4 Creepiest Things in Outer Space

If you're a fan of spooky space pictures like we are here at the Strange Mysteries Thunder Volcano Headquarters, you'll probably have already seen those weird astronomical photos of gas clouds and galaxies that resemble ghostly hands, flaming skulls, or the all-seeing eye of our benevolent Lord Sauron. But these are all just cases of pareidolia, the human propensity to see things where things don't exist. No, the really weird things in space are the events and phenomena we simply do not understand, things that scream across the cosmos and can tear reality in two, and the mysterious force which lurks at the edge of our universe. So let's explore these unsettling curiosities and more in our list of the four creepiest things in outer space. In at number four, supermassive black holes. A regular old black hole is creepy enough as these time-bending regions of space allow nothing to escape from their grasp. Planets, stars, particles, and even light itself cannot resist the lure of these mysterious objects, and once you're in, you're in for good. Information never leaves this place, and we know barely anything about what goes on inside them. Do black holes lead to other universes? Do they help create new universes? Are they wormholes to another dimension entirely? We're still not sure, but we do believe that time almost certainly slows down both near and inside one, and it may even run backwards. Not that that matters to you or I, for if a human was casually strolling by a black hole, they would end up stretched to death by a force known as spaghettification. However, if you were to instead enter a supermassive black hole, one thousands or billions of times larger than our sun, then something even weirder would happen. You'd die, and you'd be fine. The moment you entered into a supermassive black hole, your reality would split in two. Oh man, I hope I'm a super cool denim shorts-wearing kind of guy in at least one of those realities. No such luck. In one of these realities, you'd be instantly incinerated, and in the other, you'd continue on your way through the black hole without a scratch or denim cut-offs. Anyone observing this would see only the first part and your movements slow to a standstill before you're burnt to death in front of them. Like a cremation, except slower and more agonizing for the family. But based on our current knowledge, you yourself would experience nothing. You'd be just dandy, as while it's true that the deeper you go into a black hole, the laws of physics no longer apply, we believe it's possible that someone could live pretty normally within a black hole, if it were big enough. Now of course you might think this doesn't matter at all, since the closest black hole is 2,400 light years away, and the closest supermassive black hole is probably the one at the center of the Milky Way, 26,000 light years away. But don't get too comfy just yet, because we're finding new ones all the time in places we never expected. For example, on January 8th, 2017 it was announced that two monster supermassive black holes have been discovered in a pair of galaxies 38 million light years out. But these black holes were concealed behind a cloud of gas and dust, and astronomers have since described them as like monsters hiding under your bed, with further black holes almost certainly lurking elsewhere. That's if we're not living within one already, of course, which is what some physicists believe. One legitimate theory regarding the beginnings of the universe claims that our entire cosmos resides inside a supermassive black hole, which itself lives inside an even larger universe. Another theory claims that Earth exists on the cusp of a large supermassive black hole present inside our existing universe. And in both theories, we'd experience something pretty weird indeed. Time would be slowing down, or even reversing, but the people of Earth would never know. 3. Shooting Black Holes The only thing scarier than a supermassive black hole is a bunch of black holes screaming across the galaxy at 900 million miles per hour. And guess what? These suckers exist, and there may be a lot of them. Roaming black holes moving across space at hundreds of millions of miles an hour have been seen on a number of occasions, but until recently we'd never seen the Big Daddy version move anywhere close to these speeds. In fact, scientists originally thought that nothing could exert enough force upon a supermassive black hole to make them move. But in 2012, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory detected a supermassive black hole that was screaming out of its galaxy at 3 million miles an hour. It is believed that one black hole may have collided with another, and the resulting gravitational wave radiation caused a huge recoil event which propelled one of the supermassive black holes out into space at astonishing speeds. Bear in mind that this particular supermassive black hole had amassed several million times that of our sun. And then imagine something that big moving that fast across the universe. The only thing we could add into this mix to make it even scarier is unpredictability, and unfortunately we've got a hefty dose of that already stirred in. When a supermassive black hole strikes something, we're not entirely sure in what direction it's going to spurt out. So who knows, one or more could be heading our way right now. At 2. The Boötes Void If you were to try and imagine what something called the Boötes Void might look like, you already don't understand the definition of the word void. Boötes Void is just that, a void, a barren hole, a stretch of nothingness so empty it makes the Olsen Twins fridge look full. This area of mostly empty space lies 700 million light-years from Earth, and is approximately 330 million light-years in diameter. And this vast region, which represents 0.27% of the entire visible universe, contains barely any galaxies at all. It is the emptiest place in the universe, and we don't know why. Described today as a supervoid, the Boötes was discovered in 1981 by Robert Kirschner, and it took him and his colleagues a further six years to find just eight galaxies within it. Today we know of at least 60 in total, but this is compared to the 10,000 galaxies that should be there based on its size. So what gives? Why is there a giant hole where a mass of galaxies should be? One explanation claims that large voids of empty space can merge together in the same way planetary bodies or pretty bubbles do. But a more shocking theory puts the blame for the void squarely at the feet of extraterrestrial life. Do you recall Tabby's star? The star which has been curiously dimming over the past few years? Well, one explanation for that particular phenomenon has also been used here, as it argues that a super-advanced civilization might be causing both this void and the dimming of Tabby through the use of Dyson shells. Dyson shells, a gigantic theoretical megastructure which could be used to envelop entire stars in order to both harness their energy and mask their existence. And the advanced civilization required to build these things could theoretically exist, since it is thought that intelligent life in the universe first became possible around 4 billion years ago. But could this possibly be the true explanation for the Boötes void? Or are we merely witnessing the aftermath of a gargantuan cosmic event which we've yet to detect? And at number one, the force beyond our universe. Dark flow is the name scientists have given to the mysterious force which they have detected beyond the borders of our visible universe. This force is seemingly caused by something massive existing outside of the regions we are able to view. And the reason we know it exists is because it's having a huge effect on the parts of the universe we can view. It's like when your buddy says he can't come out to the bar tonight. You may not be able to see his wife actively cook-holding his totally whipped ass, but you know she's having a major effect on his ability to leave and slam some beers. The coloured parts of this image show just how much of our known universe is being sucked away by this force. And whatever it is that's causing this pull, it's like nothing we've ever seen or even conceived of before. Astronomers were initially divided on whether dark flow actually existed, and many of its effects were attributed to another strange phenomenon known as the great attractor. The great attractor is a gravitational mystery thought to be located within a cluster of galaxies called the Norma Cluster, and this intriguing anomaly also pulls objects towards it in the same direction as the dark flow. But in 2015, a team led by NASA cosmologist Alexander Kizhlinsky claimed to have found proof of the dark flow's existence, and they also believe it to be behind the great attractor's pulling power. The team's current efforts are focused on understanding the power of this force, and so far they've managed to document its influence to a range of 2.5 billion light years. So now the race is on to find out exactly what is causing this mysterious dark flow, and just how far its effects will reach. And that's our list! Did you enjoy our video? Lovely! Then why not check out our recent piece on 10 scary yet awe-inspiring space facts? The great attractor is even in there. Because we wrote it before some other science jerk said it might not exist. Damn you, progress.