Forget aliens taking over Earth being a terrifying thought.
Content creator Kobi Brown has posted what he says are the 'five scariest space facts'.
Talking about them in a video on his YouTube channel, AstroKobi, which has 1.9 million subscribers, he lists gamma-ray bursts, an asteroid hitting Earth and also, the prospect of humanity's last message just being left to drift in space for eternity.
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Pretty existential stuff.
First on Brown’s list of the five scariest space facts is the subject of dark matter, which is a hypothetical form of matter that doesn’t interact with light or the electromagnetic field.
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He explains that 95% of the universe is made of dark matter and dark energy and “we really have no idea what that even is”.
Second on Brown’s list of terrifying space facts is the gamma-ray bursts, which he explains occur when a black hole is formed.
Despite the fact that gamma-ray bursts only last a few seconds, these short-lived bursts produce more energy than the sun will emit in its entire 10 billion year existence.
“If one was aimed at us and was nearby, we would be toast,” Brown says.
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Doesn’t sound ideal.
The question of whether humans really are alone in the universe or whether we could be invaded by space aliens at any moment has to be one of the most terrifying thoughts related to space there is.
Earth is the only planet known to harbour life and Brown muses on the “approximately 10 quintillion habitable exoplanets” throughout the universe.
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Seems unlikely that Earth would be the only one to have lifeforms on it.
Perhaps we’re not alone out here after all…
And then there’s the question of whether we could be destroyed by an asteroid at any second.
“An asteroid could be on course to hit the Earth right now, and we just haven't found it yet,” Brown says ominously.
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And finally, there's the possibility that the Voyager 1 space probe out lives the Earth, meaning the probe, and possibly humanity, never makes contact with anyone or anything else out there.
Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA in 1977 to study the outer Solar System and interstellar space.
Famously, each Voyager space probe carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc, in case intelligent life ever finds it and wants to, and is able to, learn about life on Earth.
It holds photos of life on Earth and living things including humans, spoken greetings from people like President Jimmy Carter, sounds like whale calls and babies crying, and music like Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
And all of that could go unfound, leaving humanity's last message to the universe to drift in silence for eternity.
That’s enough to keep us up at night.