5 Bizarre Things Scientists Found In Space Recently

The vast expanse of the universe is filled with mysteries that humanity is yet to solve. Floating on a pale blue dot called Earth, it is difficult to fathom the real extent of the cosmos. However, every once in a while, scientists attempt to try to understand the oddities of space. In the process, we end up discovering some bizarre things that make the scientists scratch their heads and revisit their old beliefs.

Here are five bizarre things that scientists have found in space recently:

Habitable Mars

A study by researchers at Harvard's Paleomagnetics Lab has shown that Mars' magnetic field, which could have supported life, may have lasted much longer than previously thought.

While Mars is now cold, barren and rocky, evidence suggests that the magnetic field may have lasted until 3.9 billion years ago, compared with previous estimates of 4.1 billion years -- making the Red Planet a prime candidate for a thriving environment for life.

The extra 200 million years overlap with the era when the Martian surface became covered with water, the evidence for which has been gathered by several rovers sent by NASA.

Expansion of the universe

A study has claimed that black holes are driving the expansion of the universe, not dark energy. For a long time, scientists have believed in the inflationary universe theory, which states that almost 14 billion years ago, at the start of the Big Bang, a mysterious energy, believed to be dark energy, accelerated the expansion of the infant universe.

However, the radical new study challenges this notion. After analysing data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), scientists claimed that there is a correlation between the growth of black hole mass and the increasing density of dark energy over time.

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Earth spinning faster

A full day on Earth lasts about 86,400 seconds, or 24 hours, but as per scientists, the planet is rotating faster this summer, prompting the idea of reducing one second from the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service and the US Naval Observatory declared that July 10 was the shortest day of the year so far, lasting 1.36 milliseconds less than 24 hours. The official timekeepers in the world may have to take an unprecedented step if this pace keeps up; deduct one complete second from the world time.

Dark energy weakening

Dark energy makes up roughly 70 per cent of the universe, but some recent reports suggest that it is weakening over time. In March, an international group of more than 900 researchers submitted their findings after analysing three years of data from 15 million galaxies and quasars.

The findings showed that dark energy was a "cosmological constant," but it was changing over time in unexpected ways. Data showed that at the beginning of the universe, dark energy was very strong, but it has weakened over time and may continue to do so.

Powerful blazar

In January, scientists stumbled upon a supermassive black hole, located a whopping 12.9 billion light-years from Earth, with its jet pointing straight at us. Named J0410-0139, the black hole has a mass of about 700 million Suns and is one of the oldest of its kind that scientists have ever observed.

The energy beam from this black hole has travelled to Earth, just over 100 million years after the Big Bang took place -- setting a new record for the distance from which scientists have observed such a phenomenon.