10 TRUE Space Facts That Will Surely Make You Say "WOAH!"

 

Space is a strange place if you can imagine it it's likely out there somewhere but the strangest things are what we actually find scattered through the cosmos from our lemon-shaped moon to getting a new north star to our milky way hurtling towards a collision with another galaxy there's never a shortage of real oddities in space to blow your mind welcome to Science Reads in today's article we dig into 10 of the most unusual mysterious and even fanciful facts that will all make you say whoa number one how about a volcano wider than England Olympus Mons is enormous and it's on mars which is about half the size of earth fancy climbing this volcanic mountain good luck unless you think Mount Everest is a nice warm-up because this monster is 72 feet tall two and a half times the size of earth's highest peak for perspective the insanely catastrophic eruption of Krakatoa in august of 1883 was one of the most deadly volcanic eruptions of modern history it killed 34,000 and sent tsunami waves 260 feet high in all directions and lava flowed out for 25 miles a comparable eruption of Olympus Mons would cover the entire area between Los Angeles and Denver number two a planetary storm larger than earth the weather channel would have a field day with Jupiter's great red spot this monstrosity is not only larger than our earth but it's a fierce storm that has billowed for centuries wind speeds of up to 425 miles per hour mean this counterclockwise rotating hurricane isn't going to get a close-up visit any time soon NASA's Juno spacecraft comes within 2,100 miles of Jupiter's murky surface which is plenty close enough and at 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit it's enough to melt some iron number three neutron stars will make you dizzy these hyperactive oddities are the remnants of large stars that go supernova and then collapse into incredibly dense and little objects about 10 to 15 miles across they're so dense if you took every one of the 7.9 billion people on the planet and gave them the same density we'd all fit into one sugar cube and they spin when newborn neutron stars rotate at 60 times per second and when part of

 a binary system the speed gets up to

 600 rotations a second and then there's the opposite number four birthdays on Venus are weird that's right boys and girls good luck figuring out when your pool party is this year see when you live on Venus each full day takes 243 earth days complicating this is that an actual solar day the time it takes for the sun to rise set and get back to the same place in the sky is almost 117 days because our so-called sister planet rotates so slowly and in the opposite direction of its orbit yep the sun rises in the west add to that that a year lasts only 225 days so feel free to message us here at fact nominal when you figure out exactly how birthdays are celebrated on Venus number five Uranus and Neptune may have diamond showers these two marvels are believed to have temperatures within their extremely dense atmospheres that go from three thousand to twelve thousand degrees Fahrenheit and pressures from two hundred thousand to six million times those on earth but here's the kicker these conditions are ideal to produce diamonds scientists even tested this idea and were able to form these so raining from the skies of Uranus and Neptune may be shiny little engagement rings and enough bling to make everyone on earth rich number six space is silent no need to pack those noise-canceling headphones when headed out into the cosmos because

 there's no sound zero sound is basically vibrating air and if there's one thing in short supply in interstellar space it's air astronomers use some weird gadgets to convert some of what's out there into audio we can hear but it's not sound a star goes supernova next to you and what do you hear nothing like the iconic tagline and Ridley Scott's Alien "In space no one can hear you scream" number seven the moon is shaped like a lemon okay before you run outside tonight to prove this wrong hear us out if you hold a lemon a certain way it looks round right well our moon was formed at nearly the same time as earth and it was formed hot it was also closer to earth then which created its odd shape that can easily be seen from space the molten moon's crust bulge due to earth's gravity and its two side bulges resemble a lemon or some say it's an egg whichever number eight we're on a collision course with another galaxy nasa's Hubble space telescope has confirmed that galactic armageddon is on the way and will be a major cosmic event our milky way and its neighboring andromeda galaxy are headed for a cataclysmic collision which will result in a major makeover that includes our son very likely being thrown into a different orbit farther away from the new galactic center astronomers once thought the encounter might be a glancing blow but Hubble has confirmed that it will be head-on thank you Hubble but it's not time to run for the hills yet the collision is still four billion years down the road number nine solar eclipses are a major coincidence everyone has seen beautiful images of full solar eclipses with the moon slowly blocking out the sun did you ever wonder why they appear to be the exact same size when of course they're not just ask your math teacher remember that guy the sun's diameter is about 400 times bigger than the moons but it's also about 4,000 times farther away from earth those two features cancel out the differences so they appear the same size from here and thus solar eclipses and number 10 we may never reach the nearest star besides the sun okay so not exactly a fact or even a popular opinion but consider this the parker space probe the fastest object built by humans hit 430,000 miles per hour or a whopping 0.06 of the speed of light at this speed we'd reach Proxima Centauri the nearest star in a mere 6,300 years that's over 250 generations and yes never is a strong word but without wormholes or folding space or some other

 science fiction becoming science fact we'll be nesting on good old earth for quite a while so what do you think about our compilation of the odd and thought-provoking did some of them make you go whoa tell us in the comments