Here are a few mind-blowing facts about space! Hope you enjoy reading :)
Space is completely silent — There is no atmosphere in space, which means that sound has no medium or way to travel to be heard. Astronauts use radios to stay in communication while in space, since radio waves can still be sent and received.
The Hottest planet in our Solar System is 450° C — Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system and has an average surface temperature of around 450° C. Interestingly, Venus is not the closest planet to the Sun – Mercury is closer but because Mercury has no atmosphere to regulate temperature it has a very large temperature fluctuation.
There may be life on Mars — Of all the planets in our solar system (apart from Earth), Mars is the one most likely to be hospitable to life. In 1986, NASA found what they thought may be fossils of microscopic living things in a rock recovered from Mars.
Nobody knows how many stars are in space — The sheer size of space makes it impossible to accurately predict just how many stars we have. Right now, scientists and astronomers use the number of stars only within our galaxy, The Milky Way, to estimate. That number is between 200-400 billion stars and there are estimated to be billions of galaxies so the stars in space really are completely uncountable.
Halley’s Comet won’t orbit Earth until 2061 — Discovered in 1705 by Edmond Halley, the famous comet was last seen in 1986 and is only seen once every 75 to 76 years.
A full NASA spacesuit costs around $12,000,000 — While the entire suit costs a cool $12m, 70% of that cost is for the backpack and control module.
Neutron stars can spin 600 times per second — Neutron stars are the densest and tiniest stars in the known universe and although they only have a radius of about 10 km (6 mi), they may have a mass of a few times that of the Sun. They can rotate at up to 60 times per second after they are born from a core-collapse supernova star explosion and have been known to spin as fast as 600-712 times per second because of their physics.
There may be a Planet made out of diamonds — Space facts go, this is pretty impressive. A Research done by Yale University scientists suggests that a rocky planet called 55 Cancri e — which has a radius twice Earth’s, and a mass eight times greater – may have a surface made up of graphite and diamond. It’s 40 light years away but visible to the naked eye in the constellation of Cancer.
The footprints on The Moon will be there for 100 million years — The Moon has no atmosphere, which means there is no wind to erode the surface and no water to wash the footprints away. This means the footprints of the Apollo astronauts, along with spacecraft prints, rover-prints and discarded material, will be there for millions of years.
One day on Venus is longer than one year — Venus has a slow axis rotation which takes 243 Earth days to complete its day. The orbit of Venus around the Sun is 225 Earth days, making a year on Venus 18 days less than a day on Venus.
In 3.75 billion years The Milky Way & Andromeda Galaxies will collide — The Andromeda Galaxy is approaching the Milky Way – where our solar system is – at a rate of around 110 kilometres per second (68 mi/s) and eventually the two will collide to form a giant elliptical galaxy.
If two pieces of the same type of metal touch in space, they will permanently bond — This incredible fact is also known as cold welding and it happens because the atoms of two pieces of metal have no way of knowing they are separate. This doesn’t happen on Earth because of the air and water found between the pieces.
There is floating water in space — Astronomers have found a massive water vapor cloud which holds 140 trillion times the mass of water in the Earth’s oceans somewhere around 10 billion light years away – making it the largest discovery of water ever found.
The largest known asteroid is 965 KM (600 MI) wide — Discovered by Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801, the dwarf planet Ceres was the first, and largest, object to be considered an asteroid. It is located in the Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and accounts for 33% of the entire belt’s mass.
The moon was once a piece of Earth — The theory is that when Earth was a relatively young planet, it was struck by a giant object and this collision broke a piece of the Earth away to create The Moon. This piece then began to orbit the Earth as a result of its gravitational pull.
The Sun’s mass takes up 99.86% of our Solar System — Made of three quarters hydrogen and helium for most of its remaining mass, the Sun accounts for 99.86% of the mass in our solar system with a mass of around 330,000 times that of Earth.
There is a Volcano on Mars three times the size of Everest — At 600 km wide and 21 km high, Olympus Mons is a volcano on Mars that may still be active, according to scientists. It is the tallest peak of any planet. However, the Rheasilvia central peak on the asteroid Vesta is taller at 22 km.
This took me a while to write, since I tried using pictures for better understanding. There are, perhaps, more facts about space, but I listed only the ones I felt were unique. If you want a Part II, feel free to comment!
Now most of you have asked for a Part — II, which I do appreciate. I can't thank ya'll enough for the support you've given to this answer. This answer almost has 1000 upvotes (700 at the time of editing) which is fabulous!
As promised, here's your Part II. Hope you enjoy reading it.
Mercury & Venus are the only 2 planets in our solar system that have no moons — In total, there are 176 confirmed moons that orbit the planets in our solar system, with some of them being bigger than Mercury itself!
If a star passes too close to a black hole, it can be torn apart — For 20 years, a team of astronomers observed a star at the center of our galaxy orbiting a black hole. The star has now got close enough to the black hole for “gravitational redshift” to occur which is where the star’s light loses energy as the black hole’s gravity intensified.
Our solar system is 4.6 billion years old — Well, give or take 30 million years(ish). Accurately speaking, it is 4.571 billion years old. Scientists estimate that in about 5 billion years, our Sun will expand becoming a Red Giant. In about 7.5 billion years, its expanding surface will swallow up and engulf the Earth.
Enceladus, one of Saturn’s smaller moons, reflects 90% of the Sun’s light — Because Enceladus’ icy surface reflects sunlight rather than absorbing it, temperatures reach as low as -394° Fahrenheit (-201° Celsius).
The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) was the first celestial object identified as being spiral — The grand, spiraling arms of the Whirlpool Galaxy are made up of long lanes of stars and gas, sprinkled with lots of space dust. These arms act as star formation factories, compressing hydrogen gas and creating clusters of new stars.
A light-year is the distance covered by light in a single year — Light moves at the velocity of about 186,411 miles (300,000 km) a second. So one light-year equates to roughly 5,903,026,326,255 miles!
The Milky Way galaxy is 105,700 light-years wide — It would take a modern spacecraft 450,000,000 years to travel to the center of our galaxy!
Because of lower gravity, a person who weighs 220 lbs on Earth would weigh 84 lbs on Mars —When sending droids to the surface of Mars, this is something scientists plan for, being able to load the droid up with more equipment and build it from more robust materials.
There are 79 known moons orbiting Jupiter — Jupiter is the planet in our solar system with the most moons, and it also has the largest moon in our solar system. That moon is called Ganymede and is 33,279 miles (5,262 km) in diameter – that’s bigger than Mercury and it is visible with just a pair of binoculars!
The Martian day is 24 hours 39 minutes and 35 seconds long — So you’d therefore assume there are less days in a year on Mars than Earth, right? Wrong! Because Mars orbits the sun slower than the Earth, there are actually 687 Martian days in a Martian year!
NASA’s Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) found evidence of water on the Earth’s Moon — Whilst water cannot exist on the Moon’s surface under its current conditions, scientists believe water ice could survive within the cold, permanently shadowed crates at the Moon’s two poles.
The Sun makes a full rotation once every 25 – 35 days — So for us on Earth, one full rotation equals one full day. However, our gargantuan sun takes 25 – 35 Earth days to make one full rotation!
Earth is the only planet not named after a God — Nobody knows how the Earth got its name; all we know is that it is derived from an amalgamation of both the Old English and Old Germanic words for “ground”.
Due to the Sun and Moon’s gravitational pull, we have tides — This is because the Moon’s tidal force causes the Earth – and the water on it – to bulge out on the side closest to the Moon. These bulges are what cause the world’s high tides.
Pluto is smaller than the United States — If you were to walk around the equator of Pluto it would be the same distance as walking from London to Denver.
According to mathematics, white holes are possible, although as of yet we have found none — A white hole is a hypothetical region of space-time which can’t be entered from the outside, although matter and light can escape from within. Basically, it’s the reverse of a black hole.
There are more volcanoes on Venus than any other planet in our solar system — There are more than 1,600 major volcanoes across the surface of Venus, including a 5 mile (8 km) high volcano called Maat Mons.
However, none of these volcanoes are known to be erupting at present and most are probably long extinct.
Neptune’s moon, Triton, orbits the planet backwards — Triton is the only large moon of any of the planets that does this. This is known as a retrograde orbit and astronomers are unsure as to why Triton orbits Neptune this way.
Triton is gradually getting closer to the planet it orbits — Scientists believe that when Triton eventually gets too close to Neptune, it will be torn apart by the planet’s gravity and could potentially create another ring around Neptune – giving it more rings than Saturn.
Some bonus facts:
- Space smells like burnt Steak.
- Even light can’t exit Blackholes.
- Jupiter’s moon, Europa, has emerged as one of the places that may have life!
- The first picture of a black hole was taken on April 10th, 2019!
- Recently, NASA's Parker solar probe achieved 343,000 KM/hr, which is the fastest we have ever reached, and can reach upto 692,000 KM/hr. That's alot!
🌕 Thank you so much for the support, ya'll are amazing. I was busy for a while but took some time to bring the 2nd part. Hope you enjoyed!
