25 MIND BLOWING Facts About Space Part 2

 

25 mind-blowing facts about space that sound made up but are totally 100 real part 2. think you've heard it all the vastness of space is only compounded by the endless questions we have about it astrophysicists spend their entire careers looking for answers to the mysteries of the universe they are just the curious the observers the space wanderers welcome the fact nominal and in today's article we are going to blow your mind with more insane facts about space that sound made up but are totally 100 real don't jump ship we're just getting started number 25 you already know that pluto was downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2006 but did you know we have a dwarf planet closer to earth ceres is located in the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter and is about 13 times smaller than earth and was once considered a missing planet until astronomers agreed to redefine what makes up a planet in 2015 the dawn spacecraft arrived to check it out making it the first dwarf planet to receive a visit from us number 24 there's a giant cloud of alcohol floating around in space is it time to belly up to the bar not quite but they're on sagittarius b about 26 000 light years away there is a vast cloud that contains 10 billion billion billion liters of vinyl alcohol this is no single malt scotch but it is an important organic molecule that offers clues on how the building blocks of life-forming substances are produced number 23 we know a lot about our orbit around the sun and the orbits of our other planets in the solar system but do you ever wonder about our sun itself and its orbit it takes 225 million years for our sun to travel its own orbit around the center of the milky way that means that the last time the sun

 was in its current position in space

 dinosaurs were still roaming the earth and pangaea was about to break apart

 number 22 any mountain climbers out there here on earth humans are often in awe over the greatest of our mountain chains and climbing above the clouds but did you know that the largest mountain range in our solar system is not here on earth it's on mars olympus mons is a gigantic shield volcano like those in hawaii but is three times the height of mount everest or 60 empire state buildings standing 16 miles tall and over 325 miles across olympic mons is approximately the same size as the state of arizona number 21 when we think of gravity we often think of pulling like pulling our feet towards the ground however most of the universe operates on repulsive gravity or gravity that pushes instead of pulls in 1998 astronomers found that the universe is speeding up and to explain this phenomenon they

 formulated the concept of dark energy

 and it is this energy that has repulsive gravity that pushes and accelerates our cosmic expansion number 20 mercury is shrinking in 2016 we evaluated the data from the messenger or the mercury surface space environment

 geochemistry and ranging spacecraft

 this data helped us map the entire planet in high definition and get a good look at the surface of the closest planet to the sun we now know that mercury is similar to earth by being tectonically active and the data suggests that landforms known as fault scarps which are cliff-like land formations we were able to deduce that due to their size that the planet is still contracting or shrinking 4.5 billion years after the solar system was formed number 19 speaking of spacecraft our satellites and space probes have been quite busy over the last 60 years did you know we have officially visited every planet in our solar system including the two dwarf planets of ceres and pluto the busiest craft being nasa's twin voyager spacecrafts which launched in 1977 over 40 years later and they are still transmitting data to us number 18 how long would it take to get to the moon we know that it only takes about three days for a spacecraft to get to the moon which is pretty fast in the big scheme of things but what if we could use other modes of transportation to get there astronomer fred hoyle was the first to point out that if you could drive a car upwards at 60 miles per hour it would only take about an hour to get into space while space is only about an hour drive up into the atmosphere by car it would take 239 000 miles of road to drive to the moon that would take the average driver six months to get to their lunar destination walking there would take a whopping nine years number 17 we all know that jupiter is our largest planet but just how big is it you could fit all of the other planets inside of it and still have 30 percent more space to fill that's right the whole solar system could fit inside just 70 percent of jupiter's mass feeling small yet yeah us too number 16 planets look heavy don't they when considering the mass and weight of our planets we often think of our own and its dense core however the second largest planet in our solar system saturn is actually the lightest due to its gassy makeup of hydrogen and helium it's actually less dense than water which means if you had a tub large enough to contain it it would float just like your favorite rubber ducky number 15 our solar system is special scientists have discovered other planets around stars of course there are more than 3 500 on record but none of them is like our own most have a very compact grouping of planets that orbit much closer to their star even the giant-sized planets have pulled in close they also often have comet-like orbits that are more elliptical in shape then some systems work in retrograde or backward from a typical orbit we have yet to understand if there is a correlation between our uniqueness and life itself time will tell number 14 100 years ago einstein predicted ripples in the fabric of space and time and in 2015 gravitational waves were detected for the first time on earth they came from the merging of two black holes in a distant galaxy that kind of power sent out more than 50 times the energy of all the stars in the universe combined what because black holes formed from supernovas the stars that imploded would have weighed at least 300 solar masses this rare event has scientists thinking the black holes could have been leftovers from the origins of the universe itself born from the big bang number 13. ever feel a little off center welcome to uranus the only planet in the solar system that spins a little off kilter most of the planets spin in harmony with the sun on a similar axis but not uranus its difference in motion makes for very long seasons each pole gets around 42 earth years worth of straight summertime sunlight followed by a balancing 42 years of darkness the northern hemisphere of uranus celebrated its last summer solstice in 1944 during world war ii and will see its next winter solstice in seven years in 2028 merry christmas uranus number 12 some years go by in the blink of an eye and some days drag on forever no we are not talking about your life but about life on venus this inhospitable and dangerous planet has the slowest rotation in the solar system it takes longer for venus to fully rotate on its axis than it does to orbit the sun this makes its day longer than its year mind blown number 11 in our never-ending search for other life-forms scientists have theorized that over 300 million planets in our galaxy may be able to support life experts are hunting down what they call goldilocks planets or planets that have the just right conditions it takes to support life as we know it here on earth they consider impacts of size sunlight and chemical compositions of the planet and atmosphere if we have that many potentially habitable planets in the milky way imagine the possibilities for the entire universe number 10 how many galaxies are actually out there in space while different calculations offer different results the hubble telescope has provided some insight into the observable universe on average scientists believe there could be as many as 200 billion galaxies out there there could very well be more as some have suggested two trillion we just don't have the capabilities to see them at their distance number nine building off of our last fact some theories suggest we could be living in one universe of many which scientists call a multiverse this theory is supported by mathematics quantum mechanics and astrophysics

 there could be parallel universes

 and different dimensional universes

 these concepts may seem out of this world but opening our minds up to this possibility may unlock some key questions and answers we seek out of the universe as a whole number eight as humans we haven't physically made it very far out into space at this point however some of our best tools and machines have traveled astounding distances on our behalf nasa's voyager 1 is now the furthest man-made object floating out in space it is now 153 astronomical units away and has left our solar system completely having crossed into interstellar space in august of two thousand twelve number seven tibet's yar lung senpo grand canyon in the himalayas is an incredible sight at over 300 miles long and 19 thousand feet deep but it's not the largest canyon in the solar system that award goes to valles marineris on mars it's more than eighteen hundred miles long and five miles deep by comparison it is four times larger than north america's grand canyon number six we haven't talked about neptune yet our last inline of gassy giants this planet offers up the fastest wind speeds in the entire solar system ever been out in a hurricane or seen the force of a tornado these are nothing compared to the 1200 mile per hour winds found in neptune's great dark spot that's faster than the speed of sound here on earth number five our moon is pretty boring while it contributes quite a bit to life here on earth there's not a lot happening up there one of jupiter's moon's io however

 is chaotic and incredibly interesting

 io has hundreds of volcanoes on its

 surface and is the most active moon in the solar system the new horizons craft caught a glimpse of this activity on its way to pluto io's eruptions seem to come from the

 immense gravity the moon is exposed to being nestled in jupiter's gravitational well we still have much to learn and discover about io number four what is the fastest spinning object in the universe it is currently believed that pulsar neutron stars hold this grand title we can track the speed based on the radiation beam given off by pulsars so we can gauge their rotations our current gold medal winner is psrj1748-250 whose equator spins 24 faster than the speed of light or about 70 000 kilometers per second number three need to deep freeze something while we know space is all the same temperature we all know that temperatures vary greatly throughout the different planets and moons we discover and study the coldest known spot in our solar system happens to be on triton one of neptune's 14 moons the temperature here is on average minus 391 degrees fahrenheit it's gonna take a long time to defrost anything at that temperature number two while we look for equality here on earth we should take into consideration that we are all literally made of stardust

 each and every living being on earth is comprised of the same materials we are all connected calcium carbon iron it is all found in the composition and fallout from the burning core of a star therefore as carl sagan once said we

 are all made of star stuff number one

 the top mind-blowing fact about space is that out of everything out there in the entirety of the universe our human brains are the most complex and complicated system ever discovered with its hundred billion neurons and quadrillion connections we still know very little about something we use every day from everything science has discovered and it's a lot they have yet to find anything quite as unique or mind-blowing as our human imagination albert einstein once said imagination is more important than knowledge for knowledge is limited to all we know and understand while imagination embraces the entire world and all there ever will be to know and understand thanks for reading if you enjoyed

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