Hello, I'm Hank and I talk about how things work for my job. When I do this, I use a lot
of big words . Sometimes I have to, but other times I think maybe we only do that to sound
like we know lots of things.
Randall Munroe of XKCD has written a whole book explaining how things work using only
the ten hundred most used words. I really like that book, and so we thought maybe we
could do the same thing.
So here is a look at our star area, using only the ten hundred most used words in our
language.
Our world is big and great, but it is only one of a lot of worlds that go around the
sun. The sun is a star, like all of the other stars you see at night, but much closer up.
The sun is the biggest thing near us. Next to the sun, our world looks tiny.
We are close to the sun, but not the closest. Closest is a small but heavy world. The sun's
power pushed all of the not heavy stuff away from this world, so only the heavy stuff remained.
The side that is facing the sun is always very hot, but because there is very little
air the dark side cools off very fast at night.
Second is the hot sky world. It's a lot like our world but it's very hot. One reason it's
hot is because it's closer to the sun. But it is also hot because it has a really thick
sky that warms it like it's wearing lots of shirts. This world is so hot that if you landed
there you would be on fire. It can be even hotter than the heavy rock world.
Next is our world, which you know all about. Our world has a moon, which are worlds that
go around other worlds that go around a star. Our moon was probably made when a world slammed
into our world a very long time ago.
Even further out is the Red World. The red world is my second favorite after our world
because it had water like our world when it was very young. It is cold and dry now, and
all of the water is ice. But because it once had water, we think maybe it could have once
had life on it.
Next we have a large area of small worlds that some might just call big rocks. Only
one or two of these worlds are big enough to even be round, we just sent a space boat
to one for the first time, which was exciting.
After that are the Big Worlds. This is where most of the air went when the sun pushed all
the light stuff out of the inside of our star area. These big worlds are made of almost
all air. The first one is the biggest world, which has a storm so big that our whole world
could fit in it. The big world has lots of amazing moons like the ice water moon which
is warm on the inside, and so things might be able to live there.
The Ring World is the next air world, it's a lot of people's favorite world because it's
so pretty. It also has an ice moon, and a lot of other really cool moons. The rings
are very bright, even if they aren't very thick.
There are two more air worlds, they are smaller and have more kinds of air, including the
kind of air that we pull out of the ground here to warm our houses. That kind of air
makes them more blue. The closer of these worlds rolls on its side around the sun instead
of spinning like all of the other worlds. We don't really know why, but we think maybe
some other worlds hit it when it was young and turned it to its side.
After the air worlds are the cold dark worlds. These are small, but many and made of ice
and rock. We just sent our first space boat to one of these, and it was pretty much the
best day this year. The pictures are very good. Worlds like these go around the sun
very slowly in a big wide ring.
Even farther out there are a lot of small ice worlds that sometimes get pushed into
our area and, as they get close to the sun the ice burns off which we can see in the
sky. We also just sent our first space boat to one of those, which is another reason why
this year was great.
The final reason this year is great is that, as of today, this book, "Thing Explainer"
is a thing you can buy at all of the places where you would think to buy books. Thank
you to the book making people for paying us to make this.
And thank you for watching this moving picture thing, we hope you watch more of them soon!