[♪ INTRO]
2019 is almost over, and it has been another
really good year for exploring the universe.
I mean we took the first ever picture of
a black hole,
landed our first robot on the far side of the Moon, and explored our farthest-yet object in the solar system.
But some discoveries were even bigger than
those.
I mean, maybe not more important, but, like,
literally bigger, brighter, and just generally more.
This is our annual superlatives episode,
so let’s take a look at the some of the coolest breakthroughs of 2019.
What better place to start than with the brightest
object ever discovered in the early universe,
not just in 2019, we're talking ever.
Scientists announced its discovery almost a year ago
at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society,
and it’s an object that looks 600 trillion times brighter than the Sun.
This thing has a super gnarly name, I'm not going to say the whole thing, I'm just going to call it J04.
It’s what astronomers call a quasar, the
incredibly bright center of an ancient galaxy.
And all that light is created by the supermassive
black hole lurking at the galaxy’s center.
Well, the black hole itself isn’t emitting
any light.
But its powerful gravity has trapped an enormous
disk of material in its orbit.
As all that gas and dust swirls around, bits
smash into each other,
and that generates friction that heats up the disk until it’s glowing white-hot.
It turns out, though, that J04 is getting
a bit of a helping hand.
This quasar is nearly 13 billion light-years away,
so, on its own, astronomers would never be able to see it.
But fortunately, there’s another galaxy
perfectly lined up between us and J04,
creating what scientists call a gravitational lens.
Gravity from this lensing galaxy is bending
extra light from J04 our way,
boosting its brightness by a factor of 50.
It’s that magnification that gives the quasar
its apparent brightness of 600 trillion Suns
and enables astronomers to spot it from
half a universe away.
And that’s a big deal because, even though
astronomers have long thought that lensed quasars
should be common in the universe,
this is the first one they’ve actually been able to find.
And because looking this far away is also
looking back in time
because it’s taken billions of years for that light to travel
to us,
it could provide critical details about a
key phase in history,
the period when the first stars and galaxies were being born.
Next, in September, astronomers announced
they’d found another object that,
while not quite as bright, is just as impressive.
It’s about 4600 light-years away, and it’s
got another gibberish name.
So let’s call this one J07.
This object is likely the most-massive example
of a neutron star we’ve ever seen.
A neutron star is the leftover core of a massive
star that died in a supernova explosion.
During that detonation, the core is crushed
under such extreme pressure
that the electrons and protons in its atoms are forced into one another,
canceling out their opposite charges and leaving only neutrons behind.
The end result is a substance that’s ludicrously
dense.
Like, one cubic centimeter of neutron star
material would weigh a billion metric tons.
But even among neutron stars, J07 is an oddball.
It clocks in at 2.14 times the mass of the
Sun,
which is, like, really pushing the theoretical maximum on how big neutron stars can get.
Although it is still a little unclear, physics suggests
the absolute heaviest one of these things can be
is around 2.17 solar masses.
Once that limit is crossed, the star should
collapse directly into a black hole.
So at 2.14, J07 is right on that edge.
What’s more, this star is orbited by a white
dwarf;
if they were to collide, it would literally be lights out.
The extra mass would make the combined object
so dense that gravity would just like...
and just collapse it into a black hole.
For now, though, J07 will have to settle for
being the biggest neutron star on the block.
And along the way, it will likely help scientist learn more about how massive these things can become.
Finally, SpaceX set a new mark for landing
rockets this year.
When we filmed this episode in mid-December,
the company had landed 15 rockets in 2019.
That’s 3 more than in 2018, and 6 more landings than any of NASA’s space shuttles ever did
in a single year.
And it’s not like they launched all brand-new
rockets, either.
They’ve been reusing them.
Like, in November, they launched and landed
a single booster for a record-breaking fourth time.
And the rocket, 
called the Falcon 9 Block 5,
is designed to launch at least 10 and up to 100 times before being discarded.
SpaceX also successfully caught and re-flew
a rocket’s nose cone, called the fairing,
for the first time this year.
Although this is cool for the company and
everything, all these efficiencies are great
for the space industry as well.
Because they could easily add up to tens of
millions of dollars in savings on a rocket
that’s already the cheapest of its kind.
And that’s what’s really exciting here.
Because cheaper rockets could mean more missions
and more exploration!
A decade ago, when NASA selected the MAVEN
satellite to orbit Mars,
it budgeted almost $500 million for the spacecraft
and almost
$200 million to launch aboard an Atlas V rocket.
Today, launching a Falcon 9 costs a third
of that.
That’s $100 million of extra money, that
we can spend on scientific instruments or
entirely new missions.
It’s worth remembering that SpaceX isn’t
the only company making reusable rockets.
But thanks to work like this, the industry
is moving forward.
And a decade from now, maybe we’ll have
lots of new science to talk about as a result.
So, yeah, it’s been a great year for astronomy.
And here’s to hoping 2020 is even better!
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