10 SECRETS OF SPACE
Answering questions and solving puzzles has been the driving force behind astronomy for thousands of years, even if it often seems that for every mystery solved, a new one springs up. Today astronomers like to think they have a fairly good understanding of the way our universe works, including processes from the life cycle of stars to the evolution of galaxies, and it’s certainly true that we know a lot more than we did a century ago. But there are still plenty of loose ends, and new ones are emerging all the time.
Some of these mysteries are discoveries that may seem at first to break our already established rules. Of course, we can’t be sure until these particular enigmas are resolved, but often finding solutions to puzzles like this is just a matter of time; once a strange mystery object such as the ‘impossible star’ SDSS J102915+172927 or the rectangular galaxy LEDA 074886 is announced to the world, scientists can turn their collective efforts and a huge array of observational techniques to learning more about it and understanding why it defies convention.
Others require a little more patience – for instance, new images of Uranus’ satellite Miranda would certainly reveal more about its turbulent history, but we’re sadly unlikely to be sending another probe that way any time soon. The long-standing mysteries of the Sun’s corona have had to await the development of new techniques for studying it and new
