The Hubble Telescope's Greatest Discoveries

Given how quickly most technology goes obsolete and gets massive updates, it's pretty incredible to think that the Hubble Telescope has been doing its thing since it launched way back in 1990. Just imagine having the same phone that was brand new, out-of-the-box in the same year that "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" debuted, and that gives some idea of just how old it is.

Hubble has had some major issues, says Space, and it's had some huge upgrades. It's been serviced a few times, and if it was a human, it would be at the age to start to notice that its bones are getting creaky, there are weird aches and pains everywhere, and isn't the music in this bar just too loud? How is anyone supposed to have a conversation? Turn it down, please, and then get off the lawn.

Still, the Hubble Telescope has sent terabytes upon terabytes of data back to NASA, and interpreting all the things that it's seen way out there in space has yielded some incredible discoveries. Scientists have learned some shocking things about our galaxy — and the ultimate fate of the universe — all because this decades-old piece of technology is still out there: drifting, watching, and recording some wild things.

Star-gazing can be a humbling experience that puts things into perspective: The universe has been around way longer than any individual has, after all, and it'll continue long after. Just how long it's been around has been up for debate, but thanks to Hubble, NASA has an answer.

Technically, they have two answers. In 1999, teams from the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Harvard University released information on the studies they had been doing on Hubble data. The idea was — in a nutshell — to use a specific type of star to calibrate distance-measuring devices, equations, and other scientific gizmos. Basically. Measurements taken, retaken, and confirmed by Hubble were combined with findings on the density of the universe around us, and it gave NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Key Project Team a magic number of 12 billion years as the age of the universe... give or take. But that wasn't quite the end of the story.

In 2002, NASA made another announcement: Hubble had just discovered something truly wild, which are the "oldest burned-out stars in our Milky Way Galaxy." Thanks to other calculations that Hubble data had made possible, NASA already knew that it took a little less than a billion years for the first stars to form after the big bang. Taking that into account — and figuring out that these ancient white dwarf stars were around 12 to 13 billion years old — it was one more step toward figuring out a more precise birthday for the universe.

Black holes are, says Space, super-dense objects that don't let anything get away from them — not even light. That's pretty terrifying, and what's more terrifying? The presence of supermassive black holes, which are exactly what they sound like.

The first black hole was only discovered in 1971, and it has a mass of around 15 times that of our very own Sun. Then, when Hubble was launched, it promptly told NASA to hold its beer, and started providing what looked like evidence for black holes that weren't just a few times the size of the Sun, but even billions of times larger. The idea was — basically — that galaxies that collided with each other would provide the energy needed to generate a black hole larger than what anyone had seen before. And then, Hubble found evidence that not only do they exist, but they're actually pretty common — and they're at the beating heart of most galaxies, including our own. By measuring the speed of gases, astronomers can tell approximately where and how big these black holes are: The light and color signatures of gases moving at the most extreme velocities are a red flag signaling one of these black holes.

What, exactly, does it all mean? Astronomers haven't figured that one out yet, but with the discovery of supermassive black holes in the middle of galaxies, it's led them to think that they're an inevitable part of the life cycle of a galaxy.

First, the basics: Ozone, says LiveScience, is essentially a layer of gas consisting of oxygen molecules bonded together, and it's important because it blocks the sun's UV rays. It's what makes life on Earth possible, as without it, everyone and everything would be fried like the opening to "Terminator 2."

In 2020, NASA announced they had used Hubble for something neat. During a total lunar eclipse — when the Earth passed completely between the Sun and the moon — they turned the moon into a mirror, and focused Hubble's attention on that. Sunlight which had already passed through the Earth's atmosphere was reflected off the moon and to Hubble, which captured the ultraviolet signatures and — more importantly — the presence of ozone. From that description, it's entirely possible to look at it and say, "Okay ... and?"

The announcement isn't awesome because it found ozone in Earth's atmosphere, it's awesome because it proved that the experiment can be used on other planets to detect ozone. The presence of ozone is one of the things astronomers look for when they're looking for planets that can support life, and the Hubble just showed how scientists can find what NASA's Giada Armey calls one of the "necessary ingredients ... common on habitable planets."

While it's impossible to say that Hubble has discovered how many galaxies there are in the universe, it's safe to say that Hubble has proved the answer isn't just, "Lots," it's "Way more than anyone could have imagined."

In 2012, NASA released Hubble's eXtreme Deep Field Photo (pictured, in part). It was essentially a single photo of one particular spot in the sky, made from combining 10 years' worth of data and images. It allowed for what Space called "the deepest image of the universe ever taken," and it was essentially made possible by Hubble taking photos of tiny bits of lights and then combining them, to create slightly brighter bits of light that we could see.

That single image contains thousands and thousands of galaxies, and here's the kicker. The photo looks like any old photo, but size does actually matter. That photo is actually inflated: Anyone who looks up at the night sky can get an idea of just how much the photo represents by holding a hand out — and upwards — into the sky. Now, imagine the head of a pin against your hand. The area covered by the head of that pin is what Hubble took decades' worth of pictures of, and that's where thousands of galaxies exist, well beyond what the human eye can see.

What is dark matter? Who the heck knows! According to Space, it's matter that's out there, but that no one can see. Yale University's Pieter van Dokkum explains how astronomers know it's there: "Motions of the stars tell you how much matter there is. They don't care what form the matter is, they just tell you that it's there." So, while no one can see it and no one's sure exactly what it is, NASA says Hubble has made a map of it.

It's more appropriately called a map of a galaxy cluster called Abell 1689, but the dozens of images were layered together to reveal much more than just the galaxy itself. Hubble can't see dark matter either, but it can see when it's looking through dark matter. When galaxies beyond massive concentrations of the stuff get distorted by the presence of this mysterious substance between the telescope and the distant galaxies, the amount of distortion can be interpreted and measured.

That's allowed for mapping something that scientists can't see and absolutely don't understand. And, since looking at distant galaxies is the same as looking at past galaxies, it's allowed researchers to start figuring out what role dark matter played in the birth of everything ... even if they're not yet sure just what it is.

In 2015, NASA released what they called the "sharpest image ever taken of our galactical next-door neighbor," and it was a brilliant, beautiful photo from Hubble that showed the 61,000-light-year-long sweep of the Andromeda galaxy (pictured, in part). It was the first photo like it, and it took the compilation of 7,398 images to create. NASA has also said that we'd better get familiar with them, because in about 4 billion years, they're all going to be really, really close neighbors... the kind that hop the fence and grab a plate before even asking what's on the BBQ.

Hubble had been monitoring the movement of both the entirety of the Andromeda galaxy and a smaller, companion galaxy called Triangulum. Plugging Hubble's observations into computer simulations designed to see what the future holds gave a glimpse into one with a collision between the three galaxies.

Again, that's not going to happen for another 4 billion years, so there's no need to panic. Researchers also say that even when it does happen, it's unlikely there's going to be too many collisions — there's a lot of space in, well, space — and the worst our sun and solar system is probably going to see is that the whole thing gets kind of tossed around like a bit of laundry. Sure, there will be quite a bit of chaos as gravity sorts itself out, but anyone who's still around to see it happen can deal with the fallout then.

Collisions between planets, asteroids, and — usually — Earth are the basis for countless sci-fi movies, but here's the weird thing: There wasn't really that much in the way of evidence out there. Collisions were bound to happen, sure, but it wasn't until Hubble was looking in the right place at the right time that one was caught on camera. The ill-fated couple was Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Jupiter, and it was a huge deal. The comet had only been discovered fairly recently, and Hubble was in the right place to watch as it broke into around 21 pieces and then hit Jupiter, all over the course of six days in 1994.

Hubble didn't just get the impact (shown by the brown spots on the photo), but dust clouds that rose nearly 2,000 miles high, storms of impact debris that took months to scatter, and a terrifying look at what's happened to Earth more than once. In addition to seeing how such a massive impact changed things like the planet's atmosphere and weather patterns, NASA says that it also catapulted science fiction into science possibility.

Suddenly, NASA could demonstrate why there was a very real need to keep an eye on Earth's skies for anything that was going to get too close. Space says it laid the groundwork for the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which is looking for comets and asteroids that might do to Earth what Shoemaker-Levy 9 did to Jupiter. BINGO cards at the ready!