Mysteries of the Universe You never know what you might find out about the universe and in this case, we found a solar system which was almost a duplicate of our own, the difference being there were only six planets found. As you might have guessed, it wasn’t long until the thoughts turned to the chance of finding life there. Unfortunately, the solar system is so far away, we may never be able to reach it unless we can develop speeds of hundreds of light years per hour. We they say this system is almost a duplicate, scientists are talking about living conditions. The main star is cooler but the earth like planet makes up for this by being closer than earth is to its star. When we think about black holes, we assume that are all in the same position, but scientists have just found out this is not true. When a galaxy named NGC 5084 was examined, by telescope of course, it was found there was a large black hole there laying on its side. This had never been seen before. It was not laying the same in the plane of the galaxy as do other black holes. This galaxy was examined by NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope. As for the reason for this strange layout of the black hole, scientists think it may have something to do with the history of the galaxy it is in, meaning there might have been some event that caused this in the past, and it must have been very powerful. Scientists are constantly looking throughout the universe for wormholes. These are shortcuts in space connecting two or more areas. So far, none have been found, but many scientists are confident they exist, and as a matter of fact, scientific examinations on the television show, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, indicated the scientists there believed they may have found at least one and maybe more. I personally can’t wait for the new season of the show to be announced. It is also thought they could be shortcuts in time. If we can discover one or more, we might be able to avoid the limitation in speed during space travel by using short cuts known as worm holes to explore the universe, if they actually exist and we get to understand how to use them and perhaps even learn how to create them. One of the problems we will eventually have, is how to protect ourselves and our spacecraft from harmful Gamma and X-rays while traveling through space. So far, we have not to my knowledge found a credible way of doing this. The solutions we do have would add so much weight to the spacecraft it would not be feasible. It seems to me we will have to find some way to use plasma or even electricity to either shield or deflect harmful rays. There could be many other dangers in space we are not even aware of yet. When people began to work underwater in huge boxes to build the supports for bridges, they knew nothing about the bends and when they first contacted them this way, they didn’t know what was happening. The same might be true about some areas in space which could have different properties than others. Even though we can tell many objects in space are there, it does not necessarily mean we know what they are. There is an object known as CWISE J1249 which we have found but we don’t know what it is, but we do know how fast it is moving. Scientists have calculated its speed at over 1 million miles per hour. This object is in the Milky Way and it is thought it will exit the Milky Way if some tens of millions of years. This not only illustrates how fast it is moving, but also how big the Milky Way Galaxy is. We now have the most powerful space telescope in the world, which is the James Webb telescope and yet there are even areas of our own solar system we have yet to see every object in. The Oort Cloud is a distant area at the edge of the solar system. Some day we might get a big surprise in that we might find something in it we weren’t expecting. We still do not have the telescopic power to see most of the objects in it. It is studies by simulations and indirect observations to check the effects of gravity which could prove there is a large object unknown to us in the Oort Cloud. There is another distant area in our solar system known as the Kuiper Belt. It exists beyond the orbit of Neptune and is said to be the biggest structure in our solar system. We don’t seem to have an exact measurement for it yet, but it is estimated to be about 20 to 100 times bigger than the asteroid belt. Again, one never knows what might be found in there. We know there are some dwarf planets. It is thought there are no large planets there because the theory is Neptune prevented the material from forming a large planet. One thing we know about theories, the are not always correct. Some people think Planet X could exist in the Kuiper Belt. It is believed by some gravity from a very large object has affected the objects in the belt, but so far nothing has been found. The object is thought to be as large as 10 times the mass of the Earth if it exists. It is also believed it would take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the sun. Some believe it could cause some damage to the earth when it gets too close. We are on the edge of learning a lot more about the universe and much of this will be due to the efforts of private space companies like SpaceX which seems to be ahead of the curve and far ahead of NASA in some areas such as rocketry. I think it is because instead of waiting for government contracts to build rockets, such as the legacy companies do, SpaceX builds them on its own and then vies for contracts not only from the government, but also from the public companies. As they do this their technology keeps advancing while the legacy companies are falling further behind. One can only hope this continues and other new space companies do the same things. There is no doubt there is far more competition for the legacy companies and they are having a hard time handling it.
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