10 wild things the astronomers discovered by continuing something else

Most often, astronomers have something specific they are looking for when looking for the cosmos. But the universe is painfully enormous and mysterious, leading to discoveries that no one has ever decided to find.

These unexpected catches often end up being much cooler and more important than what astronomers intended to explore. Here are ten of our favorite “accidental” cosmic discoveries – unintentional conclusions that have nevertheless greatly contributed to our understanding of the universe.

1. Uranus (1781)

In the spring of 1781, the British astronomer William Herschel found a low slow object in the Gemini of the Constellation. At the beginning, Herschel, who cataloged the stars at the time, was convinced that the object was a comet. The follow -up observations revealed that she had moved to the sky and that apparent comet -shaped characteristics were visible. Later, the Finnish-Swatish astronomer Anders Johan calculated the orbit of the discovery of Herschel, who strongly suggested that it was a planet, later named Uranus, and not a comet.

2. Ceres, the first asteroid… uh, dwarf planet (1801)

Likewise, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi was trying to create a precise map of stars positions when he noticed a strange aberrant “star” which continued to move in the sky. Piazzi also thought that he was looking at a comet, but subsequent observations suggested that the object was a new planet in orbit around the space between Mars and Jupiter.

A more in -depth analysis has stripped of its planetary status and, for a long time, it was considered the first asteroid ever discovered. Then, during the great purge of Pluto in 2006, Ceres was reclassified as a dwarf planet.

3. Solar flares (1859)

In 1859, the British astronomer Richard Carrington inadvertently documented what would become known as the Carrington event. He studied sunscreen at the time and had his telescope pointed out on our host star when he witnessed a flash of sudden and intense light, later identified as a solar push. The rocket led to the strongest geomagnetic storm ever detected on earth and to discover a completely new stellar phenomenon.

4. X COSMIC X -RAIONS (1962)

If this list is a guide, the middle of the 20th century was a particularly fruitful moment for astronomy. An important conclusion of this period is that the sun radiates X-rays. A team led by the Italian-American astrophysicist Riccardo Giaconi sought to learn if the solar x rays have rebounded on the moon and created lunar X-rays.

Instead, they found something much larger – proof of a background of X -rays from outside the solar system. Their observation informed the development of many X -rays telescopes, which played a decisive role in the light on a variety of cosmic mysteries.

5. The cosmic microwave (1964)

In May 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson tested how the radio waves bounced ball satellites developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories. But they continued to obtain an unpleasant whistling noise, in addition to an unexplained heat signal. Even after eliminating disturbances – including a particularly persistent herd of pigeons – the noise has persisted.

“And we were worried about this system? “” Said Wilson at the New York Times in an anterior interview. “We were at the end of Wit.”

Fortunately, the fault was simply in the stars. The pair had come across evidence of the cosmic microwave background, a “relic” of the explosive birth of our universe – Big Bang.

6. Pulsars (1967)

The physicist in Northern Irishman, Jocelyn Bell, detected some “scrums” in the data recorded by a radio-telescope which she helped to build. Bell, a student graduated at the time, did not pay attention to her colleagues and continued to study the strange pulsation for the next three months. Its tenacity paid; Bell confirmed that the bizarre light was a signal pulsating from afar – the first known pulsar, which was then identified as a rotary neutron star.

This discovery earned Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics, although the Nobel Committee has neglected to recognize Bell’s critical contributions to the conclusion.

7. Gamma-ray Bursts (1967)

Dust rings spitting by the bursting of the brightest gamma department ever found. The observation was made by the XMM-Newton observatory. Credit: ESA / XMM – Newton / m. Rigoselli (Inaf)

Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBS) drew the attention of American satellites looking for nuclear attacks during the Cold War. Defense satellites have detected about fifteen cases of strange signals of gamma rays too strange to come from nuclear tests. Finally, the Los Alamos National Laboratory intervened to investigate and, in 1973, the astronomical community was alerted to the existence of gamma gusts – the most powerful energy source in the universe.

To say that GRBS caused great splash would be a wild euphemism. Astronomers suddenly had a new cosmic source to explain countless light signals unidentified before. To put this in perspective, a literature review revealed that between 1973 and 2001, around 5,300 articles were published on GRBS.

8. The First Exoplanet (1992)

Astronomers have long believed in the existence of exoplanets – plants in orbit of stars that are not our sun – but it took centuries of false alarms and controversy before scientists find something that was undoubtedly an exoplanet. By studying a pulsar, the Aleksander Wolszczan and Fragile Dale astronomers have spotted a pair of planets – but two at the same time – orbiting a neutron star.

Equipped with more sophisticated instruments, astronomers now find exoplanets to a constant clip. Barely a few weeks ago, the NASA official standard reached 6,000 exoplanets.

9. Proof of black energy (1998)

Until 1998, astronomers generally thought that, although the expansion of the universe accelerated after the Big Bang, gravity would end up slowing it down. Then, two distinct teams of astronomers observed an unusually low type 1A supernova. After studying its distance and its spectra, cosmologists have realized that the universe is developing at a rate of acceleration, rather than slowing down as expected. To give meaning to this observation, they proposed the existence of a hypothetical force: dark energy. If Dark Matter adds to the mass of the universe, bringing things together, black energy makes the opposite – by leading the separate matter and accelerating the expansion of the universe.

10. Fast Radio Bursts (2007)

In accidental astronomy, an accident seems to lead another. While analyzing the pulsar data. In 2007, the astrophysicist Duncan Lorimer and his third cycle student at the time, David Narkevic, found a record in 2001 of an extremely short radio – which has not only 5 milliseconds – which left the energy of the sun for an entire month.

“There are not too many things in the universe that can do it,” said Lorimer to New Scientist at the time. Pulsars emit radiation at coherent intervals, so rapid radio bursts must come from single and cataclysmic events – at least, that’s what scientists believe. This discovery is so recent that many mysteries still surround rapid radio bursts.