The emptiest place in the universe or the super-emptiness of Eridanus. The highest temperature in the Universe. Spectral classes of stars Spectra and temperature
The substance that ranks first on this list has not existed for almost 15 billion years. And in second place is our Earth, more precisely, the particle accelerator near Geneva, where in 2012 they obtained a temperature higher than which the Universe has not known since the beginning of time.
In this article:
1. Big Bang
It is unlikely that this temperature record will be broken; at the moment of birth, our Universe had a temperature of about 1032 K, and by the word “moment” we mean here not a second, but a Planck unit of time equal to 5 10-44 seconds. During this literally immeasurably short time, the Universe was so hot that we have no idea by what laws it existed; Even fundamental particles do not exist at such energies.
2. TANK
Second place in the list of the hottest places (or moments in time, in this case there is no difference) after the Big Bang is our blue planet. In 2012, at the Large Hadron Collider, physicists collided heavy ions accelerated to 99% of the speed of light and for a brief moment received a temperature of 5.5 trillion Kelvin (5 * 1012) (or degrees Celsius - on such scales it’s the same thing).
3. Neutron stars
1011 K is the temperature inside a newborn neutron star. The substance at this temperature is not at all similar to the forms we are familiar with. The interior of neutron stars consists of a bubbling “soup” of electrons, neutrons and other elements. In just a few minutes, the star cools down to 10 9 K, and in the first hundred years of its existence - by an order of magnitude.
4. Nuclear explosion
The temperature inside the fireball of a nuclear explosion is about 20,000 K. This is higher than the surface temperature of most main sequence stars.
5. The hottest stars (except neutron stars)
The surface temperature of the Sun is about six thousand degrees, but this is not the limit for stars; The hottest star known today, WR 102 in the constellation Sagittarius, is heated to 210,000 K—ten times hotter than an atomic explosion. There are relatively few such hot stars (about a hundred of them were found in the Milky Way, and the same number in other galaxies), they are 10-15 times more massive than the Sun and much brighter than it.
The matter of our Universe is structurally organized and forms a wide variety of phenomena of various scales with very different physical properties. One of the most important of these properties is temperature. Knowing this indicator and using theoretical models, one can judge many characteristics of a particular body - its condition, structure, age.
The spread of temperature values for the various observable components of the Universe is very large. Thus, its lowest value in nature was recorded for the Boomerang Nebula and is only 1 K. What are the highest temperatures in the Universe known today, and what features of various objects do they indicate? First, let's look at how scientists determine the temperature of distant cosmic bodies.
Spectra and temperature
Scientists obtain all information about distant stars, nebulae, and galaxies by studying their radiation. Based on the frequency range of the spectrum where the maximum radiation falls, temperature is determined as an indicator of the average kinetic energy possessed by the particles of the body, since the frequency of radiation is directly related to energy. So the highest temperature in the Universe should reflect, accordingly, the greatest energy.
The higher the frequencies the maximum radiation intensity is characterized by, the hotter the body under study. However, the full spectrum of radiation is distributed over a very wide range, and from the features of its visible region (“color”) one can draw certain general conclusions about the temperature, for example, of a star. The final assessment is made based on studying the entire spectrum, taking into account the emission and absorption bands.
Spectral classes of stars
Based on spectral features, including color, the so-called Harvard classification of stars was developed. It includes seven main classes, designated by the letters O, B, A, F, G, K, M and several additional ones. The Harvard classification reflects the surface temperature of stars. The Sun, whose photosphere is heated to 5780 K, belongs to the class of yellow G2 stars. The hottest blue stars are class O, the coldest are red stars and belong to class M.
The Harvard classification is complemented by the Yerkes classification, or the Morgan-Keenan-Kellman classification (IKK - after the names of the developers), which divides stars into eight luminosity classes from 0 to VII, closely related to the mass of the star - from hypergiants to white dwarfs. Our Sun is a class V dwarf.
Applied together as the axes along which the values of color - temperature and absolute value - luminosity (indicating mass) are plotted, they made it possible to construct a graph, commonly known as the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, which reflects the main characteristics of stars in their interrelation.
The hottest stars
The diagram shows that the hottest are blue giants, supergiants and hypergiants. They are extremely massive, luminous and short-lived stars. Thermonuclear reactions in their depths proceed very intensely, generating monstrous luminosity and extremely high temperatures. Such stars belong to classes B and O or to a special class W (distinguished by wide emission lines in the spectrum).
For example, Eta Ursa Major (located at the “end of the handle” of the bucket), with a mass 6 times greater than the Sun, shines 700 times more powerfully and has a surface temperature of about 22,000 K. Zeta Orionis - the star Alnitak - which is 28 times more massive than the Sun times, the outer layers are heated to 33,500 K. And the temperature of the hypergiant with the highest known mass and luminosity (at least 8.7 million times more powerful than our Sun) - R136a1 in the Large Magellanic Cloud - is estimated at 53,000 K.
However, the photospheres of stars, no matter how hot they are, will not give us an idea of the highest temperature in the Universe. In search of hotter regions, we need to look into the interiors of stars.
Thermonuclear furnaces of space
In the cores of massive stars, squeezed by colossal pressure, really high temperatures develop, sufficient for the nucleosynthesis of elements up to iron and nickel. Thus, calculations for blue giants, supergiants and very rare hypergiants give for this parameter by the end of the star’s life an order of magnitude of 10 9 K - a billion degrees.
The structure and evolution of such objects have not yet been studied well enough, and accordingly, their models are still far from complete. It is clear, however, that all stars of large masses, no matter what spectral classes they belong to, for example, red supergiants, should have very hot cores. Despite the undoubted differences in the processes occurring in the interiors of stars, the key parameter determining the temperature of the core is mass.
Stellar remnants
In the general case, the fate of a star—how it ends its life path—depends on its mass. Low-mass stars like the Sun, having exhausted their supply of hydrogen, lose their outer layers, after which what remains of the star is a degenerate core in which thermonuclear fusion can no longer occur - a white dwarf. The outer thin layer of a young white dwarf typically has a temperature of up to 200,000 K, and deeper lies an isothermal core heated to tens of millions of degrees. The further evolution of the dwarf consists of its gradual cooling.
Giant stars face a different fate - a supernova explosion, accompanied by an increase in temperature to values of the order of 10 11 K. During the explosion, nucleosynthesis of heavy elements becomes possible. One of the results of this phenomenon is a neutron star - a very compact, super-dense, with a complex structure remnant of a dead star. At birth, it is just as hot - up to hundreds of billions of degrees, but rapidly cools down due to intense neutrino radiation. But, as we will see later, even a newborn neutron star is not the place where the temperature is the highest in the Universe.
Distant exotic objects
There is a class of space objects that are quite remote (and therefore ancient), characterized by completely extreme temperatures. According to modern views, a quasar is a device with a powerful accretion disk formed by a substance falling onto it in a spiral - gas or, more precisely, plasma. Actually, this is an active galactic nucleus at the stage of formation.
The speed of plasma movement in the disk is so high that due to friction it is heated to ultra-high temperatures. Magnetic fields collect radiation and part of the disk matter into two polar beams - jets, ejected by the quasar into space. This is an extremely high-energy process. The quasar's luminosity is on average six orders of magnitude higher than the luminosity of the most powerful star, R136a1.
Theoretical models allow for quasars an effective temperature (that is, inherent in a completely black body emitting with the same brightness) of no more than 500 billion degrees (5 × 10 11 K). However, recent studies of the nearby quasar 3C 273 led to an unexpected result: from 2 × 10 13 to 4 × 10 13 K - tens of trillions of kelvins. This value is comparable to the temperatures achieved in the highest known energy-releasing events, gamma-ray bursts. To date, this is the highest temperature in the Universe that has ever been recorded.
Hottest of all
It should be borne in mind that we see quasar 3C 273 as it was about 2.5 billion years ago. So, given that the further we look into space, the more distant epochs of the past we observe, in search of the hottest object we have the right to look around the Universe not only in space, but also in time.
If we return to the very moment of its birth - approximately 13.77 billion years ago, which is impossible to observe - we will find a completely exotic Universe, in the description of which cosmology approaches the limit of its theoretical capabilities, associated with the limits of applicability of modern physical theories.
A description of the Universe becomes possible starting from an age corresponding to the Planck time of 10 -43 seconds. The hottest object in this era is our Universe itself, with a Planck temperature of 1.4 × 10 32 K. And this, according to the modern model of its birth and evolution, is the maximum temperature in the Universe that has ever been achieved and possible.
Did you know that the most massive star weighs 265 times more than the Sun? Read the post and learn a lot of interesting things.
No. 10. The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest place in the Universe
The Boomerang Nebula is located in the constellation Centaurus at a distance of 5000 light years from Earth. The nebula's temperature is −272 °C, making it the coldest known place in the Universe.
The gas flow coming from the central star of the Boomerang Nebula moves at a speed of 164 km/s and is constantly expanding. Because of this rapid expansion, the temperature in the nebula is so low. The Boomerang Nebula is cooler than even the relic radiation from the Big Bang.
Keith Taylor and Mike Scarrott named the object the Boomerang Nebula in 1980 after observing it with the Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. The sensitivity of the instrument made it possible to detect only a small asymmetry in the lobes of the nebula, which gave rise to the assumption of a curved shape, like a boomerang.
The Boomerang Nebula was photographed in detail by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998, after which it was realized that the nebula was shaped like a bow tie, but that name had already been taken.
R136a1 lies 165,000 light-years from Earth in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This blue hypergiant is the most massive star known to science. The star is also one of the brightest, emitting up to 10 million times more light than the Sun.
The star's mass is 265 solar masses, and its mass at formation was more than 320.
R136a1 was discovered by a team of astronomers from the University of Sheffield led by Paul Crowther on June 21, 2010.
The question of the origin of such supermassive stars still remains unclear: whether they were formed with such a mass initially, or whether they formed from several smaller stars.
In the image from left to right: a red dwarf, the Sun, a blue giant, and R136a1.
No. 8. SDSS J0100+2802 – the brightest quasar with the oldest black hole
SDSS J0100+2802 is a quasar located 12.8 billion light years from the Sun. It is notable for the fact that the Black Hole feeding it has a mass of 12 billion solar masses, which is 3000 times larger than the black hole at the center of our galaxy.
The luminosity of the quasar SDSS J0100+2802 exceeds that of the sun by 42 trillion times. And the Black Hole is the oldest known. The object was formed 900 million years after the supposed Big Bang.
Quasar SDSS J0100+2802 was discovered by astronomers from the Chinese province of Yunnan using the 2.4 m Lijiang Telescope on December 29, 2013.
No. 7. WASP-33 b (HD 15082 b) – the hottest planet
Planet WASP-33 b is an exoplanet near the white main sequence star HD 15082 in the constellation Andromeda. The diameter is slightly larger than Jupiter. In 2011, the temperature of the planet was measured with extreme precision - about 3200 °C, which makes it the hottest known exoplanet.
No. 6. The Orion Nebula is the brightest nebula
The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M 42 or NGC 1976) is the brightest diffuse nebula. It is clearly visible in the night sky with the naked eye, and can be seen almost anywhere on Earth. The Orion Nebula is located about 1,344 light-years from Earth and is 33 light-years across.
This lonely planet was discovered by Philippe Delorme using the powerful ESO telescope. The main feature of the planet is that it is completely alone in space. It is more familiar to us that planets revolve around a star. But CFBDSIR2149 is not that kind of planet. It is alone, and the closest star is too far away to exert a gravitational influence on the planet.
Scientists have found similar lonely planets before, but the great distance prevented their study. Studying the lone planet will allow us to "learn more about how planets can be ejected from planetary systems."
No. 4. Cruithney is an asteroid with an orbit identical to Earth
Cruitney is a near-Earth asteroid moving in a 1:1 orbital resonance with the Earth, while crossing the orbits of three planets at once: Venus, Earth and Mars. It is also called a quasi-satellite of the Earth.
Cruithney was discovered on October 10, 1986 by British amateur astronomer Duncan Waldron using the Schmidt telescope. Cruithney's first temporary designation was 1986 TO. The asteroid's orbit was calculated in 1997.
Thanks to orbital resonance with the Earth, the asteroid flies through its orbit for almost one Earth year (364 days), that is, at any given time, the Earth and Cruithney are at the same distance from each other as they were a year ago.
There is no danger of this asteroid colliding with the Earth, at least for the next few million years.
No. 3. Gliese 436 b - a planet of hot ice
Gliese 436 b was discovered by American astronomers in 2004. The planet is comparable in size to Neptune; the mass of Gliese 436 b is equal to 22 Earth masses.
In May 2007, Belgian scientists led by Michael Gillon from the University of Liege established that the planet consists mainly of water. Water is in the solid state of ice under high pressure and at a temperature of about 300 degrees Celsius, which leads to the “hot ice” effect. Gravity creates enormous pressure on water, the molecules of which turn into ice. And even despite the ultra-high temperature, water is not able to evaporate from the surface. Therefore, Gliese 436 b is a very unique planet.
No. 2. El Gordo - the largest cosmic structure in the early Universe
A galaxy cluster is a complex superstructure consisting of several galaxies. Cluster ACT-CL J0102-4915, informally named El Gordo, was discovered in 2011 and is considered the largest cosmic structure in the early Universe. According to the latest calculations by scientists, this system is 3 quadrillion times more massive than the Sun. The El Gordo cluster is located 7 billion light years from Earth.
According to the results of a new study, El Gordo is the result of the merger of two clusters that collide at speeds of several million kilometers per hour.
No. 1. 55 Cancer E – diamond planet
Planet 55 Cancri e was discovered in 2004 in the planetary system of the sun-like star 55 Cancri A. The mass of the planet is almost 9 times greater than the mass of the Earth.
The temperature on the side facing the mother star is +2400°C, and is a giant ocean of lava; on the shadow side the temperature is +1100°C.
According to new research, 55 Cancer e contains a large proportion of carbon in its composition. It is believed that a third of the planet's mass is made up of thick layers of diamond. At the same time, there is almost no water in the planet. The planet is located 40 light years from Earth.
P.S.
The mass of the Earth is 5.97 × 10 to the 24th power kg
Giant planets of the Solar System:
Jupiter has a mass 318 times that of Earth
Saturn has a mass 95 times that of Earth
Uranium has a mass 14 times that of Earth
Neptune has a mass 17 times that of Earth
Summary of previous episodes:
Scientists from Russia have found an amazing object in the vastness of the Universe - a quasar, which received the index 3C 273. This object is interesting because it has such a high temperature that it cannot be described by existing physical theories.
Quasars, like black holes, are little-studied objects in space that are of great interest to astronomers. Scientists managed to find a new quasar in the constellation Virgo. After careful study, it was found that 3C 273 has a colossal temperature that ranges from 10 to 40 trillion degrees Celsius! Scientists were, because such a temperature limit goes beyond our physical knowledge.
Previously, scientists believed that quasar cores did not exceed a temperature of 500 billion degrees, but 3C 273 “broke” all scientific calculations and threw the academic world into a stupor. “This does not agree with our calculations at all; we have not yet found a normal answer as to why this object . Most likely, we are on the threshold of a new era of exploration of the Universe,” said researcher from Russia N. Kardashev.
Quasars are amazing because they emit enormous amounts of light. Some such objects can produce radiation that is greater than any star in our galaxy! There is a theory that says that quasars are an early “stage” of new galaxies that grow due to the absorption of matter by a black hole.
The hottest object in the Universe is located very far away; at the speed of light it can only be reached in 2.44 billion years.
Boomerang Nebula. Hubble telescope image
Photo: NASA
Scientists have long been interested in the question: how cold is it in space? As a rule, the temperature there is not lower than the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which permeates the entire Universe. However, in places where stars die, temperatures can drop much lower. Scientists managed to find just such a place in the planetary Boomerang Nebula.
Average temperatures on Earth, a planet located more than 149 million kilometers from the Sun, remain within 300 K. It is worth noting that the planet is still heated by a hot core, and in addition, in the absence of an atmosphere, temperatures would be another 50 K less. The further an object is from the nearest star, the colder it is. For example, on Pluto the average temperature is only 44 K. At such indicators, even nitrogen freezes, which means that there would be practically nothing left of the earth’s atmosphere, because it contains 80 percent nitrogen. Outside the solar system, in interstellar space, it is much colder.
Molecular clouds float around the galaxy, the matter in which has a temperature of approximately 10-20 K, which is close to absolute zero. There are no longer lower temperatures in the galaxy, since the rest of its parts are warmed to one degree or another by stellar radiation.
However, in intergalactic space the temperature is even lower than in a molecular cloud, which is far from the sources of radiation. The galaxies are separated from each other by millions of light-years of emptiness, and the only radiation reaching all corners of space is the microwave relic radiation, which remains from the Big Bang. Due to cosmic microwave background waves, the temperature in intergalactic space does not drop below 2.73 K. At first glance, it may seem that it simply cannot be colder, but in fact this is far from the case.
To be more precise, it could theoretically be colder. In order for the temperature of intergalactic space to drop below 2.73 K, it is necessary to wait for the Universe to expand a little. This expansion is already happening - the Universe is expanding at a speed of about 770 kilometers per second over 3.26 million light years. Currently, the age of the Universe reaches 13.78 billion years, and when it becomes twice as old, the cosmic microwave background radiation will be able to maintain a temperature of only one degree above absolute zero.
And the most unexpected news from scientists: the coldest place in the Universe can already be found at this moment, and not very far from Earth - in the Boomerang Nebula, located at a distance of only 5 thousand light years from our planet.
In the center of this nebula there is a dying star, which in the past, like the Sun, was a yellow dwarf. Like other stars of the same spectral class, it became a red giant and ended up in a system that arose from a white dwarf and the preplanetary nebula that arose around it.
A planetary nebula is usually called the remnants of the peripheral parts of a red giant, ejected by a star during the period when its center shrank to the size of a white dwarf. But, before becoming a planetary nebula, the red dwarf becomes a preplanetary nebula for some time. If all the necessary conditions arise in it, the temperature in the nebula may drop below the lowest temperatures in the Universe. Indian astronomer Ravendra Sahai came to similar conclusions, much earlier than his team created a temperature map of the Boomerang Nebula and became convinced that it was really very cold there.
The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest place in the universe
Photo: ESA/NASA
A preplanetary nebula appears when the temperature in the star's core rises, but at the same time the peripheral matter is just beginning to separate. This process occurs through several ejections of plasma streams that begin in the outer layer of stellar matter. By cosmic standards, these flows exist for a very short time - only a few thousand years. Provided that the plasma in the flow moves quickly (and this is exactly the case in the Boomerang Nebula), then the loss of matter from the star occurs at a high speed. It is thanks to this enormous speed that those regions appear in the nebula in which the temperature does not exceed 0.5 K, which is significantly lower than the temperature in any other place in the Universe.
And all because the thermal energy of molecules turns into kinetic energy of movement, due to which the air cools down.
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