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What is space made from – what does gravity actually bend? – Phil, 12 years old, Birmingham

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What involves mind while you consider space? Imagine a friend bragging a couple of spacious constructing, stadium or museum they recently visited. Do you imagine the constructing as huge and expansive? Is it simply very large, or does it seem empty?

The word spacious doesn't necessarily mean empty. It just indicates that there may be enough room to maneuver across the objects in it. Likewise, space isn't completely empty. It's huge and always expanding, but there are a number of things in it.

As a toddler, I often wondered how far-off the clouds were, what was beyond the Earth, and the way vast space was. This curiosity led me to pursue a Masters and PhD in astronomy. I actually have been teaching these very concepts as a Professor of Physics Teaching on the University of Texas, Arlington.

Where does space begin?

The earth is surrounded by different layers of various gases. At sea level The Earth’s atmosphere incorporates about 100 billion molecules per cubic centimeter. The higher we climb, the thinner the atmosphere becomes.

At an altitude of about 80 to 100 km there will not be enough air for airplanes to flyThis boundary that separates the Earth’s atmosphere from space is called the Kármán linenamed after the Hungarian-American engineer and physicist Theodor von KarmanEverything above the Kármán line is known as space.

The density of space can vary, but on average it is just about 1 atom per cubic centimeter. Think of it this fashion: a cube-sized cube of Earth's atmosphere incorporates billions of air particles. But in space, the same-sized cube incorporates just one or two particles.

The interstellar medium and radiation

Space is an enormous, almost perfect vacuum that is basically freed from of matterThis vacuum incorporates only a few particles in comparison with the Earth's atmosphere. However, it will not be completely empty.

Space is plagued by scattered matter called the interstellar mediumwhich include hydrogen and helium atoms. These are probably the most common elements in space and so they occur in each charged and neutral forms. The interstellar medium incorporates cosmic dust – tiny particles of assorted elements, including carbon and silicon, scattered in space.

High-energy particles the so-called cosmic radiation – mainly protons and the Atomic nuclei – move through space at nearly the speed of sunshine. Cosmic rays come from various stars, including our sun, in addition to from supernovas, the fabric that falls into black holes, colliding galaxies and more.

Space is stuffed with various forms of radiation, including cosmic microwave background radiationThis is residual heat from the time of the origin of the universe. High-energy cosmic events similar to supernovas and black holes also emit X-rays and gamma rays.

Magnetic fields Fields generated by stars, planets and plenty of other celestial bodies also permeate space. These fields influence the movement of charged particles by attracting or repelling them like magnets.

Dark matter and dark energy

Scientists predict that a previously unseen type of matter Dark matter, which emits neither light nor energy, makes up a significant slice of the mass of the universe. Researchers suspect it exists because they will see its gravitational pull on other visible matter.

Scientists also predict a mysterious type of energy So-called dark energy is driving the accelerated expansion of the universe. Unlike dark matter, dark energy has nothing to do with matter or gravitational forces, but is a property of space itself.

Think of the universe as a balloon. Dark matter is like the fabric of the balloon and affects its shape, while dark energy is just like the air that’s pumped into it. It doesn't change the fabric of the balloon, but it surely does affect how briskly the balloon expands.

Is there a curvature of space? Can gravity curve space?

Space can even deform. Imagine that space is sort of a large, stretchy trampoline. If you set a heavy ball, similar to a bowling ball, in the midst of the trampoline, it creates a big depression at the underside. This depression is comparable to the curvature of space around something large, similar to a planet or a star. The larger the ball, the stronger the gravity and the deeper the depression.

If you roll a smaller marble down the trampoline while the bowling ball is in the center, the marbles might begin to roll across the depression created by the bowling ball's gravity. The marble will follow the curvature of the depression, identical to planets follow the curvature of space across the sun.

Imagine shining a flashlight over the trampoline. As the sunshine gets near the dent made by the bowling ball, it might deflect slightly along its path. This is comparable to how light deflects when it passes near a really large object in space, similar to a galaxy.

Imagine a black hole with its enormous gravity as a good greater, deeper depression within the trampoline. If you rolled a marble too near this super-deep depression, it might fall in and disappear, identical to things fall right into a black hole in space and might't escape.

So space can deform or bend around large objects with high gravity, identical to a trampoline bends while you put a heavy ball on it.

Space is greater than just emptiness. It incorporates a mix of particles, radiation, magnetic fields, and mysterious types of matter and energy. Think of space as a 3D playground where objects similar to stars, planets, nebulae, and galaxies exist and together form our fascinating and sophisticated universe.

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When a star is born or dies, or when another very energetic phenomenon occurs within the universe, it emits X-raysThese are high-energy light particles that usually are not visible to the naked eye. These X-rays are the identical type the doctors use to take pictures of broken bones within the body. But as an alternative of the shadows created by the bones that block X-rays inside an individual, astronomers capture X-rays flying through space to get pictures of events like black holes and supernovas.

Images and spectra—diagrams that show the distribution of an object's light across different wavelengths—are the 2 predominant methods astronomers use to explore the universe. Pictures tell them how things look and where certain phenomena happen, while Spectra tell them how much energy the photons or light particles they collect have. Spectra can tell them how the event they got here from was created. When studying complex objects, they need each imaging and spectra.

Scientists and engineers designed the Chandra X-ray Observatory to detect these X-rays. Since 1999, Chandra's data have provided astronomers with incredibly detailed pictures of among the most dramatic events within the universe.

When stars are formed and die, supernova explosions occur that hurl chemical elements into space. Chandra observes how gas and stars caught within the deep gravitational pull of black holes and it becomes visible when gas a thousand times hotter than the sun escapes from galaxies in explosive winds. It can develop into visible when the gravity of big masses of dark matter traps this hot gas in huge pockets.

NASA designed Chandra to orbit Earth since it cannot observe any of this activity from the Earth's surface. The Earth's atmosphere absorbs X-rays They come from space, which is great for all times on Earth because these X-rays can harm biological organisms. But that also implies that even when NASA placed Chandra on the very best mountain peak, it still wouldn't give you the option to detect X-rays. NASA needed to send Chandra into space.

Supermassive black holes and their host galaxies

Astronomers have discovered supermassive black holes on the centers of all galaxies, with masses starting from 10 to 100 million times that of our Sun. These supermassive black holes mostly sit peacefully, and astronomers can detect them by observing the gravitational pull they exert on nearby stars.

But sometimes stars or clouds fall into these black holes, which prompts them and causes the region near the black hole to emit many X-rays. Once activated, they’re called energetic galactic nuclei, AGNor quasars.

My colleagues and I wanted to higher understand what happens to the galaxy when its black hole turns into an AGN. We selected a galaxy ESO428-G014to look at it with Chandra.

An AGN can outshine its host galaxy, meaning that more light comes from the AGN than from all the celebs and other objects within the host galaxy. The AGN also emits lots of energy inside the boundaries of its host galaxy. This effect, what astronomers call feedbackis a vital component for researchers creating simulations that model the evolution of the Universe over time. But we don't yet know exactly what role the energy of an AGN plays within the formation of stars in its host galaxy.

Fortunately, images from Chandra can provide necessary insights. I take advantage of computational techniques to create and process images from the observatory that may tell me something about these AGNs.

The energetic supermassive black hole in ESO 428-G014 produces X-rays that illuminate a big area which may be as much as 15,000 light-years away from the black hole. The basic image I created of ESO 428-G014 with Chandra data tells me that the region near the middle is the brightest and that there’s a large, elongated region of X-ray emission.

The same data, at barely higher resolution, show two distinct regions of high X-ray emission. There is a “head” enclosing the middle and a rather curved “tail” extending downward from this central region.

I can even process the info with an adaptive smoothing algorithm, which brings the image as much as a fair higher resolution and produces a clearer picture of what the galaxy looks like. This shows clouds of gas around the brilliant center.

My team was in a position to observe among the ways wherein the AGN interacts with the galaxy. The pictures show Nuclear winds sweeping through the galaxy, dense clouds and interstellar gas reflecting X-rays, and jets emitting radio waves that heat up clouds within the galaxy.

These images show us how this feedback process works intimately and methods to measure the quantity of energy an AGN emits. These results will help researchers create more realistic simulations of the evolution of the universe.

The next 25 years of X-ray astronomy

The yr 2024 will mark the twenty fifth yr since Chandra began observing the sky. My colleagues and I proceed to depend on Chandra to reply questions on the origin of the universe that no other telescope can.

By providing astronomers with X-ray data, Chandra's data complement the data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope and provides astronomers unique answers to open questions in astrophysics, equivalent to the origin of the supermassive black holes that lie at the middle of all galaxies.

To answer this query, astronomers used Chandra to watch a distant galaxy first discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope. This galaxy emitted the sunshine captured by Webb 13.4 billion years ago, when the universe was still young. Chandra's X-ray data revealed a vibrant supermassive black hole on this galaxy and suggested that supermassive black holes may very well be found throughout the universe. Collapsing clouds within the early universe.

Sharp imaging was crucial for these discoveries. But Chandra is predicted to only last 10 yearsTo proceed the seek for answers, astronomers must begin developing a “super Chandra” X-ray observatory that might replace Chandra in the approaching a long time, but NASA has not yet announced any concrete plans on this regard.