The Strangest Objects in the Universe ever Discovered

The universe is an unsolved mystery which is beyond the scope of human beings to resolve. Still, humanity is trying hard to discover new and unique objects lying somewhere in the space. In this process, numerous strange and unexplainable things have been found, that have left many in great confusion.

Here is a small list of such strange things that will definitely intrigue you!

Nuclear Pasta

Image Credits: Livescience

Nuclear pasta is a theoretical type of degenerate matter that is postulated to exist within the crusts of neutron stars. If it does in fact exist, nuclear pasta is the strongest material in the universe. Between the surface of a neutron star and the quark–gluon plasma at the core, at matter densities of 10^14 g/cm^3, nuclear attraction and Coulomb repulsion forces are of similar magnitude. The competition between the forces leads to the formation of a variety of complex structures assembled from neutrons and protons. Astrophysicists call these types of structures nuclear pasta because the geometry of the structures resembles various types of pasta.

Neutron stars are formed as a result of a phenomenon called supernova, and these do not possess a gaseous plasma. In fact, the gravitational force of attraction is so intense that the compact mas overcomes the electron degenaracy pressure and results in electron capture to occur within a star. As a result, a very compact sphere of almost pure neutron matter is formed.  

At the surface, the pressure is low enough that conventional nuclei, such as helium and iron, can exist independently of one another and are not crushed together due to the mutual Coulomb repulsion of their nuclei. At the core, the pressure is so great that this Coulomb repulsion cannot support individual nuclei, and some form of ultradense matter, such as the theorized quark–gluon plasma, should exist.

The presence of a small population of protons is necessary to the formation of nuclear pasta. The nuclear attraction between protons and neutrons is greater than the nuclear attraction of two protons or two neutrons. Similar to how neutrons act to stabilize heavy nuclei of conventional atoms against the electric repulsion of the protons, the protons act to stabilize the pasta phases. The competition between the electric repulsion of the protons, the attractive force between nuclei, and the pressure at different depths in the star result in the formation of nuclear pasta. Further, the strength of nuclear pasta is estimated to be 10 billion times the strength of steel.

Mysterious Radio Signals(FRB)

FRB, which stands for fast radio burst, refers to a transient radio pulse of length ranging from a fraction of a millisecond to a few milliseconds, caused by some high-energy astrophysical process which is yet to be understood. Although they are really high energy pulses emitted from various sources, the strength of the signal reaching Earth has been described as 1,000 times less than from a mobile phone on the Moon. The first FRB was discovered by researcher Duncan Lorimer and his student David Narkevic in 2007 when they were looking through archival pulsar survey data, and it is therefore commonly referred to as the Lorimer Burst. Many FRBs have since been recorded, including several that have been detected to repeat in seemingly irregular ways. Nonetheless, one FRB, as of February 2020, has been detected to repeat in a regular way: particularly, FRB 180916 seems to pulse every 16.35 days. Although the exact origin and cause is uncertain, most are extragalactic. The first Milky Way FRB was detected in April 2020.

When the FRBs are polarized, it indicates that they are emitted from a source contained within an extremely powerful magnetic field. The origin of the FRBs has not beenidentified; proposals for their origin range from a rapidly rotating neutron star and a black hole, to extraterrestrial intelligence.

The localization and characterization in 2012 of FRB 121102, one of the three repeating sources, has improved the understanding of the source class. FRB 121102 is identified with a galaxy at a distance of approximately 3 billion light-years and is embedded in an extreme environment. The first host galaxy identified for a non-repeating burst, FRB 180924, was identified in 2019 and is a much larger and more ordinary galaxy, nearly the size of the Milky Way. In August 2019, astronomers reported the detection of eight more repeating FRB signals. In January 2020, astronomers reported the precise location of a second repeating burst, FRB 180916. One FRB seems to have been in the same location as a known gamma-ray burst.

On 28 April 2020, a pair of millisecond-timescale bursts consistent with observed fast radio bursts, with a fluence of >1.5 million Jy/ms, was detected from the same area of sky as the magnetar SGR 1935+2154. Furthermore, the dispersion measure was too low to have originated anywhere outside of the Milky Way. Although it was thousands of times less intrinsically bright than previously observed fast radio bursts, its comparative proximity rendered it the most powerful fast radio burst yet observed, reaching a peak flux of either a few thousand or several hundred thousand Janskies, comparable to the brightness of the radio sources Cassiopeia A and Cygnus A at the same frequencies. This established magnetars as at least one ultimate source of fast radio bursts, although the exact cause remains unknown.

The Rings of Dwarf Planet Haumea

Haumea

Haumea is a very unique dwarf planet orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper belt beyond Pluto. It was discovered in 2003 by a team of American astronomers at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. 

Originally called 2003 EL61, Haumea is named after the Hawaiian goddess of birth and fertility. In September 2008 the International Astronomical Union declared Haumea as the fifth dwarf planet and the fourth plutoid. Haumea is an elongated object, unlike a dwarf planet. Unlike most objects in the Kuiper belt, Haumea is not an equal mixture of ice and rock but likely has a thin water ice crust covering a rocky interior. It is one of the densest Kuiper belt objects, with a density of 1.885 grams per cubic centimeter. Haumea has a surface feature, the Dark Red Spot, which may be an impact crater that has revealed the dwarf planet’s interior. 

In 2017 astronomers discovered a ring around Haumea. The ring is about 70 km (40 miles) wide and is at a radius of 2,287 km (1,421 km) from the dwarf planet. The ring is in the same plane with Haumea’s equator and the orbit of Hi‘iaka. Particles in the ring are in a 3:1 resonance with the dwarf planet’s rotation; that is, ring particles make one revolution for every three times Haumea rotates. Haumea is the most distant solar system body with a ring and the only dwarf planet and Kuiper belt object to have one.

Dark Matter Less Galaxy

The galaxy NGC1052-DF2  observed with the help of the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, a telescope array specially crafted to investigate low-brightness targets that are often otherwise overlooked, has been found to comprise mostly of luminous or visible matter. Although it is seen that most of the mass of a galaxy is contributed by dark matter, but this galaxy's mass mostly consists of visible matter.

In other galaxies, dark matter is far more prevalent than “normal” matter, usually by a factor of 30 times or more. In fact, some galaxies like Dragonfly 44 (also identified by the telephoto array, as the name suggests) are almost made up entirely of dark matter. Dark matter is key for defining the structure of these galaxies; it drives most of the motion for the stars found within them, and it holds galaxies together in larger groups called galaxy clusters. 

Tabby's Star 

Tabby's Star (also known as Boyajian's Star and WTF Star, and designated KIC 8462852 in the Kepler Input Catalog) is an F-type main-sequence star located in the constellation Cygnus approximately 1,470 light-years (450 pc) from Earth. Unusual light fluctuations of the star, including up to a 22% dimming in brightness, were discovered by citizen scientists as part of the Planet Hunters project. In September 2015, astronomers and citizen scientists associated with the project posted a preprint of an article describing the data and possible interpretations. The discovery was made from data collected by the Kepler space telescope, which observed changes in the brightness of distant stars to detect exoplanets.

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the star's large irregular changes in brightness as measured by its light curve, but none to date fully explain all aspects of the curve. One explanation is that an "uneven ring of dust" orbits Tabby's Star. In another explanation, the star's luminosity is modulated by changes in the efficiency of heat transport to its photosphere, so no external obscuration is required. A third hypothesis, based on a lack of observed infrared light, posits a swarm of cold, dusty comet fragments in a highly eccentric orbit, however, the notion that disturbed comets from such a cloud could exist in high enough numbers to obscure 22% of the star's observed luminosity has been doubted. Another hypothesis is that a large number of small masses in "tight formation" are orbiting the star. Furthermore, spectroscopic study of the system has found no evidence for coalescing material or hot close-in dust or circumstellar matter from an evaporating or exploding planet within a few astronomical units of the mature central star. It has also been hypothesized that the changes in brightness could be signs of activity associated with intelligent extraterrestrial life constructing a Dyson swarm; however, further analysis based on data through the end of 2017 showed wavelength-dependent dimming consistent with dust but not an opaque object such as an alien megastructure, which would block all wavelengths of light equally.

Tabby's Star is not the only star that has large irregular dimmings, but all other such stars are young stellar objects called YSO dippers, which have different dimming patterns. An example of such an object is EPIC 204278916.

4-Billion-year-old Neutrino

A single, high-energy neutrino struck Earth on Sept. 22, 2017. It came from a distant galaxy, wrapped around a supermassive black hole. 

For 4 billion years, this neutrino soared through space undisturbed. It might have passed stars, chunks of rock, or other galaxies. It might even have passed through them; neutrinos can usually stream through matter without leaving any trace. So, for most of the time it took life on Earth to emerge, to form bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, and for one of those animals (us) to discover their existence, this neutrino traveled undisturbed. 

Then it crashed into an atom in a block of ice in Antarctica, spat another high-energy particle called a muon into the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a massive particle detector buried under the Antarctic ice, and it disappeared forever.

Planet Nine

Planet Nine refers to a hypothetical planet in the outer region of the Solar System. Its gravitational effects could explain the unusual clustering of orbits for a group of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (eTNOs), bodies beyond Neptune that orbit the Sun at distances averaging more than 250 times that of the Earth. These eTNOs tend to make their closest approaches to the Sun in one sector, and their orbits are similarly tilted. These improbable alignments suggest that an undiscovered planet may be shepherding the orbits of the most distant known Solar System objects.

This hypothetical super-Earth-sized planet would have a predicted mass of five to ten times that of the Earth, and an elongated orbit 400 to 800 times as far from the Sun as the Earth. Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown suggest that Planet Nine could be the core of a giant planet that was ejected from its original orbit by Jupiter during the formation of the Solar System. Others propose that the planet was captured from another star, was once a rogue planet, or that it formed on a distant orbit and was pulled into an eccentric orbit by a passing star.

7968 Elst- Pizarro

Elst Pizzaro

Comet Elst–Pizarro is really unique, as it is a body that displays characteristics of both asteroids and comets, and is the prototype of main-belt comets. Its orbit keeps it within the asteroid belt, yet it displayed a dust tail like a comet while near perihelion in 1996, 2001, and 2007. As a comet it is formally designated as 133P/Elst–Pizarro and as an asteroid it is designated as 7968 Elst–Pizarro.

Elst–Pizarro was reported in 1979 as minor planet 1979 OW7, with its image on a photographic plate being completely stellar in appearance. Its orbit remains entirely within the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, with eccentricity 0.165, typical of a minor planet in the asteroid belt. However, the images taken by Eric W. Elst and Guido Pizarro in 1996, when it was near perihelion, clearly show a cometary tail. Since this is not normal behaviour for asteroids, it is suspected that Elst–Pizarro has a different, probably icy, composition. The cometary nature of Elst–Pizarro was first discovered when a linear dust feature was observed with the ESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope at La Silla Observatory on 7 August 1996.

Subsequently, around the next perihelion in November 2001, the cometary activity appeared again, and persisted for 5 months. It again came to perihelion on 8 February 2013. The outgassing was found to happen only on small part of the surface measuring less than 600m in effective diameter, likely being the relatively recent (younger than 100 million years) impact crater.

Hoag’s Object

Hoag's Object

Hoag's Object is a non-typical galaxy of the type known as a ring galaxy. The galaxy is named after Arthur Hoag who discovered it in 1950 and identified it as either a planetary nebula or a peculiar galaxy with eight billion stars, spanning roughly 100,000 light years.

In the initial announcement of his discovery, Hoag proposed that the visible ring was a product of gravitational lensing, which was later discarded because the nucleus and the ring have the same redshift, and because more advanced telescopes revealed the knotty structure of the ring, something that would not be visible if the ring were the product of gravitational lensing. Many of the details of this galaxy still remain a mystery, most important of which is how it formed. 

The Bermuda Triangle of space

There's a place more than 500 kilometers above the Atlantic Ocean where the computer systems of the Internationsl Space Station suddenly crash, space telescopes can't operate and satellites shutdown. Some people have termed this zone as the "Bermuda Triangle of Space." Because of its shape, some researchers nicknamed it "the Duck." But there's nothing really mysterious about the South Atlantic Anomaly. It's a region of space where the Earth's magnetic field is off center and lets in space radiation to especially low altitudes. Now a team of Italian researchers have re-crunched the data from a decade-old satellite to get a clearer picture of this space hazard.

The anomaly is part of the Van Allen Radiation Belts, a ring of trapped solar radiation between about 1,000 and 6,000 kilometers above the planet's surface (there's a second ring that starts about 13,000 kilometers out). However the rings are a little bit off-kilter because the middle of Earth's magnetic field doesn't align straight through the center of the Earth. That brings one sliver of the ring closer to the planet's surface, centered off the coast of Brazil.

The Italian researchers scoured archived radiation data from the BeppoSAX satellite that flew from 1996 through 2003. The satellite carried with it a particle monitor which recorded whenever it flew through a cloud of high-energy protons and electrons like the SAA. Using this data, scientists were able to build a clearer picture of this radiation zone, or at least the northernmost section of it which the satellite passed through.