We don’t even need to go searching for signs of aliens to find incredibly bizarre and unexplainable objects and events in outer space, from a ‘black widow’ pulsar that’s devouring its own mate to a lonely rogue planet doomed to wander alone for all eternity. Now that we’ve witnessed 2017’s much-hyped total solar eclipse, which crossed the entire United States for the first time since 1918, let’s take a look at some other amazing astronomic phenomena that remain mysterious to science.

The Black Widow Pulsar

Officially known as Pulsar J1311-3430, this pulsar weighs as much as two suns, yet it’s only about the size of Washington D.C. It’s getting heavier because it’s feeding on its ‘mate,’ a normal star, stripping layers away from it with its powerful beam. Eventually, it will devour it. (Image via NASA)

The Boötes Void

Discovered in 1981 by astronomer Robert Kirshner and his team, the Boötes Void is a massive expanse of empty space about 700 million light years from Earth. The largest known void in the Universe, it measures an incredible 250 million light years in diameter and contains just 60 galaxies, which is incredibly sparse for its size. It should contain bout 10,000. Astronomers aren’t sure why the void exists, though some theorize that supervoids are caused by the intermingling of smaller voids. (image via Wikipedia)

Gamma Ray Bursts

The most powerful explosions in the universe, gamma ray busts are usually associated with the collapse of a massive star an the birth of a black hole (how metal.) These bursts of high-energy light typically last a minute or less, and occur every couple days. (Image via NASA)

Lonely Rogue Planet

This wandering planet known as CFBDSIR2149 separated from its parent star and wanders around the universe alone. Astronomers believe that it’s just one of billions of such ‘castaway planets,’ which are ostracized from their solar systems during their formative years when other plants’ orbits are establishing themselves (image via European Southern Observatory)

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Eclipsing Belief 8 Rare And Amazing Astronomic Objects Events

Galaxies stretch across Gothic columns and spatterings of stars span the archways of the chapel at King’s College, immersing hushed crowds who have come to hear a lecture on space. Artist Miguel Chevalier transforms the cavernous interiors of this stunning structure at the University of Cambridge in England to go along with specific lectures, plunging guests into the subjects at hand visually as they listen to speeches by renowned professors and alumni.

The space visuals help illustrate Stephen Hawking’s research on black holes, while additional projections in the series explore visual interpretations of history, literature, religion and other subjects. Rather than simply playing video clips to accompany the lectures, or interpreting the subject matter in a literal way, the projections create a richly colorful and moody atmosphere.

The site-specific installations were created in real-time, and represent the first time an outside artist has been invited to alter the chapel in any way. Previously, Chevalier has projected his stunning creations onto Moroccan mosques and an Italian castle built in 1240 for a project called ‘Magic Carpets.’ Biomorphically inspired, these patterns shift and swirl, making the surfaces seem alive.

When thousands of residents of the Chinese cities of Jiangxi and Foshan reported seeing a ‘floating city’ in the clouds earlier this month, theories attempting to explain it ran wild, speculating everything from experimental holographic technology to glimpses of an alternate reality. A shaky video captures what appears to be the silhouette of a city skyline high above the horizon, at a larger scale than that of the real skyscrapers on the ground.

Naturally, conspiracy theorists are having a field day with this one, even going so far as to wonder aloud whether NASA is attempting to establish a new world order through something called the ‘Blue Beam Project.’ The most likely explanation may not be quite as exciting, but it’s still a fascinating phenomenon that has mystified people for centuries.

As Wired explains, a Jesuit priest named Father Domenico Giardina swore that he saw a crystal city floating in the air over Siciily in 1643, which quickly transformed into a garden and a forest crawling with armies before it all disappeared. You might think he’d claim he had a mystical vision sent from God, but he actually mused that perhaps minerals and salts were rising up into vapors in the clouds and condensing to become a sort of moving mirror. That may not be entirely accurate, but it’s relatively close to the truth.

What we’re actually seeing in the video from China is most likely a ‘Fata Morgana,’ a rare type of mirage caused by a certain set of weather conditions bending light rays in just the right way. The clouds are essentially reflecting the nearby city. It’s most often seen above bodies of water, which explains the origins of the legendary ship the Flying Dutchman and hundreds of other age-old sailor stories about disappearing castles.

The images above show how two ships appear to change shape from one second to the next as well as an illustration of the Flying Dutchman, and a video of a ‘ghost boat’ that looks awfully similar to it. In the second video, what looks like a landscape becomes an amorphous, dissipating blob.

Our universe is located inside the black hole of another universe – or it’s just a holographic projection – or it’s all one big computer game being played by bored super-intelligent aliens. Or not. These scientific and philosophical theories about the origin and nature of existence can be major head-scratchers, but there are at least a handful of physicists around the world who support each one.

Multiverse Theory: We All Have a Doppelganger

(image via: kevin dooley)

It’s highly unlikely that we live in the sole existing universe. We’re probably in one of many. Physicists have theorized that there could be infinite universes existing next to each other in a sort of giant patchwork quilt, that the Big Bang led to the generation of many other ‘bubble universes’ and that parallel universes hover just outside of our own. Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, author of the book ‘The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos’ says the latter theory supports the idea that we all have doppelgangers.

“The argument for doppelgangers is pretty straightforward. Assuming that space goes on infinitely far, in any finite chunk, matter can only arrange itself in a finite number of ways, like cards in a deck. You and I are just a configuration of particles, so sooner or later we’re going to repeat. Matter can almost repeat its configuration but not repeat it identically. Your physical body may repeat, but your mental configuration can be a little bit different, so there might be an evil version of you, and a version that loves skydiving.”

Our Universe Could Be in a Black Hole

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Our universe might be so small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, that it’s hidden inside the black hole of another universe, totally unbeknownst to theoretical sentient beings in that universe. And that means all the black holes so far found in our own universe could also contain doorways to alternate realities. This theory is based on new mathematical models of the spiraling motion of matter falling into a black hole.  The matter absorbed by black holes isn’t necessarily destroyed – it could be expelled, to become the basis for new galaxies, stars, and planets. This could explain the mystery as to how the universe could have started with a singularity in the Big Bang theory – instead of just existing with no explanation, it was birthed by a white hole, the hypothetical escape hatch for matter at the other end of a black hole.

The Ekpyrotic Scenario: Universes Colliding

(image via: western paradigm)

Did our universe actually come about due to a collision of two three-dimensional worlds? The ekpyrotic scenario is a cosmological model of the origin and shape of the universe that illustrates it as a giant, stretched rubber band that could fly back into our faces at any moment. It contradicts the Big Bang theory, in which time and space began when something created a bubble of energy from nothing – a bubble that blew up into what we now know as the universe in a tiny fraction of a millisecond. Based on string theory (which suggests that once you get smaller than an atom, everything is a 2D unit called a quantum string – an attempt to marry Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum physics), it’s highly controversial, but intriguing all the same.

In the ekpyrotic scenario, two three-dimensional worlds (branes) collide in a space with an extra (fourth) spatial dimension. It amends the earliest point of the Big Bang theory, stating that rather than beginning with nearly infinite temperature and density, the universe began cold and nearly vacuous.

“The hot expanding universe we know came as a result of a collision that brought the universe up to a large but finite temperature and density,” says Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, who came up with the concept. “The rest of the story is as the Big Bang model would have it, but the beginning is different.”

“Quantum effects cause the incoming three-dimensional world to ripple along the extra-dimension prior to collision so that the collision occurs in some places at slightly different times than others. By the time the collision is complete, the rippling leads to small variations in temperature, which seed temperature fluctuations in the microwave background and the formation of galaxies. We have shown that the spectrum of energy density fluctuations is scale-invariant (the same amplitude on all scales). The production of a scale-invariant spectrum from hyperexpansion was one of the great triumphs of inflationary theory, and here we have repeated the feat using completely different physics.”

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If you ever needed proof that science is completely amazing, the mind-blowing phenomenon of quantum levitation might just do it. A group of researchers from Tel-Aviv University demonstrates the incredible effect in the video below. We aren’t physicists, but the science behind the phenomenon goes something like this: a crystal sapphire wafer is coated with an extremely thin ceramic layer. When it is cooled to an extremely cold temperature, the ceramic-coated wafer becomes a superconductor.

Putting the superconductor into a magnetic field causes something called the Meissner effect. From there, there is a lot of complicated physics that happens with magnetic fields, superconductivity and magnetic flux tubes. The powers of superconductivity and magnetism fight against each other. When the superconductor moves, the flux tubes move as well – but the superconductor tries to prevent this and so becomes “pinned” or “trapped” in mid-air.

The effect is nothing short of stunning. The wafer appears to levitate effortlessly – and it doesn’t hurt that it gives off impressive amounts of vapor, making the demonstration look almost like magic. It even seems to float upside-down. We have a feeling that if every high-school science teacher used a demonstration like this in class, we wouldn’t be saying “we aren’t physicists” today.