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From zombie worlds and monster black holes to terrifying space tornados – Nasa’s ‘galaxy of horrors’ revealed

Published on April 05, 2025 at 11:30 AM

VISIONS of leaving Earth and launching humanity further into the cosmos are enough to get anyone starry-eyed.

But the universe is full of mind-blowingly destructive forces and creepy celestial objects that are enough to spook even the folks at Nasa.

Illustration of Venus and Earth in space.
Earth and the Moon
Illustration of a terrestrial planet in space.
An artist's impression of the zombie world known as Poltergeist

The US space agency has outlined some of the most terrifying cosmic curiosities in the universe – dubbed its ‘galaxy of horrors'.

Zombie worlds

Zombie worlds like planets Poltergeist, Phobetor and Draugr are inhospitable worlds that have been showered with intense pulses of radiation from a nearby dead star.

According to Nasa, “these doomed worlds were among the first [exoplanets] to be discovered as they orbit an undead star known as a pulsar.

“Pulsar planets like Poltergeist and neighbors Phobetor and Draugr are consumed with constant radiation.”

This trio of doomed worlds lies roughly 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Virgo.

Artist's impression of the early universe.
An artist's impression of how the very early universe might have looked

Dark energy

Dark energy is the latest addition to the contents of the universe – and actually makes up a massive 70% of the cosmos, scientists believe.

“An unseen power is prowling throughout the cosmos, driving the universe to expand at a quickening rate,” says Nasa.

“This relentless pressure, called dark energy, is nothing like dark matter, that mysterious material only revealed by its gravitational pull.”

Cygnus X-1: NASA's Chandra Adds to Black Hole Birth Announcement, , https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/cygx1/
An artist's impression of Cygnus X-1

Monster black holes

Also known as supermassive black holes, these cosmic monsters can be millions to billions of times more massive than our Sun.

They are typically found at the centres of most large galaxies – including our Milky Way.

“Lurking in our galaxy, approximately 6,000 light-years from Earth, is a monster black hole named Cygnus X-1,” Nasa explains.

“Don’t get too close, or you’ll become its next meal!”

CygnusX-1 spans 700 light-years across. For context, it takes about 27,000 years to travel one light-year.

In panel 1, a pair of neutron stars in a binary system spiral together. Orbital momentum is dissipated through the release of gravity waves, which are tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time. In panel 2, in the final milliseconds, the two objects merge and produce a gamma-ray burst lasting just one-tenth of a second. In panel 3, a small fraction of the mass of the merging neutron stars is flung out during the merger. This hot, highly radioactive material expands and its outer layer thins enough for infrared light to escape. At its peak brightness (within a week and a half of the merger) the explosion is about a thousand times brighter than a classical nova and so is called a kilonova. In panel 4, a black hole remains after the event with a remnant debris disk in orbit around it. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild https://hubblesite.org/contents/articles/gamma-ray-bursts
These cosmic explosions are so powerful they can sterilise entire planets – or even vaporise them

Gamma ray ghouls

Gamma-ray bursts could wipe out all life on Earth, though they are fortunately unlikely to hit us.

As Nasa explains: “In the depths of the universe, the cores of two collapsed stars violently merge to release a burst of the deadliest and most powerful form of light — gamma rays.

“These beams are unleashed and shine a million trillion times brighter than the Sun.”

These cosmic explosions are so powerful they can sterilise entire planets – or even vaporise them.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light with the NIRCam and MIRI instruments. The intricate features of the outflow, represented in reddish-orange color, provide detailed clues about how young stars form and how their jet activity affects the environment around them. A chance alignment in this direction of the sky provides a beautiful juxtaposition of this nearby Herbig-Haro object (located within our Milky Way) with a more distant, face-on spiral galaxy in the background. Protostars are young stars in the process of formation that generally launch narrow jets of material. These jets move through the surrounding environment, in some cases extending to large distances away from the protostar. Like the water wake generated by a speeding boat, the arcs in this image are created by the fast-moving jet slamming into surrounding dust and gas. This ambient material is compressed and heats up, then cools by emitting light at visible and infrared wavelengths. In particular, the infrared light captured here by Webb highlights molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The galaxy that appears by happenstance at the tip of Herbig-Haro 49/50 is a much more distant spiral galaxy. It has a prominent central bulge represented in blue that shows the location of older stars. It also displays hints of “side lobes,” suggesting that this could be a barred-spiral galaxy. Reddish clumps within the spiral arms show the locations of warm dust and groups of forming stars. In the image background there are many more galaxies at further distances, including galaxies that shine through the diffuse infrared glow of the nearby Herbig-Haro object. [Image description: Angled from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the image is a conical shaped orange-red cloud known at Herbig-Haro 49/50. This feature takes up about three-fourths of the length of this angle. T
This natural wonder occurred 625 light-years away in a corner of space that is bustling with newly born stars

Space tornadoes

Nasa has recently observed so-called ‘space tornadoes' in unprecedented detail with its $10billion James Webb Space Telescope.

This natural wonder occurred 625 light-years away in a corner of space that is bustling with newly born stars.

The ‘tornadoes' are actually the giant plumes of plasma that pour out of stars as they're born reaching dense areas of dust and gas in space.

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