The Rarest Things in the Universe

Let's start with the rare and work our way towards things so rare, they might as well not exist. Number 7. The Strongest Magnets in the Universe Scientists say that it's impossible to know how many of each thing there is in the universe. So I made this video to clear everything up. Hope this helps. There are many different types of stars. Some, like the one in the middle of our solar system that holds it together, are not special and are very common throughout the universe. While stars like me probably come once every millennium. One of the rarest types of stars in the known universe are magnetars. Magnetars are a type of neutron star with the most powerful magnetic fields in the universe. What makes these stars so rare is the probability of a star becoming one is like winning the lottery back to back. First, a star has to be incredibly large to begin with, around 10 times larger than our sun. When this star reaches the end of its life and burns through most of its fuel, it will explode and more than likely become either a neutron star or a black hole. But if the explosion and the newborn neutron star develop under just the right conditions, there's a small chance that it will become a magnetar. These stars are so rare that out of hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, astronomers have only ever observed around 30 of them. I know what you're thinking. Just how strong is the strongest magnetic field in the known universe? For reference, Earth's magnetic field is so pathetic, you never even notice it. And it's only good for turning the dial on a compass, which nobody uses anymore. While a magnetar's magnetic field is so powerful, it would rip apart the atoms in your body before you even reached its surface. Now, you're probably thinking, so what, what's the big deal, who even cares? Which is valid, so let's stop here. Number 6. The Giant Radio Rings No One Can Explain In 2019, astronomers discovered something they'd never seen before. Enormous rings of radio waves surrounding entire galaxies. The crazy part is that these rings span anywhere from 500,000 to a million light years across. For scale, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is only about 100,000 light years wide. Odd radio circles are some of the strangest and rarest phenomena in the known universe. But the scary part is, astronomers still don't know what they are or what created them. Here's an image that was taken using one of the world's most advanced radio telescopes. And here's an image of an artist's interpretation of what it would look like in HD. Pathetic. If they wanted a real artist's interpretation, they could have just asked. Now they'll have to pay for it. Even though astronomers don't know exactly what creates odd radio circles, the leading explanation is that they're enormous shockwaves left behind by ancient eruptions from a supermassive black hole. Other researchers think they may have formed when countless massive stars exploded within a galaxy, creating a gigantic shell of energy that continues expanding through space. Now, those are decent theories. But since 33 of my tax dollars go to NASA every year, I do expect a real answer. So hurry up. To date, astronomers have discovered only around a dozen confirmed odd radio circles, making them one of the rarest discoveries in the universe. Number 5. Visitors from another solar system. Really quickly, before you get too excited, no, we're not talking about aliens. But rather, alien rocks. I know what you're thinking. There is no way he can possibly talk about rocks and make it interesting. Relax, I've never let you down. Until now. Interstellar visitors are comets and asteroid-like objects that didn't form in our solar system. Instead, they originated around another star before being violently cast out of their original orbit and into the darkness of interstellar space. Many spend millions or even billions of years silently wandering through the galaxy before one briefly passes through our solar system, only to vanish back into the void. To date, we've discovered only three interstellar visitors, with the first one being discovered in 2017 and named Oumuamua. It spanned anywhere from 330 to 1,300 feet, but the scary part is that it traveled past our sun and headed directly towards Earth, only missing us by a quarter of an inch. According to this diagram, the second visitor intruded into our solar system in 2019. A comet measuring around half a mile across and was named 2I Borisov. This one wasn't even close. And honestly, it was a pretty embarrassing attempt. The final interstellar visitor came in 2025 and was yet another near miss. Thankfully, if it would have destroyed a planet, it would have been Mars, which obviously wouldn't have been a big deal. This comet may have been as large as 3.5 miles wide and sped past our solar system at more than 137,000 miles per hour. I know large numbers are very hard to grasp, so I'll put it in a way we can all understand. The fastest car on Earth is the Yongguang U9 Extreme, and the comet was still faster. Realistically, there may have been many other interstellar visitors in recent history, but we simply didn't have technology that was advanced enough to detect them. Now, I don't want to cause my viewers to panic or anything like that, but it can all be over at any moment. Number 4. Wandering Black Holes. What could possibly be scarier than a black hole that gobbles up everything that comes near it? A black hole that comes right to you. Wandering or rogue black holes are black holes that are not bound to any star. Some roam within galaxies, while others have been ejected into intergalactic space, traveling across the cosmic void, devouring anything unlucky enough to get near them. These wandering black holes drift silently through space, invisible to our telescopes. So astronomers usually detect them by observing how their immense gravity affects the objects around them. This is exactly what astronomers observed in 2022 using the Hubble Space Telescope, when a wandering black hole briefly bent the light from a distant star, and was later confirmed as the first wandering black hole ever discovered. So how exactly do these traveling black holes become homeless in the first place? Well, there are three theories, and they're all a bit complicated to explain. But thankfully for you, I'm a professional at making very complicated subjects easy to understand. Thanks to my world-renowned illustrations, and my ability to identify the confusing parts, and deleting them. The first way a wandering black hole can form is when a massive star reaches the end of its life and collapses into a black hole. If the supernova explosion is uneven, it can launch the newly formed black hole away from its original position. Another way is during galaxy mergers. As two galaxies collide, their central supermassive black holes spiral towards each other, while smaller black holes from both galaxies can be left wandering through the newly merged galaxy. The final way is when three supermassive black holes interact. Their immense gravity can act like a slingshot, ejecting one of them from its galaxy and sending it hurtling through intergalactic space, becoming someone else's problem. Number 3. Vanishing Stars. For decades, astronomers expected most massive stars to end their lives with one of the brightest explosions in the universe. A supernova capable of briefly outshining an entire galaxy. That was until 2015, when a red supergiant roughly 25 times the sun's mass did something no one could have ever predicted. Instead of exploding, it simply disappeared. At first, astronomers weren't sure what they were seeing. After all, stars don't simply vanish. If one disappears, it's usually because something is blocking our view, like a planet, moon, or a cloud of gas and dust. Over the next several years, astronomers repeatedly observed the star, hoping it would reappear. But it never did. Instead, the evidence pointed towards something far stranger, and something that had never been documented. The star had likely undergone what astronomers now call a felled supernova. Rather than producing a powerful explosion and sending pieces of the star outward, its core collapsed under its own gravity, forming a black hole while most of the star fell inward instead. And since there was no bright explosion, the star simply faded from view and remains one of the strongest pieces of evidence that some massive stars can die in near silence. Number 2 A Two-Faced Star In 2023, astronomers discovered one of the strangest stars ever observed. A white dwarf that appeared to have two completely different atmospheres. One side almost entirely hydrogen, the other helium. This was the first time in history that astronomers had discovered a star with two dramatically different surface compositions, making Janus the first known white dwarf with two dramatically different hemispheres. Normally, a white dwarf sorts its atmosphere by weight. The lightest element, usually hydrogen, rises to the surface while heavier ones sink below it. Astronomers still aren't completely sure why the star appears to be split in half, but there are two theories, so I'll quickly cover them both. The leading theory is that the star's powerful magnetic field is preventing the two sides from mixing, so I'm sure one day we'll have to do it ourselves. The second theory is that astronomers are witnessing an incredibly brief stage in the white dwarf's evolution that has never been observed before, but only time will tell which theory is correct, so we'll potentially have to wait a few million years to see who can say I told you so. Either way, Janus remains the only known star ever discovered with two dramatically different faces, making it one of the rarest stellar discoveries in modern astronomy. Number 1. The rarest discovery in the universe. Who would have guessed that the rarest thing in the universe all along, was us? Me. Us narcissists knew this all along. Humans have discovered billions of stars, thousands of planets, countless galaxies, black holes, magnetars, and even interstellar visitors. Yet despite decades of searching, we've found no confirmed evidence of intelligent life beyond earth. Now before you say, doesn't this completely contradict the video you made on aliens? No. All those encounters happen on earth. There are several possible explanations for why we've never found evidence of intelligent life beyond earth, so let's take a look at the most common theories. Beginning with the possibility that intelligent life is extraordinarily rare. The universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, each filled with billions of stars. So if intelligent life is common, why haven't we found any evidence of it? Another possibility is that civilizations simply don't last very long, disappearing before they ever have the chance to contact one another. Or it could simply be that intelligent life is too far away from us. After all, the universe is unfathomably large. An even creepier possibility is that intelligent life is being intentionally silent. Which raises the troubling question, why? Or perhaps we're searching in the entirely wrong way. Maybe we simply don't have the technology, or the right kind of technology, to communicate with other intelligent life. But I'll end this video with one of my favorite mysteries about the universe. The Fermi Paradox. There are billions of stars in the Milky Way similar to the sun. Many of those stars are thought to have earth-like planets orbiting within their habitable zones. Many of those stars and their planets are also billions of years older than our sun. If earth-like planets are common, then some may have developed intelligent life millions or even billions of years before us. Some of those civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, something we still dream of achieving. Even traveling at relatively slow speeds, the entire Milky Way could theoretically be explored within a few million years. If that's true, we might expect to have found some convincing evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations, or at the very least their probes. Yet we've found nothing, leaving us with one unsettling question. Where is everybody?