[CRUNCH] STRANGEST Things Found in Solar System
Our solar system is filled with amazing things, and we keep discovering more of them. Welcome
to CRUNCH, and in this video, we’ll be showing you some of the strangest things found in the
solar system:
15. Great Red Spot Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system
and is big enough to be considered a “failed star”, there are so many weird things and features
about Jupiter, some of which will be covered in this video, and the first strange thing about
Jupiter is its Great Red Spot. The Great Red Spot isn’t actually a stable piece of land, but rather
a continuous storm that could fit over 2 earths inside of it. The storm has been going on for at
least the past 300 years, but in recent years, the spot has shown that it might be shrinking.
14. Death Star Moon The Death Star is one of Star Wars’ most
iconic elements, but what if we told you something quite similar to the Death Star actually
exists in real life? While it’s not actually called the death
star, and it doesn’t exactly have an intergalactic supervillain residing on it, the Mimas moon is
one of Saturn’s 82 moons. The moon has quite a few physical resemblances to the death star
itself, and the massive crater indicates that it may have been the site of a major space incident
in the past. 13. Mountains on Pluto
The tiny dwarf planet of Pluto has plenty of mysteries about it. For the longest time, it was
considered to be the smallest planet in our solar system until it was reclassified as a dwarf
planet. In the past decade, we’ve gotten to know a lot more about this dwarf planet, including
massive mountains that are all over pluto. Prior to their discovery, Pluto was thought to be
mainly a flat planet, but these mountains have changed the way we see Pluto altogether. These
mountains are up to 3,300 meters high, which indicates that the planet may have been
geologically active as recently as 100 million years ago.
12. Pluto’s Atmosphere While we’re on the subject of Pluto, the tall
mountains weren’t the only incredible discovery made on it through the New Horizons spacecraft.
One amazing new discovery about Pluto was that the planet is home to an intense atmosphere.
While some sort of atmosphere was expected from Pluto, what scientists saw really blew their
minds. The haze from Pluto reached as far as 1,000 meters high, much higher than it is
on earth. The atmosphere is very rich in nitrogen, and
was also found to be much colder than previously expected. There’s also a lot of nitrogen
leaking out of Pluto’s atmosphere, but it quickly produces more nitrogen to make up for it.
11. Saturn’s Hexagons
Jupiter isn’t the only planet in the solar system that has a massive storm in it, affecting its
appearance. Saturn is no different, and its storms take up a more geometrical shape. The storm
is located on Saturn’s north pole, in the shape of a hexagon, and is about 32,000 kilometers
wide. Perhaps we were all too busy looking at Saturn’s rings to notice the massive storm that
was brewing above it. 10. Uranus
All the jokes about this planet’s name aside, Uranus is truly one of the weirdest planets in our
Solar System. Uranus, unlike all the other planets in our solar system, actually orbits on its side,
and its ring is actually vertical rather than horizontal.
Each season on this planet lasts about 20 years, and it orbits the sun from west to east,
and is one of only two planets to do so (with the other being Venus). Uranus’s strange position
might have been because it collided with another planet millions of years ago.
9. Miranda Now that we’re done talking about Uranus,
we can start talking about its craziest moon, Miranda. It’s Uranus’s smallest moon and was
once closely photographed by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft. The strangest thing about Miranda
is its physical appearance, the moon looks as if it’s ready to be completely broken into pieces
as if it’s made of glass. It’s actually a layer of ice,
but it looks, unlike any moon in the entire solar system that we know of.
8. Titan Titan is one of Saturn’s many moons. It’s
considered the second largest moon in the solar system, but there’s something truly unique about
this moon. It acts more like a planet than it does as a moon, in fact, Titan is the only moon
in the entire universe that’s known to have its own atmosphere, which is quite similar to earth’s.
On top of that, Titan is the only body in the Solar System, other than earth, that has stable
bodies of liquid located on its surface. Maybe we’ve been trying to colonize the wrong space
object. 6. Asteroids and Comet
There are plenty of strange asteroids and meteors out there and we don’t have nearly enough
time to list all of them, but one thing they all have in common is that they’re highly destructive
and can hit us at any given time, without warning, and there’s probably nothing we can do about
it. These objects have caused mass extinction events on earth in the past,
and it’s only a matter of time before one angry comet decides
it’s it for all of us, so be on the lookout. 5. Northern Lights on Jupiter
While everything may be bigger in Texas, Jupiter likes to take things
to the next level when it comes to size and grandeur.
One of its most impressive recent discoveries is the light show that
happens on the North Pole of Jupiter every now and then. Jupiter’s aurora is the result of its
high magnetic pull that collides with the solar wind, creating these incredible lights. In fact,
Jupiter’s aurora is so large that you could wrap it around the earth multiple times over.
4. The Biggest Volcano Mars is one of the most explored planets in our
solar system, but it hasn’t really gotten a lot of love in this video, however, there truly is one
strange feature about Mars, and that’s the Olympus Mons, which is officially the
largest volcano in our entire Solar System, and the largest
volcano ever discovered. It’s also the tallest volcano, with a peak of about 21.9 kilometers,
which also makes it the second-tallest mountain in our Solar System. Clearly, Mars has plenty
of its own extremes. 3. Dwarf Planets
We’ve discussed Pluto a bunch of times in this list so far. Pluto was once considered a proper
planet but was relegated to a “dwarf planet” category after a bunch of other objects around
Neptune was found to have a size quite similar to Pluto itself, officially making it too small to be
a planet. Neptune’s Kuiper belt contains most of the dwarf planets that are found in the Solar
System, and many of these actually have their own moon, or even multiple moons, despite
being only a fraction of Earth’s size. 2. Haumea
Now that you know what a dwarf planet is, one of the strangest dwarf planets within our solar
system would have to be Haumea. Haumea is also located within Neptune’s Kuiper belt and is a
size that’s equal to about 1/1400th of the Earth’s.
It was first discovered in 2005 and has many similarities with Pluto, everyone’s favorite
dwarf planet. Aside from that, Haumea is also the fastest spinning object in the entire Solar
System, completing one day in just 4 hours. 1. Giant Hidden Planet
This is one object that we don’t actually know if it exists, but even among the strictest of
scientists, no one has ruled out the possibility of it existing.
Yes, there might actually be a ninth planet in our solar system and it’s not a dwarf
planet like Pluto. Planet Nine is expected to be located in the outer region of the solar system,
and the furthest planet from the Sun. It would be around 5 to 10 times larger than the earth itself,
and it also might be suitable for life, we’ll just have to wait and see if it ever gets discovered.
That’s a wrap for the strangest things found in the solar system! If you enjoyed this video, make
sure to leave us a like and subscribe to our channel for more videos like this!