion, University of California, Berkeley
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Beyond
Signals will also be
looked for broadly in the
100 nearest galaxies,
100,000 to 11 million
Milky Way light years away.
The centre of our
galaxy and the entire
galactic plane as seen
from Earth will also be
studied for radio signals.
Searching nearby
The two radio telescopes,
and maybe others at a
later date, will study the
closest 1 million stars to
Earth for radio signals
from an intelligent race.
The proponents of Breakthrough Listen. From left

to right: Yuri Milner, Stephen Hawking, Martin
Rees, Frank Drake, Ann Druyan and Geoff Marcy
earnest by 1992. Sadly, Congress terminated funding electromagnetic radiation in all directions, and if this is all we know. So, it makes sense to look for
the following year. But SETI lived on, in the form anyone is within 75 light years or so and looking in other signals that we know exist. “We are assuming
of the not-for-profit SETI Institute in California, and the direction of Earth with similar technology, they that other intelligent civilisations think like we do
other attempts began to spring up around the world. will know there is intelligent life here. So, it makes and would use similar technology for long-distance
In 2007, the Allen Telescope Array was built at the sense that if there is other intelligent life out there, space communication,” says Seager. “The best-case
Hat Creek Radio Observatory in California, where perhaps more advanced, they likely went through scenario is that intelligent life forms are actually
much of the modern SETI is done. Funding shortfalls similar stages of technology as us, and must certainly using radio signals and are sending a message
remain a problem, though. have communicated in a similar manner at some directly to Earth.”
What have they been looking for? Signals. Since point or other. There may be different forms of If we do find a signal, what then? Do we send
World War Two we have been firing out encoded communication we are yet to discover but, for now, a message back? Such an action would not be
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Message to
outer space
The Voyager Golden
Records are an
example of how to Into deep space
communicate using A Golden Record is
included on both
maths and astronomy the Voyager 1 and 2
spacecraft, which are
travelling out of the
Solar System, although
it’s unlikely they will
ever be found.
How to play
Shown are instructions on Life on Earth
how to play the Golden The records contain
Record with a stylus, images and sounds
included on each spacecraft. from Earth, with these
instructions detailing
how the video signals
should appear.
We are here
This diagram shows
the location of the Sun Hydrogen atom
relative to 14 pulsars – This diagram proves our scientific
rapidly rotating neutron knowledge by showing the
stars that act as beacons. lowest states of a hydrogen atom,
and is also the key to accessing
information on the records.
unprecedented. Besides the Voyager spacecraft detection. The process is painstakingly slow, though –
carrying Golden Records that describe Earth in detail, just a fraction of the total stars in the Milky Way have
How to talk we have been constantly broadcasting information
for approaching a century. In 1974, meanwhile, a
been studied so far.
That’s where the Breakthrough Listen project
to aliens specific message was sent out containing information
about Earth hidden in code, called the Arecibo
comes in. While SETI has been restricted to a few
telescope arrays around the world so far, Milner is
Breakthrough Message message, towards the Great Cluster in Hercules, pouring money into the project so that it can afford
In tandem with Breakthrough Listen, this M13, about 25,000 light years away from Earth. The to buy serious time on some of the most powerful
competition will encourage discussion on Breakthrough Initiatives will hold a competition telescopes in the world. “With Breakthrough Listen,
possible messages to send to another civilisation. called Breakthrough Message to ask members of the we’re committed to bringing the Silicon Valley
public what sort of message they think we should approach to the search for intelligent life in the
Not guaranteed send to any potential intelligent civilisation. universe,” says Milner. “Our approach to data will be
There is no definitive plan to send messages; There’s just one problem: where is everyone? open and taking advantage of the problem-solving
this is merely a discussion. If habitable planets are so abundant, then surely power of social networks.” Of the $100 million (£65
we should have heard something by now? This million), one third will obtain thousands of hours of
Prize money is known as the Fermi Paradox, with various time on radio telescopes, another will fund research
There is a pool of prizes for the best messages solutions suggested. Perhaps space is too vast for and development of new technologies, and the final
totalling $1 million (£650,000). meaningful communication. Perhaps civilisations third will be used to hire astronomers. $2 million
blow themselves up before they have a chance to (£1.3 million) will be used to secure 20 per cent of the
How to communicate communicate. Or perhaps we really are alone in annual observing time in 2016 of the world’s largest
Entrants must devise ways to communicate in a this vast universe. Our best bet at the moment to fully steerable radio telescope, the Robert C Byrd
universal language, such as mathematics. find out is to methodically search each and every Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, United
star for signs of artificial signals within our range of States. Additional funds will secure 25 per cent of the
All about content
The digital messages are asked to be
representative of humanity and planet Earth.
“With Breakthrough Listen, we're
Enter the competition at: committed to bringing the Silicon
breakthroughinitiatives.org Valley approach to the search for
intelligent life in the universe” Yuri Milner
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annual observing time of the Parkes Radio Telescope

in Australia from October 2016 for five years. “Right now there could be messages
Observing time on other telescopes may be
bought as well, and these telescopes will be used from the stars flying right through the
to systematically study stars and known exoplanets
for signals. If there is anything emitting Earth-like
room, through us all. That still sends a
signals around one of the million stars that will be
studied, we’ll know. “Breakthrough Listen will be
shiver down my spine” Frank Drake
the most sensitive, comprehensive and intensive
search for intelligent life ever undertaken,” says will be studied, in addition to the centre of our technology like humans. And, perhaps most
Andrew Siemion, director of the SETI Research galaxy and entire galactic plane, Breakthrough Listen unnervingly, it may be simply that we are alone.
Center at the University of California, Berkeley and will also search for messages from the 100 closest Life could be incredibly rare, and perhaps it was
one of the project leaders on Breakthrough Listen. galaxies to the Milky Way. only Earth that somehow had exactly the right
“We will search more of the radio spectrum, at It’s fair to say the project has garnered significant conditions for it to form. As the late author Sir
higher sensitivity, than any previous experiment.” interest. Among its advisors and proponents are Arthur C Clarke once said: “Two possibilities exist:
Siemion adds that Milner’s enthusiasm for SETI was Stephen Hawking, Astronomer Royal Lord Martin either we are alone in the universe or we are not.
“fabulously unexpected”. Rees, Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, astronomer Both are equally terrifying.” The implications of us
Such is the power and size of the telescopes being Frank Drake and Ann Druyan, who was married being alone would be profound, although it’s an
used that this project is estimated to be 50 times to the late Carl Sagan. And all of the data that the uncomfortable possibility no one wants to discover.
more sensitive than any previous SETI programme. project will gather will be open to the public, giving But perhaps it would highlight just how important,
It will cover more than ten times the sky of anything anyone the opportunity to sift through to search and rare, Earth really is. “As always, absence of
before it and five times the amount of radio spectrum for a signal. Existing endeavours like SETI@home evidence is not evidence of absence,” Siemion notes.
– all at 100 times the speed. A civilisation around will also be incorporated. “Right now there could “However, if after ten years of sustained searching
one of the nearest 1,000 stars sending us a signal be messages from the stars flying right through the we haven’t found anything, we will surely have to
with the power of a common aircraft radar will be room, through us all. That still sends a shiver down take a moment to ponder the rarity of technologies
detectable. And in tandem with the radio search, my spine,” says Drake. “The search for intelligent like our own – and the care that we must take to
the Automated Planet Finder Telescope at the Lick life is a great adventure. And Breakthrough Listen is ensure the long-term future of our rare example of a
Observatory in California will be used by the project giving it a huge lift.” technologically capable species.”
to search for optical laser transmissions. This could But let’s be blunt: the chances of this succeeding Of course, in the search for life, Breakthrough
supposedly detect the energy output of a normal are low, for a variety of reasons. The most obvious Listen is not the only project you should be excited
household light bulb from a distance of four light is that intelligent life more advanced than us might about. In our own Solar System, new missions are in
years. But the project isn’t just limited to our own communicate in a manner we don’t understand. the process of being drawn up to find if some more
galaxy – while 1 million of the closest stars to Earth It might be that no nearby life has developed reachable locations were once habitable, or perhaps
Numbers
Decoding a message for alien life The numbers one to
ten written in binary.
Devised in 1974 by the likes of Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, the
Arecibo message was broadcast into space in the direction of DNA
The atomic numbers
globular cluster M13 some 25,000 light years away of the elements that
make up DNA.
Formula
The formulas for the
sugars and bases
found in DNA.
Double helix
The structure of DNA.
Earth’s population
The height of an
average man and the
human population on
our planet.
Solar System
Our solar
neighbourhood along
with which planet the
message is coming from.
Arecibo telescope
The Arecibo The dimension of the
Observatory in radio dish from which
Puerto Rico the message is being
transmitted.
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still are. For example, on Mars, we are now fairly

certain the planet was wet and habitable perhaps “The best-case
xxx
a billion or so years ago. The next step, via an

upcoming NASA rover in 2020 and further missions scenario is that
beyond, will be to look for actual signs of life now or
in the past.
intelligent life forms
Elsewhere, some other destinations are becoming
rather desirable; NASA is already in the process of
are actually using
researching a mission to send to study Jupiter’s
icy moon Europa by 2024 at the earliest. Europa
radio signals and are
is believed to have a vast underground ocean,
containing more water than there is on Earth, and
sending a message
some say it could harbour small microbial life. Other
moons in the Jovian system such as Ganymede
directly to Earth”
Sara Seager, MIT
also show promise for life forms, and are to be
investigated by ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer
(JUICE) from 2030 onwards. And that’s not all;
Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan could also host
microbial life in some form or another, and new
missions to these have been touted.
Ultimately, though, anything found inside the Solar
System will be microbial in size. It is in the rest of the
galaxy where the real ‘action’ could be happening,
and aside from the Breakthrough Listen project
there are other things to look forward to. For one
thing, astronomers are continuing to look for rocky
planets in habitable zones of stars, with upcoming
telescopes like NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey
Satellite (TESS), due for launch in 2017, increasing
our capabilities. The most powerful telescopes in
existence will study the atmospheres of some of
these worlds and will include NASA’s upcoming
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), due for launch
in 2018.
One thing is for sure, though. SETI is finding
itself closer and closer to the spotlight, and if a
discovery is made in the next ten years, those days
of money problems will be long gone. Milner has
gone on record to say he will continue funding the
Breakthrough Initiatives beyond ten years, even if a There could be hundreds
detection is not made. But there’s no doubt it would of billions of Earth-like
planets within our galaxy, some
be a major disappointment if nothing is found.
of which scientists hope may
To paraphrase Carl Sagan, if we are alone, it’s an
support extraterrestrial life
awful waste of space.
Chances of making contact The Drake Equation is often used to estimate

how likely it is someone else is out there
N = R* × fp × ne ×
This is the total number of civilisations This is the rate of formation The fraction of those The number of planets per
in the Milky Way whose signals are of stars that could host stars that have Solar System that could have
detectable, according to the equation. habitable planets. planetary systems. a habitable environment.
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What happens if
we make contact?
Seth Shostak, director at the SETI
Institute, explains what would
happen if a signal were to be found
What’s the procedure if we find alien life?
In the case of SETI, there is a set of protocols. I
was the chair of an international committee that
revised these protocols over the last five to ten
years, and basically you have ample time to check
out the signal, tell everybody, and don’t respond
without international agreement. That’s basically
all there is to it.
But the truth is, it doesn’t really work that way.
And we know that because, in the case of false
alarms, you see what really happens. There’s no
policy of secrecy within SETI. If you get a signal, and
it looks interesting and you begin to think it might
be the real thing, you start to call people at other All these instances are what would happen similar to the natives of the Caribbean, arguing about
observatories and say ‘hey, would you check this out immediately. In terms of finding additional signals, what they should say to Columbus, should he land.
too?’ And you find the people are writing about it you would probably – with the money – build much
on their blogs and sending emails to boyfriends and bigger antennae and go back and see if you could Would it be the biggest discovery of all time, in
girlfriends, or tweeting or whatever. As a result, what find any modulation on the signal, any message, your opinion?
actually happens if you get a signal is, long before because that would be very interesting. That’s a very I once polled science journalists about this, asking
it’s confirmed and you know it’s newsworthy, which big project, however, and it would take a very large them how big a story they thought it would be, and
could take days, it’s already news. In 1997 we had a antenna. But in any case, you would know now how every single one of them said it would be the biggest
signal that looked good for almost a day, and by the to look for other signals, because once you find one story ever. I don’t argue with them, I’m sure it would
end of that day the NY Times was calling me up. there’s a better clue as to how to find others, and I’m be a huge story.
sure that would happen.
What would happen next? If the planet is close, would a mission there be on
Well, if you really find it and confirm it’s ET, the Should we send a message back? the agenda?
first thing is that every telescope in the world, no If you picked up a signal, it would be a tremendous Oh, I’m sure it would be seriously discussed. It would
matter what kind of telescope, would be pointed in incentive to send something back. I’m sure you still be very hard; even with our best rockets, to go to
the direction in which you got the signal. You would couldn’t stop people from doing that, a lot of people something 50 light years away would take almost 10
try and learn as much as you could; is this a star would. It doesn’t trouble me, we’ve been sending million years. I think a far better scheme would be to
where we have detected planets, for example. Radio messages into space since World War Two, and send signals, frankly.
telescopes could look at the signal as it changes many are pretty strong, so it would just be additional
frequency, which would tell you something about information. But you could argue about what we How confident are you we’ll find something?
the motion of the planet, the length of their year, should say, should we tell them about the bad as well I bet everyone that I’ve spoken to about this a cup of
stuff like that. as the good, and all that kind of stuff. For me it’s very coffee that we’ll do it within two dozen years.
@ Getty Images; Tobias Roetsch; Breakthrough Initiatives; ESO; JPL-Caltech; NASA; SETI Institute
fl × fi × fc × L
The fraction of total The fraction of those The fraction of habitable planets The length of time any such
planets in our galaxy on habitable planets where with civilisations that develop the civilisations would release these
which life exists. intelligent life arises. technology to emit signals. detectable signals into space.
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GREATEST
DISCOVERIES Join us as we take a tour of our
favourite images by this iconic
space telescope
The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
INTERVIEWBIO This year, the Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 25th space. A series of corrective mirrors were installed by intrepid
year in space. Over the past two and a half decades, it has made astronauts in a week-long mission in 1993, acting like a pair of
Dr Mario Livio more than a million observations, provided the data for over glasses and bringing the light into focus. Since the repair the
Senior astrophysicist
at the Hubble Space 10,000 scientific publications and it has given us a breathtaking telescope has been upgraded on a further four occasions and
Telescope Science window out into the far reaches of the universe from its position has gone on to capture thousands of stunning, high-resolution
Institute beyond the haze of our atmosphere. and iconic images.
Dr Mario Livio is an Hubble was the brainchild of American astrophysicist Lyman Hubble is responsible for some of the biggest scientific
astrophysicist specialising Spitzer Jr. and its construction took almost a decade, completed discoveries of the space age. It showed that dark energy
in exciting stuf like black in 1985. However, its journey into space was complicated. Its is accelerating the expansion of the universe and allowed
holes, neutron stars, white launch was delayed by the Challenger disaster in 1986, which scientists to pinpoint its age to between 13 and 14 billion years.
dwarfs and supernova claimed the lives of seven astronauts and by the time it finally And it has shown that there are supermassive black holes at the
explosions. He has worked
arrived in orbit in April 1990, its first images were blurry. To centres of almost all galaxies.
with Hubble at the
Space Telescope Science the dismay of the team, the carefully crafted 2.4-metre (94.5- In its 25 illustrious years in space, Hubble has taken some of
Institute since 1991 and inch) mirror had a spherical aberration, a microscopic fault that the most breathtaking images of the cosmos and in the process
has published over 400 prevented the light being properly focussed. this amazing feat of engineering has captured the hearts and
scientific papers and five Hubble was designed to be able to dock with the Space minds of the adoring public like no other space telescope has
popular science books. Shuttle, allowing repairs and upgrades to be performed in done before.
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Hubble’s greatest discoveries
The galactic rose

This stunning image was released as part of Hubble’s 21st birthday celebrations
in 2011. The cosmic rose at its centre is formed by two interacting galaxies known
together as Arp 273. The image was captured using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3)
and filters were used to distinguish between ultraviolet, blue and red light. A small
galaxy called UGC 1813 viewed side-on from the Earth, forms the stem of the rose
while the flower itself is a galaxy known as UGC 1810, which is five-times bigger.
Astronomers believe that a past collision pulled the larger galaxy into its distorted,
petaled shape. The ring that encircles UGC 1810 indicates that the smaller galaxy
burst straight through as they collided, passing off-centre through the plane of the
spiral and pulling its arms into a ring. As a result of the collision the centre of the
small galaxy has lit up and the larger galaxy is studded with massive hot blue stars
born out of the chaos. At the top right of the larger galaxy, there is another visible
mini spiral, along with a blue burst of young star activity.
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The sombrero galaxy

This incredibly detailed image of M104 was captured by the Hubble’s
Advanced Camera for Surveys. It is one of the biggest Hubble images
ever taken, and it was stitched together from six separate exposures and
used red, green and blue filters to create a true-colour representation.
The galaxy, nicknamed the sombrero galaxy after its wide, flat shape,
is one of the most massive objects in the Virgo cluster. It was originally
thought to be a star, but is moving away from us at speeds of over 1,127
kilometres (700 miles) per second and it is now known to measure
50,000 light years in diameter. It is almost the same age as the Milky
Way, with globular clusters dating back 10 to 13 billion years.
In the very centre is a second disc, which appears at an angle to the
main disc of the galaxy. It emits bright X-ray radiation and is thought to
belong to a supermassive black hole measuring one billion solar masses.
INTERVIEW
“This visually stunning galaxy is about 28 million light-

years from Earth. We view it almost edge-on. The main
reason I like this image is that Hubble has captured
the dust lanes in the galactic ring that surrounds the
central bulge with such a resolution that the image
looks almost three-dimensional. Around the galaxy
you can see a collection of between 1,000 and 2,000
globular star clusters. This is about ten-times more than
the number of clusters that surround the Milky Way.”
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INTERVIEW
“These images in ultraviolet light
capture Saturn's auroras as they
change over a few days. Auroras
are the result of charged space
particles colliding with the planet's
magnetic field, leading to flashes
The auroras of Saturn produced by gas in its atmosphere.
In 2003, Hubble collaborated with the Cassini Saturn’s atmosphere. As the solar wind increases, The emission is in the form of
spacecraft to monitor the auroras in Saturn’s the auroras brighten and shrink in diameter.
atmosphere. Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Although the aurora seems to glow a
radio waves and ultraviolet light.
Surveys captured the visible light images of the bright, icy blue in this image, on the surface of An increase in the intensity of
outline of the planet and its Space Telescope Saturn the spectacle would appear to be quite
Imaging Spectrograph revealed the ultraviolet different. As the blue-ish ultraviolet light hits the
the emission is accompanied the
glow of the auroras as they moved through the atmosphere it excites hydrogen atoms making emission ring shrinking. This
atmosphere. What they saw was auroras that last them glow red. On Earth we see something particular behaviour is different
for days on end and glow bright throughout. similar, except that in our atmosphere of nitrogen
With Cassini’s help, we know that these and oxygen, the dominant colours would be from those observed in the auroras
auroras are created by pressure changes in green and blue. of both the Earth and Jupiter.”
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Jupiter’s stormy spots

Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 has trained its eye on Jupiter, watching
carefully as storms rage across the equator. The enormous storm that is Jupiter’s Great
Red Spot has achieved worldwide fame, persisting in the Jovian atmosphere for 200
to 350 years, but it is not alone. This image captured in 2008 shows its two smaller
companions. The largest, Red Spot Jr. was discovered in 2006, but the third, dubbed
Baby Red Spot was new. They both started life as white spots and turned red as material
was lifted high above the methane atmosphere, exposing it to ultraviolet light.
Shortly after this image was taken Hubble watched as Baby Red Spot became caught
up in the vortex of its big brother and was gone, providing a potential explanation as
to how the great storm continues to gather momentum even after all this time. Since
it was first measured by the Voyager spacecraft in the 1970s, the Great Red Spot has
shrunk dramatically and Hubble's newer Wide Field Camera 3 continues to keep watch.
Comets, stars
and galaxies
The star of this image isn't actually a star, but
the streaking comet ISON, snapped by Hubble
as it made its final journey towards the Sun. As it
travelled inwards the temperature rose, leaving a
tail of evaporating material in its wake. ISON was
known as a sungrazing comet and in December
2013 it broke apart as it faced searing heat and
came within 1.9 million kilometres (1.2 million
miles of the surface of the Sun.
At first glance, the background appears to be
studded with stars, but a closer look reveals a sea
of galaxies. Captured by the Wide Field Camera 3,
this incredible image is a combination of separate
exposures and Hubble reveals an amazing
contrast of depth. The comet was just a few
hundred million miles from the Earth, the nearest
stars in the picture are 60,000-times more
distant and the closest galaxies are more than 30
billion-times farther away.
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A cosmic cave
This incredible nebulous cave has been carved out by some
of the most massive stars in the known universe and in this
image, stitched together from several separate pictures
captured by both the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and
the Advanced Camera for Surveys, the architects of this grand
cosmic palace are revealed.
The bright stars at the top of this image are part of the
cluster known as Pismis 24 and are some of the brightest and
most massive stars in space. Their combined emissions have
sculpted enormous structures in the NGC 6357 nebula below,
with a combination of gravity, interstellar wind, radiation
pressure and magnetic fields coming together to shape vast
pillars into the gas cloud. At the bottom of the image, nestled
inside the nebula itself is another massive star, which is carving
out an enormous cavern in the glowing hydrogen gas.
The stars that have produced this incredible spectacle are
truly enormous, but Hubble has revealed new clues about
their structure. Once thought to be one of the most massive
stars in the known universe, it is now known that the largest
star in the cluster is a binary, containing two smaller stars.
INTERVIEW
“This image shows the nebula NGC 6357, being irradiated by the
massive stars in the cluster Pismis 24. The nebula is at a distance
of about 8,000 light-years from Earth. One of the bright stars in the
Pismis cluster was once thought to be more than 200-times the
size of the Sun. However, Hubble's sharp vision has shown that the
object is really composed of two stars, about 100 solar masses each.
The intense radiation from the star cluster is not only causing the
nebula to glow, but is also eroding the gas and dust, leaving only
the densest parts as pillars pointing towards the star cluster.”
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The perfect spiral

This incredible image of the spiral galaxy M74 is a
combination of data captured over two separate
years by The Advanced Camera for Surveys and
has been combined with images captured by two
ground-based telescopes to create a high-resolution
view of the structure of a spiral galaxy. From our
position on Earth, M74 is visible almost head on,
creating an incredible portrait of the intricate swirls
that make up spiral galaxies like our own, albeit on a
smaller scale.
M74 is an almost perfect two-armed spiral, with
dark dust lanes twisting outwards from its nucleus.
Filters used on the camera reveal blue, visible and
infrared light, highlighting chains of bright young
stars that adorn its edges. Hubble has also picked
out pockets of irradiated hydrogen gas, glowing
pink as the ultraviolet light emitted by these hot
young stars excites the molecules, providing an
ideal environment for star formation.
INTERVIEW
“The galaxy M74 is at a distance of about 32 million light
years from Earth and contains about 100 billion stars. It is
a spiral galaxy, which means that its structure is that of a
pancake-like flat disc. We are viewing the galaxy face-on, so
that the spiral structure, which is a consequence of density
waves in the galactic disc, is beautifully visible. New stars
are being born in the spiral arms and they heat up the
gas and cause it to glow. Three exploding stars, known as
supernovae, have been detected in M74. One in 2002, one
in 2003 and one in 2013.”
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Hot new stars

This image, captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, shows a
nebulous star forming in a region nestled inside the Small Magellanic
Cloud, a dwarf galaxy 200,000 light years from Earth. At the centre
are the hot young stars of the NGC 602 cluster. They are just five
million years old and are still surrounded by the dust and gas from
which they were formed, but their energetic outpourings have
blown an enormous hole in the cloud. They are gradually eroding
away at the gas, leaving behind vast pillars that point back inwards
towards the source and in the turbulent environment amongst the
ridges, more new stars are beginning to form, inching outwards
as the cloud is gradually blown away. The incredible resolution of
Hubble’s camera also reveals background galaxies, including a face-
on spiral just above this text.
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The centre of the galaxy

In 2008, Hubble teamed up with the Spitzer Space Telescope to peer right
into the centre of the Milky Way. In the process it orbited the Earth 144
times and made 2,304 separate exposures that were stitched together to
build this stunning mosaic. Hubble’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object
Spectrometer (NICMOS) were able to reveal objects around 20-times the size
of our Solar System, producing the sharpest infrared image ever made of the
core of the Milky Way. It revealed massive stars spewing strong stellar winds,
sculpting the surrounding gas and showed the glow from ionised hydrogen
in the vicinity. The image was laid over a colour survey, completed by the
Infrared Array Camera on board the Spitzer Space Telescope, which although
only about one tenth of the resolution of Hubble’s image, separates the
different wavelengths of infrared light by colour.
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A delicate spiral
This delicate spiral galaxy is just 46 million light years
away and was captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3
(WFC3) in 2010. Four different filters were used to reveal
its composition. At the centre is a yellow-white nucleus, lit
by the glow of middle-aged stars and surrounding them are
tight, delicate spirals composed of dark dust lanes studded
with younger blue star clusters.
NGC 2841 is a massive spiral galaxy and at 150,000
light years in diameter is larger than the Milky Way, but
star formation within the delicate spirals has slowed. The
energetic youngsters have blown most of the surrounding
gas away, halting new star birth in their immediate vicinity.
Pockets of pink star forming regions are still visible but
overall this delicate looking galaxy is relatively quiet
compared to other spirals like our own.
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The butterfly nebula

This nebulous butterfly is the aftermath of the death of a
star five-times the size of our own Sun and is one of the
first images to be captured by the Wide Field Camera 3
(WFC3), installed in May 2009. The star at the centre is
shrouded in a ring of thick dust, generated after the star
swelled to become a red giant. The wings formed later and
were shaped by extreme stellar winds as the central star
sped up, covering an expanse of space measuring more
than two light years across. Filters on the camera allow the
constituent gases of the nebula to be picked out.
INTERVIEW
“I am certainly proud to have been a part of
this fantastic scientific endeavour”
How did you get involved with Hubble? me that I must be crazy to come work with a flawed
Shortly after its launch in 1990, I was contacted by a telescope. There was indeed a serious risk, since at that
colleague that was already at the Space Telescope Science point we didn't know whether it could
Institute (the institute that conducts the scientific program be corrected.
of Hubble) and he asked me whether I would consider
coming to work at the Institute. I had visited it already At the time, did you anticipate that Hubble would
in 1986 and hence was somewhat familiar with the go on to be such a huge success?
organisation and I knew quite a few of the astronomers Absolutely not. At that time I feared that Hubble may be
there. So after a brief hesitation, I said I would definitely remembered as one of the biggest scientific failures. And
consider it. one that could potentially jeopardise the entire concept of
big, ambitious science. There was the danger that people
Hubble got off to a shaky start: what was the would use the Hubble example to argue that too complex
feeling at the Space Telescope Science Institute scientific missions are doomed to fail.
when the flaw was discovered?
I was not yet at the Institute when the spherical aberration How did the mood change after it was fixed?
of the mirror was discovered, but I was absolutely shocked One can hardly describe it. The feeling of elation was
to hear about it. When I eventually decided to come to similar perhaps to that felt after the birth of a new child.
the Institute in 1991, a few of my colleagues were telling The drama added, of course, to the iconic status of this
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Pillars of
creation
Found within the famous
Eagle Nebula, some
astronomers think this
cosmic cloud has already
been blown away by a
nearby supernova. But,
because of its distance
from Earth (7,000 light
years), we won't see this
for another 1,000 years.
© NASA
telescope. This was an amazing demonstration of what By showing us thousands of galaxies in an area of the
can be achieved through the ingenuity of scientists and sky similar to that you would see through a drinking
engineers and the courage of astronauts. straw, the Deep Fields have visually demonstrated to
us the smallness of our physical existence, compared
What do you think is the most iconic image to the vastness of space. No one knew exactly what to
captured by Hubble and which one is your expect from the Deep Fields, but they turned out to be a
personal favourite? demonstration of cosmic archaeology at its best.
There is little doubt that the Eagle Nebula is Hubble's
most iconic image. We have re-observed that region this What is it about Hubble that has captured the
year in high definition as part of the 25th anniversary public imagination?
celebrations. The new image is breathtaking. I personally A few elements have combined to make Hubble almost
like very much the image we call 'Mystic Mountain', unique in the history of science. Hubble has brought the
which also shows pillars of gas and dust in which new excitement of discovery, which used to be the province What does the future look like for Hubble?
stars are being born. of only scientists, into the homes of people all across the We hope very much that Hubble will continue to operate
globe. The drama that was associated with the flaw in at least till 2020, which will allow it a few years of overlap
What were you hoping to see in the Hubble Deep the mirror and its spectacular repair has also added to with the James Webb Space Telescope. If the telescope
Field images? Hubble's popularity – this was the 'telescope that could'. will still be scientifically productive at 2020, I hope that
The various Hubble Deep Fields have not only shown The incredible servicing missions by shuttle astronauts it will be kept even beyond that. Eventually, a propulsion
us the universe at its infancy, when it was less that 500 also captured the imagination. Hubble's longevity, 25 module will be attached to the telescope, directing it into
million years old, while its current age is 13.8 billion years, years of outstanding scientific results and the the ocean. However, I am convinced that Hubble will
they have also given us the cosmic history. For instance, unbelievable images, some of which have been dubbed still make important discoveries in the coming years. I
we now know the rate at which the universe as a whole by an art writer as "the most remarkable works of art of am certainly proud to have been a part of this fantastic
has been forming new stars, throughout its entire history. our time. scientific endeavour.
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Science of
the universe
The pieces that make up our universe
98 What is dark energy?
A mission to ind out more about this mysterious
force that has boggled even the greatest minds
108 50 amazing facts about

black holes
Delving into these awesome time-bending
gravitational chasms
120 How do planetary

orbits work?
Learn about the forces that keep the planets in
their paths around the Sun
122 Dark matter

Understanding the invisible, yet important entity
known as dark matter
130 Super galaxies

What inluence do these cosmic giants have on
124
their surroundings? Dark matter
140 How stars explode
Looking at the powerful and catastrophic
explosions that mark the end of a star
148 The search for wormholes

Science attempts to uncover the truth behind
science iction
158 Hypergiant stars

Get a closer look at these cosmic monsters and
the destruction they can cause
168 Giant space storms

Witness the power of Jupiter’s giant red eye and
other cosmic weather
“In our Sun, over 600 million

tons of hydrogen is converted
into helium each second”
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130
Super
galaxies
140
How stars
explode
© Sayo Studio; Tobias Roetsch; Alamy
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Space science
What is
dark
energy?
Meet the experts that have
hatched the Dark Energy Survey:
a mission to find the force that
could change space forever
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What is dark energy?
It seeps through every pore of the universe; an

energy that permeates through anything and
everything that stands in its way. Yet while it
seems to be everywhere, this ‘dark energy’ almost
behaves like some mythical beast that even our best
equipment fails to catch. This mystery force seems
to be pushing the galaxies that pepper the cosmos
further and further apart, driving the very expansion
of time and space from the moment everything that
we know popped into existence.
Importantly, it is causing this expansion to
accelerate, with the universe expanding at an ever
faster rate rather than a decreasing rate, which is
counter-intuitive given the fact that the Big Bang
was 13.8 billion years ago. Dark energy could even
decide the fate of the universe; if it keeps up then
within 3 trillion years all the other galaxies in the
universe will have moved so far away from the Milky
Way with the cosmic expansion that we won’t be
able to see them any more and the universe beyond
our galaxy will be dark. If dark energy increases
its grip on the universe, it could not only pull
galaxies away from each other, but pull the fabric
of space apart, right down to the level of atoms – a
catastrophic ‘Cosmic Rip’.
Extraordinarily, dark energy makes up an
astonishing 68.3 per cent of all energy in the cosmos.
We do not know what it is yet, though, we just
know that it’s there. After all, the supernovae and
galaxies as well as the static that also fills the entire
universe – the cosmic microwave background (CMB)
radiation – are indicating as much. And it is in these
places that astronomers have been looking for the
energy that has eluded them for so long. However,
with clues come questions and these are puzzles
not to be taken lightly. What the universe is actually
doing – its expansion speeding up – is causing a
tug of war between reality and Einstein’s theory of
general relativity. The pair refuse to agree – according
to Albert Einstein, the father of physics’ rules, gravity
should be slowing everything down. With that in
mind, we need to get to the energy that’s throwing
The Dark Energy Survey’s

DECam can take 570-megapixel
images to carry out its search
for dark energy
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Space science
what we believe into disarray – we need to probe set allows it to partake in multiple areas – namely When the discovery of dark energy was
the universe that’s moving away from us in order to the supernovae, galaxies and cosmic background announced in the late-Nineties, it came as a shock
uncover dark energy’s true nature. And we need to radiation among which lurk clues to dark energy’s to scientists concerned with the expansion of the
use the objects in it to do it. nature. And to be successful in such a feat, the universe. Astronomers knew that the cosmos was
What astronomers are hoping will be their ace card scientists behind DECam have ensured that the expanding after the Big Bang, but they thought that
is sitting high up in the Chilean Andes and has been digital camera – which would dwarf your handheld at after nearly 14 billion years it would be slowing down.
affixed to the Blanco four-metre (13-foot) telescope home – hasn’t gone in unarmed. With 570 megapixels But they wanted to know the rate at which it was
at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory – the allowing it to peer great distances into space in a slowing down, as this could be crucial for the future
DECam, a highly sensitive dark energy camera that’s large swathe of the southern sky, DECam will try of the universe. So two teams of astronomers, one led
carrying out the Dark Energy Survey, or DES, for short. to uncover who will remain victorious in one of by Saul Perlmutter and the other by Brian Schmidt
As of September 2012, the Dark Energy Survey the biggest battles of the universe – its headlong and Adam Riess, set about trying to measure the
is the new kid on the block when it comes to expansion or the theory of general relativity – expansion rate using a particular type of supernova.
attempting to unravel dark energy – joining by snapping a map of its chosen area of sky in The class of supernova that they were interested
forces with Antarctica’s South Pole Telescope, unprecedented detail. in were those belonging to the Type Ia category;
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) at Apache And the world’s most powerful digital camera two stars that were previously in an eternal tango
Point Observatory in New Mexico and the Vista gets to work as soon as the Sun sinks below the where a dead star, dubbed a white dwarf, greedily
Hemisphere Survey of ESO’s Cerro Paranal horizon, with the intention of turning its gleaming grabs material from its larger, and more massive,
Observatory in Chile. And, with well over 100 eye skyward for hundreds of nights over the next companion. Over time, the stellar remnant bites off
cosmologists from 23 institutions from the likes of four to five years. more than it can chew, and it begins to sweat under
the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil and the United “We’re looking at this big galaxy map of the the amount of material that it has pulled onto itself
States backing the survey, there can be no doubt that universe as a way of finding evidence for dark energy before hitting the limit that causes an almighty
it certainly means business. and characterising its nature with cosmic epoch,” explosion; the supernova that lights the way in
The DECam – the powerhouse behind the Dark says the head of the Dark Energy Survey Science finding more out about dark energy.
Energy Survey, is a master of all trades when it comes Committee, Ofer Lahav of University College London. What is special about these Type Ia supernovae is
to searching for its quarry. Ensuring that it doesn’t “An even more challenging goal for the Dark Energy that they always have the same natural brightness
miss a thing, its multi-talented pixels don’t just focus Survey is to tell if what causes the acceleration of the because the limit at which the white dwarf explodes
on one clue to dark energy’s existence, its skill- universe is indeed dark energy.” is always the same mass, 1.4 times the mass of our
Sun. This makes them ideal standard candles, which
are like constant, identical beacons that light the
“We’re looking at this big galaxy map way in the universe, like distance markers. If you
of the universe as a way of finding know how bright the supernovae naturally are, then
compare them to how bright or faint they appear to
evidence for dark energy” Ofer Lahav us on the sky, you can judge how far away they must
be relative to one another.
World’s most powerful camera Hexapod adjustor

570-megapixel High-quality images are
achieved with the help of the
CCD hexapod’s real-time focus
Using CCDs that
and alignment system.
are around ten
times thicker than
conventional ones,
DECam doesn’t just Correcting lenses
have the ability to With the biggest of five
view large areas Wynne-style lenses
of sky but it’s also measuring 98cm (39in) in
sensitive to red light diameter and weighing in at
from distant galaxies. 172kg (380lb), the optical
corrector system provides a
2.2-degree field of view while
Readout not needing to contribute too
electronics much to the image’s quality.
An entire digital image
can be read out and
recorded in 17 seconds
flat. Such a short time
allows the camera to
be read out in the time
it takes the Blanco
four-metre telescope
to move to its next Filter-shutter system
section of sky. The Survey uses five filters – designated g, r, i, z and
Y – which will let in a broad spectrum of colours
including red, green or blue light. Comparing amounts
of light coming through each filter gives astronomers
an idea of how fast an object is moving away from us.
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brightness at the peak of their explosion. Once we What are the problems that you face when using
know their peak brightness, we can estimate their DECam to look at supernovae?
distance, which in turn allows us to determine how The main problem is classifying the supernova event
The distance has changed with time. once we’ve found it. It needs to be a Type Ia to allow
supernova Astronomers have about 1,000 Type Ia supernovae

they can use to measure distances in the universe,
it to be used to measure distances. Unfortunately this
classification has previously been achieved by taking
snapper but it is time to collect more supernovae, and better

ones as well. DECam is ideal for this because it has a
a spectrum of the event and using that to find out
what type it is. That isn’t possible for all supernovae
bigger field of view and has better detectors allowing as there are too many. So, we have now developed a
Prof Bob Nichol, us to see deeper into space. We find supernovae by photometric method for characterising supernovae
University of Portsmouth taking a picture of the same part of the sky every
few days. Supernova explosions change with time, so
and recent work, done at Portsmouth, suggests we
can control the contamination from other types to
How can DECam pick up light from distant we look for anything that starts getting brighter with less than three per cent.
supernovae and turn this data into information time, peaks, and then fades.
about dark energy? What has been achieved so far with DECam and
A Type Ia supernova is the total annihilation of How confident are we that dark energy is the force the Dark Energy Survey?
a carbon-oxygen white dwarf star, turning all behind the expansion of the universe? We’ve obtained 100 nights of telescope time on the
the mass into light. Since we know how much I’m 100 per cent sure about the accelerated Anglo–Australian Telescope. This is essential to the
mass is roughly present, we can predict how expansion of the universe. What causes that is success of the survey. We’ve also found our first
bright it should be. This means we can use them another matter. Dark energy is one explanation and ‘superluminous supernova’. These are 1,000 times
as ‘standardisable candles’, which means we probably the most popular but we are no closer to rarer than Type Ia supernovae and appear to be 100
can manipulate them so they all have the same understanding what dark energy could be. times brighter than any other supernova event.
Lighting the way

The flame of a candle can
be likened to the brightness
An explosion of of a supernova. In fact,
brightness astronomers call them
The end of star’s life is standard candles because
marked by a catastrophic they light the way out to great
stellar explosion called a distances in the universe.
supernova. Supenovae
are so bright that they can
outshine their host galaxy.
Working out
distances
If an astronomer knows
the luminosity of a
supernova, then it follows
that they can work
out how far this great
Type Ia supernovae are used as explosion is from Earth.
candles – beacons of light that
serve as distance markers
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Space science
Sloan Digital By comparing the size of these grey spheres (which

represent baryonic oscillations) to a predicted value of the
Sky Survey size of the cosmos, astronomers have been able to estimate
distances to galaxies more accurately than ever before
(SDSS)
Wide-angle
telescope
The Sloan Digital
Sky Survey (SDSS) Multi-filter camera
employs a 2.5m In its scanning of just over 35% of
wide-angle optical the sky, the telescope’s camera is
telescope to carry out equipped with 30 CCD chips that total
the Baryon Oscillation 120 megapixels. Five filters – named u,
Spectroscopic Survey g, r, i and z – allow the camera to image
(BOSS) as part of the in a variety of wavelengths.
SDSS III project.
Drift scanning
The telescope might remain
locked into position, but that
does not mean that it’s not
capable of scanning the sky.
It makes use of the Earth’s
rotation to record small strips
of its chosen region of sky.
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What the two teams of astronomers found was The cosmic microwave
background, as observed
astounding. They measured the redshifts of the
by the now defunct
supernovae, which told them how much their light Planck Spacecraft
had been stretched into redder wavelengths by back in 2013, is a
the expansion of the universe and found that the snapshot of the
supernovae were further away than they should have oldest light in
been if the expansion of the universe was indeed our universe,
slowing down. The results could only mean that the imprinted on
expansion of the universe was not coming to a halt, the sky when
but was instead speeding up. Nobody knew what the universe
was just 370,000
could be causing this expansion, so they described
years old
this mysterious force as dark energy. Even though
they didn’t know what this dark energy was, the two
competing teams who had raced to publish their
results first and beat the other jointly won the Nobel
Prize for their discovery. Today, supernovae are still
hugely important for the same reasons and are one of
the big aims of the DECam.
According to our current understanding, the
early universe was alive with the sound of cosmic
oscillations. One way the DECam will use to measure
dark energy links the very distant, ancient universe
with the cosmos that we can see around us today.
After the Big Bang the universe was a seething soup
of particles and things like galaxies and stars and
planets hadn’t formed yet. Huge pressure waves –
essentially sound waves sweeping through the fog of
matter in space – washed through this plasma soup,
and on the crests of these waves the plasma was
denser than in the troughs. As the universe cooled
while it expanded, these waves were frozen in place Collaborators of the Dark Energy Survey gather in front of Spanish DES scientists with the Blanco Telescope (left to
and astronomers have found them hidden in the DECam. Enrique Gaztañaga stands third from the right in right: Juan de Vicente, Laia Cardiel-Sas, Ramon Miquel, Juan
cosmic microwave background radiation emitted the lower line with his team García-Bellido, Enrique Gaztañaga and Francisco Castander)
Interview or energy, the stronger the gravitational force.

Gravitational attraction is the basic mechanism
we need to combine the BAO and supernova results
with measurements of the growth rate of structure in
behind the growth of structures in the universe the universe. This is how fast density perturbations
(such as galaxies or stars). But at that early time grow. We can do this in the Dark Energy Survey
radiation pressure opposed gravity and this by measuring galaxy clustering, weak gravitational
generates oscillations very similar to sound waves or lensing and the abundance of galaxy clusters.
waves in the sea.
Have you uncovered anything important yet?
What aspects of dark energy can the BAOs So far, the Dark Energy Survey has not taken enough
tell us about? data to measure BAO, but we are testing the other
In particular we want to measure what is the density methods to measure the growth and preparing for
of dark energy and how it evolves with time. This the BAO analysis by studying systematic effects that
could shed new light over the nature of dark energy. might affect the BAO measurement once we have
In combination with other measurements, like enough data.
Microwave the rate of growth of structure, which we can also

do with DES, we will be able to decide if the dark Is measuring BAOs an easy measurement
listener energy model can fit the data or if we need instead to

change the laws of physics, like the law of gravity on
to make?
There are several effects that we need to take into
Dr Enrique Gaztañaga, very large scales. account to make a good BAO measurement. Some
are related with the quality of the data taken and its
professor of cosmology at Why do we assume that dark energy is the driving calibration. For example, we need to get rid of the
the Instituto de Ciencias force behind the universe’s expansion? foreground contamination from stars and dust in
With the BAO or supernova measurement alone, it our galaxy, and also from the Earth’s atmosphere
del Espacio will be hard to decide that dark energy is the driving or from instrument noise and damage (for example
Where do the baryon acoustic oscillations, or force behind expansion. This is because there are cosmic rays, satellite trails, scattered light). Some
BAOs, come from? many possible models for dark energy. But we will are related to the modelling of the observed BAO
They come from the very early stages of the be able to at least rule out or confirm the simplest oscillations that are subject to other effects, such as
universe, when it was dominated by radiation. In of these models: the cosmological constant [which non-linear gravitational evolution or biases between
general gravity tends to amplify small primordial is the strength of the raw energy present in space]. the light that we see and the true underlying mass
density or energy perturbations: the more matter To understand the cause of the cosmic acceleration that we do not see.
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Space science
370,000 years after the Big Bang. Between then and The idea is for DECam to survey galaxies at that has implications for the future because it would
now, the denser material in the crest of the waves different eras in the universe and see how big they mean that the strength of dark energy could change
gradually attracted more and more material, growing were and how fast they grew at different times. We again, affecting the evolution of the universe.
into galaxies, and clusters of galaxies and finally know dark energy is winning the battle now because But just how can scientists measure the mass
huge chains of galaxy clusters stretching hundreds the expansion of the universe is accelerating, but of galaxy clusters? With the help of advanced
of millions of light years in some cases. By doing in the past when the universe was smaller and technology, of course. Working on their computers
huge surveys of faint galaxies astronomers can piece everything was closer together, gravity had a much they have simulated what the masses of clusters
together maps of the universe that show where these greater influence and was able to override the effect should be based on what we know about the
huge chains that grew out of the waves are located. of dark energy. Plus astronomers would like to know universe and dark energy, but we do not know for
Astronomers have even run huge simulations on if the strength of dark energy has been constant over sure that they are those masses in reality. So what
supercomputers that have described the evolution history, or if it has changed. If its strength varies, then is DECam looking for? Their physical size is not
of the universe, showing the growth of these waves
with voids in between them. Because of how these
filaments look on the largest scale, scientists call it
the ‘cosmic web’.
So what is the connection? If the largest structures
in the universe grew from these waves, which
scientists technically call baryon acoustic oscillations,
or BAOs, then the rate at which the universe has
expanded will decide how large these structures have
grown. In a way, they are like big cosmic ‘rulers’ by
which to measure the universe, so astronomers called
them ‘standard rulers’. This is defined by the distance
the waves travelled before they froze in place, which
has been termed the ‘sound horizon’ and is the speed
of sound multiplied by 370,000 years, which was the
age of the universe when they froze. As the universe
has expanded, the waves have grown to be around
450 million light years. What DECam will do is study
chains of galaxy clusters that make up these waves
during different ages in the universe, which is made
possible because the further away you look in the
universe, the further back in time you are looking.
So DECam will be able to measure their growth at
different stages in the universe and see how strong
dark energy has been in the past compared to today.
Over at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico,
one of DECam’s partners in seeking out dark energy
– the Sloan Foundation 2.5-metre Telescope’s SDSS
III – has also been busy taking advantage of these
BAOs as part of its Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic
Survey (BOSS). Quite recently, the survey measured
the distances to galaxies more than 6 billion light
years away to an accuracy not ever achieved before,
placing new constraints on the mysterious dark
energy’s properties.
What they found appears consistent with a form
of dark energy that stays constant throughout the
history of the universe. “We don’t yet understand
what dark energy is,” explains astronomer Daniel
Eisenstein, the director of the SDSS, “but we can
measure its properties.” Everywhere you look in the
cosmos there are galaxies; those collections of stars
held together by gravity to form the most majestic
of structures. And gravity likes to bind them further,
into huge collections of dozens, hundreds or even
thousands of galaxies and we call these groups
‘galaxy clusters’.
DECam is going to be spending time counting
these clusters, going as far back as when the universe
was less than half of its current size. But how will
this help astronomers understand dark energy? Let’s
think about it: gravity is pulling galaxies together, but
dark energy is working in the opposite direction to
pull galaxies apart. So it is like a cosmic tug of war –
can gravity win over dark energy, or will dark energy The completed DECam, ready to observe 300 million
pull galaxies apart to limit how big clusters can grow? galaxies and discover thousands of bright supernovae
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The South Pole Telescope

in Antarctica teams up
with DECam in the hunt
for dark energy
“We don’t yet quite understand what

dark energy is, but we can measure
its properties” Daniel Eisenstein
The South Pole Telescope in Antarctica, which multiple images of them made as their light takes
is possibly the most inhospitably located telescope different paths along warped space. The most perfect
on the planet, will study how the hot gas in clusters kind of gravitational lens is what’s known as an
scatters photons from the cosmic microwave Einstein ring – the light of the more distant object
background radiation, which will give astronomers an is warped into a complete ring around the nearer,
indication of how much gas there is within a galaxy lensing object. Other times the lensing effect is
cluster. Meanwhile, the Blanco Telescope on which very subtle, just two per cent. Galaxy clusters make
DECam is attached is going to search for an amazing excellent gravitational lenses because they are so
phenomenon that was predicted by none other than massive and, the heavier a galactic grouping, the
Gravitational lensing at work in the Abell 2218 cluster: Albert Einstein, which is gravitational lensing. more light is bent. DECam is able to measure these
distant, lensed galaxies appear stretched into arcs Think of a big lens in space that acts to magnify masses by looking at how big a lens a galaxy cluster
objects beyond it, such as galaxies. But how can makes, surveying 300 million individual galaxies
necessarily a guide, because some clusters are more space act as a lens? It can because objects warp space in the process. Combining its ability to count and
compact than others. Counting all of the galaxies in with their gravity, which depends on their mass, ‘weigh’ galaxy clusters, measure supernovae as well
a cluster only gets astronomers so far too, because causing the path of light from objects beyond to as build a map to chart the sounds of the universe,
that doesn’t account for two things: firstly, the hot bend. Sometimes the gravitational lens is obvious, DECam, the most powerful survey instrument of
gas filling the spaces between galaxies in a cluster causing galaxies to look much brighter, but the lens its kind, seems to have all bases covered. However,
that shines in X-rays and secondly, the ominous and is imperfect and the images of the more distant whether it will be able to snag dark energy for all to
invisible dark matter. galaxies appear warped or smeared or bent, or have observe, is something that only time will tell.
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Space science
DECam belongs to the

Cerro Tololo Inter-American
Observatory high up in the
Chilean Andes
Interview
We speak to Dr Kathy Romer of the University of Sussex to
find out how she uses galaxies to probe dark energy
How important is the Dark Energy Survey to the galaxy, the older the light), so this experiment is energy model known as the ‘cosmological constant’
scientists’ efforts to understand dark energy? a lot like an archaeological dig – we cannot influence – this model was first proposed by Albert Einstein
The Dark Energy Survey will use the DECam what the galaxies do, but by examining them in about a hundred years ago (and made decades before
instrument to locate millions of galaxies across a detail, and in situ, we can learn a lot about the the accelerated expansion was detected).
large fraction of the southern sky. It will also locate universe at the time the light was emitted. In the cosmological constant model, the dark
thousands of exploding stars, known as supernovae. energy is uniform in both time and space. It is the
The galaxies and supernovae can be used as beacons Could dark energy have altered between the early simplest dark energy theory and also seems to be the
to trace the size, shape and history of the universe. universe and now? one most favoured by current observations.
These are all properties that are modified by dark In most models of dark energy, the dark energy
energy. Therefore, by comparing observations with changes its properties with time, although in only How does the South Pole Telescope team up with
theoretical predictions, we can get closer to knowing very few does it change its properties with location, DES in the study of clusters of galaxies?
which theory of dark energy is correct. ie you can think of dark energy as being uniform Clusters of galaxies are bright not only in the optical
The starlight from the galaxies we observe with in space, but not in time, in those models. However, part of the spectrum (where DECam is sensitive),
DECam is up to 10 billion years old (the further away there is one very important exception, the dark they can also be detected in the microwave part of
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the spectrum (because they contain vast quantities What will happen if Einstein’s theory of general
of hot diffuse gas). Unlike almost everywhere else relativity is proved to be insufficient or too simple
on the Earth, microwaves from clusters of galaxies in explaining cosmic acceleration?
can get all the way to the ground at the South Pole, Einstein’s theory for gravity is appealing, and has
because it is the driest place on Earth. At almost been so popular for nearly a hundred years, because
every other terrestrial location, microwaves from of its conceptual (if not mathematical!) simplicity.
space are absorbed by water molecules in the It is possible that it might be too simple, and some
atmosphere (by the same physics mechanism that sophistication might need to be added based on
© Fermilab; NASA; David Kirkby; Peters & Zabransky; STFC; Reidar Hahn
allows you to heat up water in a microwave oven). future findings.

A large microwave telescope at the South Pole (the By doing so we won’t need to radically change
South Pole Telescope) has been scanning the sky to our theories for the universe’s history, but it will
search for clusters of galaxies for the last few years. change our predictions for our universe’s future:
By combining galaxy data from DES and microwave an accelerated expansion has the unfortunate
data from the SPT we are able to measure masses of, consequence of an eventual ‘Cosmic Rip’, whereas
and distances to, clusters much more accurately than we might be in for a less cataclysmic future if gravity
we could do using the data separately. acts differently to our current assumptions.
“Supernovae can be used as beacons

to trace the history of the universe” Dr Kathy Romer standing next to the Blanco Telescope,
holding the DECam (top), and analysing its results
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Few things are as universally awe-inspiring and terrifying
as black holes. These invisible behemoths are the great
architects and the great destroyers of the universe
posted: MAXIMUS
50 amazing facts about black holes
1
Many
black holes
started life
as stars
Stars spend their entire lifetimes outwards push, the balance is tipped
resisting gravitational collapse. Their in favour of gravity, and the star begins
enormous mass means that the gas is to collapse. For small stars, such as the
continually pulled towards the core, Sun, the collapse is incomplete, and
but instead of collapsing down, atoms repelling forces manage to hold the
collide and fuse, releasing explosive last glowing embers open as a white
atomic energy. Radiation pushes dwarf star. For a white dwarf star that
outwards against gravity, holding the is larger than 1.4 times the mass of
“As stars age, the star open as a glowing ball of gas.
As stars age, more and more of the
the Sun (known as the Chandrasekhar
limit), these forces are insufficient, and
fuel eventually atoms are fused, creating heavier and
heavier elements, and eventually the
the star continues to crunch inwards,
forming a dense neutron star, or a
starts to run out” fuel starts to run out. Without the black hole.
2 Supermassive
black holes do
not destroy
everything
around them
Actively feeding supermassive black holes are some
of the most violent places in the universe, and
quasars devour the equivalent of tens to thousands
of Suns each year, but amazingly, the galaxies that
surround them do not disappear into the abyss.
Despite their frightening reputation, black holes
do not actually behave very differently to other
massive objects in the universe, unless you get too
close. Just as the Earth will not spontaneously crash
into the Sun, objects in stable orbits around black
holes are in no danger of being swallowed.
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Space science
Black holes feed

9
3 Black holes
slow the flow
of time
To an outside observer, an object
falling into a black hole appears
to slow down, before stopping,
on stars, revealing
caught in suspended animation at
the boundary.
4 A black hole
their location
reveals no clues Black holes cannot be seen directly,
but the effect they have on their
The supergiant is part of a binary
system, and is locked in a fatal dance
about what it has surroundings often reveals their with a black hole, known as Cygnus
Magnetic field lines
swallowed presence. In the Cygnus constellation, X-1. As the black hole spins, space
As black holes spin, the
As matter enters a black hole it is a blue supergiant star is being pulled and time spiral up with it, and dust
magnetic fields within
stretched, pulled and eventually into a teardrop shape, causing its light and gas from the star accumulate in a their accretion discs will
shredded. Even if something to flicker as it spins. The star orbits vast swirling whirlpool known as the spiral up and
were to leak out, it would bear no once every 5.6 days, and as it turns, accretion disc. Particles spiral towards down, and creating a
resemblance to what went in. the outer layer of gas is stripped away the event horizon, like water circling doughnut-shaped field
from its surface at 1,500 kilometres a drain, and as they tumble inwards around the disc.
(932 miles) per second as it is the friction releases bright flashes and
5 They have no funnelled towards an invisible point. flares of X-ray light.
size limit
In theory, black holes continue
to grow in size indefinitely, but
Companion star
just how large they are able to get Some stellar black holes are part
depends on their local environment. of binary systems, and are closely
associated with another star.
6 Supermassive
black holes
are around the
same mass as the
Solar System
Supermassive black holes contain
the mass of at least 100,000 Suns
compressed into a space that is
around the size of our Solar System.
7 It’s the size

of a black hole
that matters, 10
not its mass
Just a few micrograms of matter Black holes
would be enough to create a black
hole if it was compressed into a
spin faster
small enough space.
than the stars
8 Some that made them
If a star is spinning when it dies, it will continue to spin
galaxies if it becomes a black hole. However, it will not spin at the
might harbour same speed. Imagine the star is a twirling ice skater,
ultramassive holding his arms outstretched. As he spins, he pulls his
arms inwards, and starts to spin faster. This is down
black holes to the law of conservation of angular momentum.
The galaxy OJ 287 has two black As the matter collapses in towards the centre
holes, one of which is thought to of a dying star, its diameter decreases
contain the mass of around 18 and, like the ice skater, it
billion Suns. spins faster.
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Accretion disc
Spinning black holes trap a wide,
rotating disc of matter, which
increases in velocity as it hurtles Singularity
towards the event horizon. The Shielded from view, at the very heart
trapped dust and gas particles rub of the black hole, matter is crushed to a
against each other, glowing with single point. Physics as we know it falls
energetic radiation. apart, and space and time cease to exist.
Jets
At the poles of a spinning 12 Some
black hole, the magnetic
field funnels material black holes
away from the immense
gravitational pull, shooting it
out into space in bright jets.
have jets
Some black holes spew impressive
amounts of energy from their poles,
marking their location like a beacon.
As dust and gas race towards the
event horizon of a spinning black hole,
magnetic field lines direct some of the
energy outwards, funnelling it into two
energetic jets, like a particle accelerator.
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey
Explorer (WISE) has identified a pair
of black holes orbiting one another,
Event horizon which together create gravitational
The event horizon is
the point of no return, and magnetic disturbances so intense
where the velocity that their jets are being warped and
required to escape the twisted into ribbon-like spirals.
pull of the black hole
is greater than the
speed of light.
11 The centre of a
black hole could
contain a singularity
The event horizon of a black hole can
measure thousands of kilometres in
as a singularity. Every possible path
leads back to the centre, and matter 13 They
diameter, but once matter crosses
over the edge it does not stop
becomes so crushed, into such a tiny
space, that it is unrecognisable. The slowly leak
moving. Exactly what happens on
the inside is debated, but according
singularity is infinitely small, and
infinitely dense, creating an infinite radiation
to Einstein’s theory of general curvature in space-time. Within a Stephen Hawking showed that
relativity, the curvature of space-time region of space known as the event black holes could actually radiate
inside a black hole is extreme, and horizon, anything that crosses over energy, known as Hawking radiation,
everything is directed towards a is compelled towards the centre with releasing their scrambled contents
single point, known mathematically no hope of escape. back into the universe.
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Space science Space-time
This two-dimensional representation
demonstrates how a black hole distorts
the fabric of space-time.
14 It takes
millions of years
to orbit our
supermassive
black hole
Sagittarius A* lies around 26,000
light years from the Solar System,
and it takes 225 million years for us
to complete a single orbit around
the galactic centre.
15 They were
originally known
as dark stars
The idea of black holes has
been around much longer than
the science that predicts their
existence, but in the 18th Century
they were known as ‘dark stars’.
16 Cygnus X-1
was the first
black hole to be
identified
Cygnus X-1 is one of the brightest
radio sources in the sky, and
is currently in the process of
devouring a blue supergiant.
17 Black holes
create waves
Albert Einstein predicted that as
massive objects, like black holes,
move through space, they create
gravitational waves that ripple
through space-time.
18 The universe
is shaped by
black holes
Supermassive black holes are found
at the heart of almost all large
galaxies, and act as the linchpins
of the universe, around which stars
and planets turn.
20
Black holes
19 Stellar black
holes contain
the mass of five
bend space-time
Albert Einstein showed that the The more mass that is collected in is trying to travel in a straight line,
or more Suns universe is made from a fabric, known one area, the more of an impression however, the curved floor forces them
Black holes formed during the death as space-time, and, just like a piece it makes in the fabric, and the more to move around in circles. If they pedal
of a star usually contain at least as of cloth, it can be bent, twisted and energy is required to escape its faster, they might be able to get up
much mass as five Sun-sized stars, stretched. Massive objects, including gravitational field. enough speed to climb out of the top
compressed into an area measuring planets and stars, make dips in the One object in orbit around another of the dome, and if they slow down,
just a few kilometres across. fabric of space-time, like bowling can be thought of as being similar to they will start to drift back in towards
balls sitting on top of a trampoline. a cyclist in a velodrome. The cyclist the centre.
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Interview
We spoke
to head of
the Nuker
Team, Prof
Douglas Richstone,
about the origin of
supermassive
black holes
22 Almost
every
Infinite curve good-sized
The singularity is infinitely dense,
and creates an infinite curve in
galaxy has a
the fabric of space-time. supermassive
black hole
For every galaxy that is
reasonably good sized and
regular (that is, a galaxy with a
disc and a bulge, and possibly
spiral arms, or a so-called
elliptical galaxy that looks round)
there is a black hole. Moreover,
the black hole’s mass tracks the
mass of the host galaxy (and
is about 1/1,000 of the galaxy’s
mass). These black holes range
from 1 million to nearly 10 billion
solar masses.
However, for galaxies that
are very small, or irregular, or
possibly only have a disc and
no round component (bulge),
the situation is much more
complicated. Some of these
galaxies appear to have black
holes and others don’t.
21 23 Quiet
Black holes supermassive
black holes used
are spherical to be quasars
Black holes are often depicted as being funnel-shaped,
We don’t know for certain how the
but these two-dimensional diagrams are simply used to
big black holes noted above form,
explain the idea that massive objects cause space-time to
but there is a clue. The amount of
bend. In reality, space has at least three dimensions, and the
mass in galaxies at present tied
Focal point impression that a black hole makes in space-time is much
up in black holes is almost exactly
Space and time more complicated. The black hole itself, like most massive
the amount of mass needed to
is concentrated objects, is actually spherical. Gravity acts equally in all
power quasars (very bright objects
on a single spot different directions around it, and the event horizon
thought to be black holes accreting
at the singularity. represents the point beyond which gravity becomes
matter) when the universe was
so intense that it is inescapable. It is the same
about a fifth of its present age. So it
distance from the centre of the black hole,
is reasonable to identify the black
no matter which direction you
holes in galaxies now as the relics
approach it from.
of quasars.
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Space science
24 It's impossible 1. Neutron star

After black holes, neutron stars
2. Stellar black hole
Many black holes are part
to see them are the densest objects in the of binary systems, closely
directly universe, a single teaspoon can
weigh billions of tons.
orbiting another star,
and hurtling towards an
Black holes do not emit or reflect
eventual collision.
electromagnetic radiation (except
Hawking radiation), but their
gravitational effects are detectable.
4. Spaghettification
The front edge of the star is
25 Some black 3. Shredding closer to the centre of the black
holes spin at As the star is stretched,
it starts to come apart,
hole, and the gravitational pull is
stronger, stretching it out into a
half the speed creating a vast smear. wide arc as it spirals inwards.
of light
30
By looking at the pattern of X-rays
in the area surrounding a black
hole, the speed at which it is
spinning can be determined.
26 There are
two types of
Objects are
black hole stretched like
Schwarzschild black holes are
the simplest, and are made up of
spaghetti as
just an event horizon and a they approach
singularity. Kerr black holes rotate,
and have a third component a black hole
known as the ergosphere. As an object gets closer to a black quickly than the back, the elastic limit of the material
hole, the gravitational pull rises drawing it out into a long filament in it starts to break apart, continuing
27 Black holes sharply. The parts of the object a process known as spaghettification. to tear into smaller and smaller
that are closest to the black hole The tidal forces around a black pieces, each being stretched out like
are noisy experience stronger attraction than hole are strong enough that anything spaghetti, until all that is left are the
In 2003, NASA’s Chandra X-ray those farther away, causing them entering becomes stretched, from the elementary particles.
observatory revealed that a black to accelerate faster. This stretches largest stars, to the smallest atoms. Spaghettification takes place at
hole in the Perseus cluster makes the object as the front moves more When the stretching force exceeds different times depending on the
a sound in the pitch of B flat.
28 We’ll never
know what is 31 When two black holes
really inside a collide, they form one even
black hole
Light cannot escape across the
event horizon of a black hole,
more massive black hole
preventing us from seeing in; It is thought likely that the
there is no definitive answer supermassive black holes at the
about what really happens centres of galaxies began to form
inside a black hole. early in the evolution of the universe.
As matter condensed to form the
first galaxies, it would have been
29 One day, much closer together, and small black
black holes will holes would have been able to feast
on dust, and gas, becoming truly
dominate the massive in a very short space of time.
universe Several ‘intermediate black holes’
Black holes evaporate so slowly are thought to have formed within
that they will exist long after clusters of stars, before sinking
the last of the stars fade and die, towards the centres of galaxies
leading scientists to predict that under the influence of each other’s
one day they will be all that is left gravitational pull, collapsing in on
in the universe. one another to form the supermassive
giants that we see today.
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6. Immense friction
The particles in the disc rub against one
another, releasing energy, and leaving
a blazing trail as the broken star circles
towards the event horizon.
5. Entering the disc

As the dismantled star grows
nearer to the event horizon,
it starts to merge with the
accretion disc.
7. X-ray emissions
In the minutes and hours following
the initial collision, the last remnants
of the swallowed star continue to
drop over the event horizon, releasing
spikes of X-ray emissions. 8. Gamma-ray burst
As the neutron star crashes
into the black hole, most of
9. Polar jets it is swallowed in an instant,
In a feeding frenzy, the black releasing a huge burst of
hole spits the excess back out energetic gamma rays.
into space, funnelling it away
from the poles in two bright jets.
size and type of black hole. For small,

stellar black holes, for example, it
occurs before objects have crossed
the event horizon. However, in
supermassive black holes, the tidal
forces do not always become great
enough until the object has crossed
over the point of no return.
Interview
33 Even dwarf
32 The galaxies can harbour
larger supermassive black holes
the black Prof Anil
Seth,
black holes play an important role in
how galaxies form, and this provides a
hole, the University

new environment for us to find these
objects. Currently we don’t understand
less dense of Utah,

how they form because their formation
happened so early in the universe.
it is recently discovered a
How did such a big black hole form
As if the mass inside a black supermassive black in such a small galaxy?
hole doubles, the volume of its
event horizon increases eight
hole at the centre of a M60-UCD1 got its name because it
is just 22,000 light years from the
times, making it more massive, dwarf galaxy giant elliptical galaxy M60 (this is
but less dense. What makes the supermassive black closer than we are to the centre of our
hole in the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 galaxy). We think that M60-UCD1 is
such an interesting find? in orbit around M60 and was once a
We think most big galaxies have much larger galaxy. When it passed
supermassive black holes, but M60- close to the centre of M60, this bigger
UCD1 is much smaller and less galaxy had its outer parts stripped
The sponge is bigger massive than any other galaxy with a away leaving just the dense core of
and more massive. but
supermassive black hole. Supermassive stars and the black hole behind.
less dense than
the marble
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Space science
No singularity
According to Hawking’s theory, matter
is temporarily trapped inside the black
Hawking radiation hole, condensed and unrecognisable, but
The strange physics around the never quite crushed to a single physics-
perimeter of a black hole mean that it is defying point.
theoretically possible for matter to travel
faster than the speed of light, escaping
the void as Hawking radiation.
Apparent horizon
Prof Stephen Hawking theorises
that instead of having an event
horizon, black holes create such
a disturbance in space-time that
34 Black holes they can hold light temporarily

around their edges.
were first
imagined
Black holes
in the 18th
century
Scientists John Michell and Pierre-Simon
LaPlace were the first to wonder about
the existence of black holes, imagining
that beyond a certain point, the gravity
of a massive object must become so great
35
In 2014, Stephen Hawking put
forward a controversial theory
might not exist
about black holes; that they do not
According to Einstein, the point
at which matter crosses over into
a black hole and gets destroyed
of quantum theory, but Hawking
proposes a new answer; that the
event horizon does not actually
that nothing can get away. The trouble
was, according to Isaac Newton’s theory of exist at all, at least not in the way as it's spaghettified and pulled exist at all. He suggests that black
gravitation, light wouldn’t be affected by we imagine them. The science of towards the singularity. However, holes are not bottomless pits from
gravity, because it has no mass. So, no matter black holes is based on Einstein’s according to quantum theory, which nothing can return, and
how massive an object became, light should theory of general relativity, but the event horizon would actually that instead, they just temporarily
be able to escape. It wasn’t until Einstein’s there are grey areas that don’t be a 'firewall' of high-energy hold and scramble matter, before
theory of general relativity that the physics of quite make sense. One of the major particles. The physics behind releasing it back into the universe
black holes really started to make sense. problems is the event horizon. Einstein's theory contradicts that as radiation.
36 Black
holes
regulate
their
own size
Feeding generates intense radiation,
which pushes outwards, clearing an
enormous hole near the black hole,
and limiting its growth.
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37 Even a rocket travelling at

the speed of light could not
escape from a black hole
As objects become more massive and
more dense, it becomes increasingly
hard to escape their gravitational pull.
star, like Sirius B, the same rocket would
need to travel at 5,200 kilometres (3,231
miles) per second in order to escape.
For a rocket to escape the gravity of the Within the grip of a black hole, even
Earth, it must travel at a speed of 11.2 a rocket travelling at the breakneck
kilometres (seven miles) per second, speed of light, 299,792 kilometres
from the surface of the Sun, that speed (186,282 miles) per second, would be
rises to 618 kilometres (1,005 miles) per unable to free itself from the immense
second, and from a dense white dwarf gravitational pull.
Escape Sun
velocity 618km/s
Event horizon
Greater than
299,792km/s
(speed of light)
Earth
11.2km/s
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Space science
44
38 Some can be
very tiny
The smallest theoretical mass
for a black hole is around 22
micrograms, a value known as the
Planck mass.
39 The closest
black hole is There is a
6,070 light
years away
from Earth
supermassive
The closest black hole to Earth is
Cygnus X-1, and is located on the
Orion Spur of the Milky Way and
has the mass of about 15 Suns.
black hole at
40 “Black holes
have no hair” the centre of
This famous statement made
by scientist John Wheeler
describes the simplicity of black
holes. Typically, they can be
described by just three quantities:
the Milky Way
At the centre of the Milky Way, the stars move in strange circles. They hurtle
their mass, angular momentum towards a bright radio source, turn in a tight hairpin, and then race away
and electric charge. again. Tracing the lines of their orbits reveals that they all overlap at a single
point, known as Sagittarius A*.
41 They halt The region is shrouded in a thick cloud of dust and gas, making it difficult
local star to see, but in order to account for these highly elliptical orbits, astronomers
have calculated that Sagittarius A* must contain around 4 million solar
formation masses, compressed into a volume with a radius of about 25 million
The largest and most active kilometres (15.5 million miles). In other words, it is a supermassive black hole.
supermassive black holes often
occur in the quietest galaxies.
The radiation released as they
feed stops the gas around them 45 Some
condensing to form stars.
black holes
42 The Sun power the
could never
become a brightest
black hole objects in
To become a black hole, a star
must be so massive that it
the universe
completely collapses under its In the Sixties, US astronomer Allan
own gravitational pull. The Sun Sandage noticed a very bright object
is much too small, and instead, it in the distant sky. From Earth, it
will end its life as a white dwarf. was as bright as a nearby star, but its
vast distance meant that it must be
emitting hundreds of times as much
43 Black energy as all of the stars in the Milky
holes come in Way combined. Dubbed quasars,
these objects are among the brightest
different sizes in the universe, and represent actively
Stellar-mass black holes can feeding supermassive black holes.
measure just a few kilometres in Thousands have been identified, and
diameter, whereas supermassive each blazes brightly as matter tumbles
black holes can be the size of our on to its accretion disc, spewing
Solar System. X-rays and visible light into space, and
producing energetic jets from its poles.
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47 Space around
a spinning black
hole is warped
Spinning black holes distort space-
time, wrapping it into a swirl known
as the ergosphere. Within this area,
© NASA; ESO; Adrian Chestermann; Science Photo Library; ESA; JPL-Caltech; CXC; STScI; Alamy
space itself moves faster than the
speed of light.
48 W49B is the
youngest known
black hole in the
Milky Way
An asymmetrical supernova remnant
is all that remains of a star that
exploded just 1,000 years ago. There
Strange things happen
is no evidence of a neutron star at its
around supermassive black
hole Sagittarius A* core, leading astronomers to believe
that it harbours a young black hole.
49 Spinning
black holes have
a donut-shaped
46 Particle magnetic field
accelerators formation
could create As matter swirls around the accretion
disc of a black hole, the magnetic
micro black fields line up, forming a donut-

shaped ring with the event horizon
holes nestled in the hole at the centre.
When the Large Hadron Collider at

CERN was switched on in 2008, there
50 Small galaxies
were concerns among scientists that contain medium-
the particles, travelling at close to sized black holes
the speed of light, could theoretically It was thought that black holes
produce miniature black holes. So far, came in two sizes, stellar-mass black
no such holes have been created, but it holes and supermassive black holes,
is definitely possible in theory. but researchers using data from
Even if a micro black hole was NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory
created, there would be little to worry and Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer
about. The black hole would be so (RXTE) telescopes measured a
incredibly small that it would take medium black hole in Messier 82 to
billions of years for it to consume just be around 400 solar masses. These
a single gram of matter, and if Stephen 'intermediate-mass black holes'
Hawking is correct, and black holes contain between 100 and 10,000
do leak radiation, the tiny black hole times the mass of the Sun.
would decay long before this would
ever happen.
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Space science
How do planetary
orbits work?
Which forces keep the planets of the Solar
System in their paths around the Sun?
If the Sun disappeared tomorrow, Earth would
soon become a very cold and dark planet and
Solar System
Kepler’s third law can be
would tumble out of its orbit. It would follow a applied to our Solar System.
straight rather than a curved path, drifting away in Mercury’s orbit is just 88 Earth
whichever direction it was facing. days compared to our 365-day
Thankfully, this won’t happen any time soon. orbit, so we know that Mercury
Even though the Earth only wants to go forward, the is closer to the Sun than Earth.
Sun's gravity stops it moving further away and holds
it in orbit, doing the same for the Solar System's Equal areas rule
other planets, dwarf planets, comets and asteroids. Let's say we drew a line from the
In doing so, the Sun exerts a centripetal force, orbiting object (a planet) to the
pulling these falling bodies into an elliptical object being orbited (the Sun in
path around it. The stable orbits that result are a this case) and then drew another
balancing act between the planet's forward motion 31 days later. The area of the
resulting triangle will always be
and the gravitational pull exerted on it. At the
the same, no matter where on
optimum balance, although the body is constantly the eclipse you start the sample.
falling towards the Sun, it is moving sideways fast
enough to ensure it does not collide with the Sun.
The same principle applies to satellites that orbit
planets. Our Moon, for example, is affected by the
gravity of the Earth as well as the Sun. It must
remain at the required speed to stay in orbit and it
cannot reach a speed that enables it to pull free.
Any object in orbit around another, under the
influence of gravity, acts in accordance with a set of
laws described by the German mathematician and
astronomer Johannes Kepler. These are referred to
as Kepler's three laws of planetary motion and they
date back as far as 1609.
The first law states that the planets move around
the Sun in orbits shaped like ellipses. The second
rule is that they sweep out equal areas of space in
equal times as they orbit. Even though a planet
changes speed as it orbits the Sun – the closer it is
to the Sun the faster is travels and vice versa – if you
were to draw a line from the centre of the planet to
the centre of the Sun and then another at a later set
period of time, it doesn't matter where the planet is
in its orbit, the area of the ‘slice’ of its orbit ellipsis
that it has covered will be the same.
Kepler’s third law describes the relationship
between the time it takes for a planet to orbit,
and its distance from the Sun. His equation states
that the square of the orbital period of a planet is Perihelion
proportional to the cube of its average distance A planet will move faster when
from the Sun. So if you know how long it takes for it is closer to the Sun, creating
a planet to go around the Sun, it is possible to work a broader triangle. The point
out how far away it is. Kepler's work has been hugely of nearest approach is called
influential; it was his final law that led Isaac Newton the perihelion.
to his work on gravity and the laws of motion.
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How do planetary orbits work?
Elliptical orbit
Johannes Kepler worked as
Aphelion an assistant to astronomer
When a planet is furthest Tycho Brahe and was asked
from the Sun, it will move to define the orbit of Mars.
slower, so the triangle He noted that all objects in
is long and narrow. The orbit around another object
furthest point in an object’s follow an elliptical path and
orbit is called the aphelion. this became his first law.
Kepler's laws of
planetary motion
The focus points

An ellipse has two points called foci. If
you draw two lines from the orbiting
object to the foci, the sum length of the
lines will remain constant, regardless of
where the object is on the ellipse. The
object being orbited will sit at one of
the foci on the long 'major axis'.
Earth has
around 3,000
orbiting satellites
Earth orbits
When satellites are put into space, they can do one
of two things: stay above one particular area of Earth
or circle the planet. The behaviour of the satellite is
determined by its distance from Earth, and whether
it is in a low, medium or high orbit. Objects in a low
Length of orbits orbit move faster than those in a high orbit. Satellites
The third law was announced a decade for television, communication and weather are
after the first and second, going into more placed in a medium orbit where they can follow the
depth on the movement of an orbiting same spot on the Earth. NASA's Aqua satellite, which
© Adrian Mann
object. If you know how long it takes for a gathers information about the Earth's water cycle, is
© NASA
planet to orbit the Sun, then you can work in a low orbit, circling the planet in 99 minutes.
out how far away from our star it is.
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Space science
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Dark matter
85 per cent of reality is missing.

We shed light on the secret controlling
the fate of the universe
When you look up at the night sky, you’ll see least because it is unlike the normal matter that we
millions upon millions of illuminated objects, from find here on Earth. It is not composed of baryons,
the Moon and stars to the planets in our Solar the ‘normal matter’ particles that make up the
System. It is easy to think that they make up the planets, stars and even ourselves. It does not emit
bulk of what exists in the universe but, in fact, what or absorb light and it cannot be directly observed
can be viewed is a tiny fraction of what is there. with our very own eyes. About the only thing
What you can’t see is an invisible yet important astronomers know with some certainty is that dark
entity called dark matter, which makes up 22 per matter interacts through gravity. As for the rest, it’s
cent of the cosmos. That may strike you as odd since fair to say astronomers understand more about what
there is six times more dark matter than the normal dark matter is not, than what it actually is. “It’s all a
matter that comprises everything we can see and bit embarrassing,” Richard Massey, an astrophysicist
touch, but as one of astronomy’s deepest mysteries, at Durham University’s Institute for Computational
it looks set to take decades to unravel its secrets. Cosmology, tells All About Space. “There are lots
Dark matter has been confounding and and lots of theories about what it could be, but you
fascinating astronomers for more than 80 years, not could take a theorist and put him in a room for a
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Space science
day with a pencil and he will come up with another

theory. We’ve had decades to think about dark
matter so there’s a lot of ideas about what it is and
what it could do but, honestly, we have no clue. It
could be any or none of them.”
Dark matter was first 'observed' in 1933 by Swiss
astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who had argued – correctly
– that galaxies moved in relation to one another
within clusters. It was during his study of the Coma
Cluster, that he noted the rapidly moving galaxies
did not have enough visible matter to provide the
necessary gravity to hold them together. In order to
explain what he was seeing, he concluded that there
must be lots of unseen matter. At the time, however,
his findings were largely ignored.
Gradually, though, the idea of an invisible material
became the accepted wisdom. In the Seventies, Pascal Pralavorio, using
astronomer Vera Rubin found that single galaxies the LHC’s ATLAS
as well as clusters also had hidden mass and she detector, is seeking the
discovered that the stars orbiting black holes at the particles that could
centre of spiral galaxies maintained the same speed make up dark matter
no matter how far away they were from it. This
kind of behaviour struck her as being particularly the time of the Big Bang, eventually condensing to opposite of matter, but they haven’t seen the unique
unusual since the black holes provide gravity, just form the backbone on which everything else in the gamma rays that are produced when antimatter
as the Sun does for the planets in our Solar System. universe is built. As the universe formed and dark meets matter and the pair destroy each other.
The difference is, the further away planets are from matter clumped, its massive weight exerted gravity Massive compact halo objects (MACHOs), brown
the Sun, the slower they complete their orbit. To on the visible, normal matter objects around it, dwarfs, white dwarfs and black holes have also been
explain why stars keep a constant speed regardless pulling them in and helping galaxies to form. The looked at as explanations but they have been ruled
of their position around a black hole, Rubin believed gravitational attraction is so great that it prevents out because dark matter comprises 85 per cent of
something else must be providing the gravity. the galaxies from splitting and affect the speeds at all matter in the universe and there just aren’t that
That something else is dark matter, the stuff which they travel in a cluster. many of these objects to account for such a large
which binds galaxies together. Forming an invisible But what is this elusive mass made up of? That heft. There is a potential for dark matter to be made
halo around a galaxy which extends beyond its is the question astronomers are keen to answer up of neutrino or axion particles. But astronomers
edge, it also keeps the rotation speed constant. and so far science has drawn a blank. Experts have believe it is more likely to include something
Dark matter is believed to have been present at considered dark matter consisting of antimatter, the entirely different given that the behaviour of
What is dark matter? In the dark

Dark matter is non-luminous
meaning astronomers can
study its effects but are unable
A galactic glue to directly observe it. It does
Dark matter has a not emit or absorb light.
gravitational attraction
which enables it to hold
clusters of galaxies together.
Lending extra mass

At the speeds they rotate,
galaxies should tear themselves
Perplexing matter apart. Dark matter lends extra
Astronomers still know mass, generating the gravity
little about dark matter. needed to keep them intact.
Most believe it is not made
up of photons, electrons
and atoms, though.
War in the cosmos

Dark matter ‘battles’ with
Space’s scaffolding dark energy. As dark
As well as binding matter seeks to bond,
clusters, dark matter acts dark energy is pushing
as a kind of skeleton to the universe into an
hold the universe together accelerated expansion.
in a web-like structure.
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Dark matter
What is the universe made of? 26.8%

Dark matter
Over 25 per cent of our
universe is made up of
dark matter – just over
five times that of normal.
31.7%
All matter
Take dark energy out of the
equation and the amount
of matter in the universe is
85% dark and 15% normal.
68.3%
Dark energy 4.9%
Astronomers believe dark Normal matter
energy makes up the Normal matter – the visible
majority of our universe. substance making up the
It’s thought that this baryonic matter we can
mysterious form of observe – comprises a small
energy will become more per cent of the universe.
dominant in the future.
those particles do not fully explain the indirect the smashing of particles in June. “If dark matter is “gravity would have to be modified compared to
observations of dark matter. They label the potential really a new particle, then it should have a special what we know”. But since, this, in principle, has
dark fundamental particles as weakly interacting characteristic,” says Pascal Pralavorio, a physicist been tested in the Eighties and Nineties and the
massive particles (WIMPS) and while this still fails at CERN who works on the LHC’s ATLAS detector, conclusion is that it is not possible to explain the
to actually explain what they are, it at least points to which is seeking the particles that could make up dark matter phenomena by modifying the gravity,
one of the hallmarks of dark matter: the fact that its dark matter. “It should be long-lived and go at a the probability is that it is a new particle. And so the
particles can pass through normal matter and other relatively slow speed compared to the speed of light. search continues.
dark matter particles. “Dark matter doesn’t interact But we know nothing about these particles – we Scientists are using a variety of instruments in
with our particles or other dark matter particles don’t know their mass, for example. We are trying to the hunt ranging from the Large Hadron Collider
except through gravity,” explains Massey. “If you put search everywhere.” and telescopes to antimatter detectors, cosmology
your hand down on the table, it doesn’t go through In trying to re-create the primordial blast of instruments and gamma-ray detectors – NASA’s
the table because of the electromagnetic force. 13.8 billion years ago, CERN scientists hope that Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope could possibly
That’s what pushes atoms apart from each other. It’s the particles which make up dark matter may be detect dark matter collisions, for example. Hundreds
the same with a car crash – electromagnetic forces spotted. Pralavorio thinks that there could be one, of galaxies have been analysed and they are seen to
stop the car and crumple it up. With dark matter, it two, three, or more dark matter particles, but resigns behave in the same way, displaying speeds at which
seems, everywhere we looked were lumps of dark himself to the fact that we just don’t know yet. With they rotate that do not match their visible mass.
matter that had smashed into each other like a big the LHC’s beam energy level being cranked up, In April this year, Massey led aZ team of scientists
car crash. But they just passed straight through scientists are looking for missing transverse energy, which used the Hubble Space Telescope to view four
each other and they didn’t care. They also passed which is an imbalance in momentum before and distant galaxies at the centre of a cluster 1.3 billion
through ordinary matter and just kept going. We after a particle collision. “But the way we are looking light years away from Earth. Lots of the collisions
concluded that dark matter doesn’t interact with the at it is paradoxical,” Pralavorio adds. “These particles, showed that dark matter didn’t interact, slow down
electromagnetic force.” if they were to exist, would leave no hint at all in or become destroyed. But there was an extra one – a
It is perhaps ironic, then, that one of the methods our detectors so we will see them by the absence of single galaxy falling into a cluster of galaxies, which
being used to detect the individual particles of dark seeing them.” is something that happens over a longer period of
matter involves smashing protons together at close If it seems like a stab in the dark, then it is to time – that showed dark matter didn’t end up where
to the speed of light. Such a thing is taking place in a degree. “We are kind of in the dark for the time it was expected. Instead, it appeared that one of the
the 27-kilometre (17-mile) long underground complex being,” says Pralavorio. “It’s like entering a new dark matter clumps was lagging behind the galaxy it
that is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near world of experiments and, in principle, it is possible surrounded, leaving it some 50,000 million million
Geneva. Scientists at the European Organization for that dark matter doesn’t even exist.” In order for kilometres (31,000 million million miles) away. This
Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland resumed it not to exist, though, the physicist explains that was an intriguing discovery because it showed dark
matter may be able to interact with forces other
than gravity otherwise it would have remained close
“We’ve had decades to think about dark and kept up to speed. “It points to a very gentle
source tugging at the dark matter, very, very slowly
matter so there’s a lot of ideas about for billions of years resulting in an appreciable net
what it is and what it could do” Richard Massey force,” says Massey. This showed the lag and pointed
to a possibility of dark matter’s self-interaction. It
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Space science
Dark matter vs dark energy

How the universe could end depends on who wins in a cosmic tug of war
Big Freeze Big Crunch
Rather than rip apart, there is a theory For the ‘Big Crunch’ to occur, gravity would slow
that the universe will continue to expansion and drag objects back, collapsing the
expand and then simply stop. Dark universe in on itself. There would need to be enough Dark
energy will push the universe apart,
with the energy inside it becoming more
matter with a density greater than critical density to
exert the required gravitational force. It would also
matter
and more spread out, until it reaches a
balance point with dark matter. New
mean dark matter dominating over dark energy. The
result would be the creation of the largest ever black
wins
stars will be unable to form because the hole – or the ignition of another, reforming, Big Bang.
supplies of gas are too thin and there
will be a uniform temperature. It will
result in the Big Freeze, leaving the 5 A state of 6 Start again
The singularity is
universe dead and empty. singularity incredibly dense
The black holes coalesce
and, in theory,
4 The Big Freeze and a unified black hole
it could spark
The universe cools and is created. A very hot
another Big Bang,
heat death results: stars die point is reached.
starting the whole
and matter decays since cycle over again.
there is no temperature
difference to allow energy
to be consumed. 4 Black hole
As galaxy clusters
are pulled closer
3 Continuing
and merge, stars
to expand explode and black
As the universe
holes emerge
expands, the space
as the universe
between the clusters
collapses under
of galaxies will grow.
its own gravity.
The gases needed for
star formation run thin.
2 Period of
expansion
The universe has been
expanding for billions
of years. It began It's 3 Greater
density
accelerating 6 billion
years ago and heat is
being dispersed.
a tie! The density of the
universe is greater
than the critical
value. Gravity is
increased and
starts to contract
1 The beginning the universe.
As with all theories,
everything starts
with the Big Bang
which happened 13.8
billion years ago.
KEVIN PIMBBLET 2 Reaching a

maximum
Astronomer at the University of Hull, The Big Crunch NEMANJA KALOPER
UK, and Monash University, Australia theory supposes
“We know that the universe is expanding and space is a positive Professor of physics at the
accelerating in its expansion. We also know that constant curvature, University of California, Davis
its geometry is all but flat (which means angles or a closed universe. “Since particles have a mass, the universe
If so, a maximum 1 Universe must have a finite volume and time range,
in a triangle add up to 180 degrees). What we
expansion is reached. expands so it must crunch in the future. The
don’t know is how powerful dark energy is. For
The universe is
this reason, the current best bet for me is that the currently expanding current phase of acceleration cannot last
universe will carry on expanding forever. If dark and it will continue to forever, but is merely a transient phase.
energy is shown to be stronger, then I’m willing to do so for many more Dark energy cannot ever remain constant,
change my mind and opt for a Big Rip instead!” billions of years. which preordains the universe to collapse.”
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Dark matter
Big Rip is not conclusive and more studies are needed, but
It was once widely thought that the gravitational pull of Dark Massey says: “If it’s verified then there is no doubt it
the universe would cause its expansion to slow down but
evidence points instead to an acceleration. Indeed, the energy 7 Torn apart
is very significant.”
“What we saw was a bit of a mystery,” he adds.
gravitational attraction of dark matter began to weaken 8
billion years after the Big Bang, putting dark energy in a
wins Eventually everything
from the galaxies to
“We saw the kind of thing that would be predicted if
dark matter particles were bouncing off each other,
dominant position. This appears to be pushing the universe the planets, stars and without actually witnessing it first hand. But it’s
subatomic particles
apart and, if it continues to speed up, the constituents of such an important thing if it’s true that we’re busy
would be ripped apart.
matter could start to separate, causing the Big Rip. trying to check if there is any other way to cause
this kind of observational effect that we saw.”
Scientists ‘see’ dark matter using a precise
technique called gravitational lensing which relies
on dark matter’s ability to deflect light rays. The
path that the light follows around dark matter lets
astronomers map its distribution. “Fortunately big
lumps of dark matter bump into each other from
time to time, just as galaxies bump into each other
as they whizz around the cosmos,” says Massey.
“So what we’ve been doing is using the Very Large
Telescope in Chile to look at those places in the
universe where lumps of dark matter and ordinary
material happen to have bumped into each other.
We watch for the trajectories of dark matter and see
6 Faster and faster whether it has slowed down at all and whether it’s
Should gravity be
changed direction or converted into something else.
thwarted in its attempts
We also look to see whether some of it disappeared
to make the universe
collapse again, expansion in the collision.” Certainly, Massey feels dark matter
would accelerate further. should interact in some way, at a very low level
at least. “We know that because dark matter was
created in the first place and so it must have been
5 Accelerating created through some sort of interaction. Even
expansion in the universe 13 billion years later there will be
Gravity decreased due some very low level residual,” he says. In general,
to the falling density of though, it has been seen that when two galaxies
dark matter. Dark energy
collide, they merge without any issue with various
3 Dark energy began to accelerate the
universe’s expansion. elements smashing into each other, pointing to the
Around 6 billion gravitational field of the galaxies.
years ago, the One thing that can be said for certain is that there
density of dark
is a finite amount of dark matter. Dr Massey says
energy exceeded
the density of measurements began being taken ten years ago to
dark matter for see how much dark matter there is in the universe
the first time. 4 Galaxy formation at different times. “Wherever we look, there seems
The merging and clumping to be a fixed amount of it, just like with ordinary
of dark matter formed matter,” he explains. “But as the universe gets
galaxies which started bigger, it gets stretched and diluted. Eventually it
small and drew in other
could get so stretched, it pulls itself apart but dark
objects to become larger.
matter’s gravity pulls it together. It’s like when you
throw up a ball and gravity brings it back down
again, keeping everything nice and steady on the
ground. If you explode out of the Big Bang, then
gravity will pull everything back together and keep
everything intact.”
But in 1998, an astonishing find was made by
two teams of astronomers using the Hubble Space
2 Dark matter EELCO VAN KAMPEN Telescope. The High-Z Supernova Search Team and
Dark matter exceeded the Supernova Cosmology Project were studying
the density of dark Astronomer at ESO distant exploding stars, or supernovae as they are
energy for billions “Dark energy competes with gravity (due to matter, referred to, and noted that they appeared to be
of years. It made up including dark matter) to determine the fate of unexpectedly dimmer. The observations pointed to
about 63% of the our universe. Gravity pulls things together, while the stars being further away than the calculations
universe when it was dark energy tries to expand everything away from suggested they should be, especially given that, up
just a few hundred
each other even more than it currently does: it until that point it was firmly believed the expansion
thousand years old. 1 The Big Bang
accelerates the expansion of our universe. How of the universe was slowing down. This led to
Dark matter and dark
energy are said to have fast that happens depends on the nature of the the startling conclusion no one was expecting:
originated at the point of dark energy: in the most extreme case, it causes that the expansion of the universe was actually
the Big Bang, following everything, including atoms, and finally space- speeding up. If we use Massey’s example of the ball
which atoms were formed. time itself, to rip apart: this is the ‘Big Rip’.” being thrown into the air, this is akin to it being
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Making a dark
propelled upwards and continuing to rise at faster
and faster speeds forever more. On Earth, gravity
would pull it back down and in space, dark matter
exerts a gravitational pull, which should rein in such
acceleration. So how could the universe be speeding
up? After much checking of the data, astrophysicists
came up with a hypothesis which said the universe
was expanding because of a repulsive gravity.
matter map
This has been labelled dark energy. Einstein From the ground and space, astronomers
had theorised such a thing decades before. His
theory of gravity made mention of a cosmological
are building a picture of the dark universe
constant which predicted that empty space is able
to possess its own energy. But while he later called
the constant his biggest blunder, it has since proved
not to be. For astronomers believe that, as the The Large Synoptic Gravitational lensing
universe expands, more dark energy appears. The Survey Telescope Gravitational lensing relies
Currently being built in Chile, on concentrations of
overall global effect of this leads to an ever greater
the LSST will map the visible matter bending light from
repulsive force which continues to accelerate the sky using a mix of strong and a more distant source.
speed of expansion. Since dark energy is not evenly weak gravitational lensing. It allows astronomers to
distributed throughout the universe, it has been measure the dark universe.
shown to ‘override’ the gravitational pull of dark
matter. These were astonishing findings and it was
no surprise when scientists Saul Perlmutter, Adam
Riess and Brian Schmidt shared the 2011 Nobel Prize
in physics for their work. “There’s a pull-versus-
push thing going on between dark energy and dark
matter – a titanic tug of war,” says Massey. “But dark
energy is just as mysterious still and we know even
less about it than we do dark matter. There are lots
of big experiments trying to measure both together
and work out the balance between them and what
all of these things do.”
As you would expect, this has a potentially huge
effect on the universe as a whole. The gravitational
pull of dark matter is failing to prevent the universe
from accelerating and so it gets bigger and bigger.
There is a possibility the universe will expand so
fast that it overstretches, the consequence of which
could be the eventual tearing of the universe. This
is something theorists call the ‘Big Rip’. At the same
time, dark energy is becoming ever more dominant.
Today 26.8 per cent of the universe is dark matter,
around 4.9 per cent is normal matter and dark
energy makes up the remaining 68.3 per cent. But
dark energy’s percentage is higher than it used to be
and dark matter’s percentage is lower. Dark energy
gained the upper hand around 6 billion years ago
and dark matter’s percentage share will continue to
fall in relation to dark energy as the latter feeds off
it. Should this continue, the growth of structures
such as galaxies could slow. Indeed, in 2011, NASA
reported that a five-year study of 200,000 galaxies
stretching back 7 billion years in cosmic time
independently confirmed dark energy was driving
our universe apart at accelerating speeds.
All of which makes the dark universe a
fascinating study. “If dark matter particles exist,
then it means we have physics beyond the model
that we know very well and that explains all
phenomena we are seeing,” says Pralavorio. “It will
need new theory to explain this in the next decade.”
Indeed, dark energy, dark matter and matter/anti-
matter symmetry is a key direction for 21st century
astrophysics. “Dark matter could have a role – dark The LSST telescope in Chile
energy for sure could have a higher role. It could will aim to measure the dark
universe using strong and
change the field of particle physics,” says Pralavorio.
weak gravitational lensing
“And we are not at the end of the surprises.”
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Introducing Euclid Plotting the evolution

Euclid is an ESA By mapping the 3D
mission which seeks distribution of 2 billion galaxies
to map the geometry and their dark matter and dark
of the dark universe. It energy, astronomers can plot
will launch in 2020. the evolution of the universe.
Measuring expansion
The telescope will point to a
position in the sky to accurately
measure the accelerated
expansion of the universe,
getting a better understanding
of dark matter and dark energy.
Taking snapshots
The telescope will feed
a visible-light camera
and a near-infrared
camera/spectrometer.
Hot, warm and cold dark matter
Cold dark matter Warm dark matter Hot dark matter

The cold dark matter theory is favoured Warm dark matter sits between cold Possessing high energy and travelling at
by most astronomers. It posits that cold and hot matter. Structures are formed speeds that are close to or at the speed
dark matter particles move much more from the bottom-up, as with cold dark of light, hot dark matter is composed
slowly than the speed of light. This matter where the distribution can grow of particles with zero or near-zero
means they possess lower energies and denser and more massive. They also mass and no electric charge such as
have an increased chance of growing form from the top-down, in the manner neutrinos. It is a less favoured theory
hierarchically since they can attract and of hot dark matter. Warm dark matter since the fast-moving particles are less
merge with each other, forming large- particles move at a higher speed than likely to clump together, making early
scale structures. cold dark matter but slower than hot. galaxy formation more difficult.
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Super galaxies
Super
galaxies
They’re the biggest galaxies in the universe – enormous
star clouds many times the size of the Milky Way. So
how do giant elliptical super galaxies form, and what
influence do they have on the universe around them?
Imagine a galaxy so large that, if it took the place of Giant ellipticals, sometimes nicknamed super
the Milky Way, it would not only engulf our galaxy’s galaxies, are the biggest and most massive galaxies
immediate satellites like the Magellanic Clouds, in the universe, as Ryan Hickox, assistant professor
but also swallow up the giant Andromeda spiral 2.5 in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at
million light years away. The idea of a monster on Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, explains:
this scale might seem outlandish, but in fact there’s “They tend to be found in the centres of large-scale
just such a giant 1 billion light years from Earth, in structures, either groups or clusters of galaxies, and
the constellation of Virgo. IC 1101 is the elliptical the largest ones have masses around a trillion times
super galaxy at the heart of the Abell 2029 galaxy the mass of the Sun, which is around ten times more
cluster – a huge ball of red and yellow stars with an than spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way.” Hickox
incredible six million-light year diameter. has dedicated much of his career to understanding
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Centaurus A is a giant elliptical galaxy thought to

be no more than 10 million light years from Earth
these giants – their properties, distribution and, above “One of the key properties of elliptical galaxies is times more massive, and yet have a star formation
all, the mysteries of their formation. that they have very old stars, most of which formed rate ten times slower. One of the major questions
As their name suggests, elliptical galaxies are probably only a few billion years after the Big Bang, about giant ellipticals is why they don’t have this gas.”
ball-shaped collections of stars. While most of the and right now they have very little cold, dense, star- As well as trillions of individual stars, super
stars in spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way orbit forming gas in them, so they have very little ongoing galaxies are often surrounded by large numbers of
around a flattened disc, the stars in ellipticals are star formation,” explains Hickox. It’s this lack of globular star clusters. These compact balls of up to
more randomly inclined. The result is a galaxy that star formation that leaves ellipticals dominated by a million stars look rather like miniature elliptical
appears to be more or less elongated or elliptical red and yellow stars – these sedate, low-mass stars galaxies in their own right, and are also dominated
along a particular axis. Small elliptical galaxies vary have lifetimes of many billions of years, while hotter by old red and yellow stars. Around 150 of these
in size from around 20 to 50,000 light years across, white and blue stars live and die on much shorter clusters orbit in and around our Milky Way galaxy,
but giant ellipticals can be several hundred thousand timescales, and so die out relatively rapidly if star but giant ellipticals such as Messier 87 (one of the
light years wide. Even bigger ‘cD’ galaxies have huge, formation stops. “In a galaxy like the Milky Way, you closest super galaxies to Earth, some 54 million light
diffuse outer layers that may be a million or more might have one Sun-like star being born every year,” years away at the heart of the Virgo Cluster) may be
light years across. Hickox continues, “but a giant elliptical could be ten accompanied by many thousands of globulars.
While smaller ellipticals are found throughout
“They have very old stars, the universe, the real monsters are only ever found
near the centre of large galaxy groups and clusters,
most of which formed where their gravitational influence makes a major

contribution to holding the cluster together. Here,
probably only a few billion X-ray observations show that they are surrounded
by vast clouds of gas, heated to many millions of
years after the Big Bang” degrees by tidal forces between the cluster galaxies.
“We think the reason why that gas is hot is
Ryan Hickox because it’s sitting in the gravitational well of the
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Super galaxies
How big is a
super galaxy?
Super galaxy
With a diameter of roughly 6
million light years, the largest
known galaxy in the universe
– IC 1101 – is about 50 times
the diameter of the Milky Way.
ay
Milky W
the
ger than
big
0 times
5
Milky Way
The scale of our spiral galaxy is
almost unimaginable – with a
diameter of roughly 120,000 light
years, it is a staggering 126 million
times the size of the Solar System.
126
milli
on t
imes
big ger
than
the
Sola
r Sys
tem
Solar System
The Solar System out to the orbit
of the outermost major planet,
Neptune, is roughly 9 billion
kilometres (5.6 billion miles)
across – about 6,500 times the
diameter of the Sun at its equator. e Sun
nth
er tha
igg
esb
tim
00
6,5
Earth
Our home planet is 12,742 kilometres
across, while the average distance to
the Moon is 384,400 kilometres (30
Earth diameters). Sun
The visible surface or photosphere of
arth our local star is 1.39 million kilometres
hanE (865,000 miles) in diameter – 110
rt
s bigge times the diameter of the Earth
e (12,740 kilometres/7,900 miles).
tim
110
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Elliptical structure
The galaxy’s structure
Anatomy of IC 1101 is formed by billions of
overlapping stars, each in
– the biggest galaxy their own elliptical orbit
around its inner core.
known to man
Hot gas
A huge halo of X-ray-emitting
gas surrounds the galaxy,
extending across the galaxy’s
halo into the surrounding
cluster. The gas is thought to
have been initially heated during
the galaxy mergers that formed
IC 1101, and probably remains
hot thanks to activity from its
supermassive black hole
Core region
The core region contains
most of the galaxy’s mass
and accounts for most of its
luminosity – some 2 trillion
times the luminosity of the Sun.
Central location
IC 1101 lies at the very centre
of the Abell 2029 cluster – cD
galaxies are thought to settle at
the centre of their clusters as
they are slowed down by the
gravitational pull from material
Supermassive black hole drawn into their wake.
A black hole with the mass of
many billions of Suns is thought
to dominate the galaxy’s core,
acting as its gravitational anchor
and spitting out jets that help
keep the surrounding gases hot
and subdue star formation.
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Super galaxies
whole cluster, which may have a mass a thousand

times or more than the central galaxy. But one thing
that’s not been clear is where that gas actually comes
from – has it fallen in from outside, or is it a hot
‘atmosphere’ produced by evolving stars inside the
galaxy? You can think of the hot gas in the system as
being bound to the galaxy cluster as a whole, but it’s
an open question how much is associated with the
galaxy itself.”
At the heart of every giant elliptical lies an
enormous supermassive black hole that acts as the
galaxy’s gravitational anchor. These are the largest
black holes in the universe – super-dense regions of
space containing the mass of a billion or more Suns
squeezed into a volume the size of the Solar System.
They hold the key to understanding the way that
super galaxies form and evolve, and as a result have
become the focus of intense research.
Learning about the black hole in the first
place, though, can be a tricky business. In some
cases, where the hole is actively feeding on its
surroundings, it may give itself away through X-ray
emissions or by ejecting high-speed jets of particles
(jets that are now thought to play a key role in
preventing the cooling of the surrounding hot gas
and choking off the formation of new stars. In other
galaxies, however, the black hole may be dormant:
invisible by its very nature, it gives itself away
through its gravitational influence.
Extended halo “The most direct way to observe the presence of
Stars in the halo region follow a black hole in a galaxy is by watching the orbits of
orbits that take them up to stars in the centre and inferring that the mass that
3 million light years from the has to be present in order to hold the stars in their
core. The uniformity of the halo orbits,” explains Hickox. “The best example of this
indicates that it is very old,
is from our own spiral galaxy, where we can resolve
since its stars have had time to
individual stars going around the central black hole,
become evenly distributed.
Ancient stars but other galaxies are too far away for us to resolve
The galaxy is dominated by the orbits of individual stars. What you can do
low-mass, relatively dim red and instead is take spectra of the galaxy’s central regions.”
yellow stars – only these stars By splitting the light into a spectrum of different
are long-lived enough to persist colours and analysing how these change from one
for billions of years after star side of the centre to the other, it’s relatively simple to
formation has come to an end. work out the speed at which the stars are moving.
Even this is only possible for relatively nearby
galaxies, but Hickox points out one way that the
method can be extended. “You can use this kind
of technique a bit further if a galaxy has a feature
called a maser – a beam of microwave emission that’s
produced by a chain reaction in the galaxy’s gas.
Sometimes this will create individual spots near the
“You can use this

Globular clusters
Super galaxies are typically
kind of technique
surrounded by thousands
of globular clusters, thought a bit further if
to be cannibalised from
other galaxies the giant has a galaxy has a
previously absorbed.
feature called a
maser: a beam
of microwave
emission”
Ryan Hickox
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Formation of a
giant galaxy
According to the most successful theories, elliptical
super galaxies originate in the collision of two or
more gas-rich disc-shaped galaxies, followed by
further mergers throughout the galaxy’s history.
These simulations track the evolution of a super
galaxy over several billion years.
1. Gas-rich discs
The light from disc galaxies
is dominated by young,
bright and short-lived
stars that are continuously
created in disc regions
filled with star-forming
gas and dust, and older
red and yellow stars in a
comparatively gas-poor hub.
2. In collision
When galaxies collide,
direct hits between stars are
rare, but tidal forces disrupt
the spiral arms and cause
them to unwind. Clouds of
gas, however, undergo head-
on collisions that can heat
them up and drive gas out
into the galaxy’s halo.
3. Birth of an elliptical
Stripped of the cool gas
that can help to form
new stars, the galaxy
now consists of older,
XMM-Newton is the most sensitive X-ray telescope
long-lived stars that are
ever built and a reliable super galaxy observer
left in chaotic orbits
around the nucleus,
which contains a large
supermassive black hole.
“So in other words, we know what
4. Continued growth
galaxies those violent early galaxies
The newly formed giant’s
enormous gravity leads to
will turn into because we know how
more frequent collisions,
in which they may absorb
their dark matter halos will evolve”
further disc galaxies,
Ryan Hickox
cannibalise small irregular centre of a galaxy, and if we can trace the motion of bursts of star formation and other activity. This
galaxies, or undergo ‘dry’ the maser around the centre, that can give us another model explains many of the distinctive features of
mergers with other gas- handle on the mass of the central black hole.” super galaxies, ranging from their stellar populations
poor galaxies. Researchers have used a variety of more complex to their lack of gas and dust and location in the heart
methods and rules of thumb to measure the mass of dense galaxy clusters. It even offers an explanation
5. Central member of black holes in even more remote galaxies, and a for the hot gas clouds in the centre of clusters.
Today, super galaxies remarkable pattern seems to have emerged from The major problem for astronomers, however, is
are found at the centre their results. The size of the central black hole seems that it’s impossible to see this process in action on
of highly evolved, to increase in line with the mass of visible matter in a short timescale – the best we can hope for is to
dense galaxy clusters. the galaxy, estimated from the combined brightness see ‘snapshots’ of different stages in the process.
Depending on their extent of its stars. How can we be certain that distant interacting or
and density, these galaxies This evidence has given rise to the most popular active galaxies (existing in earlier, more turbulent
can be classed as either model for the formation of elliptical super galaxies stages of cosmic history and whose light may have
giant elliptical galaxies or – the idea that they formed from the collision of taken billions of years to reach Earth) are evolving
cD galaxies. smaller, gas-rich systems whose black holes combine to become present-day super galaxies? Recent
together at the same time, accompanied by intense studies by Hickox and his colleagues may provide
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ii
Super galaxies
Supermassive black holes are believed to be one of

the driving forces behind the growth of galaxies
Probing the secrets of

galactic growth
Brian McNamara, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Waterloo in
Ontario, Canada, explains how galaxies can grow to such a tremendous size
Why is it important to study the the energy, and how does it ‘know’ to So how widespread is this process? that surprised the hell out of us. We
brightest galaxies at the centres of create enough energy to prevent all There is indirect evidence to suggest had assumed that we’d see radio
galaxy clusters? the surrounding gas collapsing and that it’s prevalent – it’s going on in emissions from gas falling in to feed
What’s interesting about studying forming stars? most or all giant elliptical galaxies, star formation – at a lower rate than
the brightest cluster galaxies is that and some theoretical studies have normal, because of the feedback
we can see the normal processes that How can you study the shown that when you include this effect, but still happening. But when
occur at the centres of all elliptical mechanisms involved? in your models of galaxy formation, we got our first observations, we
galaxies in great detail, because The key observations involve taking you can actually describe the overall actually saw this cool molecular gas
everything is amped up – we see X-ray images of galaxies and clusters, luminosities and sizes of galaxies flying outwards. We hadn’t expected
these powerful jets coming out with telescopes like the Chandra X-ray today. We’ve found 50 or more of that, because the molecular gas is
of supermassive black holes. The Observatory and the XMM-Newton these things now, pumping out very dense – thousands to a million
black holes are bigger, the jets are observatory. When you take a picture energy on a variety of scales. Messier times denser than the gas associated
more powerful, and the mass of gas of a cluster in X-rays, you see X-rays 87 is the nearest of these systems, with these bubbles. Trying to move
surrounding them is larger, so given coming from the hot gases. but it’s actually producing energy at a molecular gas with the hot gas would
the instrumentation we have, we can These gases are hot because the quite low rate – the biggest one we’ve be like trying to move a boulder with
study this process we call feedback in gravitational forces are so large found is nearly a million times more a garden hose. If this turns out to
tremendous detail. that the gases move about and powerful. It turns out the amount of be happening in a lot of ellipticals,
collide with each other at enormous energy that’s being pumped in is just the feedback mechanism has to be
Can you explain what the feedback speeds, creating heat. When we look about the right amount of energy you coupled to the cold gas as well. It’s
process involves? carefully we find giant holes in the need to quench star formation. the cold gas that ultimately fuels the
The notion of feedback is pretty X-ray emission, and these holes were black hole and star formation, so we’re
simple – in the late-Nineties we blasted out by jets of magnetic fields Where do you see this work seeing an extra cog in this chain.
discovered there’s a remarkable and particles – electrons and protons going next? Feedback is still troubling, because
relationship between a galaxy’s – launched from the vicinity of the The thing we’re really excited about it’s hard to make it work conceptually
total mass and that of its central, black holes. The holes can be huge at the moment is ALMA [the Atacama and theoretically, but everywhere
supermassive black hole. Their ratio – thousands to tens of thousands of Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array]. we look, we see it happening. I think
is nearly constant, which implies that light years across. My group got early science time on nature is teaching us something new
something is governing the growth of Enough energy is pumping out of the project, and we found something about the physics of these black holes.
both – and maybe it’s the black hole these black holes to keep the gas at a
doing it. The notion that something so high temperature and prevent it from
tiny could regulate the growth of the
entire galaxy is remarkable and raises
cooling. The energy is then released
when small amounts of the gas do
“We’ve found 50 or more of
all kinds of other issues – how do you cool and fall on to the black hole – these things now, pumping
regulate the matter falling into the
black hole, which is what generates
that’s why it is what's known as a
feedback effect. out energy”
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the missing link. They have been looking at the 01

relationship between the central supermassive black
holes of giant galaxies and unseen ‘dark matter’ that
does not interact with light but forms huge extended
halos around the visible galaxies. Vastly outweighing
visible matter, this material has an important role to
play in the birth and evolution of any galaxy, but can
only be detected through its gravitational influence
on visible objects around it.
“We can estimate the mass of galaxy halos by
measuring the spatial clustering of the visible
galaxies,” Hickox explains. “We know that galaxies
with more massive halos bunch together more in
space [due to their greater overall gravity], so by
measuring how tightly clustered the galaxies are,
we can get an estimate of how massive the typical
halo is that these galaxies live in. A lot of my work
has involved looking at distant, growing systems and
asking what are the masses of the halos that those
galaxies reside in.”
It turns out that by estimating the size of halos
in distant galaxies, Hickox can predict how those
5 super
galaxies will look in the future: “The interesting
thing is that, because the physics of gravity is fairly
galaxies
well understood, then if you have a halo that’s a
few billion light years away, you have a pretty good
1. Perseus A 2. Messier 87
idea of what that halo’s going to evolve into. If we
Size: 250,000 light years across Size: 1 million light years across
know how massive the halo of some distant active
Mass: 20 Milky Ways Mass: 2 Milky Ways
galaxy is, we can estimate the mass of the halo at
This complex super galaxy consists of a cD Messier 87 is our closest cD galaxy, with active jets
the present time. The same goes for big powerful
galaxy with an active black hole ejecting emerging from the region around its central black
starburst galaxies. What we’ve found is that these
bubbles of hot gas, and a foreground dusty hole. Interactions with neighbouring galaxies are
halos are consistent with them living in medium-to-
galaxy heading towards it on a collision course. thought to have truncated growth of its outer halo.
large-scale galaxy groups today, and that’s exactly
where we find massive elliptical galaxies today. In
other words, we know what galaxies those violent
early galaxies will turn into because we know how 02
their dark matter halos will evolve.”
If this seems like conclusive evidence of how
modern elliptical galaxies formed, it’s not end of
the story. “There’s still uncertainty over how much
different types of mergers contribute to the process,”
points out Hickox. “Really big galaxies like Messier
87 probably had a different history from smaller
ellipticals, but the general model still stands up.”
For the most enormous galaxies in densely packed
clusters, such as IC 1101, the story is probably quite
different again. It seems that there’s certainly plenty
we are still to learn and understand about the biggest
galaxies in the universe.
“Really big galaxies

like Messier 87
probably had a
different history
from smaller
ellipticals, but the
general model still
stands up”
Ryan Hickox
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Super galaxies
03
04
3. NGC 6482 4. NGC 1399 5. Centaurus A

Size: 1 million light years across Size: 1.3 million light years across Size: 100,000 light years across
Mass: 3 Milky Ways Mass: 2 Milky Ways Mass: 1 Milky Way
This giant elliptical is known as a ‘fossil galaxy group’ A relatively small cD galaxy, NGC 1399 is Though relatively similar in size and mass to the Milky
– irregularities in the X-ray gas clouds around it allow orbited by around 6,000 globular clusters Way, this giant elliptical is one of the closest active galaxies
astronomers to trace the original galaxies that merged and has a central black hole with the mass to Earth. It’s thought to consist of a dusty spiral galaxy in
to form the central giant. of 500 million Suns. the process of merging with an older elliptical.
05
© NASA; Sayo Studio; Alamy; CXC; J.Irwin; STScl; JPL Caltech; ESA; AURA; ESO; WFI; CfA; R.Kraft; MPIfR;
APEX; A.Weiss; L.Frattare; NRAO; WIkiSky; UA; The Hubble Heritage Team; Hubble Collaboration
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Space science
We witness the powerful, catastrophic explosions

that mark the end of a stellar life
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How stars explode
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Space science
Tycho's Supernova (SN 1572)

is one of the few supernovae
visible to the unaided eye in
recorded human history
Cassiopeia A in the
constellation of the same
name, sitting approximately
11,000 light years away
Look down at your hands. It is likely that you can by-product. In our Sun, for example, over 600 million
make out the intricate network of vessels carrying tons of hydrogen is converted into helium each
blood around your body. It is also possible that you second. For millions, and sometimes billions, of years
are wearing some form of jewellery, a ring, bracelet these two opposing forces neatly balance, keeping
or watch made from gold, silver or platinum perhaps. the status quo. However, fusion cannot continue For red giants this is the end of the road. The star
What do these things have in common? The unlikely forever. Eventually the star runs out of hydrogen in shakes itself apart and becomes a beautiful planetary
answer is that without exploding stars – supernovae the core. “That’s when things start to go wrong,” says nebulae, leaving behind a white dwarf star at its
- none of them would exist on Earth. Those precious Dr Joanne Pledger, a supernova researcher at the heart. Yet for red supergiants there is much more to
metals, along with the iron ferrying oxygen around Jeremiah Horrocks Institute, part of the University of come. Heavier and heavier elements are consumed
inside you, were all forged during the death throes of Central Lancashire. “Gravity wins,” she says. in the core, each in turn shoring up the star from
a very big star. The core begins to collapse, raising the collapse. A cross-section of the star resembles a giant
Compared with us mere humans, stars live temperature and leading to a temporary reprieve. It onion, with layers of hydrogen, helium, carbon, neon,
incredibly long lives. Even those that die youngest is now hot enough for helium to fuse into carbon. oxygen and silicon. Eventually the temperature
manage to eke out an existence that can last for However, helium fusion creates more energy than reaches 3 billion degrees Kelvin and for one solitary
hundreds of millions of years. For most of its days, a hydrogen fusion and so the balance is upset once day the star can turn silicon into iron. But there the
star is very stable. There’s gravity acting inwards and again, this time in favour of the outwards force. The process must stop. “Iron’s atomic structure means
trying to compress the star, along with the outward star’s outer layers begin to surge outward. For stars that in order to keep the process going you have to
pressure caused by energy production via nuclear like the Sun, astronomers call this new beast a red put more energy in than you get out,” says Pledger.
fusion in the core. Fusion is the process of combining giant. For even bigger stars it becomes known as a “It’s just not self-sustaining.”
lighter elements into heavier ones, with energy as a red supergiant. The sudden loss of energy causes the core to
collapse once more. Meanwhile, now unsupported,
much of the star’s outer material begins to collapse
“The star’s core gets to a point where it inwards too, and at a significant fraction of the
speed of light. Eventually the core gets to a point
cannot collapse any more. It rebounds where it cannot collapse any more. “It rebounds on
on itself, producing a shockwave” itself, producing a shockwave,” says Pledger. As that

shockwave hits the in-falling material it rockets it
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The ways stars die

The two most famous types of supernova are Type Ia and Type II – here’s how they work
Type Ia supernova
A cosmic meal White dwarf forms
The white dwarf’s intense
One star in a binary pair
gravitational pull is able to rip
dies leaving behind a dense
material from its companion
white dwarf star that’s
and it approaches a mass
about the size of the Earth.
of 1.4 solar masses - the
Chandrasekhar limit.
Carbon burning Boom!

An uncontrollable
The new mass
wave of thermonuclear
raises the
reactions tears through
temperature and
the star and it rips itself
pressure in the
apart and explodes as
white dwarf’s core,
a supernova.
igniting the process
of carbon burning.
Type II supernova
Onion layers Core collapse
As the giant star No longer supported
1 nears the end of
its days it fuses 2 against gravity, the
core of the star begins
3
successively heavier to collapse and the
elements together, outer layers of the star
building up onion begin to rush inwards.
like layers within.
Fusion Shockwave and

For the final 24 supernova
hours of its existence Unable to contract
the star fuses silicon further, the core of the
into iron, but due to
the stability of iron it
star rebounds, sending
a shockwave outwards 6
4 cannot be fused into
anything heavier. 5 to meet the in-rushing
material. A spectacular
explosion results.
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back outwards and the star explodes as a colossal not have made it across the galaxy to end up in your Fortunately, studies have shown that a star would
supernova. The core eventually turns into a neutron bloodstream. Supernovae are the bringers of life. have to be within around 25 light years in order to
star or black hole. So dense and energetic is the out- But, be warned, they also have the potential to take knock out half of our ozone layer. So it is reassuring,
rushing eruption that atoms are slammed together it away. During a supernova, vast amounts of gamma then, that the nearest star currently predicted to go
and even heavier elements like gold, silver and rays are produced. Should the supernova explode supernova is Spica in the constellation of Virgo. At
platinum result. close enough to us, this radiation could have a 250 light years distant, perhaps we can all breathe a
Over many hundreds of millions of years this catastrophic effect on Earthly life. The energy would little easier. Along with Spica, another famous star set
material continues to spread its way through space, act to deplete the ozone layer – our protective bubble to go supernova is Betelgeuse in the constellation of
mixing with the ejecta from other dead stars to form from harmful UV radiation from space. Rates of skin Orion. Over 600 light years away, and already in its
giant interstellar clouds. Eventually, gravity will cancer would likely soar. Perhaps, more worryingly, red supergiant phase, it could go bang any day now.
collapse these clouds down to form brand new stars such an event would also strike right at the base of Should it do so in our lifetimes, it would certainly
and infant planets orbiting around them. That’s how the food chain. “There are certain types of plankton put on quite a show. For a brief period, a supernova
the heavy elements that you’re likely to find when in the ocean which will die if they get too much UV can shine as bright as the other hundreds of billions
looking down at your hands ended up here on Earth. radiation,” says Pledger. Considering that 50 per cent of stars in a galaxy combined. The searing light from
Without supernova explosions, the oxygen and iron of our oxygen comes from photosynthesising marine Betelgeuse’s explosion would see its brightness in our
created during a star’s final days and months would microbes, that's a significant blow. sky climb to roughly match that of the Full Moon,
Supernova danger zone Planet sizes not to scale
Fortunately, the Sun is not a big enough star to

go supernova, but chaos would ensue if it did
Pluto (39.5AU) Uranus

The temperature on Pluto There is the smallest chance
would quickly rise from its that Uranus may remain intact.
current -220°C to around The supernova changes the
15,000°C ((27,000°F). If it isn’t mass at the centre of the Solar
also ejected from the Solar System and therefore the
System it might be pushed to a planet could be ejected from
much farther orbit. the Solar System entirely.
Neptune
Studies have shown that a
planet would need to be 100
times further from the Sun
than Earth to be ejected rather
than obliterated – Uranus and
Neptune currently sit 19 and
Kuiper belt 30 times respectively, so their
(approx 30-50AU) chances of survival are slim.
Being banished to more distant
orbits by the changing gravity
at the heart of the Solar System
means that these objects are
far more susceptible to being
stolen by other stars buzzing by
our neighbourhood.
30 25 20
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easily enough to spot it during the day. It would likely has instead formed a white dwarf. Being incredibly
stay with us for several months, before the energy
peters out and the star fades beyond the limits of
dense, and with a particularly potent gravitational
pull, it is able to rip gas from its companion. “The “Fortunately,
human eyesight.
It is this colossal brightness that has made
white dwarf grows in mass and both the temperature
and pressure in its core increase,” says Professor Mark
studies have
supernovae an invaluable tool for measuring to the
very far reaches of the cosmos, albeit a difference
Sullivan, a supernova researcher at the University
of Southampton. This ignites the process of carbon
shown that a star
variety of supernova. The explosions we’ve seen so
far are known as Type II supernovae. For measuring
burning and sets off a runaway nuclear reaction that
leads to the star blowing itself apart – a supernova.
would have to be
distances in the universe, astronomers turn instead
to supernovae labelled as Type Ia. This kind of stellar
What makes these explosions so useful
for cosmologists is that there is a maximum
within around 25
detonation relies on not one star, but two.
Astronomers believe that around 70 per cent of
mass a white dwarf can achieve. “It’s called the
Chandrasekhar mass and it’s about 1.4-times the
light years in order
all the stars in the universe exist in pairs, making mass of our Sun,” says Sullivan. Contrary to many to knock out half
our solitary Sun an oddity. Imagine a scenario where
one of the stars, too small to explode as a supernova,
popular accounts of this process, however, the star
does not explode because it exceeds this limit. “If of our ozone layer”
Earth Supernova
The real Sun will become a red Before a star goes
giant instead of a red supergiant. supernova it will first swell
When it does so, there’s a into a red supergiant, just
chance the Earth could be like Betelgeuse is doing
swallowed. However, with our currently. That means
imaginary supergiant there’s no the inner planets are
doubt it will follow Mercury and threatened long before the
Venus into the inferno. actual supernova goes off.
Asteroid belt
The asteroids in the belt are first
objects you might legitimately
argue could escape being
consumed. However, the edge of
Sun would now be right on their
door step and they would most
likely melt under its intense heat.
40
Saturn Jupiter
The ringed planet will Jupiter will be the first
be no better off. Around planet not to be engulfed by
three quarters of an hour the red supergiant. When
after it destroys Jupiter, the supernova goes off, Mars Venus Mercury
the supernova will do however, the shockwave You guessed it - the Venus will fair no better. It doesn’t stand a
the same to Saturn and will vaporise the planet as Red Planet will be As the surging Sun chance. Like a tiny
its beautiful set of rings. temperatures rise to beyond absorbed too. If we approaches, it will begin building in the path
100,000°C (180,000°F). placed Betelgeuse to boil away the planet’s of a colossal tidal
in the centre of our atmosphere. Closer still wave, it will simply
Solar System then and the planet falls to be swept up by
Mars’s current orbit the supergiant, leaving the expanding star
would sit inside the Earth as the next world and destroyed
surface of the star. in its path. within it.
Astronomical
15 10 5 0 Units (AU)
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ASTRO-H will analyse

the mechanism behind
stellar explosions
Staring into the heart of supernova explosions

Project manager of ASTRO-H, Tadayuki Takahashi, due for launch next year, tells us how
the Japanese spacecraft will help us to understand more about how stars explode
What are the scientific goals of ASTRO-H? ASTRO-H will be the only major X-ray observatory Chandra does not cover energies above 10keV and
ASTRO-H will measure dynamical processes taking to be launched in the 2010-2020 decade and can only one instrument at a time can observe. Whereas
place in wide categories of objects for the first time, be considered to be the forerunner for the ESA-led ASTRO-H will be able to use all four of its co-aligned
using a combination of micro-calorimeters, X-ray Athena mission, which uses similar technologies. instruments at once, making it especially powerful.
CCDs and other two instruments that cover hard This mission is the fourth in a series of joint ASTRO-H will also have the first instrument capable
X-ray and soft gamma-ray bands. So it will open up Japanese-international X-ray missions and has major of high spectral resolution for extended sources such
high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy. technical contributions from the United States, as supernova remnants, normal galaxies and clusters
The mission will determine the velocity of the Europe and Canada, and scientific contributions from of galaxies. It will also have the highest resolution
gas in clusters of galaxies and allow sensitive and over 100 institutions. and highest sensitivity of all the spectrometers
precise measurements of how clusters grow and at energies above 2keV. This feature makes the
evolve. Measuring the chemical composition of the In terms of observational capabilities, how will SXS particularly sensitive for the measurement of
gas in active galaxies should allow measurements ASTRO-H compare to existing or older X-ray velocities of celestial X-ray sources.
of the strength of the winds in these sources, which missions, such as Chandra?
are predicted to be one of the main players in the While both Chandra and XMM had pioneering What is new about the technology behind the
formation of galaxies. high-resolution spectral instruments, their limited ASTRO-H mission?
Measurements of the gas in supernova remnants spectroscopic capability for extended sources and at The Soft X-ray Spectrometer instrument (SXS) on
and clusters will also provide precise determination higher energies have been limiting factors. board ASTRO-H operates at ~0.05 degrees above
of how relativistic particles are accelerated. Due to its sub-arcsecond telescope, Chandra is absolute zero and detects X-ray photons via a totally
considerably more sensitive than ASTRO-H for new technique. The SXS instrument will be the first
When it is scheduled for launch and who is imaging studies. However, ASTRO-H is much more low temperature detector system for use in space that
working on the mission? sensitive for high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy can operate without cryogens, and will pioneer this
The launch is expected in early 2016. A final launch above 2keV for point sources and from 0.3-10keV for capability for future missions such as Athena.
date will be released by JAXA in the fall of 2015. extended ones. The technology behind the Soft Gamma-ray
Detector (SGD) was proved in measurements of
the distribution of radioactive caesium-137 in the
“Studies of the gas in supernova remnants environment of Fukushima. In addition to showing
that the technology works as designed “in the field”,
and galaxy clusters will also determine the use of the prototype camera for the SGD provided
how relativistic particles are accelerated” crucial information in understanding how the fallout
from the 2011 nuclear accident was distributed.
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it did it would just collapse into neutron star,” says measurements entirely contradicted this idea – Sullivan. The launch of ASTRO-H, an X-ray telescope
Sullivan. But, any Type Ia supernova will explode more distant galaxies (those representing earlier from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), sometime
as the mass of the white dwarf approaches the times) were moving away more slowly than nearer next year should bring future supernova into even
Chandrasekhar limit. This means that, more or galaxies (those representing more recent times). The sharper focus (see boxout).
less, every such supernova explodes with a similar expansion of the universe must be speeding up. So Further analysis of Type Ia supernovae might
amount of fuel – just under 1.4 solar masses. Stars crucial was this finding that the 2011 Nobel Prize also clear up another outstanding mystery: why
consistently exploding with a similar amount of fuel in Physics was awarded to astronomers behind the some white dwarfs can apparently break the
are all going to share a similar brightness, and that’s discovery. We don’t currently know what is pushing Chandrasekhar limit. The first of these so called
the fundamental attraction of these explosions to galaxies apart at an ever faster pace, but we do have a “super-Chandras” – Type Ia supernovae that appear
cosmologists who refer to them as “standard candles”. name for our ignorance: dark energy. to have detonated with more than 1.4 solar masses
So we know how bright the supernova should be, The key to solving both the mysteries of this worth of fuel – was discovered in 2006, and a
but as its light travels across the universe towards us dark energy, and the inner workings of Type Ia handful of others have been found since. Due to
it fades. And the further it travels the more it fades. supernovae themselves, is to find more explosions. their quite limited number, Sullivan is not concerned
That means comparing how bright the supernova “We still have a lot to understand,” says Sullivan. that they are throwing off our cosmological
appears to us with how bright we know it should be We don’t know, for example, the exact nature of the measurements, but they still represent a conceptual
can tell us how far away it is. As these supernova material being transferred from the companion to puzzle. “They illustrate a lack of our astrophysical
explosions are so bright, and can outshine all the white dwarf. Nor, in fact, do we know much about knowledge,” he says.
stars in their host galaxies, we can see them from the companions – whether they are normal stars like Our evolving understanding is further illustrated
very far away and astronomers can use them to the Sun or fellow white dwarfs. All the more reason by two other types of explosion: Type Ib and Type
measure the distances to those galaxies. It was to find more supernovae, and that’s an effort that has Ic supernovae – both thought to be core-collapse
just such an exercise that, in 1998, brought us a already begun. The Dark Energy Survey is currently supernovae like their Type II cousins. Supernovae
staggering realisation: that the expansion of our scouring the skies from Chile, and has found 3,000 are classified as Type I if astronomers observe no
universe is getting faster. Type Ia supernovae. Looking further into the future, hydrogen in their spectra, and Type II if there is
Two teams of astronomers had been using Type the planned Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), hydrogen present. With Type Ic supernovae, not
Ia supernovae to measure the distances to far off due for completion by the end of the decade, should only is there no hydrogen, there is no helium either.
galaxies. As it takes time for the light to reach us, be able to find tens of thousands. Type Ib supernovae are the middle ground with no
looking at light from distant galaxies actually means Such numbers are good for statistical analysis to hydrogen but some helium. “Historically, Ics were
looking back in time to the era when that light first pin down the nature of dark energy, but if we really thought to be more massive stars which use up
set off. The further the galaxy, the further back in want to get to grips with how the supernovae work more energy and therefore have used up all of their
time you’re peering. The astronomers were also able then what we really need is to study them up close. helium,” says Pledger. But, she says, over the last
to measure how fast the supernova’s host galaxy Fortunately nature has agreed to play ball, with two decade supernova surveys have found that more
was moving away from us. When they put the two explosions going off relatively close to us in recent Type Ics exist than Ibs. Given that small stars are
measurements together they found something totally years – one in the Pinwheel Galaxy in 2011 (SN common and big stars are rarer, if the traditional
unexpected. Everyone thought that the universe 2011fe) and one in the Cigar Galaxy last year (SN viewpoint was right then it should really be the other
should be slowing down over time as the energy 2014J). “They have been studied in a lot of detail and way around. “It shows that things are not necessarily
from the Big Bang fizzled out. And yet the supernova that will help with the modelling of events,” says as straightforward as we thought," she says.
As we move forward and study these stellar
explosions with ever increasing scientific precision, it
“Type Ics were thought to be explosions is likely that we will be able to clear up some of these
intriguing mysteries for once and for all. What is
of more massive stars, which use up certain at this point in time, however, is that without
more energy and much more helium” supernovae we wouldn’t be here to ponder these
very questions.
Mu Cephei
5 stars due Type of star: Red supergiant
When star will explode: next few million years
Size: Around 1,000 times larger than the Sun
Eta Carinae may explode as a superluminous
supernova called a hypernova
to explode Distance: 6,000 light years

Mass: 19.2 solar masses
Betelgeuse Rigel
Type of star: Red supergiant
Type of star: Blue supergiant
When star will explode: next few hundred
When star will explode: next few million years
thousand years
Size: 79 times larger than the Sun
Size: 1,000 times larger than the Sun
Distance: 860 light years
Distance: 643 light years
Mass: 21 solar masses
Mass: 7.7 – 20 solar masses
Antares Eta Carinae

Type of star: Red supergiant Type of star: Binary star system (luminous blue
When star will explode: next few hundred variable & blue-white main sequence star)
thousand years When star will explode: next few million years
Size: 883 times larger than the Sun Size: 250 times larger than the Sun
Distance: 550 light years Distance: 7,500 light years
Mass: 12.4 solar masses Mass: 120 solar masses
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The search for wormholes
The
search for
wormholes
We speak to the teams of scientists searching for wormholes in an
attempt to uncover the facts behind the science fiction
Wormholes are so-called gateways that provide a However, we still don't know for sure whether
shortcut through the fabric of space-time. They can traversable wormholes like the ones in Star Trek
be thought of as tunnels with ends capped by an really exist. Even finding the slightest hint of these
ever-hungry black and a white hole, the black hole’s natural portals almost seems like a pipe dream.
time-reversed cousin that prefers to spit things out if With this in mind, it would seem odd that massive
anything comes too close to its event horizon. organisations are still looking, such as Project
It’s true that a wormhole never looks out of RadioAstron, the Soviet Union’s first radio astronomy
place in science fiction, for example lurking in the research facility.
universe of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and employed by “The search for wormholes seems like a worthy
captain Benjamin Sisko and his crew of the Defiant. undertaking,” muses assistant professor of
They use the hole to travel from the Alpha to the astrophysics Robert Owen of Oberlin College. His
Gamma quadrant on the other side of the galaxy at thoughts are echoed by Igor Novikov, a Russian
unprecedented speed – certainly a thrilling prospect. theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist who made
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Unlike the wormhole featured in the

Interview movie Stargate, scientists believe that
the real portals are likely less stable
Why are we
looking for
wormholes?
Professor Robert
Owen, of Oberlin
College, USA, tells
us why hunting
for wormholes is
so necessary
“I think it's extremely important that we continue
to search for and research the ideas behind
wormholes. There are all sorts of [avenues for]
research and we often find that some subjects are
more practical than others. Obviously wormhole
physics is not a very practical subject but
wormholes and other exotic phenomena, provide
a route to understanding some of the deepest
questions about the nature of our universe – the
arena of our very existence. For that reason alone,
this is an exciting endeavour and deserving of
support for its own sake.
"It’s also important to note subjects that might
seem highly impractical could eventually be
central to our daily lives. Electromagnetic theory an important contribution to the theory of time travel wouldn't merely mean searching for the wormholes
was at one time considered an impractical during the mid-1980s. The Novikov Self-consistency themselves, but the equally elusive white holes
subject and now it's fundamental to everyday Principle states that it’s impossible to make paradoxes that are supposedly tacked onto one end, making
life. Quantum theory has long been viewed as an of time. “There’s a hypothesis that primordial the task of locating them all the more difficult.
arcane body of research, but now it's essential for wormholes exist and can connect some regions However, despite this, Owen believes that despite
the inner workings of much modern technology. in our universe in the model of the multiverse,” the obvious difficulties, the hunt for wormholes
"Another important point is that all research is Novikov, who is based at the Russian Space Research must be supported. He studies the relativistic effects
fundamentally interconnected with insights made Institute in Moscow, explains. “In this case, the search of black holes and neutron stars colliding to make
in one field of study often transferred into others. for astrophysical wormholes is a unique possibility to gravitational waves – ripples in the curvature of
For example, there is a long-standing symbiosis study the other universes.” space-time – to find traces of the holes.
between research in particle physics and solid- These elusive tunnels through space wouldn’t just So, is finding a wormhole really that important at
state physics – the field that provides much of be a major discovery in and of themselves, but could all? We asked theoretical physicist Kristan Jensen at
our understanding of the properties of materials. even open up avenues to bigger things – possibly the University of Victoria. Alongside Andreas Karch, a
There is a constant conversation between these even answering some of the deepest questions about professor of physics at the University of Washington,
two fields of study and ideas are regularly shared the nature of our universe. Although we haven’t Jensen looks at wormholes purely from a theoretical
between them. In a broader sense, this occurs found them yet, the laws and complex equations perspective. “Honestly, no,” he initially answers. “I
throughout the sciences. So there's really no way that underpin Einstein’s theory of general relativity find it unlikely that there are wormholes [of notable
of knowing ahead of time what the eventual say that, technically, they should exist out there size] in our universe.” This is because he – as well
significance of any field of research might be. somewhere – maybe as microscopic structures the as quite a few in the scientific community – believe
"Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts size of atoms, or giant but impassable wormholes that we might be hard-pressed to find these tunnels
quite clearly that if a wormhole existed, it would connecting the black holes in the centres of galaxies. through space. Paradoxically, it seems that the theory
be unstable and we wouldn’t be able to use it for However, should a stable wormhole be found, it suggesting that wormholes exist also makes an
practically travelling through time. However, with might be possible to travel down it and end up in equally strong case for how they could never be real.
all scientific questions, we can't be completely another place, and another time, in the universe. If you were to open up a wormhole, you might
certain that general relativity, in the form that Clearly the practicalities of finding a wormhole find it quickly begins to fall apart. Egyptologist and
we currently understand it, is the most accurate is a challenging subject entirely on its own and linguist Daniel Jackson, the protagonist in Stargate,
possible description of space-time in all situations. one that scientists like Owen relish. The search might have found himself cautiously stepping into a
It could be that in certain situations general
relativity becomes inaccurate, just as Newtonian
physics becomes inaccurate near a black hole, for “In general relativity, time travel is
example. This means I certainly wouldn't rule
out the idea absolutely, until we have some good actually one of the things that naturally
astronomical evidence.”
comes along with wormholes” Prof Robert Owen
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Black hole
The making Everything – from matter to light – is
pulled into a high-gravity black hole.
2. A cosmic plug hole
Shrinking smaller and smaller, the core continues
to pale in significance compared with its former
of a wormhole Quite confusingly, this is the future
end of the wormhole.
stellar glory. While it has shrunk to a speck, all of
its mass is concentrated in a very small area. This
forms what is known as a singularity that might be
small, but is so heavy that it can bend space-time.
Gravity is the effect that a heavy object has
on the fabric of space-time found around it. If
you place a household object onto a bed sheet,
you’ll find that it makes a dent. Anything moving
towards the object in the dent will fall towards it,
which is how gravity affects the universe.
1. Collapse of the core

When a gigantic star dies, when it no
longer has any nuclear fuel to burn
sometimes a black hole is formed. The
core has no choice but to collapse in on
itself in the catastrophic explosion of a
3. The makings of a doughnut
A star’s core can still be found to be
supernova. The devastated star’s outer Singularity spinning when it decides to collapse.
layers are expelled into space, while the
Crumbling to a singularity, it rotates
core continues to shrink in size.
faster and faster, spinning so fast
that what’s left of the star’s material
4. Punching through space spreads out. Space-time is no longer
The tunnel being made punches its way through the fabric of focused on a single point, but is being
space-time and, almost in an unusual state of reversal, emerges wrapped around space ring.
backwards in time and into the past. This tunnel, which can
feasibly work its way into another parallel universe, is called an Doughnut Space-time
Einstein-Rosen bridge, or wormhole. Any matter grabbed by the singularity tunnel
black hole is passed through this tunnel.
5. Exit
If you were to travel through a
wormhole, you would reach its
far side, which can be likened
to a black hole in reverse: the
Einstein-Rosen Bridge white hole. Matter pulled in by
the black hole will emerge from
or wormhole the singularity found at the
white hole’s centre and released.
White hole
Matter and light is thrown
out into the past. Very
much like a smaller
version of the Big Bang.
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The telescope took its first readings on 27 September “Imagine that I had a wormhole with both throats [in
2011, capturing the ancient star Cassiopeia A other words, both openings to the wormhole], in my
office and I could step into one of them and emerge
from the other ten seconds earlier,” he describes.
“For those ten seconds there would actually be two
of me in the office. But what if I then chose to wait
those ten seconds and then step through [the black
hole again], simultaneously with my earlier self?” The
answer is that Owen and his past self would again
emerge from the white hole ten seconds earlier and
there would now be three of him in the office. “If I
did it again, there would be four of me, five, six and
so on," he continues. "This silly story illuminates the
way that a wormhole would naturally destroy itself.”
Owen is talking about feedback, just like the
feedback you might get on a microphone, because it's
not just people that could take a trip though these
Space radio telescope Spektr-R launched in 2011, is
time-tunnelling wormholes. Radiation, be it light or
part of Russian venture Project RadioAstron
heat, can also enter the wormhole and do exactly the
same thing as the multiple Robert Owens. So much
“All you need to enter a wormhole is a energy would end up in the loop that it would cause
the wormhole to collapse.
spacecraft. Just dive in and go” Dr. Eric Davis Another problem is that a wormhole would
be too small for a single person – let alone a
stable wormhole when he cracked the code behind one of the things that naturally comes along spaceship capable of interstellar travel – to be able to
the hieroglyphics that opened a pathway to another with wormholes,” he says. “However, the idea that comfortably fit through. To successfully pass through
galaxy. The reason that we might not be able to find wormholes could be used for travelling through time a hole, we would need to find some way of enlarging
a wormhole could simply be that in reality they're is usually taken as an indication that they probably one, something that seems unfeasible given that we
incredibly unstable entities. couldn’t exist.” Owen references several calculations don’t even yet have proof of its existence.
Owen suggests that you just need to think about that have been processed, showing that wormholes However, not everyone thinks that the journey
travelling through one to get a full picture of why naturally destroy themselves before they could even would be entirely impossible. One of the world’s
this is. “In general relativity, time travel is actually offer us the chance to be used to travel back in time. leading theoretical physicists, Kip Thorne, is professor
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How many of the stars out there

in the universe could harbour
wormholes at their centres?
Debate
Scientists behind Project RadioAstron suspect a
wormhole is at the centre of quasar 3C273, due to its
increase in temperature and odd magnetic field
Are wormholes likely to exist?
Two experts give their opinions on whether or not we'll ever find
emeritus at the California Institute of Technology these tunnels piercing through space-time
(Caltech) and a long-time friend of both Stephen
Hawking and the late Carl Sagan. Thorne not only
thinks that these portals might exist somewhere out
Yes No
there, but that they could also be used as some kind Dr Eric Davis, Professor Andreas
of time machine, capable of getting us from one place senior research Karch, a professor
in the universe to another.
Another scientist who has confidence in the
physicist at the of physics at the
possibility of using wormholes for travel is Eric Institute for University of
Davis, a senior research physicist at the Institute for
Advanced Studies at Austin, Texas. “All you need to
Advanced Studies Washington
enter a wormhole is a spacecraft. Just dive in and go,” “Yes, wormholes should exist in nature, because “No, I would completely agree that most likely they
he says. “If the wormhole is too small for a spacecraft, they are predicted by Einstein’s theory of are just a theoretical construct. It's very unlikely
then it has been posited by Kip Thorne, the man who general relativity, which is the theory that also that we will ever see the more-standard kind
discovered suggestions of traversable wormholes predicted black holes, cosmology, neutron stars, of wormhole – the one that you could traverse
in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, that all one the gravitational lensing of galaxies, gravitational through, as seen in science-fiction movies.
may need to do is feed the wormhole more negative redshift and time dilation, the bending of light by “According to our understanding of physics,
energy density and/or more-negative pressure to stars (gravitational lensing) among other things. these traversable wormholes seem almost
inflate it up to a larger size.” “All of these astrophysical phenomena have been impossible and we certainly haven’t seen one. Even
So, what is negative energy? Dark energy, which repeatedly observed to high precision and so verify if they exist, I’m not sure how to hunt for them.
is causing the universe to expand, is an example the general relativity theory. There is no reason One couldn't measure the existence of a wormhole
of a negative energy pressure – something that is why wormholes shouldn't exist based on a very directly without sending in two observers into
opposing forces such as gravity. However, we don’t well-tested theory whose other predictions have the two connected black holes [which could also
even know what dark energy is, let alone any way to been verified as previously mentioned. Another form the basis of a wormhole]. If they meet in the
create true negative energy, suggesting that we won’t prediction of general relativity is the existence of middle, there’s a wormhole. If not, then there’s
be venturing down a wormhole any time soon. gravitational waves [which could form an indication no wormhole. In any event, the more-fortunate
Still, this isn't to say that nature hasn't found a of the existence of wormholes], and there has been external observers would never know the outcome
way to enlarge wormholes, which is exactly what a search for their existence going on for over 50 of the experiment.
Russian scientists working on Project RadioAstron years. This search is now ramping up with a major “Of course, that doesn’t mean that one should
are banking on. They are using the largest space British astronomy program dedicated entirely to stop looking – we should always look for what’s out
telescope ever launched – not Hubble or the Herschel detecting them.” there, however, I wouldn't hold my breath.”
Space Observatory, but Spektr-R, a radio telescope
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The story of
the wormhole
Building bridges
In 1935 Albert Einstein and Nathan
Rosen were the first scientists
to come up with the idea of
wormholes. They described
how their theory presents a
description of space by means of
two sheet, while a spatially finite
bridge connects these sheets. Technically they are
known as Einstein-Rosen Bridges, but the American
Earth
physicist John Wheeler introduced the term
wormholes for them in 1957.
Clocks run slower

Kip Thorne theorised that
wormholes can act as time
machines. Imagine you have
a wormhole and you take one
mouth of it and accelerate it
close to the speed of light, before
bringing it back. According
to special relativity, time runs slower for things
moving near the speed of light, so a clock inside the
accelerated mouth would show an entirely different
time from the static end of the hole.
The Mad Scientist

Paradox
Stephen Hawking doesn’t think
it’s possible to travel through a
wormhole, even after capturing
and enlarging one. He’s
concerned about time-travel
paradoxes and uses the Mad
Scientist Paradox as an example. Here a scientist
creates a wormhole in his lab that takes him back
ten minutes in time. Seeing himself ten minutes
ago he shoots himself dead. Yet if he’s dead in
the past, how can he be alive in the future to
shoot himself?
Turning a
Uncertainty
Stephen Hsu and Roman Buniy
wormhole
of the University of Oregon
suggested the uncertainty
principle of quantum mechanics,
into a time
stating that the more precisely a
property of a particle is known,
the less precisely other properties
can be known. As wormholes involve quantum
machine
Take a piece of paper and imagine that it's a
effects, Hsu and Buniy claim you can never know two-dimensional representation of our universe.
exactly where you will end up once you travel Sprinkled across this paper are all the stars and Alpha Centauri
through the wormhole. galaxies. To travel from one end to the other would
take a long time, so imagine if it were possible to take
Interstellar a shortcut that folds space. If you bend the paper so
Kip Thorne's theories feature that the two opposite ends are now touching, rather
in this successful Hollywood than crossing the entire length of the paper to get to
blockbuster that he co-produced
the other end, you can just hop a short distance to
called Interstellar, which involved
reach it. The idea is that a wormhole would act like a
travel through a wormhole and
was released in November last bridge to connect the two ends together.
year. Thorne himself is no stranger Now imagine that the paper doesn’t just represent
to science fiction – when Carl Sagan needed a space, but also time. This means that a wormhole
means of faster-than-light space travel for his novel doesn’t just connect two different spaces within the
Contact, Thorne developed the science behind universe, but can also connect two time periods. This
wormholes that Sagan could then use in his story. accompanying diagram illustrates exactly how this
could be possible.
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The present
Your starting point can be at any place
or any time where the wormhole mouth
is found. This can be formed by violent
events in the universe, such as colliding
gravitational waves produced by high-
velocity cosmic rays.
Enlarging the mouth

To enlarge the mouth you The traveller that launched into space in 2011 and has a detector
would need something Stable and traversable diameter of ten metres (33 feet). The hope is that
called exotic matter – in wormholes would need to with Spektr-R they will finally discover evidence for
other words something with be big enough for a person wormholes and white holes.
negative energy to act as or a spaceship to travel The project’s initial steps into probing the universe
an anti-gravity to hold the through them. were originally quite bleak, because the Soviet
wormhole open. Union collapsed just as it was within reach of being
completed, but now it has been restarted. Until
quite recently an old radio telescope built in 1959,
dubbed RT-22, was the main receiver of signals from
the Spektr-R. For many months the receiver has
The throat been studying supermassive black holes found at
Between the two
the centres of galaxies and even probing the Milky
mouths of the
wormhole is a throat Way’s own black hole, Sagittarius A*. Observations
that acts as the bridge of the black hole's event horizon – the point of no
across space and time. return from this exotic high-gravity beast – is where
RadioAstron’s aims get interesting.
Getting close to black holes could lead us to the
elusive wormholes and white holes, according to
RadioAstron scientists. The trick is to keep our eyes
peeled for a certain signature. “We must look for
the structure of magnetic fields near the centres
of galaxies,” says Novikov, who back in 1964 also
pointed out that general relativity allows for the
existence of white holes. “If the structures of the
magnetic fields appear to be magnetic monopoles,
that are macroscopic in size, then this is a wormhole.
[These magnetic phenomena have only one pole and
are predicted to exist but so far, like wormholes, have
proven elusive].”
It turns out that wormholes – specifically their
white holes – will emit their own radiation, in contrast
with black holes that don’t emit radiation themselves,
but rather intensive radiation from the surrounding
gas that spews out in swirls.
The past “We should

Reaching the end of the wormhole, you'll be
spat out by the white hole’s event horizon.
always look out
On this side you would have travelled both
backwards in time and onto the other side
for what's out
Mouth of the
of the universe – if you’re even in the same
one you started in, that is. Estimations
there, however,
wormhole
of where a wormhole could take you are
beyond even our best theories at present.
I wouldn't hold
Scientists call this a closed
time-like curve – a loop that
connects the two different
my breath”
periods of time found at each
Professor Andreas Karch,
mouth of the wormhole. University of Washington
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The Optical Ground Station (OGS)

in Tenerife is an instrument that
exploits quantum entanglement
as a means of communicating
satellites with total security
“There are many places that wormholes location might make it a little bit difficult for us to
reach them. Vladimir Folomeev of the Institute of
could be hiding, from inside black holes Physicotechnical Problems and Material Science in
the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzstan) has suggested
and stars, to the subatomic world” that if exotic phantom matter exists – the same kind
of stuff as dark energy, which has negative energy
density – then it's possible it could exist within stars.
We might not have detected a wormhole for particles interact they can become entangled so that “The idea is very simple,” explains Folomeev. “If
sure, but it turns out RadioAstron might be on to their characteristics correlate. The famous Heisenberg dark energy amounts to about 70 per cent of the total
something. Turning its attention to the core of quasar Uncertainty Principle means that the quantum states, energy density of the universe, then it is natural to
3C273, in the constellation Virgo around 2.5 billion or properties of the particles such as their spin, assume that in some cases mixed objects consisting
light years away, it has found something unexpected. remain undefined until they're measured properly. of both ordinary matter and dark energy can exist.” A
Quasars are active galactic nuclei producing However, when the spin of one of the entangled mixed star would act oddly, affecting the star’s mass
enormous amounts of radiation from around their particles is measured, then the other particle and causing unusual oscillations as the negative
black holes. We know there’s a black hole in the heart instantly follows suit, even if each of them are on energy phantom matter moves around inside the star.
of 3C273, but RadioAstron’s observations show that it opposite sides of the universe at the time. There are many places that wormholes could
has increased in temperature. There's also the weird How they communicate across huge distances be hiding, from inside black holes and stars, to the
and wacky magnetic field that Novikov mentioned so quickly is not truly understood, but Karch and subatomic world, but the big question is, what would
earlier, so RadioAstron must keep looking to verify Jenson have proposed that tiny black holes that have it be like to travel down one? According to Davis,
the increasing suspicions of theoretical physicists. become entangled may have wormholes connecting the mouth would look like a sphere with a distorted
Meanwhile, instead of using telescopes to scan the them. Julian Sonner, of the Massachusetts Institute mirror image of the region of space on the other
skies for these elusive tunnels, other astrophysicists of Technology, has taken this idea a step further, side of the wormhole, as the negative energy density
have taken to imagining wormholes. For example, showing that wormholes could connect entangled deflects light passing through. When you pass
take the work of theoretical physicists Jensen and quarks, which are the fundamental particles that through, the journey would likely be instantaneous
Karch, who have suggested that the particles of make up protons and neutrons inside of atoms. and looking back you’d see another sphere reflecting
a quantum phenomena called entanglement are Another place where theorists are looking for where you came from. Across the universe in a single
connected by miniature wormholes. When two wormholes is inside stars themselves, although their step – wormholes would be a truly giant leap.
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An artist’s impression of quantum

entanglement. If two photons
of light are allowed to properly
interact with each another, they
can become entangled
© Science Photo Library; NASA; Caltech; NPO Lavochkin;
Alamy; IQOQI Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences
“When you pass

through, the journey
would be instantaneous”
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Hypergiant
stars
They’re the biggest stars in the universe – cosmic
monsters up to a million times brighter than the
Sun – so how do supergiant and hypergiant stars
push the limits of astrophysics?
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Hypergiant stars
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Space science
Look up at the sky on a dark night,

and you’ll see hundreds of stars. But The size of stars
only a few will really stand out – have
you ever wondered why? For some, it’s
simply because they’re quite close to
Earth. For instance, Sirius is just 8.6
Our Sun Arcturus
Type: Yellow dwarf Type: Orange giant
light years away – so, even though it’s Solar Radii: 1 Solar Radii: 25.7
a fairly average star (though still 25
times more luminous than our Sun) it
appears as the brightest star in our sky.
But other stars appear bright
because they really are. The second
brightest star in the sky, Canopus, is
one such star – 310 light years from
Earth and some 15,000 times more
luminous than the Sun.
Stars in this class are usually known
as supergiants – they have the mass
of ten or more Suns, and evolve in a
very different way from lower-mass
‘Sun-like’ stars, living fast, squandering
their nuclear fuel and dying young in
spectacular supernova explosions. The
most massive stars of all, containing
Sirius A Pollux
many tens or even hundreds of solar Type: White main sequence Type: Orange giant
masses of material, are hypergiants, Solar Radii: 1.711 Solar Radii: 8.8
the most extreme stars known.
“In astronomy I think there’s a
natural tendency to be attracted to
extremes,” explains Professor Paul
Crowther from Sheffield University. Antares Betelgeuse
“Whether that’s the most extreme Type: Red Type: Red Supergiant
by physical size, which are generally supergiant Solar Radii: 1,075
Solar Radii: 883
the cool red supergiants, or the most
extreme by mass, which are the
hottest and brightest blue hypergiants.”
Supergiants and hypergiants were
first discovered through the theoretical
tools of astronomy – in particular the
Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram
which allows astronomers to visualise
the properties of stars en masse.
However, the word ‘giant’ can be
somewhat confusing, because in this
case it combines concepts of mass and
size. The largest stars by diameter can
all be loosely defined as ‘red giants’ –
an evolutionary phase that most stars
pass through near the end of their
lives, during which they swell to huge
diameters (often larger than Earth’s
V509
Cassiopeiae
VV Cephei
Type: Red supergiant
Solar Radii: 1,050
“Supergiants simply don’t live

long enough to make it out of VY Canis Majoris
This image shows a spiral structure in
the material around the R Sculptoris star their stellar nurseries” Type: Red hypergiant
Solar Radii: 1,420
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Hypergiant stars
Rigel Zeta-1 Scorpii V509 Cassiopeiae

Type: Blue-white Type:Blue hypergiant Type: Yellow hypergiant
supergiant Solar Radii: 103 Solar Radii: 650
Solar Radii: 74
Our Sun compared

V354 Cephei NML Cygni to NML Cygni
Type: Red hypergiant Type: Red hypergiant At this scale our Sun would be
Solar Radii: 1,520 Solar Radii: 1,650 smaller than a pixel on this page
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Space science
orbit around the Sun) and become

“The borderland between
Types of far more luminous as they pump out
more energy, but conversely turn red
supergiants and hypergiants
giant stars thanks to the coolness of their vast
outer surfaces. The more massive a
is filled with unusual stars”
star is, the bigger it will grow as a red
giant, and red supergiants with tens and its most massive stars are about while those at the edges hardly get
of solar masses (such as VY Canis 30 times that of the Sun, while the any. It’s a competitive environment,
Majoris, with a diameter larger than NGC 3603 cluster has about 10,000 and that probably puts an upper limit
Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun) are solar masses of material, and its most on how massive a star can get.”
indeed the largest stars of all. However, massive stars weigh around 100 solar Another major difference between
really monstrous heavyweight stars masses. We don’t know quite why normal and monster stars lies in the
never actually reach this stage, so this ‘mass function’ is the way it is in nuclear reactions that keep them
Red supergiant while the larger a red giant is, the more young star clusters, but it seems to be shining. In low-mass stars, these
The biggest red giants are the massive it will be, the most massive a universal rule,” says Crowther reactions are dominated by the
largest stars in the universe, stars of all aren’t actually the largest. Competition between the massive ‘proton-proton (p-p) chain’, a process
swollen to diameters of a billion The most massive stars are born at central stars seems to act as a throttle in which individual hydrogen nuclei
kilometres or more by changes in the heart of collapsing star-forming to the formation process, ensuring that fuse together one reaction at a time, to
their cores as they near the end of nebulas, where gas and dust are most really massive stars are increasingly eventually produce nuclei of helium,
their lives. As they swell in size and readily available. Unlike the more rare. “The next obvious question is the next heaviest element. The p-p
brighten to hundreds of thousands
sedate, Sun-like stars, which form whether if you had an even more chain releases small amounts of
of times solar luminosity, their
around the edges and coalesce over massive cluster, would the mass of its energy at every step, but proceeds
surfaces cool to a distinctive red
colour. But many scientists say many millions of years, these stellar biggest star keep going higher?” says relatively slowly allowing Sun-like stars
these stars are supergiants rather heavyweights grow to their enormous Crowther. “And the answer seems to keep shining for billions of years.
than true hypergiants. proportions in just a hundred to be no – we suspect there’s a limit In more massive stars, however,
thousand years. The overall amount of and it’s linked to the star formation another process called the CNO cycle
raw material in the nebula (reflected process. A star forms in a collapsing becomes important. This fusion chain
in the size of the star cluster that nebula full of competing stellar ‘seeds’, also converts hydrogen nuclei into
emerges from it) also has a role to play. and it has a limited time to grab as helium, but it uses carbon nuclei as a
“There seems to be a broad much material as it can, or else its sort of ‘catalyst’, allowing the reactions
relationship between the total mass neighbours will. It’s a bit like throwing to happen at a much faster rate. The
of a cluster, and the most massive star a handful of sweets into a crowd of CNO cycle becomes increasingly
within it – so for instance the Orion children – the ones nearest the centre dominant at higher temperatures and
Nebula has a mass of 1,000 Suns, will grab most of them really quickly, densities, and causes heavyweight
Yellow supergiant
Yellow supergiants seem to be a
rare intermediate stage, though
again they get their name from
their size and brightness rather
Star classification
than their mass. They seem to be One of the most useful tools
for classifying stars is the
SPECTRAL CLASS
red supergiants that have shed
large amounts of their outer gas Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R)
as they head towards a supernova diagram. It plots stars according
O B A F G K M
explosion. In this photo of the to their surface temperature
‘Fried Egg Nebula’, rings of ejected Blue supergiant, Red supergiant,
and colour or ‘spectral type’ 4
10,000x
material can be seen surrounding Alnilam Betelgeuse
(on the horizontal axis) and
the central star. their luminosity (on the
vertical axis). When a large 2
number of randomly selected
BRIGHTNESS
Red giant,
100x
stars are plotted, a pattern Sirius Arcturus
Blue giant,
soon emerges: most stars are Eta Aurigae
arranged along a diagonal Sun
ribbon known as the ‘main
1
sequence’, that runs between Alpha Centauri B

1
1/10,000x 1/100x
the faint, cool and red and the

Blue hypergiant bright, hot and blue. Luminous Red dwarf,
Blue hypergiants are the real cool stars and faint hot ones Proxima Centauri
heavyweights of the universe – (‘red giants’ and ‘white dwarfs’) White Dwarf,
3 Sirius B
tens or even hundreds of times occupy regions to either side
more massive than the Sun, and
of the main sequence and are
millions of times more luminous.
Their powerful gravity limits their
comparatively rare. TEMPERATURE
size, so their surfaces are intensely
hot. The young star cluster NGC
1. Main sequence 2. Red giants 3. White dwarfs 4. Supergiants
This is the region where stars Most stars pass through These hot stars are faint These high-mass stars are
3603, shown here, contains one
spend the majority of their this phase near the end of because of their tiny size – brilliantly luminous and
binary system whose stars contain
lives – a star’s position on their lives, brightening and they are the burnt-out, slowly display a variety of colours
a staggering 90 and 120 solar
the main sequence is largely developing an atmosphere cooling cores of stars like our as they move back and forth
masses of material.
determined by its mass. with a cool surface. own Sun. across the H-R diagram.
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Hypergiant stars
Structure of
a supergiant Monster star
The largest red supergiants can grow
Red supergiant to diameters larger than Jupiter’s
A red supergiant is a orbit around the Sun.
high-mass star that is
nearing the end of its
life and has long since Still burning Fusion shells
exhausted the supplies The star’s core keeps Meanwhile, nuclear fusion of
of hydrogen fuel for generating energy lighter elements spreads out
fusion in its core. by fusion of heavier in a series of shells around
elements, growing the core.
denser over time.
Outer envelope
The huge amounts of
energy coming from the
core and its surrounding
shells cause the star’s upper
layers to balloon in size.
Cool surface
The star’s enormous
size gives it a huge
surface area, so Convection cells
despite pumping out Huge currents within the
huge amounts of outer envelope create
energy, the surface rising and sinking masses
remains relatively cool of hot and cool gas, often
and appears red. giving the star’s surface a
blotchy appearance.
Iron core
Just before the star dies, a core of solid
iron begins to build up. Unlike the lighter
elements, iron fusion absorbs, rather
than releases energy, triggering the core’s
collapse and a supernova explosion.
Heavier shells
Closer to the core, heavy elements
continue to fuse into still heavier ones,
allowing the supergiant to keep shining.
Helium fusion
A second shell of helium fusion
follows the hydrogen shell out into
the star, creating heavy elements
such as carbon and oxygen.
Hydrogen fusion shell

Changes in the star’s density and
temperature allow hydrogen fusion to
continue in an expanding shell around
the core after hydrogen in the very
centre has been exhausted.
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Hypergiants
stars to shine many thousands of
in our galaxy
times more brightly than their less
massive neighbours. But the price for
this brilliance is a drastically shortened
life span – even though their cores
contain much more nuclear fuel than
those of Sun-like stars, massive stars 3
exhaust themselves in just a few
million years and begin to swell into
2
supergiants or hypergiants.
This short life span means that
Eta Carinae
Constellation: Carina 1
supergiants are almost always found Distance from Earth:
at the heart of newborn star clusters 7,500-8,000 light years
– these clusters disintegrate over
millions of years, eventually scattering 1. Massive binary
The hypergiant Eta Carinae in the
their longer-lived stars over a broad
southern constellation of Carina is
region of space, but supergiants simply
a binary system in which one star
don’t live long enough to make it out has at least 120 times the mass
of their stellar nurseries. of the Sun, and is 5 million times
“These stars are incredibly rare – more luminous.
they only form in a few places and
2. Violent outbursts
have very short lifetimes, so even if Eta Carinae is prone to sudden
you find a star cluster that’s just 5 eruptions that cause it to brighten
million years old, its most massive unpredictably as it hurtles towards
stars will already have died,” says an eventual death as a supernova.
Crowther. “There’s only a handful of
3. Homunculus Nebula
really young, massive clusters close The star is still surrounded by
enough to Earth for us to look for this famous double-lobed nebula,
these guys and they’re losing mass at ejected during its last major
a terrific rate, so the mass we measure eruption around 1843.
depends on just how old the stars
happen to be. The places where you
usually find these really massive
clusters tend to have enhanced star
formation rates, usually due to galactic
collisions or interactions.”
So what do supergiants and
hypergiants look like? They’re
surprisingly varied – while the H-R
diagram might suggest that they’d
all have extremely hot surfaces and
appear blue in colour, in reality they 2
range across the spectrum of colours.
Supergiants show the most variety,
and it seems that their colours simply
reflect the precise balance between the
inward pull of gravity and the outward
Pistol Star
Constellation: Sagittarius
3
pressure generated by its radiation at
Distance from Earth:
a particular phase in their lives. This
25,000 light years
balancing act, known as ‘hydrostatic
equilibrium’ governs a star’s overall 1. Pistol Star
diameter and therefore its surface This blue hypergiant in the
Quintuplet Cluster close to the
area: even highly luminous stars can
centre of our galaxy has the mass
display Sun-like yellow, or even cooler
of around 100 Suns, and is 1.8
red surfaces if they are large enough million times more luminous.
for the heating effect of their escaping
radiation to be thinly spread. 2. Pistol Nebula
A nebula surrounding the Pistol
Most stars retain more or less the
Star contains roughly ten solar
same mass (and therefore gravity) masses of material, ejected 1
throughout their lives, so their in a violent eruption several
equilibrium is mostly affected by thousand years ago.
changes to their luminosity as the
3. Infrared view
nuclear reactions in their cores change
The Hubble Space Telescope
and evolve – from this, we can work used its infrared camera to pierce
out that blue supergiants are still the dust between Earth and the
close to the ‘main sequence’ of stellar galactic centre, revealing this
evolution, while yellow ones have unique view of the star.
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Thor’s Helmet Constellation: Canis Major Distance from Earth: 15,000 light years
1. Thor’s Helmet 2. Wolf-Rayet star 3. Gas shell 4. Swept wings

This distinctive nebula, which The central star is a blue supergiant As wind from the star collides with the Collisions with interstellar material
is catalogued as NGC 2359, lies with a powerful stellar wind blowing nearby interstellar medium, it is heated as the star travels through space
15,000 light years from Earth in the material away off its surface – an and excited to release energy through create the nebula’s distinctive
constellation of Canis Major. object known as a Wolf-Rayet star. light, creating a glowing gas bubble. helmet-like wings.
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“R136a1 probably started

its life even bigger than its
current 265 solar masses”
begun to swell in size as they reach elements in the core itself. These
the end of their lives. Red supergiants processes cause the dying star to
are even further along their life cycle, brighten and swell, shifting it towards
and are the largest stars of all. ‘red supergiant’ territory, while its core
But for really massive hypergiant develops a complex layered structure
stars, there’s a different story. These of increasingly heavy elements. Each
stars never make it across to the red new phase of fusion produces less
side of the H-R diagram – instead energy than the previous one, and
their brilliant radiation generates is exhausted more quickly, but the
such huge pressure that it blows their radiation that continues to pour from
outer layers away into space, exposing the core still helps to support it against
the interior and ensuring that such its own enormous gravity.
stars remain hot, maintaining blue or That all changes when the star
white-hot surfaces throughout their attempts to fuse iron – the first
lives. This strong outflow of hydrogen- element whose fusion absorbs energy.
rich material gives itself away in a The star’s power supply falters and
hypergiant’s spectrum and is one of dies, and the huge weight of its
the key means of distinguishing them outer layers comes crashing down.
from really bright supergiants. In what is known as a ‘core-collapse
The borderland between supergiants supernova’, the iron-rich core is
and hypergiants is filled with a compressed to a tiny size, while a
strange variety of unusual stars, and tremendous shockwave rebounds
no two astronomers really agree on through the remainder of the star,
the dividing lines between them. For heating and compressing it until the
R136a1 was discovered in the massive, young
example, luminous blue variables star ignites in a blaze of nuclear fusion
star cluster R136, which resides in the 30
are extremely bright stars that show that may last months and outshine a
Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region
long, slow changes in brightness with billion stars. As the supernova fades in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy
occasional outbursts, and include and the debris clears, the compressed
both supergiant and hypergiant stars. remains of the core may be revealed
Most of the rare so-called ‘yellow as a super-dense neutron star, or even
hypergiants’, despite their name,
actually seem to be red supergiants
that are shedding their outer layers
and heating up. And, as we’ve seen,
a black hole.
For the most massive stars of all,
there may be a third option. “Theorists
tell us that if a star dies with roughly
Searching for
astronomers also differ about whether
red hypergiants even exist! Depending
on their features displayed in their
light, other categories of supergiant or
hypergiant bear exotic names such as
200 solar masses of material
remaining, it could just blow up – it
wouldn’t be the usual core-collapse
event, but a ‘pair-instability supernova’,
which would blow itself up before it
monster stars
Wolf-Rayet stars and Ofpe stars.
However, until recently, the only
could form a super-dense core. These
things would be amazingly bright and
In 2010, Professor Paul
certain means of weighing really there have been a few observations Crowther and his team
massive stars, and identifying
supergiants and hypergiants, was to
of events that might be this kind of
‘superluminous supernova’.” discovered the most
pick them out in binary systems. Here,
the orbital motions of the two stars
Astronomers believe that
supergiants and hypergiants would
massive known single
can be used to calculate their masses. have been far more widespread in the star, R136a1
Fortunately, a recent breakthrough early universe, when the lack of heavy
in modelling the behaviour of really elements would have given them a Can we start by asking what first stars or more, if you could see them all.
high-mass stars promises to remove more compact structure with a hotter drew your attention to the R136 It’s been known about for a long time,
some of these limitations. surface. Thanks to the expansion of star cluster? but the exciting thing is that now,
Supergiant and hypergiant stars the universe, the ultraviolet radiation Well, it’s probably the prime target for with Hubble and large ground-based
live fast and die young, but what that poured from the surface of anyone looking for the most massive telescopes, we can resolve separate
fate awaits them at the end of their these stars should now be stretched stars – it’s the most obvious place stars and look at them individually.
lives? Once a star has exhausted the or ‘Doppler-shifted’ to infrared to look really because it’s the most
hydrogen fuel in its core, it reaches wavelengths. Here it should be massive young star cluster in our part As I understand it, there’s a really
the end of its main sequence lifetime visible to NASA’s James Webb Space of the universe. It’s about the same tight knot of stars at the cluster’s
and can only continue to shine by Telescope when it launches in 2018 size as the famous Orion Nebula, but centre, called R136a?
burning hydrogen from the shell to give us our first view of the earliest while that’s got a couple of thousand Yes – and originally there were claims
surrounding the core, and heavier stellar generations. stars, R136 probably contains 100,000 that R136a was a single supermassive
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Hypergiant stars
© NASA; Alamy; ESO; DK Images; Science Photo Library

star thousands of times more massive fraction of their energy as visible
than the Sun. But about 25 years ago light, but you can still measure
astronomers confirmed that it was them in the infrared, where most of the
actually a cluster and now, thanks to energy is coming out. The challenge
technological advances, we can finally with hot stars like R136a1 is that the
analyse the individual stars within it. energy’s coming out in the ultraviolet, at
When our team looked at it with the wavelengths that get soaked up by the
European Southern Observatory’s interstellar medium on their way to
Very Large Telescope in Chile, we were Earth. We can’t measure the star’s
actually looking for binary stars, hoping peak energy directly, so we have to infer
we could use them to measure the it in other ways, through other features
masses of stars directly. We didn’t find of its light.
any binaries, but we did find that the But even once you’ve got an idea The Hubble Space
Telescope can be used to
individual stars in the cluster, and the of the star’s temperature and overall
resolve separate stars
brightest one in particular, are far more luminosity, you still have to get a mass.
exceptional than anyone had thought. Fortunately on the main sequence
there’s a clean relationship – the more me as a sceptical scientist, that’s now the most massive star system to be
So a binary system would have let luminous a star, the more massive it is. all rather dubious – the figures are confirmed through the laws of orbital
you measure the mass of its stars For R136a1, where we came up with a very interesting but not really backed up motion – it’s got two stars in an orbit of
directly – but how do you work out luminosity not far off 10 million times by enough evidence to prove it. about four days, with masses of 120 and
the mass of a giant single star that of the Sun, we asked our colleagues So what we did was go looking for 90 Suns.
like R136a1? to work out evolutionary models for the another example of a similar star to Once we had got those robust
The first thing you do is work out the expected mass. That’s how we arrived at prove the technique. Ideally we were numbers for that system, we used them
star’s luminosity, but that’s a problem the figure of 265 solar masses, and the looking for a star in a close eclipsing to test our temperature and luminosity-
in itself. If you’re looking at a yellow star star probably started its life even bigger. binary system [where the two stars based methods, and we got basically the
with the same surface temperature as regularly pass in front of each other as right answer, which was reassuring.
the Sun, then it’s fairly straightforward And is there any way to check that seen from Earth], which would let us So that was a sanity check – if it had
– you’re seeing most of the radiation in theoretical result? work out the mass independently. We worked for that object, there’s no reason
the optical and can work out the total Well, the problem is that you’re relying eventually found just such an object why the method, and of course the final
energy output quite easily. Red stars on one method to get a temperature, in a cluster called NGC 3603, about result, shouldn’t then also be correct for
such as cool supergiants emit only a tiny another to get a mass, and so on. For 25,000 light years from Earth. That is our R136a1 work.
167
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Space science
Witness the awesome power of Jupiter’s great eye and other

cosmic weather, as we chase the biggest cyclones and most
extreme temperatures in the cosmos
168
posted: MAXIMUS
Giant space storms
Inside the Great Red Spot on

Jupiter, as depicted by this
artist’s illustration
169
posted: MAXIMUS
Space science
As we fight against the high winds, lashing rain twin’ with good reason, the second world from the rover – ping back images showing stretches of barren
and deafening thunderstorms on our planet, it’s Sun is a toxic and barren wasteland. Thick, heavy landscape beneath a somewhat dull pink sky. The
quite easy to think that there’s nothing worse clouds laden with sulphuric acid hang in the hot, truth is, if you thought that we struggled to make
than the dreadful weather that can batter Earth’s pressurised Venusian sky, topping the odd active an accurate prediction of the weather here on Earth,
landscape. That is, until you leave the envelope of our volcano, which burp additional heat and toxicity. then we would be even more at a loss with the
atmosphere that serves as a gateway to space. Here, The scene is one of high pressures and poisonous, Martian weather system, leaving many weather
even a windproof umbrella and a faithful waterproof choking fumes, making us somewhat grateful for forecasters tearing their hair out.
windcheater jacket that served you so well on Earth Earth’s much more forgiving weather fronts. That’s because Mars’s weather is as unpredictable
won’t save you. That’s because the weather that In the opposite direction to Venus, things aren’t as it gets – and that’s quite surprising for a planet
can be found in space is monstrous, making our much better on Mars. It’s quite easy to think that with an atmosphere that’s only about one per cent as
planet’s occasional crashes of thunder sound like nothing much happens on the Red Planet, as its dense as Earth’s. Being so thin ensures that whoever
low grumbles and the great lashes of rain, capable of robotic inhabitants – including NASA’s Curiosity dares to walk its dusty surface is sure to receive
flooding the lowlands, appear as nothing more than
puddles made by light drizzle.
No more than an astronomical stone’s throw away
“A calm day can turn into one that’s
– at an average distance of 108 million kilometres (67 rife with dust devils and great haboobs
million miles) away – from our planet, things turn
quite nasty on planet Venus. Nicknamed ‘Earth’s evil capable of engulfing the entire globe”
A dust devil stalking

the Martian landscape
as imaged by the Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter
An artist’s impression of a
Martian dust storm as seen
from the Viking lander
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posted: MAXIMUS
Giant space storms
Saturn’s southern hemisphere

plays host to unusually shaped
tempests known as Dragon Storms,
which flare up periodically
fatal doses of space

radiation, whether its origin
is the deeper recesses of our
galaxy or the Sun. There is good
news, though: it never rains on the
Red Planet, even though clouds do form
and snow does fall, but that evaporates before
it has a chance to reach the ground.
In general, Mars is pretty cold with temperatures
not getting much higher than 20 degrees Celsius
(68 degrees Fahrenheit), even during the summer. of
Day to day, or even as quickly as hour to hour, an swirling
otherwise calm day can turn into one that’s rife with dust and
dust devils and great haboobs capable of engulfing limited sunlight,
the entire globe in a red haze for weeks. Kicking up they have no choice but
such great amounts of dust is all thanks to a drop in to wait for the storm to be over
temperature, as Martian sunsets give way to Martian in order to pursue their exploration of
nights, sending the lukewarm world’s summer Mars as the solar panels that power them to
plummeting into a harsh -140 degrees Celsius (-220 scout the Red Planet become covered in soil.
degrees Fahrenheit). The bigger the planet, the more heavy-handed the
Such a change in temperature drives hard and storms. On these giants, just a small percentage of direction due to
fast winds, which blow red dust up to speeds of the wind power is capable of more than blowing your the crushing high
over 160 kilometres (100 miles) per hour. The same umbrella inside out – it can pick up houses and throw pressure on the gas giant.
thing happens on Earth, with moisture arming these them like dice. Surprisingly, grabbing a view of some But inside this behemoth of a storm, things are
swirling storms. But given that all there is to pick up of this weather-based action is difficult, as it can go quite a bit different. At its heart, gone are the gale
on Mars is loose, red soil, raging storms throw dust undetected below cloud cover on some worlds. force winds, giving way to a more gentle breeze, but
into the air, supplying the Red Planet with a pinky- There is one planet that’s not shy about showing where temperatures are also a chilly -160 degrees
red atmosphere. With dust polluting the air, it can off the forces it wields in its upper cloud layers – and Celsius (-256 degrees Fahrenheit). To last for as long
get warm on Mars, propelling the winds even faster that’s Jupiter. Compared to the other worlds of gas as it has, this extreme hurricane is held together by
and throwing more and more dust into the thin that make up the outer portion of our Solar System, jet streams, retaining its structure to travel multiple
atmosphere, sometimes creating the snap and crackle this majestic planetary king is a bit of a poser, times around the stormy planet. However, scientists
of electricity in their wake. Then, just as quickly as it proudly revealing swirls and bands that depict its have noticed that Jupiter’s trademark feature is not as
appeared, the storm can die down again – perhaps by chaotic nature. The most famous of these is the Great great as it once was: the Great Red Spot is shrinking.
blocking out the Sun’s light – causing temperatures to Red Spot, an anticyclone that’s so large that three In the 1800s astronomers measured the Great Red
cool and the soil that was once on a whirlwind trip Earths are able to fit inside it. We’re able to see this Spot to be 41,000 kilometres (25,500 miles) across.
around the globe to settle back down to the ground. great storm system using Earth-based telescopes, By 1979 when the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft reached
Dust storms are about as extreme as the weather and we’ve been watching in awe as the winds have the gas giant, the massive storm had been whittled
gets on Mars. Trouble is, the rovers and landers that raced at over 400 kilometres (250 miles) per hour down to around 23,300 kilometres (14,500 miles)
have touched down on its surface hate it. In a world for the past 350 years, rotating in an anticlockwise across. Much more recently, NASA’s Hubble Space
The trail of a great northern storm of thunder The persistent weather

and lightning on Saturn in 2011, which was pattern that is Saturn’s north
estimated to be able to suck out the entire polar vortex has six sides,
volume of our planet's atmosphere in just each measuring around
150 days with its updraft alone 13,800km (8,600mi) long
171
posted: MAXIMUS
Space science
The Solar System’s weather

If you thought Earth’s weather was bad, here’s the
forecast for the other worlds in our Solar System
The Sun Venus Mars Jupiter
Extremely hot, with angry A very cloudy start with Generally cold, dry and Very strong persistent
outbursts of coronal mass acid rain only affecting the clear all day. A change in winds of around 360
ejection – a massive burst planet’s highlands. There temperature could see dust kilometres (224 miles) per
of solar wind and magnetic are likely to be strong devils and dust storms hour in most places on
fields. High temperatures winds, hitting speeds up become prevalent in the the globe and especially
will persist for the to 360 kilometres (224 evening. Very cold during around the Great Red Spot
foreseeable future with the miles) per hour. High the night, with sub -60°C area. Likely to be very cold
possibility of solar flares. temperatures guaranteed. (-76°F) temperatures. all day.
Average temperature Average temperature Average temperature Average temperature
5,500°C (9,932°F) 462°C (864°F) -55°C (-67°F) -150°C (-238°F)
172
posted: MAXIMUS
Giant space storms
Telescope has measured the Great Red Spot to be

16,500 kilometres (10,250 miles) wide. What’s more,
the storm seems to be taking on a more circular
appearance these days. Just what will happen to
the storm next is anyone’s guess, with astronomers
wondering if it will vanish completely.
Jupiter’s not the only planet in the vicinity to have
a rampant weather system. Its neighbour, ringed
Saturn, also has a huge weather system, although
you’d be hard-pressed to see it from Earth. On the
whole, its gaseous surface looks pretty bland, almost
as if the winds and great powerful lightning bolts
thrown from its cloud decks are non-existent. But
underneath that creamy and misleading atmosphere,
Saturn is fairly wild. Gusts topping 1,800 kilometres
(1,118 miles) per hour race and force this world’s
collection of gases and ices around it at break-neck
speed, making Jupiter’s Great Red Spot seem like
a light gust of wind. Up close and personal though
– and with the helping hand of a fleet of space
telescopes – we can get a good look at what makes
Saturn’s storms so mega. At the planet’s north pole
circulates a hexagonal storm with its six sides each
measuring a whopping 13,800 kilometres (8,600
miles) long and making our planet look fairly small.
To look at, this unusual anticyclonic disturbance
seems unreal but it’s undeniably present, with
proof from the likes of NASA’s Voyager and Cassini
spacecrafts thrusting photographic evidence into the
hands of astounded scientists.
The hexagon has bemused planetary scientists,
but it seems to be some form of jet stream created by
an area of turbulent atmosphere. Inside the hexagon
is a whirlpool of air, which is matched at the south
pole too and also on Saturn’s hazy moon Titan – the
only moon in the Solar System with a substantial
atmosphere. On Titan, winds struggle to reach much
of a pace blowing at just a few kilometres per hour as
they battle through the dense nitrogen atmosphere,
while it rains droplets of black methane that settles
into rivers and lakes. If you were to take a tour of this
moon, you would definitely need your umbrella and
your thermals: it’s bone-chillingly cold at -180 degrees
Celsius (-292 degrees Fahrenheit).
Heading out of the Solar System at around 2.9
billion kilometres (1.8 billion miles) away, we hit the
Saturn Uranus Neptune featureless face of the seventh planet from the Sun,
Uranus. This collection of gas and ice might look like
a boring world but underneath that placid turquoise
cloud layer, a whole different story unfolds, even if
it’s not as enraged as the other planets we’ve met so
far. Beneath its clouds, scientists think that it might
actually rain on Uranus but we’re not talking water
like Earth or liquid organics like Titan – experts are
hinting at diamonds. It’s a jeweller’s paradise, but
perhaps not a rainstorm that you’d want to get
Winds hitting at least 1,600 Storms possible with a Very blustery with caught in when it’s in full force. An umbrella won’t
kilometres (994 miles) per chance of diamond rain, diamond rain forecast. Very help you here either, you would need a shield, as
hour will make the air feel which will become heavy cold with temperatures priceless chunks rain from the heavens, making
very cold wherever you are and persistent. Upper dropping to as low as -214°C any painful hailstorm that you’ve been caught
in the planet’s atmosphere atmosphere is likely to be (-353°F) at times. Winds up in seriously pale in comparison. This torrent
due to windchill. Very calm but on the whole, will become stronger and of diamonds – or crystallised carbon – is made by
strong electrical storms there will be high pressure very persistent throughout methane, being squashed under enormous pressures,
forecast. and cold temperatures. the day. hundreds of thousands of times greater than those
Average temperature Average temperature Average temperature on Earth.
-168°C (-270°F) -224°C (-371°F) -200°C (-328°F) They say that you shouldn’t judge a book by
its cover and Uranus is no exception – even if it does
173
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Space science
According to observations made by NASA’s

Hubble Space Telescope, Jupiter’s iconic
Great Red Spot is shrinking in size and will
continue to do so as years pass by
1995
2009
2014
appear serene with very little activity other than the

Constant spinning occasional angry outburst.
How the Great Hot gases in the gas
giant’s atmosphere are in a
Fellow ice giant Neptune is outwardly much more
interesting than Uranus. It too has diamond rain
Red Spot works constant twirl, continually
rising and falling.
deep inside, but the smallest of the outer planets
also tries to emulate its bigger brother with its own
great spot. Here, instead of Jupiter’s embarrassed red
hue, Neptune’s is cool and dark. It was discovered in
Neptune’s southern hemisphere when Voyager 2 flew
Dropping the past the last planet from the Sun in 1989 and is an
cool gas anticyclonic storm like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, and
The cooler gases fall about the same size as Earth at 13,000 kilometres
through Jupiter’s (8,100 miles) across. White cirrus clouds form around
atmosphere and then its fringes, made from crystals of frozen methane.
forces start to cause
Yet while Jupiter’s eye is shrinking, Neptune’s spot
the area to begin
did its own vanishing act in 1994, disappearing
whirling, creating
eddies that last for a completely when the Hubble Space Telescope looked
long period of time for it. However, this magic act was not permanent, as
since there is no solid a new dark spot sprang to life in Neptune’s northern
ground on Jupiter to hemisphere and is still blowing today at 2,400
create friction. kilometres (1,500 miles) per hour. Even faster clouds
High winds
If you were to stand have been seen on Neptune, called scooters because
inside the Great Red they scoot around Neptune far faster than the
The shifting and
Spot, you would lumbering dark spot.
merging of eddies
find that wind Eddies that are made Everything in the Solar System, even as far out
speeds are able to are able to move as Neptune, experiences the effects of the Sun’s
reach 400km/h around and merge weather. The solar wind doesn’t blow air like on
(250mph). together, creating Earth or Jupiter or Titan, but streams of particles that
bigger and much more wash out of our star. Occasionally the Sun burps,
powerful storms. and unleashes storms of plasma from active regions
with sunspots that can batter our magnetic field
and atmosphere, generating the beautiful aurorae
that illuminate the poles of our planet. These storms
though can also be deadly, for the radiation can kill
174
posted: MAXIMUS
Giant space storms
A gigantic reservoir of water, which

astronomers know to be quasar APM
08279+5255 holds 140 trillion times
the mass of water in Earth’s oceans
Ice giant Neptune is home

to anticyclonic storms,
which appear as dark spots
and then vanish
astronauts, short-circuit satellites and knock out black holes. Galaxies with active black holes
communications and power systems on the ground. that are hungrily consuming gas and producing
For these reasons the Sun’s weather is the most brilliant light are called quasars. In 2010, US
scrutinised outside Earth, with many Sun-watching astronomers announced the discovery of the oldest
space missions such as NASA’s STEREO and the and most massive cloud of water vapour ever seen
joint NASA-ESA mission SOHO, giving early warning in a quasar, 12 billion light years away, which existed
of any solar storms that may be heading our way to less than 2 billion years after the Big Bang. Far bigger
cause mischief. than any cloud on Earth, it contains 4,000 times
Our Sun is just one star, but what about a galaxy more water than the total found in our Milky Way
of hundreds of billions of stars? Their winds can galaxy. This will probably never make it into oceans the
combine into super winds that can blow all the gas or rivers, or fall as rain on a planet, but will most same
used for making stars out of a galaxy, dispersing it likely fall into the black hole instead. way the
many thousands of light years away. There are also There is more weather in our own galaxy besides Moon’s face is always the same as seen from Earth.
storms at the centres of galaxies with giant lightning the weather on the planets of our Solar System. The Because of this, the dayside of worlds like WASP-33b
bolts that even Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, stars in our galaxy have their own planets, including are always in their star’s light, causing huge storms to
would be impressed by. In the distant galaxy IC 310, a particular breed that like it especially hot. Take arise, bigger than anything in our Solar System. The
which is 260 million light years away, astronomers Jupiter with its Giant Red Spot, move it 770 million hot Jupiter exoplanet HD 189733b has a huge storm
have detected huge bursts of gamma-ray radiation kilometres (480 million miles) closer to the Sun on its dayside, practically the size of its sun-facing
coming from enormous flashes of lightning emitted and you get a ‘hot Jupiter’. Astronomers have found hemisphere, where temperatures directly underneath
by the hot gas encircling the forbidding black hole hundreds of these hot Jupiters around other stars – the sun reach as much as 1,500 degrees Celsius
at the centre of the galaxy. In this gas are powerful and they are scorching, with temperatures as great as (2,730 degrees Fahrenheit). This creates winds that
electric fields that can unleash electrical discharges 3,200 degrees Celsius (5,800 degrees Fahrenheit) in outpace anything in our Solar System at 9,700
every few minutes across an area of space the size of the case of the exoplanet WASP-33b, which is so close kilometres (6,000 miles) per hour, whipping around
our Solar System, dwarfing all the weather familiar to to its star that its year lasts just 29 hours. The close the dark side of the planet, which always faces away
us from our planetary neighbours. proximity to their parent star means that they’re into space and never sees the light of its star – a dark
On Earth, lightning is assisted by moisture in the ‘tidally locked’ by gravity, so that they rotate at the and windy place, but never cold.
atmosphere, and huge amounts of water have been same speed that they take to orbit their star. This We often view the weather as an inconvenience,
detected as vapour in the gas around supermassive means they always show the same face to their stars, soaking us with rain, blowing our hair around with
© DK Images; Alamy; NASA; JPL
wind, frying us in hot and sunny climes and freezing

“Astronomers have detected huge bursts us when snowflakes drift downwards. But when we
are complaining about what the weather is doing
of gamma-ray radiation from flashes of here, spare a thought for the places experiencing
lightning around a black hole” far worse, not just within the confines of our Solar
System but beyond it too.
175
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All you’ve ever wanted to know about the universe
In the Secrets of the Understanding

beginning universe space science
Find out how the universe began, from Uncover some of the most intriguing Discover the amazing science behind
the Big Bang to the birth of individual mysteries in the universe, including the components of our universe, and
planets and how a galaxy is formed the search for alien life the projects investigating the unknown
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What does the book cover?

What does the book cover?

What astronomical phenomena does it discuss that are not well understood?

What astronomical phenomena does it discuss that are not well understood?

• Searching for alien life

W • How stars explode

Senior Art Editor

Distributed in the UK, Eire & the Rest of the World by

18 Big Bang: not just a theory

22 How planets form

Secrets of the universe

54 Edge of the universe

64 10 biggest things in space

74 The new search for

“Dark matter has been

for more than 80 years”

108 50 amazing facts about

120 How do planetary

122 Dark matter

130 Super galaxies

140 How stars explode

148 The search for wormholes

158 Hypergiant stars

168 Giant space storms

18 Big Bang: not just a theory

22 How planets form

The universe almost seems to have come out of

2. Quark soup 3. Big freeze out

The eLISA spacecraft will attempt to test

launched in 1989. Offering four years of service, COBE

How it will end

Closed universe Open universe Flat universe

A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) is one of seven

birth all the way through to its 13.8 billion-year-old

3. The flatness problem “The Hubble

is a very unlikely result of the universe’s evolution

Coe and his colleague Jennifer Lotz, an

Big Bang: not

“It gave a factor of

When you started using BICEP2 you discovered a

So, it gradually dawned on the team that you

What exactly is B-mode polarisation and how did

How can this signal be recognised for what it is

Where do you go with BICEP now that you have

There's been a lot of talk of Nobel Prizes in the

Will you be going back to the South Pole for

colour, at 95 gigahertz instead of 150 gigahertz. That

what we used in our paper.

Discover how our home, along

The protoplanetary disc

A terrestrial world is born

The frost line explained Hot and rocky

The frost line

“The origins of Jovian gas 231-838

giant planets, like Jupiter bright proplyd 231-838

and Saturn, are less certain” shockwave, giving it a

sucks away a cavity, which goes into

© Science Photo Library; NASA

The universe is packed with galaxies. Everywhere