To quote Douglas Adams, “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
And yes, space is an completely crazy place.
Hypervelocity stars
You all probably know that ''shooting stars'' are not really stars, but meteorites entering Earth's atmosphere. Meteorites are, in fact, just rocks, infinitely smaller than real stars.
But, not to disappoint you, real shooting stars do exist. Big, fiery balls, rocketing around at huge velocity.
What gives them such velocity?
When a binary star system is gobbled down by the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, one of the two stars is consumed, while the other is ejected at high speed. Just imagine a huge ball of gas, moving at millions of miles per hour.
Also, a star can be in binary system with black hole. Contrary to popular belief, black holes do not consume everything that comes close to them, and stars, and other objects can be on stable orbits around black holes. Example for this is SWIFT J1357.2. The star from this system makes a complete orbit around the center of the system’s mass in the shortest orbital period known of at this time, just in 2.8 hours.
The diamond planet
The huge diamond planet was once a star in a binary system, until its partner began to cannibalize it. However, the star was not able to pull its carbon core away. As you know carbon needs heat and pressure to tun into diamond, and this planet has it all. It is said that 1/3 of planet is pure diamond, and would be priced at 27 nonillion dollars. Yes, nonillion, that is 1 and 30 zeros after.
God's liquor cabinet
Sagittarius B2, a huge cloud a few million times the mass of our sun, floating around near the center of our galaxy. Scientists have discovered that it's basically giant barrel of raspberry-flavored rum.
Sagittarius B2 contains about 10 billion billion billion liters of alcohol, and the cloud is also full of the molecule called ethyl-formate. This chemical smells of rum, and is the same chemical that gives raspberries their flavor.
The Universe's largest water reservoir
Twelve billion light years away, huge water cloud, consisted of 140 trillion times more water that in all world's oceans, resides in the center of quasar.
Astronomers expected water vapor to be present even in the early, distant universe, but had not detected it this far away before. There's water vapor in the Milky Way, although the total amount is 4,000 times less than in the quasar, because most of the Milky Way’s water is frozen in ice.
The Universe's largest electrical current
Only a few years ago, scientist discovered this electrical current of cosmic proportions, 10^18 amps, or like one trillion lightning bolts (if you can relate to this more).
Where is this coming from?
It is believed that the source of this electrical current is an enormous black hole in the center of the galaxy, which has a nucleus that is a ''huge cosmic jet''. Apparently, the black hole’s huge magnetic field allows it to fire up this lightning bolt through gas and dust to a distance of over 150000 light years away, and yes, bigger than our home galaxy.
The Great Attractor
When astronomers were observing one of the closest super-clusters, they noticed that something is pulling the galaxies toward it at speeds more than 200,000 miles per hour. The mass needed for the structure or object or whatever it is to apply the measured force on the galaxies is huge.
The nature of this structure is not known, some scientist believe that dark energy, the force that is expanding the universe is to blame, others just say it is some kind of gravitational anomaly. But, latter would mean that we still do not understand how gravity acts on large scales.
The Eridanus Supervoid
It is empty space. Not amazed?
Most of space is actually empty, but with the discovery of quantum physics we know that empty space is not completely empty as it contains energy and virtual particles that pop in and out of existence.
But Eridanus Supervoid is entirely devoid of all matter, and even dark matter. This is the largest known void, and it stretches over one billion light years.
Still not amazed? Wait to hear the possible explanation.
Some scientist believe it could be the imprint of another universe, caused by entanglement of two universes, before they were separated by cosmic inflation. Simply put, the other universe rubbed elbows with our own in distant past.
On the other side, some scientist believe it is a black hole, equal in mass with whole universe.
The LQG
This is a structure so big that breaks laws of modern cosmology. Think about our galaxy,Milky Way, 100000 light years across. If something happens on one end of galaxy, light needs 100000 years to reach the other end. Now imagine something 40 000 times bigger than this.
LQG (stands for large quasar group) is 4 billion light years across. This cluster of 73 quasars breaks the rules of modern astrophysics, because maximum size for an object is 1.2 billion years, and scientist have no absolutely clue how this thing formed.