What is the coolest thing in or about space to you (real or hypothetical)?
For me it is the idea of a habitable planet being made from tidal forces, especially if said planet lacks a star and only thrives off one small black hole or another planet in a binary orbit. Though I'm interested in what really stands out about space for you!
If I’m honest, there’s so much about space that fascinates me that I wouldn’t be able to list them all.
But one thing that comes to mind that is so cool and frighteningly perplexing is Hoag’s Object.
It’s a ring galaxy, and probably THE most prototypical ring galaxy. It was discovered in 1950 by Arthur Hoag, so, it’s his object! The hot blue stars that make up the ring are newly formed, young stars, while the center of the galaxy is older stars, kind of resembling the structure of elliptical galaxies just kind of being a circular cloud of ancient stars. It’s theorized the gap between the center and the ring contain star clusters!
In a feat of incredible cosmic coincidence, of *all* possible orientations it could be at, it’s PERFECTLY angled to face us. This thing ~180 megaparsecs away (that’s a lot. like 600 million light years away.) is just staring US in the eye. And within it, you can see ANOTHER ring galaxy! Which is wild given how rare ring galaxies are, in the grand scheme of things!
Another thing is, scientists still have really no idea HOW it was formed so perfectly like this. Most ring galaxies are formed by collisions but they’re more messy and not quite as perfect as Hoag’s Object. So it’s a fascinatingly unique and confusing and beautiful and terrifying thing that exists out there in space!
FOOD HUBRIS BY COUNTRY america: believes their shitty local burger chain is a once-in-a-lifetime culinary experience because their mayo includes onion paste canada: if your poutine tastes better than the styrofoam plate it comes on you will discover the cold rage that lies under the canadian’s polite exterior united kingdom: despite thriving and unique fusion cuisines spreading from the UK to the rest of the world in recent decades, when asked to think of ‘british food’ the average UK citizen will start a fight over whether cold beans with a modest side of white bread is haute cuisine france: McDo Ortolan Bunting italy: extremely mad about american versions of italian food. blissfully ignorant of what happens in brazil brazil: if the scientific genius applied to making cronenbergian pizzas were applied to anything else, brazilians would all be commuting to jobs on the moon. They have pizza that can feel pain russia: obviously mayonnaise is the perfect topping for all foodstuffs, this is solved. The question is what to put on top of mayonnaise, and it might never be answered germany: less a joke than a fact: the single most produced numbered Volkswagen part is a standardized currywurst
