Mysteries of the Millennium

Space has some the best views and the deepest mysteries. We are trying to solve the mystery while being a part of it, and hence such mysteries can never be solved. Its safe to say some of these mysteries are better off solved by nature itself.

1. The star that breaks Math: There is one star in the Milky Way galaxy named HD-140283, located about 200 light years away from Earth. This star is living proof that stars can exist for tens of billions of years. When scientists first discovered this star in the late 90’s they were astonished by the calculations. This star was first evaluated to an approximate age of 14.3 billions years. But, the age of the universe itself is not more than 13.8 billion years. How can a star exist before the universe itself? Later, the age of the star was further calculated and was again found to be 13.9 billion years, this was done by supercomputers which have been fed with the most accurate data known to mankind. It is still shining with almost its full brightness and will probably exist for hundreds of billions of years into the future. Scientists predict, this one star might give us the chance to observe a black dwarf (stars which have completely cooled down and stop fusing hydrogen into helium and basically cold planet-sized rocks). Such type of objects has never been observed as the universe itself it is not old enough for such entities to exist. If the age of this star is proven true, it might lead to a gateway to understanding the nature of the first stars to have been ever formed since the Big Bang. It might also allow us to study the earliest known stars, called the Primordial Stars.
2. Phoenix A*: This is an ultra-massive black hole located in the heart of the Phoenix galaxy cluster, located about 8 to10 billion light-years away from Earth. This black hole has a mass of 100 billion suns. To put that into perspective, the black hole at the center of our Milky Way is about 1 million solar masses. This also means that, if we were to take all the stars in the Milky Way, stretching from end-to-end this black hole would still be more massive. The event horizon of this black hole, that is the point of no return stretches 590 billion kilometers. To put that into perspective, the distance from the Sun to Pluto is 5.9 billion kilometers, so that means the event horizon of this black hole is 10 times wider than the distance between Sun and Pluto. If we were to put our solar system inside this black hole, we can still fit 10 more of our solar systems laid out in a straight line with some more space to spare. Now the question arises, how could a black hole become this massive? The answer to that question is not simple. Generally, black holes grow in size by feeding on stars and gas clouds. But in the span of our universe’s age, there isn’t enough time for it to grow by this way. This leaves only another option. It must have grown in size by feeding on other black holes. There is a good possibility that the singularity found in this black hole is a result of the merging of tens or even hundreds of other smaller black holes in the extreme past. This also suggests the fact that, this might be one the earliest black holes to be formed in the universe, making it the first ever Primordial Black Hole.
3. Hercules Corona Borealis — The Great Wall: This is an anomaly in spacetime itself. This is an arrangement of galaxies in almost a straight line spanning over 10 billion light-years in length. This is 10% of the entire length of the observable universe itself. The baffling part is that the Dark Matter which is found in each and every galaxy in the universe has not tangled up in this case. Generally, when two or more galaxies are very close to each other, the dark matter in those two galaxies gets tangled up and ends up in a galactic collision. But, in the Hercules Corona Borealis, it seems this very fundamental process is not happening. Due to the combined gravitation pull of this monstrosity, all the galaxies hundreds of billions of light years away from it is getting pulled towards it. Our Milky Way, the Andromeda and the 30 other galaxies in the close vicinity called the Local Group is also getting pulled towards it. That is the reason why the Andromeda Galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way, all of it because of the massive combined gravitational tug. Another baffling part about it is the fact that it is bigger than some of the Super Constellations which are the cosmic filament which makes up the observable universe. The Virgo Super Constellation pales in comparison with this filament. This is one of the strangest things we have found so far, the bizarre part being, the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) which is the left-over heat from the Big Bang is oddly hotter in that region when compared to other regions of space. Though it is not that significant, and the temperature variation is by degrees in the decimal, this one entity breaks all the laws of Astrophysics and the known rules that govern existence itself.

In conclusion, the universe always has something brighter, the massive and more baffling things. It is wise to say that nothing is in our control and our problems here on Earth is like a drop of water in the ocean of mysteries.