Instant Genius - The most mysterious objects in the Universe - Colin Stuart

Episode Date: January 9, 2019

From 'Oumuamua to Planet Nine, astronomy writer and Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society Colin Stuart counts down the five strangest cosmic enigmas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. But what is the oddest thing about it is that it's not part of our solar system, or at least it didn't form in our solar system. Because its trajectory, you know, the path it's taking through our neighbourhood, suggests that it's coming in. at a high speed and high angle from somewhere else. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Focus magazine team, with the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world.

Find out more at ScienceFocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Hello and welcome to the Science Focus podcast. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor of BBC Focus magazine. In October 2017, an astronomer working in Hawaii discovered a bizarre cigar-shaped object hurtling through our solar system. It was the first interstellar object detected passing through our celestial neighbourhood. And imaginations were immediately sent into overdrive. Could it be an asteroid, a comet, or even an alien spaceship sent here on a scouting mission from a distant planet? The strange entity, named Oamuamua, still has astronomers'est,

scratching their heads. But it's not our universe's only mystery. From invisible galaxies to gigantic rectangles, the cosmos is awash with puzzling objects. In this week's podcast, astronomy writer Colin Stuart counts down his top five. Here's our staff writer, James Lloyd, speaking to Colin. So Colin, we're going to go on a bit of a whistle-stop tour through the most mysterious objects in the universe. So at number five on the list, we have the red rectangle nebula. Can you describe this to me? It's an odd one because it's a really geometric in shape. So as the name suggests, it's a rectangle. And it's odd to see something with such perfect straight lines in a nebula. Normally they're quite sprawling and nebulous. But in this case,

it's almost perfectly square. We don't see many rectangles in space in general, do it? No, it's really unusual to see that kind of shape. And so it means that we don't know exactly why it is shaped like that. There are some ideas, but they're certainly not confirmed. So this is a kind of rectangular, is it a mass then of gas and dust? Exactly that, yeah. It sits about just over 2,000 light years away.

So it's very much part of our galaxy. But explaining what it comes from is a bit tricky. We've got pictures, though, haven't we? We've seen it. It's the Hubble Space Telescope took some shots of it. Do we know how the nebulae forms? Well, so the leading idea is that, at the heart of the nebula is actually two stars

rather than a single star. And if both of those stars create a shockwave, that can hit the surrounding dust. So what you end up with is two cones. And that seemed together from a distance, those two cones would kind of add together to make a rectangle. And so the effect is to give it this kind of appearance

of a giant glowing red rectangle. Do we know what causes it strange kind of red glow as well? The effect is called extended red, mission. And also it remains a mystery. So we think it's to do with the dust surrounding the stars. And in particular when the dust interacts with ultraviolet light, because we see this effect elsewhere in the universe too when you get UV light and dust. But exactly what's going on, we're not entirely sure, although some people have talked about if the dust is particularly carbon rich, there's lots of carbon molecules in it, then that could give you a sort of boosted red light.

Okay. So at number four, we've got Galaxy X. This does sound like something out of science fiction. What's so special about this particular galaxy? It's dark matter content. So dark matter is the invisible glue that we think helps bind big structures together like galaxies. And in a galaxy like our Milky Way, we're talking about 20 times more dark matter than ordinary matter. But in dwarf galaxies like this one, they're significantly a significantly higher proportion of dark matter even than that and so there appears to be very few stars very few hot objects in there it's just almost invisible cold and dark

and whereabouts is this galaxy in relation to the Milky Way? It's a satellite of our Milky Way so it's bound in orbit around our own galaxy and that's how we discovered it in the first place because its gravitational pull is disrupting some of the the dust and gas in our own galaxy, causing little ripples, and that's the kind of give away that there's something else at play. Does it pose a threat to our galaxy at all, you know, if we

collided with it or anything like that? No, I mean, we're surrounded by lots of satellite galaxies, and they are so small compared to our Milky Way that, you know, unless the collision was straight through the solar system, which is unlikely it wouldn't cause us an issue. And how many dark matter galaxies are out there? Have we discovered any more? We have a handful. So there was one that was discovered back in 2006, and staggeringly it contained a thousand times more dark matter than ordinary matter. And so these things might be a really good way of almost like natural laboratories for studying dark matter,

because there's very little else that they're made of, so they could be quite pristine in that way. So the idea is that we could make observations of these galaxies, and then that might help us figure out. We still don't know what dark matter is, do we? So could it help us figure that out? It might do, yeah. And it's getting to the stage, actually, where our ideas about what dark matter is made of are coming up short.

All of our current experiments and not finding what they thought they might find. So if we go back to the drawing board and try and come up with some new ideas, testing those ideas in these little dark matter dwarf galaxies could be a good way forward. Okay, so number three, we've got Planet 9. So this is something that people

might have heard of. It's been around for quite a while, hasn't it, this idea of an extra planet in our solar system. What's the latest thinking about this mysterious planet that we still haven't discovered, but people think might be there? Yeah, it's quite amazing to think that we might not finish the list of planets in our own solar system at the moment. So the idea of this particular planet has been around for about five years, because when we look at objects that orbit the sun, considerably further out than even Pluto, they all appear to be herded together. They all have very similar orbits. Now, if you saw a load of sheep running around in a field all together, you might imagine

there's a shepherd or a sheepdog somewhere that maybe you can't see, well, that's exactly the same as what we think is going on here, that these objects are being herded together by the gravity of a planet we haven't seen yet. And we're talking about a considerable planet. It would be 10 times the mass of the Earth in order to be able to pull these objects around in that way. And so how far away would this be then from Earth? Is it right on the outskirts of the solar system? We're talking between 10,000 and 20,000 times further from the Sun than the Earth.

And to put that into context, Neptune, which is the currently accepted last planet, is only 30 times further from the Sun than the Earth. So way, way out, much further than anything we've seen so far. So if it's so big, why haven't we spotted it yet? What's stopping us from discovering it? It's that distance. So for us to see it, it's only going to reflect sunlight. So the sunlight has to go from the sun out to at least 10,000 times the Earth's distance, reflect off the planet and travel almost all the way back to the sun again to us.

and it's light fades all the while, fades on the way out and fades on the way back. So it means that it's currently right on the edge of our telescopes. But there are astronomers, as we speak this week, that we're talking, that have been on the telescopes in Hawaii, night after night, trying to hunt it down. And are you optimistic that we'll find it? Do you think it is out there?

It seems to be the best explanation for what we're seeing. And according to the people who are, searching for it, the area that they think it might be in that they've sort of narrowed down, we can complete the search in the next three or four years. So we're not going to have to wait, hopefully, decades and decades, this object could be found in the years to come. Okay. So number two is my favourite on the list. It's called Hogue's object. I'll try to describe it. It's a galaxy, but it's kind of unlike any galaxy you've seen before. It's got like a central, kind of yellow core, looks almost like a sun, but I guess it's lots and lots and lots of stars,

surrounded by a kind of dusty, like halo almost. It looks a bit like the I have Sauron from Lord the Rings or something. It looks almost CGI. What is this? It's a galaxy, obviously, but what do we know about it and what's so unusual about it? Well, it looks a bit like a normal spiral galaxy, except almost if someone's come along and rubbed out the, in a bit. So you still have the center and you have the ring around the outside, but someone's

kind of deleted the rings in the middle. And really, it's still a mystery as to why that is. You know, is it a spiral galaxy that's been disrupted in some way? Is it a kind of, you know, a very rare type of galaxy that we, we don't see very often? People have talked about maybe a collision that if a big galaxy and a small galaxy have collided, then that's, that's a little galaxy might be enough to have created this shape. But if that were the case, you'd still see the, you know, if a small object had passed through a big one, you'd still see the small object nearby. And we don't see that. And the other thing is that, that collisions, they tend to make things spin faster. Right. And as something gets hit, the spin, if it's spinning, it spins faster and

faster. But the core of this galaxy spins really slowly. So that doesn't really fit with a collision either. So yeah, the jury is still very much out. I don't think anyone has a good explanation for it. It's a very unique object. And have we found any other similarly shaped objects? I guess it's a, what would you call it, a ring galaxy? Yeah, a ring galaxy. Well, the really coincidental thing is, and it's crazy, is that behind this ring galaxy, much further in the distance, there appears to be another ring galaxy that you can see through the first rings. But we don't think those two ring galaxies have anything to do with each other. We're just seeing them in the same line in the night sky.

But these objects are so rare that the chances of having a ring object, a ring galaxy seen through the ring of another ring galaxy is astronomically small. A bit spooky. It's crazy. So moving on to number one. most mysterious object in the universe, you've selected an object called Umuamua, which has been in the news a lot over the past year or so. For those who aren't familiar with this, could you describe it?

It's a very unusual-looking object, isn't it? Yes, it's very long, and that's what makes it particularly unusual. So imagine like a space cucumber, that sort of dimensions of width to length. But what is the oddest thing about it is that it's not part of our solar system, or at least it didn't form in our solar system. Because its trajectory, you know, the path it's taking through our neighbourhood, suggests that it's coming in at a high speed and high angle from somewhere else. So this is the first confirmed interstellar object.

Right. And an object that's entered the solar system from the outside. And when did we first discover it? When was it first spotted? Back in October 2017. So it's still pretty recent. You know, this is something that we sort of had to scramble to look at because it was moving so fast that that actually didn't have a large window to take some measurements of it. And so we've got a picture of it, or do we have a picture of it? How have astronomers actually spotted it as such? Is it using telescopes? What kind of telescope?

Yeah, so optical telescopes to start with, but we don't have a picture of it in the sense that it's quite small. we're talking no more than a kilometer long which for a piece of space debris is fairly small at a distance that you're never going to be able to take a full photograph of it but by the way that it reflects the light from the sun you can and it's the way it's spinning you can then build up a picture

of what it's like so when you see the images that the CGI images but based on based on real measurements of its way it reflects like. So astronomers have spotted this bizarre cigar cucumber shaped object. They know it came from outside

the solar system and they're still trying to figure out what exactly it is, aren't they? What explanations have been proposed so far since it was discovered? Well, the go-to explanation at first was that it was an asteroid, an asteroid that had been ejected from another solar system.

And if you look back at the history of our solar system, and we think we would have ejected a lot of asteroids too. So that's not a surprise. The shape was a bit of surprise, but they thought it was an asteroid. But then we got a curveball. It was changing its path through the solar system in a way that couldn't be explained by the gravity of the sun alone. So there was something else changing the path of this object as it moved through the solar system. An asteroid wouldn't really do that.

whereas a comet on the other hand, which is made of ice rather than rock, if the sun is warming the ice, then it would have created little jets that came out from the object, almost like little rocket boosters that would have, you know, moved it off course slightly. So we've sort of moved now from asteroid to comet as the explanation. Although having said that, it's nowhere near as, or it's a lot more shiny than comet.

It reflects a lot more light than a comet does, almost double the amount. So the comet idea isn't a sort of nailed on perfect explanation either. And that's not the only explanation, is it that's been proposed. As a professor who has suggested, it could even be an alien space probe sent from another solar system to find out more about our solar system. Could you tell me more about that suggestion? Yeah, it's a very controversial but very interesting idea. again, it's to do with this, why is it moving off its natural course? And of course, if it's an alien artifact, then that might be the reason.

The idea being that maybe it's propelled by a solar sail. So it has a sail on board that catches the solar wind that allows it to move. So that would be why it was changing course. And in that paper they put out, they showed that, in theory, the changes in its path could be explained by a solar sale, but it's really unlikely. So who put out this paper? It was Professor Arvi Loeb at Harvard. I think that's part of the reason why it got such a big, it made a quite a big splash because a Harvard professor says this is the case, then people are going to listen. What's the reaction being to that suggestion? Most of the astronomical community have been

very skeptical about it because almost always, well always, the simplest explanation for something is not aliens. And just this week, again, we've listened as data come out from listening to the object. Because if it was artificial, if it was some alien space probe, maybe it would have some sort of radio source to send back the data that it was finding to its alien creators. But a search for radio signals coming from it have been completely, haven't found a single thing. So it's completely radio quiet, which is unlikely if it's an alien scout sending data back about our solar system. So what's the most likely explanation at the moment then, do you think? At the moment, it's a comet.

That's what most people are plumping for. But with the caveat that it is a very unusual for a comment to be so elongated and be so reflective. So maybe it says something about what the solar system is like that it came from, and maybe how that was slightly different to our ones. Yeah, I think most people are putting their bets on comet at the moment. Yeah, okay. How can we find out for sure, can we find out for sure? Is this object likely to visit us again, or is it off on its travels now

to another part of space? Yeah, that's it. I'm afraid our chances have gone because it's fleeing now out beyond the Earth. So it's going now, it's gone past Jupiter and it's going through the outer solar system. And in a few more decades, it would have left the solar system entirely. back out on its trajectory to interstellar space. So for this object, I think the chance is over. But we still got some data from when it was closer to pour over.

So people are still working on the stuff we have. But the chance for new observations of it are gone, I'm afraid. So it's likely always to remain a little bit of a mystery then. Yeah, for this one. And it kind of shows us that maybe we should have a space probe waiting on the earth, good to go, that when we find something like this, that we can send up a probe quickly and get a closer look

because I think at the time people showed that we could have got a closer look if we'd had a sort of a probe ready and waiting to go for these things because they should be passing through our solar system all the time. It's just quite hard for us to spot them in the short window that they're close to the earth.

So do you think there could be a lot more objects like this out there then? Was it just happenstance? Was it just chance that we spotted this one? Yes, exactly. I mean, these objects should be, you know, these interlopers

should be passing through our solosism all the time. But if they're the size of a kilometre, you know, happening to look in the right place at the right time to find them is, it's just luck. So we should see more of these in future, whether they'll be as weird

and weirdly shaped as this one. We'll have to wait and see. That was Colin Stewart talking about Owa Muamua. Colin's latest book, How to Live in Space, is out now, and you can read his full piece on the universe's most mysterious objects in the January issue of BBC Focus magazine. Also in this issue, we look at, the science of maximising the effectiveness of your workout

by working smarter, not harder, the cutting-edge tech able to spot heart attacks before they happen, and the research is hoping to stretch quantum theory to its limits by putting a living thing in two places at once. The magazine is available in supermarkets and news agents now, where you can also find our latest special edition, The Science of True Crime. In it, we find out how psychological profiling changed the FBI,

whether maths can help us predict terrorist attacks, and how brain injuries can help create criminals, along with much more. Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Focus magazine team. We're the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes

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