Balls of burning gas; holes that trap light and everything else; stars made out of diamonds;
these are but a few of the many things that make our universe a scary but wondrous place.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, our universe is a wild place, and for all of history, man
has been trying to make sense of it. Although we've come a long way in our understanding,
with every passing day new discoveries are made. Whether it's an alcoholic gas cloud
floating in the center of our galaxy or Einstein's theories of relativity, it's enough to make
an astrophysicist go wild. I'm Mike with List25 and don't worry, this stuff is cool enough
that by the time you finish watching these 25 Crazy Facts About The Universe, we're pretty
sure you'll be going wild, too.
25.
Tonight, when the sun goes down, look up.
Depending on how dark it is outside, you can probably see several thousand stars up there,
all of which come from our own galaxy, the Milky Way. If you look a bit closer though,
you might be able to spot one of only a few galaxies other than our own that is visible
with the naked eye.
24. If this makes you feel small, it should, because
scientists estimate that there are hundreds of billions more galaxies in the universe,
none of which you can see without a telescope. Moreover, each one of these galaxies has billions
of stars, which brings the estimated grand total number of stars in the universe to 10
billion trillion. That's more stars than the number of grains of sand on the Earth.
23. All the stars, galaxies, and black holes in
the universe only compose about 5% of its mass. As crazy as it sounds, the other 95%
is unaccounted for. Scientists decided to label this mystery material â€œdark matter.â€
To this day, they are still not sure where or what it is.
22. For those of you considering opening your
own pubs, there is probably no place better than Sagittarius B. Although it is 26,000
light years away, this interstellar cloud of gas and dust contains over a billion billion
billion liters of vinyl alcohol. Okay, so it's not really drinkable, but it's a very
important organic compound that is critical to the existence of life.
21. In the late 1950â€²s, by way of something
labeled Project A119, the US decided it would be a good idea to launch a nuclear missile
at the moon. Why? Evidently, they felt it would give them a leg up in the Space Race.
Fortunately, however, the plan was never executed.
20. Have you ever noticed that when the moon is
directly on the horizon, it appears to be a lot closer and larger? Known as the Ponzo
illusion, your brain inflates the size of the moon to make it appear larger than it
really is. Donâ€™t believe me? Next time youâ€™re looking at an oversized moon
block everything else out with your hands and watch it shrink.
19. Upon leaving the moon, astronauts on the Apollo
missions described moon dust as smelling like gunpowder and feeling extremely soft. Scientists,
however, are still not exactly sure why this is because the two have extremely different
compositions with moon dust consisting mostly of small shards of silicone dioxide glass.
18. In 2004, scientists discovered the largest
diamond ever. In fact, itâ€™s a collapsed star. Measuring 4,000 km (2,485 miles) across
and having a core composed of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, itâ€™s roughly 50 light
years from the Earth.
17. Strangely enough, Venus completes an entire
orbit around the sun before it manages to turn on its axis once. This means that its
day is actually longer than its year.
16. As big as the planet Saturn is, if you were
to put it in a glass of water, it would float. This is because its density is .687 grams
per cm cubed, while water is the famous .998 g per cm cubed. Unfortunately, though, you
would need a glass that is over 120,000 km (74,564 miles) in diameter to witness this.
15. Whenever two pieces of metal in outer space
touch each other, they are more or less permanently stuck together. While welding usually requires
heat, in this case, the vacuum of space does the trick, hence the name cold welding. You
might think then, how do space shuttles accomplish anything out there? Well, typically, metals
on Earth have a layer of oxidized material covering their surface that prevents this,
so on shuttle missions, the risk of accidentally welding the shuttle to itself is negligible.
14. Earth has more than 1 moon. Okay, not really.
Theyâ€™re more like moon-wannabes, but scientists have discovered several asteroids
that are more or less following the Earth as it moves around the sun.
13. Earth does, however, have over 8,000 objects
orbiting around it. Most of these would be classified as â€œspace junkâ€ or debris
left over from spacecraft and missions in the past.
12. Each year, scientists have determined that
the moon moves about 3.8 cm further from the Earth. As a result, Earthâ€™s spin has
slowed by about .002 seconds every day over the course of the last century.
11. While most of us know that the light hitting
Earth took 8 minutes to cross the 93 million miles between our skin and the surface of
the Sun, did you know that the energy in those rays started their life over 30,000 years
ago deep within the core of the sun? They were formed by an intense fusion reaction
and spent most of those thousands of years making their way to the Sunâ€™s surface.
10. While itâ€™s not my intention to burst
your bubble, I thought I should inform you that the Big Dipper is actually an asterism,
not a constellation. There are only 88 official constellations in the night sky, and everything
else, including the Big Dipper, falls into this other category. It is, however, composed
of the 7 brightest stars in the Great Bear (Ursa Major) constellation.
9. You are standing on a planet that is spinning
about its axis while rotating around a star that is revolving around the center of a galaxy
barreling through space. Sounds like enough to give you motion sickness, right? Well,
before you take your Dramamine, let's visit our next point.
8. So, how do you know that the bus you are taking
to work is in fact moving? What if you are sitting in the only motionless object in the
known universe and everything else, including the road beneath your tires, is moving instead?
Well, the truth is that there is no way to prove what is moving and what isn't. Itâ€™s
all relative to your frame of reference. To you, the person across the aisle is stationary
because your frame of reference is the bus. To the person watching from the sidewalk,
however, you are both speeding along at 60 mph (96.5 k/hr) through traffic because their
frame of reference is the earth.
7. Going back to the bus example, if you were
to shoot an arrow out the window at a target down the road in front of you, how fast would
it be moving when it hit the bullseye? Well, essentially it would be going the speed of
the bus â€“ about 60 mph â€“ plus however fast you shot the arrow. Now what
if you shined a beam of light at it? Since the light travels at 186,000 miles per second,
we would just add the 60 mph right? Wrong. Scientists found that no matter what, light
travels the same speed. Which brings us to our next pointâ€¦
6. As a result of the aforementioned fact that
light cannot exceed 186,000 miles per second, it would follow that nothing can, which is
exactly why this has come to be known as the universal speed limit.
5. Without getting too complex, Einstein essentially
came forward with the revolutionary idea that not only is motion relative, but time is too.
In fact, they are linked together. The faster you move, the slower others will perceive
that time has passed for you. While this was exactly the kind of nonsense scientists were
trying to avoid, Einstein took it at face value and accepted the conclusion.
4. Everything I just talked about is very relevant
to modern technology. In fact, the clocks in onboard computers and navigation equipment
have to take into account the effects of relativity. For example, if you measured the time that
had elapsed on a fighter pilots wristwatch, you would find that it lagged behind your
watch by several nanoseconds.
3. Because the force of gravity increases near
the surface of the Earth, so does your acceleration, meaning exactly what youâ€™re thinking
â€“ time slows down. Once again, this is very relevant to modern day society because,
at different altitudes, clocks tick at different â€œspeeds." Also, remember that since
the earth is rotating, someone standing near the equator is moving faster than someone
on the north pole. Once again, their clock is ticking slower.
2. If you have been keeping up so far, then this
wonâ€™t be too much of a leap. The famous Twins Paradox states that if you put one twin
on a spaceship that was moving near the speed of light through space and left the other
on Earth, due to the effects of relativity, the twin in the spaceship would return to
the planet significantly younger than his Earthbound sibling.
1. At one point, black holes were actually supermassive
stars. When one dies, it generally blows off its gaseous outer layers and the core collapses
into an extremely small and dense sphere. Imagine, for example, trying to pick up a
tennis ball containing the entire mass of the Sun. The immediate effect of this astronomically
high density would be an insanely strong gravitational field. To break free from any gravitational
field, you have to be traveling faster than something known as escape velocity. On Earth,
spacecraft reach a speed of about 7 miles per second. On some collapsed stars, though,
they would have to reach a speed faster than 186,000 miles per second which is more than
the universal speed limit, meaning nothing â€“ not even light â€“ could escape.
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