With a couple of recent exceptions, cosmic phenomena (often hyped up in the media) tend to be underwhelming. Which, to be fair, is probably a good thing. But history has recorded plenty of genuinely spectacular events in the centuries and millennia before modern astronomy.

10. The Julian Star

Caesar’s Comet, aka the Julian Star, appeared after Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Senate. It was visible after sunset for seven days during the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris (games held to honor the ruler). Naturally, it became an object of worship. From the Roman writer Pliny the Elder we also learn that Augustus, Caesar’s heir, the first Roman Emperor, saw the comet as a sign that his rule had begun. 

In fact, the comet’s appearance was pivotal for Augustus and by extension the world. As Caesar’s grand-nephew, his legitimacy to rule was debated—not least by Caesar’s general Mark Antony, who accused the boy of having sex with his grand-uncle to get his will. For Augustus, the comet was a gift from above. Taking advantage of Roman gullibility, he declared the “new star” the soul of Caesar on its way to join the gods—which, neatly, affirmed his own divine status in the process.

It was so spectacularly timely, in fact, that some wonder if Augustus made it up. They point to unusual discrepancies like the 26-year gap between its alleged appearance and depiction on coins. However, ancient Roman sources are corroborated by Chinese records. Also, comets were seen as bad omens by Romans. Augustus was cunning enough to spin it as auspicious, but it wouldn’t have been his own choice.

9. The Supernova of 1054

In 1054, a supernova bright enough to be visible in daylight was recorded by astronomers worldwide. Ancient Chinese called it a “guest star” and compared it to Venus, the “morning star”, since both were best seen before dawn. Unlike Venus, though, “it had pointed rays on all sides”. Meanwhile, in the Levant, the appearance of this exploding star was linked to an epidemic that killed 14,000 people in Constantinople before spreading southwards to Cairo.

The light hung around for 23 days before it finally fizzled out and dispersed, although it remained visible for 21 months at night. Today, we know it as the Crab Nebula—the brightest remnant of any supernova we can see. However, up until recently, we didn’t know exactly what caused it. We just knew it was unlike any other supernova on record. That is, it wasn’t an iron-core collapse (whereby the mass of a huge star flows into its core causing it to collapse and explode) nor a thermonuclear supernova (whereby a small white dwarf siphons so much mass from another that it explodes). It wasn’t until 2018 that a new type of supernova was discovered: electron capture. Previously only theoretical, it more closely resembled the supernova of 1054. Electron-capture supernovae occur in stars 8-10 times the mass of the Sun when internal pressures force electrons to merge with the nuclei of atoms. This causes the core to collapse and explode. 

We didn’t see the supernova of 2018 because it happened 30-40 million lightyears away in the galaxy NGC 2146, whereas the supernova of 1054 happened in our own galaxy, just 6,500 lightyears away.

8. The Total Solar Eclipse of 585 BC

The total solar eclipse of May 28, 585 BC was among the earliest predicted cosmic events. It was foreseen by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus, who studied patterns in earlier records.

But it’s remembered for another reason too. On the day of the eclipse, two kingdoms, the Medes and Lydians, were engaged in a brutal battle. But as the moon passed in front of the sun, blocking it out and turning day into night, the fighting suddenly stopped. Both armies interpreted the darkness as an omen—a sign of the gods’ displeasure. They didn’t just stop fighting; they came to a hastily brokered peace agreement that included the marriage of a Median prince to a Lydian princess.

Fittingly, the same eclipse that stopped the savagery on the field (albeit through superstition) ushered in the dawn of rational astronomy. Thales’ prediction showed celestial events follow the laws of nature and not the whim of the gods. It laid the groundwork for future inquiry and marked a shift from superstition to science.

7. Halley’s Comet (1066)

Easily the most culturally significant object of its kind, Halley’s Comet is a part of the human story. One of its most famous appearances was in 1066, shortly before the Battle of Hastings, which imposed on the English a Norman aristocracy that remains in power today—almost 1,000 years later. 

The comet was seen as an omen at the time. The Bayeux Tapestry, an 11th-century embroidery, is thought to have been the earliest depiction, showing not only the comet but also men looking up in fear. But not everyone was afraid. Whereas the English saw it as a sign of their doom, the Normans under William the Conqueror took it as a sign of God’s blessing. He wanted them to enslave the English and steal all their land. 

Halley’s Comet’s 1066 visit is a classic example of how celestial events have been perceived as harbingers of change. Its appearance not only influenced medieval beliefs and actions but also left a lasting legacy in art and history, symbolizing the intertwining of cosmic phenomena with human destiny.

6. The Great Fireball of 1783

On the night of August 18, 1783, a lone fireball set the skies of Britain ablaze. This bright, slow-moving meteor appeared to be roughly the size of the disk of the moon and was estimated to be half a mile across and traveling at 20 miles per second. It was only visible for a minute before it broke into pieces, leaving only its core continuing on its path.

This so-called Great Fireball, which sailed across the sky just 50 or 60 miles off the ground, inspired awe and curiosity worldwide. Astronomers like Charles Blagden gathered reports, hoping to identify its origin. At the time, however, meteors were seen not as rocks but as electrical phenomena in the upper atmosphere. Hence it didn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind that, given the size and speed of the object, the world had just narrowly avoided a catastrophic impact.

Nevertheless, the fireball’s appearance and subsequent studies marked a shift from this old view to one of meteors as extraterrestrial objects. 

5. The Great Comet of 1744

Also known as de Chéseaux’s Comet, the Great Comet of 1744 dazzled observers on November 29, 1743. Although initially quite dim it brightened as it got near the sun. By mid-January the following year, the comet had a tail seven degrees long (roughly four finger widths at arm’s length). By February 1, it rivaled Sirius in brightness, with a curved tail extending 15 degrees (which is roughly the distance between the tip of your index finger and pinky spread apart at arm’s length). Still, though, the comet continued to intensify. By February 18, it was as bright as Venus and had two tails. It peaked on February 27 at a brightness of -7 apparent magnitude. The full moon is -11 and Sirius is 1.5. It was visible even in daylight, despite being just 12 degrees from the sun.

The Great Comet reached its perihelion on March 1. But the show wasn’t over just yet. When it reappeared in the morning sky on March 6, it appeared to have six brilliant tails fanned out like a Japanese hand fan across 60 degrees of the sky (four times the distance between the tip of your index finger and pinky spread apart at arm’s length!). Interestingly, these six tails were really just the most visible parts of a single, enormous curved dust tail.

4. The Great September Comet of 1882

Often said to be the brightest comet on record, the Great September Comet of 1882 was first seen by Italian sailors. By the middle of the month, near the Sun, it was bright enough to see in broad daylight. It was only 264,000 miles from the Sun’s surface, which, although it sounds a lot, is actually just a tiny fraction of Mercury’s distance of 28.5 million miles. It’s also not far off the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Hence the Great September Comet’s classification as a Kreutz Sungrazer—a comet that passes close to the Sun. 

Spectacularly, this incredibly close approach illuminated the comet 1,000 times brighter than the full moon. Observers called it a “blazing star” or “super comet” and watched in awe as its nucleus broke up into fragments. It was visible in the sky for weeks and was witnessed around the world.

3. The Great Meteor Procession of 1913

The Great Meteor Procession of February 9, 1913, remains both rare and unexplained to this day. Unlike normal meteor showers, where meteors zip across the sky at blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speeds, this procession moved slowly with the meteors crawling across the sky in formation. Also, because of their nearly horizontal trajectory, they were visible for much longer than usual: up to a minute for individual meteors and several minutes for the whole procession. There was no radiant point from which they emerged, as with meteor showers.

Witnesses across North America, the North Atlantic, and even down to Brazil reported seeing the phenomenon. Some even reported rumbling sounds suggesting the meteors might have been close to Earth when they finally broke up and disappeared. Canadian astronomer Clarence Chant, who gathered more than 100 eyewitness reports, described the meteors as two bars of flaming material trailing sparks, followed by a bright, star-like ball of fire.

Theories about the procession’s cause vary. Some think the meteors may have been fragments of a temporary second moon—a small, short-lived, natural satellite of Earth. Despite extensive study, though, the Great Meteor Procession remains a mystery to science.

2. The 1833 Leonid Meteor Storm

Ever stayed up late for a meteor shower, only to be disappointed? The term—a favorite of the media—is misleading. Even “meteor drip” would overstate it. In most cases, you’ll be lucky to see 50 in an hour, which isn’t even one every minute. It’s nothing like what people imagine. That would be a meteor storm, which is worth staying up for.

On November 13, 1833, the skies of America were utterly transformed by as many as 20 meteors per second, or 72,000 meteors per hour. It was so intense that the region of the sky around Leo looked like an umbrella of falling lights. Of course, in those days, very few knew what it was and the phenomenon caused widespread panic. People described the lights as falling “thick as snow in a snowstorm”. Fearing the end of the world, many fell to their knees and prayed. Others ran into churches to manically ring the bells. The spectacle didn’t end until dawn, fading with the first light of day. 

Today, it’s remembered as the most stunning meteor storm on record. It was also the beginning of meteor astronomy. Before this, “shooting stars” were not considered worthy of study. Hence astronomers later identified the phenomenon as caused by the comet Tempel-Tuttle and predicted its return 33 years later. Right on cue, 1866 brought another spectacular Leonid meteor storm—this time over Europe.

1. The Carrington Event

The Carrington Event of September 1-2, 1859, remains the most powerful geomagnetic storm on record. It was caused by a coronal mass ejection, a cloud of superheated plasma flying out of the Sun toward Earth. Basically, the Sun shot a magnet at our planet. And when it collided with the Earth’s magnetic field, auroras usually only visible in the far north (like Iceland and Greenland) were seen as far south as the Caribbean. 

This geomagnetic storm also caused telegraph systems right around the world to malfunction, giving electric shocks to operators, sending sparks flying, setting paper alight, and even sending telegrams without a power source. The distortion of the Earth’s magnetic field by the charged solar particles was so great that it electrified the air around us. If an event of this magnitude happened today, in our hyperconnected world, the fallout would be catastrophic. And there’s no reason not to expect one. In fact, there was a near miss in 2012 that, had it hit, would have caused trillions of dollars in damage.

It’s no surprise that the universe is a violent arena of destruction. After all, it was born out of the grandest “explosion” that was ever possible. The Big Bang materialized out of nothing and for no reason, producing exotic matter with energies of trillions and trillions of degrees. About 400,000 years later, the universe settled down into stable hydrogen, helium, and a dash of lithium and beryllium. But the peace didn’t last long, and chaos soon resumed.

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10 A quasar that eats the equivalent of a star every single day

Imagine the power required to destroy and consume our Sun. Now imagine a celestial body doing that every single day. An entity like that exists, and it’s called J2157.

J2157 is the fastest-growing black hole ever discovered. And it’s unimaginably massive: 34 billion-times the mass of the Sun. It’s also the brightest quasar yet discovered, a ravenous star-destroyer devouring the equivalent of one star per day.

And it’s just as mind-warpingly distant as it is destructive: 12.5 billion light-years from Earth. It wasn’t expected that such an early black hole, from the days when the universe was about a billion years old, should be so massive.

To get an idea of just how stupidly monstrous J2157 is, it’s 8,000 times more massive than Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. Even with the equivalent of 4 million suns in its belly, Sagittarius A* would need to consume more than 60 percent of the Milky Way’s stars to become as massive as J2157.^[1]

9 A planetary collision births a world of iron

The cosmos is full of world-shattering acts of interplanetary violence. But planetary collisions create new worlds: bizarre ones, ten-times as massive as Earth and made mostly of metal.

Kepler-107c resides in the Kepler 107 system, which contains four planets orbiting a Sun-like star, 1,700 light-years away. And by measuring the shift in wavelengths of light arriving from Kepler 107, astronomers detected the first-ever evidence of a planetary apocalypse occurring outside the solar system.

A crash of cosmic bodies birthed Kepler-107c, which measures about 1.5 Earth-radii but is made of 70 percent iron, by mass. It’s super-dense, holding 12.6 grams of material per cubic centimeter, compared to Earth’s modest 5.5.

107c has a similarly-sized but lighter (only about 3.5 Earth-masses) sibling, Kepler-107b. Its density is a more Earth-like 5.3 grams per cubic centimeter. And its iron core only accounts for 30 percent of its mass.

This suggests that the unexpectedly-iron rich Kepler-107c suffered a major collision at speeds of nearly 40 miles per second. The accident stripped Kepler-107c’s light silicate mantle, leaving a scarred, iron core with little else on top.^[2]

8 A black hole is ripped from its galaxy

Black holes dictate the structure of the universe. With their immense gravity, they lay the foundation for massive galaxies by literally punching a dent in the fabric of space-time. And that’s why they’re usually found in the center of galaxies.

But celestial forces can wrench even black holes from their galaxies and send them hurtling through space. Which is what happened to black hole XJ1417+52. It was spotted by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the XMM Newton X-ray observatory, two space-born instruments that observe the universe in, you guessed it, X-rays.

Black hole XJ1417+52 is located 4.5 billion light-years away in the outer reaches of a galaxy called GJ1417+52. It’s throwing off a stupendous amount of X-rays and smashing two cosmic records: it’s 10 times farther away and 10-times brighter (in X-rays) than any rogue black hole yet discovered.

XJ1417+52 has the mass of 100,000 Suns and once anchored its own galaxy. But that galaxy collided with the much bigger galaxy GJ1417+52, which stole the black (along with its orbiting stars.^[3]

7 Galaxies tear each other apart around the Milky Way

The Milky Way has many smaller satellite galaxies attracted to its monstrous pull. And the two most famous, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), smashed into each other a few hundred million years ago.

And the damage from that ancient collision is still occurring. The southeast portion of the Small Magellanic Cloud, or “Wing,” is floating away from the rest of the galaxy. The stars populating this region are moving in the same direction and at similar speeds, preserving the evidence of a collision hundreds of millions of years ago.

If the stars were moving in a perpendicular direction, it would suggest that the SMC and LMC passed each other closely, but didn’t collide. But the runaway region of the SMC is moving toward the LMC, proving that the two galaxies collided head-on.^[4]

6 Gravity dismantles small galaxies

Speaking of bad things happening to the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), it’s dying before our eyes. Some galaxies die glorious Viking deaths, torn apart by the gravity of some more massive object. But the SMC is dying a slow and undignified death.

Even though the 200,000 light-year-distant SMC is one of the farthest objects visible to the unaided eye, it’s still not massive enough to retain all of its gas and dust. So it’s quickly hemorrhaging its life support, hydrogen gas, into space.

The galactic assassin is gravity because the SMC doesn’t command enough of it. For every single star that the SMC produces, it loses ten times that amount in gas.

But the SMC may yet enjoy a warrior’s death and earn its place in galactic Valhalla. Researchers believe it will be absorbed by the Milky Way before it dissolves into nothingness. Many other small galaxies will not be as lucky.^[5]

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5 Solar systems throw planets thrown toward their star

Our innermost planet, Mercury, orbits the Sun in 88 days. But numerous observed super-Earths complete an orbit around their stars in just a few days. And now, new evidence points to a strange phenomenon that sends unsuspecting planets hurtling toward their sun.

Solar system formation is, not surprisingly, tricky, with many forces at play. Magnetic forces, collisions small and large between swirling bodies, and good-old gravity are among the primary shapers. And when conditions are just right, these forces can push multiple planets into a conga line toward their star.

The disk of particles that planets are born from, and the planets themselves, occasionally get locked into synchronized orbits. This “resonance” occurs as the planets and disk push and pull on each other.

And the planets go tumbling inward. They gradually migrate to the inner reaches of their solar system, ending up in an orbital berth that’s too hot and barren to form planets.^[6]

4 Clusters of galaxies smash into each other

Clusters of galaxies are zipping through space at millions of miles per hour. Sometimes they smash into each other and merge. Some ridiculously rare times, four galaxy clusters combine into one of the most massive structures the universe may ever see.

About 3 billion light-years from Earth, the universe is assembling a massive mash-up of clusters called Abell 1758. Each cluster contains potentially thousands of stars, and they’ve all been caught in an irresistible gravitational embrace.

Abell 1758 is split into two pairs of clusters. In the northern pair, the two clusters already swung by each other in the previous 300 million years. And they mixed their heavy elements together in a gravitational swirl, like a cosmic pinky swear, promising they’ll reunite once again.

The sonic boom-like shockwave from the ancient encounter reveals the mind-boggling forces at play. The clusters, each a collective body of thousands of stars, passed each other at 2-3 million miles per hour. Gravity is pulling them back together again and will eventually smoosh them into the other two galaxy clusters, forming a quadruple-cluster-deluxe.^[7]

3 Black holes gorge and spew like a fountain

Black holes appear to be surrounded by a calm donut-shaped disk. But in reality, black holes are vomiting super-hot matter all over themselves, like a fountain.

When presented with a Golden Corral-amounts of gas and dust, even the most voracious black holes can’t consume it all. The debris accretes into a disk of in-falling gas, which plunges into the black hole’s maw with ferocity. It’s heated to millions of degrees and stripped into its constituent atoms and ions, which are expelled back into the galactic environment.

Some of the black hole’s throw-up escapes into space and is never seen again. But some of the insanely-hot atomic gas is pulled back in by the insurmountable gravity to continue the cycle, circulating like water through a city fountain.^[8]

2 Millions of stars explode into life as galaxies collide

Galactic collisions invoke images of destruction. And even though galaxies may be torn apart, and stars flung into space, collisions also ignite a mass birthing of stars. The earliest example comes from when the universe was a youthful billion years old,

Even at the dawn of time galaxies, were already locked into a chaotic celestial mosh pit. Two of these galaxies, located 13 billion light-years away, have crashed into a gassy blob known as B14-65666. The bi-galactic blob isn’t huge. Its two constituents combined are only about 10 percent the mass of the Milky Way, which is expected at such an early stage in space-time.

But despite its size, the blob is 100 times more active with star-birth than our own much more massive galaxy. Galactic pile-ups cause the compression of vast clouds of gas, triggering bursts of stellar birth by literally smashing stars into life.^[9]

1 Jupiter-like planets are roasted to death

NGTS-10b is the closest-orbiting hot Jupiter ever discovered. This gas giant is 20 percent bigger and twice as massive as Jupiter. And it zooms around its 10-billion-year-old parent star so closely and quickly that its year only lasts 18 hours.

When a planet is so close to its star that a year is 25 percent shorter than an Earth day, that planet is probably scorchingly hot. And NGTS-10b is getting roasted. Luckily, its star is 1000 degrees colder than our Sun. And 70 percent less massive. But, to scale, the planet is 27 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun.

So the average temperature on NGTS-10b is only around 1000 degrees Celsius (1800 degrees Fahrenheit). But since it’s (probably) tidally locked, the temperatures differ wildly between the permanent-day-side and the permanent-night-side.

As we see it today, NGTS-10b could be serving the very last portion of its death sentence. In only 10 years, astronomers might be able to watch NGTS-10b’s final death-dive, as it spirals into its star’s fiery bosom.^[10]

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In case you haven’t heard, the universe is old. So old, it just kind of popped up about 13.77 billion years ago, for some reason. Throughout that lengthy period, it’s had a lot of time to stretch its feet and evolve into what we see today.

Though it’s stupendous that we can even see that far, which is luckily possible because light has a speed limit of 186,000 miles per second. So we can observe things as they were when their light left its source, many billions of years earlier. And that light reveals some surprising, incredibly ancient (or aged) things.

Related: Top 10 Long-Term Space Exploration Problems We Have Yet To Solve

10 A Mindbendingly Gigantic and Old Quasar

The quasar—unexcitingly known as J0313-1806—is an astronomical hall of famer for its mass and age. It’s 13.03 billion light-years away, and even at this early stage, it’s a doozy.

Though the universe was less than 5% of its current age at this point, the quasar-powering black hole already held 1.6 billion Sun-masses. That’s an absolutely insane quantity, and with stats like these, it’s easy to see why quasars often outshine the entire galaxies that surround them.

The blandly named quasar in question is (was) indeed active, spewing super-hot gasses at one-fifth the speed of light. It’s also altering its environment, as astronomers have detected intense star formation in the host galaxy.

But the black hole is too massive, too early, to have been fed by stars or formed by a collapsing star cluster. Instead, if it skipped these middlemen and started from big blobs of cold hydrogen gas that collapsed directly into a black hole, it still would have been born gnarly: a baby black hole with 10,000 stars’ worth of mass.^[1]

9 A Galaxy That Seemingly Skipped Billions of Years of Evolution

Every so often, a galactic observation bungles conventional cosmological models. One such bungler is a galaxy known as ALMA J081740.86+135138.2. It’s more than 12 billion light-years away and therefore very old, to understate things. But it’s too much of a whopper and too orderly for such universal infancy.

Around this time, less than 2 billion years after the Big Bang, about 90% of early galaxies were “train wrecks,” or chaotic clumps of gas and dust. But our dear ALMA J081740.86+135138.2 already sported a nice rotating disk and matched our Milky Way in size, at 100,000 light-years across. Plus, at 70 to 80 billion solar masses, it’s pretty beefy for a faintly shining antique galaxy.

Since the universe was only 1/10th its current age, the surprisingly hefty specimen is an unexpected find in such early cosmological days. Typically, it takes billions of years for galaxies to whip themselves up then calm down so that the gas can cool and coalesce into Milky Way-like structures.

But it’s possible to skip this whole billions-of-years-long process if the cold gas flows along dark matter filaments, as on a cosmic highway, to prematurely create beautifully spiraling galaxies.^[2]

8 The Early Universe Wasn’t So Empty

About 300,000 years after the Big Bang, everything was filled with an opaque fog of neutral hydrogen that blocked light and made the young universe invisible. It was only unveiled when the first cosmic bodies burst forth to shine and ionize (electrify) the hydrogen, lifting the “fog.”

Luckily, scientists can peep more than 13 billion years into the deep past to see how it happened. An improved gravity lensing technique revealed the cosmos when it was between 500 million and 1 billion years old. Though the researchers didn’t find their primary target, the first stars ever born, known as Population III stars.

But they did find a surprising amount of galaxies already brewing. Up to 100 times fainter than any previously detected, with lower masses than anything Hubble has spied so far. This suggests that the first stars formed even earlier than anyone thought.

And that, a mere 500 million years after the Big Bang, an unexpectedly rich collection of galaxies was already ionizing the opaque intergalactic murkiness of neutral (non-ionized) hydrogen.^[3]

7 The Oldest Galaxies…Are Right Here

You don’t have to go rummaging through deep space to find the universe’s oldest galaxies because they’re within astronomical “walking distance.”

Some of the faintest dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way, including Segue-1, Bootes I, Tucana II, and Ursa Major I, are more than 13 billion years old. This places these satellite galaxies at the beginning of the universe, making them some of the first galaxies ever—among the ones that dispelled the ever-reaching darkness of the “cosmic dark ages.”

These findings support the “Lambda-cold-dark-matter model,” which states that dark matter particles (whatever they are) drive cosmic evolution. And they began doing it more than 13 billion years ago, when congregations of dark matter, by their gravitational influence, persuaded particles of matter to accumulate and form all the structures we see now.^[4]

6 A Solar Graveyard

Barring any unforeseen catastrophe, the Sun will die in about five billion years. When it does, it’ll puff out, shed its outer layers, then settle down as a white dwarf.

A white dwarf like the dead star SDSS J122859.93+104032.9 is located about 410 light-years away. It was originally about twice as massive as the Sun. But when it died, it puffed up and lost its outer layers, shrinking and becoming only 70 percent as massive as the Sun. It’s also surrounded by a cosmic graveyard. It’s encircled by a debris field made from the shattered bodies of the planets it once warmed.

In its death throes, the star obliterated its solar system. But astronomers picked something surprising out of the jumbled carnage. A planetary fragment, a heavy metal (physically and figuratively) body that survived the death of its planetary family.

The fragment was detected by a stream of gas emanating from its body. Its size is iffy, possibly just a kilometer across. Or it could rival the solar system’s largest asteroids, at several hundred kilometers. It’s deep within a gravitational well that exerts believe has a pull 100,000 stronger than the Earth’s. So to have held up, the fragment could be the ultra-dense, metallic remnant of a planetary core.^[5]

5 The Mysteriously Ancient Galactic Disk

DLA0817g, aka the Wolfe Disk, is an anomaly. A rotating disk galaxy, spinning at 170 miles per second, upset galactic formation theories by existing when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old.

Astronomers thought galaxies like these required much longer to form their clean, stable disks. And by much longer, we mean about 6 billion years, or approaching half the universe’s current age. But like all fortuitous finds, DLA0817g nonchalantly discards man-made theories. It’s unlike typical galaxies formed around this time, which are messy, banged-up things caused by big-time collisions.

But that’s not the case here, suggesting a different mechanism. If DLA0817g were sucking up streams of cool gas, like a gigantic vacuum cleaner, that would allow it to hold its form. And to continue pumping out stars at a rate ten times faster than in our Milky Way.^[6]

4 Quasars Terrorized a Young Universe

Astronomers peered deep into space-time and found a bunch of quasars at the edge of the universe, more than 13 billion light-years away. That’s such an incredibly distant, unimaginable epoch that its inhabitants existed in a dust-free environment. Because there hadn’t been enough time for stars to spew out the plumes of molecules that coagulated into cosmic dust.

Of the 21 quasars detected in the baby universe, J0005-0006 and its buddy J0303-0019 are the first ones ever observed without any dust around them. They belong to the most-distant population of quasars detected, which were already popping up in surprising abundance less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

These 21 ancient quasars from the infant universe are powered by supermassive black holes that hold the contents of 100 million suns. Due to their dust-free complexion, astronomers believe these to be first-generation quasars. Yet these things are so stupidly energetic and modern astronomy so precise that researchers can see them literally across the entire universe.^[7]

3 A Star Nearly As Old As Existence Itself

A newly discovered star, 2MASS J18082002–5104378 B, is unbelievably ancient: 13.5 billion years old. That’s almost as old as the universe itself. And it will continue to burn for trillions of years over a ridiculous span that dwarfs the current age of the universe. And here’s a huge surprise: it wasn’t found out at the far reaches of space, but close to home in the Milky Way.

In another surprise, it’s located in the “thin disk” of our galaxy, in the same neighborhood that houses the Sun. But unlike good ol’ Sol, this star with the terribly unwieldy name is so old it could be just a single generation removed from the first-ever stars, which graced the void with light.

These first stars were devoid of metals. Metals were created later on, as their sub-atomic components were smashed together in the fury of stellar cores or during supernovae. So instead of metals, these ancient stellar geriatrics were full of hydrogen, helium, and lithium.^[8]

2 A Timeless Cosmic Relic

NGC 1277 is unique. It’s an old soul, a relic that shows what galaxies were like during the universe’s early eons. Like many old-timers, it’s aversed to change and has “remained essentially unchanged for the past 10 billion years.”

It’s one of over 1,000 galaxies floating about the Perseus cluster, about 240 million light-years away—even though these “1-in-1,000” relics are generally found much, much farther away. It almost exclusively contains elderly old stars born 10 billion years ago. These once shined bright and blue(r) but are now aging and red, enjoying a period of galactic quiescence. And even though NGC 1277 contains twice as many stars as our Milky Way, it’s only a quarter of the size.

NGC 1277 has a grim future. This menagerie of elderly stellar bodies is zooming through space at two million miles per hour. That’s probably too fast to allow it to combine with other galaxies or siphon star-building gas to keep itself spry.^[9]

1 Amino Acids Form Early, Before the Planets

The prevalence of amino acid building blocks is a major factor in universal habitability. A prospect that just improved via the recent discovery that glycine, a simple yet super-important life-forming amino acid, is even easier to form than previously believed.

It was thought that energy was needed to form glycine and its ilk. Energy supplied by, say, ultraviolet radiation. But researchers now say UV is no longer a necessary ingredient in the recipe; glycine can form through the rad-sounding “dark chemistry.”

In the interstellar clouds, tiny, ice-covered dust particles smash into each other like cosmic bumper cars. They fragment and reassemble into interesting compounds. The most tantalizing aspect of the research is the realization that glycine, and other amino acids, may form in space clouds before the clouds condense into celestial bodies.

So these amino acids can be ready before the formation of their solar system. And then distributed throughout the universe by comets and such, potentially laying the groundwork to birth all sorts of ETs.^[10]