- When you look up at the stars,
what do you think about?
That we may not be alone?
The vastness of it all?
There's a lot to wonder about space.
The fact is we don't know all the answers about it.
We know it's vast and beautiful,
but we're not really sure how vast
or how beautiful for that matter.
Some of the things we do know, however,
are downright mind-boggling.
Here, we've collected some of the most amazing facts
about space, so when you look up at the stars
you could be ever more wowed by what you're looking at.
Neutron stars can spin
at a rate of 600 rotations per second.
Neutron stars are one of the possible evolutionary endpoints
of high mass stars.
They're born in a core-collapse supernova star explosion
and subsequently rotate extremely rapidly
as a consequence of their physics.
Neutron stars can rotate up to 60 times per second
after born.
Under special circumstances, this rate can increase
to more than 600 times per second.
Space is completely silent.
The misconception that there is no sound in space
originates because most space is a vacuum,
providing no way for sound waves to travel.
Sound waves need a medium to travel through.
Since there is no atmosphere in the vacuum of space
the realm between stars will always be eerily silent.
A galaxy cluster
has so much gas NASA has picked up actual sound.
Here it is amplified,
and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole!
That said, worlds with atmospheres and air pressures
do allow sound to travel
hence why there's plenty of noise on Earth
and likely other planets as well.
There is an uncountable number of stars
in the known universe.
We basically have no idea how many stars there are
in the universe.
Right now we use our estimate of how many stars
there are in our own galaxy, the Milky Way,
we then multiply that number by the best guesstimate
of the number of galaxies in the universe.
After all that math, NASA can only confidently say
that there are zillions of uncountable stars.
A zillion is any uncountable amount.
An Australian National University study
put their estimate at 70 sextillion.
Put another way, that's 70,000 million million million.
The Apollo astronaut's footprints on the moon
will probably stay there
for at least a hundred million years.
Since the moon doesn't have an atmosphere
there's no wind or water to erode or wash away
the Apollo astronauts' mark on the moon.
That means their footprints, rover prints, spaceship prints,
and discarded materials will stay preserved on the moon
for a very long time.
They won't stay on there forever, though.
The moon is still a dynamic environment.
It's actually being bombarded constantly
with micro meteorites, which means
that erosion is still happening on the moon
just very slowly.
99% of our solar system's mass is the sun.
Our star, the sun, is so dense
that it accounts for a whopping 99% of the mass
of our entire solar system.
That's what allows it to dominate
all of the planets gravitationally.
Technically, our sun is a G-type main-sequence star
which means that every second
it fuses approximately 600 million tons
of hydrogen to helium.
It also converts about 4 million tons of matter
to energy as a byproduct.
When the sun dies, it'll become a red giant
and envelop the Earth and everything on it.
But don't worry that won't happen
for another 5 billion years.
The largest asteroid in our solar system
is a mammoth piece of space rock named Ceres.
The asteroid which is sometimes known as a dwarf planet
is almost 600 miles in diameter.
It's by far the largest in the asteroid belt
between Mars and Jupiter,
and accounts for a whole third of the belt's mass.
Ceres surface area is approximately equal
to the land area of India or Argentina.
The uncrewed spacecraft, Dawn,
finished up its mission orbiting Ceres in October 2018
helping us totally transform our understanding of the world.
One day on Venus is longer than one year on Earth.
Venus has an extremely slow axis rotation
that takes about 243 Earth days to complete one full cycle.
Funny enough, it takes Venus even less time in Earth days
in order to complete one revolution around the sun.
226 to be exact.
Furthermore, the sun rises every 117 Earth days,
which means that the sun will rise only two times
during each year, which is also all technically
in the same day.
Since Venus also rotates clockwise,
the sun will rise in the west and set in the east.
Jupiter's red spot is shrinking.
Jupiter's famous red spot has been shrinking
over the past few decades.
This spot on the planet is a giant spinning storm
that used to be able to fit about three Earths.
Now, only one Earth can fit inside the spot.
Interestingly enough, as the storm is shrinking in width
it's actually growing taller in length.
Scientists are still stumped
as to why this phenomenon is occurring in the first place.
But some theorize that it may have to do
with jet streams on Jupiter
that have either changed direction or location.
One of Saturn's moons has a distinct two-tone coloration.
Iapetus, one of Saturn's 62 moons
is actually a pretty unique celestial object.
This moon has a very distinct two-tone coloration
with one side much darker than the other.
This strange occurrence isn't present on any other moons
in the solar system.
Iapetus's color has to do with its position in relation
to the rest of Saturn's moons.
It turns out that Iapetus is way outside of Saturn's rings
and because of this, it gets hit with a lot of space debris
from objects that might be passing through its orbit,
explaining the dark areas, according to Forbes.
Furthermore, another moon, Phoebe, which is completely dark
and farther out than Iapetus,
revolves clockwise around Saturn
and emits a steady stream of particles.
Iapetus revolves counterclockwise,
meaning that only one side of Iapetus
gets hit with the particles coming off of Phoebe
when they revolve past each other.
This explains why Iapetus isn't fully dark
but only partially.
The position of the North Star will change over time.
Navigation will be weird
when Polaris stops being the North Star
in about 13,000 years.
In case you didn't know,
Earth's axis goes through a motion called precession
which means that the planet's axis will change
and trace out the shape of a cone.
Even if slightly, when this occurs,
it takes around 26,000 years for the axis to trace out
a complete cone shape.
To add to this, Polaris, the Earth's current North Star
will eventually begin to shift positions
as the Earth undergoes precession.
In 3000 BC, it's believed that the North Star
was the star Thuban, otherwise known as Alpha Draconis.
In about 13,000 years the Star Vega
will be the new North Star,
but in 26,000 years,
Polaris will return in its original position
as the Earth continues to go through precession.