Space Oddities

Runaway Black Hole

The James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021, with goals of studying the formations of galactic objects and researching the origins of life. It must’ve been surprising when it discovered the first ever rogue black hole flying through the cosmos. Designated RBH-1 (ten points for guessing what that acronym represents), this black hole has been spotted moving through space at a speed of up to 1,000 km per second – roughly the same as travelling from the National Space Centre to Berlin in a second.

Scientists think that RBH-1 was sent on its journey when two galaxies collided. The two supermassive black holes in their centres combined, but there were some teething problems between the two, causing some gravity shockwaves to be flung out. This caused the newly merged black holes to be slingshotted backwards, becoming RBH-1. As it flies, it leaves a trail of newly formed stars in its trail. It might be scary and terrifying to think that black holes can fly around, but at least RBH-1 leaves some positivity behind!

Gravitational Lensing

Now folks, bear with me here. Gravitational lensing sounds complicated and while researching for this blog, I came across the words “Einstein’s general relativity” and had a mild panic. But it’s not that complicated, it’s just very, very odd.

As it says on the tin, gravitational lensing is when gravity acts as a lens! Lenses take in light, and then can bend it and slow it down, so when it comes out the other side it looks clearer and even slightly different. When light hits the strong gravitational pull of something like a galaxy, it gets pulled on and curved slightly, and just like a lens you find in your glasses would, it makes things look different. It can help us see further out into space, as telescope lenses tend to do, and we can even see space objects that have things in front of them. The light from a star cluster, for example, will curve around a massive galaxy that could’ve been blocking it from our view, but thanks to gravitational lensing, we can see the star cluster (albeit potentially in a different position).

Gravitational lensing makes things bulge, swirl and look very strange out in space, but it is also very useful to astronomers to find out about these distant places that may have been blocked from view! Thank you, universe, for the creation of natural lenses!

Moon Illusions

For our last entry, we’re going to look at something less odd about space, and something more odd about ourselves. Don’t worry, this isn’t a psychological test or anything, but our brains and eyes are weird.

Picture this. You’re out in the evening and you see the Moon rise on the horizon! Wow, so beautiful. So yellow! But why does it look so big near the horizon? It’s not changed size, has it? Is it getting closer? PANIC!

No, it’s not. And in fact, when on the horizon, the Moon isn’t any different than usual. Instead, it's our brains that make the Moon look so much bigger when it’s on the horizon than when it’s in the night sky. The Moon appearing bigger is simply an optical illusion that our mind tricks itself with. When you see the Moon next to familiar objects, like houses and trees, your brain gets confused by the distance and scale of the Moon. When it appears in the open sky, with nothing to compare it to, it then looks much smaller. The Moon also looks a little yellower when lower down thanks to the colour spectrum and Earth’s atmosphere getting in the way. As light hits our atmosphere, it hits all of those gas particles and molecules we need to breathe and not freeze to death, causing the light to scatter in different directions.

So, if you want to get a closer look at the Moon without a telescope, let your mind trick you and start looking as it starts to rise.