There are many amazing things about our planet, but did you know there are more trees on Earth
than stars in the Milky Way Galaxy?
That’s right, the global number of trees on our tiny blue planet is approximately 3.04
trillion, with 1.30 trillion trees in tropical and subtropical forests, 0.74 trillion trees
in boreal regions, and 0.66 trillion trees in temperate regions.
That’s a lot of trees!
And yet another unbelievable fact is this number has fallen by 46% since the beginning
of human civilization!
On the other hand, if we were talking about stars in the entire observable universe, you
might be surprised to know there are more stars out there than there are grains of sand
on the Earth.
That’s an incredibly mind blowing amount of stars in the observable universe, which
scientists estimate to be one-septillion, or one-quadrillion in the European system
[1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000].
Now, some of you are probably saying ‘no one can count every grain of sand on the Earth’,
but researchers from the University of Hawaii came up with an estimate and say the number
is around seven-quintillion, five hundred-quadrillion grains of sand.
That would make one heck of a sand castle!
Now let’s take a look at the Earth and moon from space.
When you look up in the moonlit night sky, the moon looks very close to us.
But the moon on average is 384,400 kilometers [238,855 miles] away from us.
During full apogee, when the moon is at its farthest orbit from the Earth approximately
405,000 kilometers [251,655] away, there is enough space to fit every planet in our solar
system between the Earth and the moon!
And yes, we put Pluto in there so it doesn’t feel lonely.
And while we’re on the subject of the moon, it’s a pretty strange place by itself.
Did you know the moon isn’t really round?
It’s actually shaped like an egg, with the bigger part pointed at Earth thanks to the
pull of gravity.
And for the record, the moon does rotate, but in exactly the same time as it takes to
orbit Earth.
This is why we always see one side of the moon.
If it didn’t rotate at all, we’d be able to see the dark side of the moon.
You probably knew that, but there’s something surprising about the moon that we bet you
didn’t know.
The moon’s regolith; the layer of loose material over the top of solid bedrock, has
been estimated to contain 45% oxygen!
In fact, it’s estimated that there is enough oxygen on the moon to sustain 8 billion people
for 100,000 years!
However, that oxygen is not in gaseous form like in Earth’s atmosphere.
Instead, it’s trapped inside the regolith.
Researchers are now trying to come up with a way to extract that oxygen so it can be
used by future moon base astronauts to breathe, and be converted into rocket fuel, which will
be really helpful in fueling rockets on their way to Mars.
But what about space itself?
We’re talking about just plain old empty space.
Outer space begins at just 100 kilometers [62 miles] above the surface of the Earth.
Out there in space, it is completely silent.
This is because sound waves can’t travel through a vacuum.
However, radio waves can travel in space.
But the weirdest thing about space is that astronauts say it has a certain smell.
After entering airlocks, some space jockeys say their suit or equipment is left with a
smell like seared or burnt steak, spent gunpowder, or welding fumes and burning metal.
A NASA chemist believes this smell probably comes from high-energy vibrations of ions.
And speaking of strange smells, the first humans on Mars might get a whiff of what the
planet smells like once they enter an airlock after exploring the surface of the red planet.
Mars is mostly made up of magnesium, iron, sulfur, acids, and CO2.
Of course, we can’t breathe on Mars, which is probably a good thing because it doesn’t
smell pretty.
Because of the composition of the planet’s elements and the makeup of its thin atmosphere,
researchers have come to the conclusion that Mars must smell like rotten eggs.
But that’s not all.
One of the most incredible things on the red planet is Olympus Mons.
It is a HUGE shield volcano that reaches 21.9 kilometers [13.6 miles or 72,000 feet] at
its peak.
That’s two and a half times the height of Mount Everest above sea level, and it’s
as big as the state of Arizona, USA.
In fact, this volcano is the biggest and tallest mountain volcano in the entire Solar System,
and even a hundred times bigger than Earth’s largest volcano, Mauna Loa, in Hawaii.
After all the bad smells in the galaxy, it’s nice to know there might be something worth
inhaling.
And when it comes to smells, something else incredibly unusual was discovered in our own
Milky Way.
At the heart of our galaxy is a giant molecular cloud of gas and dust called Sagittarius B2.
The mass of this gas and dust cloud equates to about 3 million times the mass of our sun,
and spans an area roughly 150 light-years across.
Scientists and astronomers in Spain have been studying this dust cloud for years, trying
to identify amino acids; the building blocks of life.
However, after analyzing a stream of data, scientists discovered the presence of a substance
called ethyl formate.
This chemical compound is what gives raspberries their distinctive taste, along with giving
rum its deep signature smell.
So yes, this cloud might taste and smell just like raspberry rum!
How weird is that?
Now here’s another surprising and mind blowing fact.
The Sagittarius B2 gas and dust cloud also contains enough ethyl alcohol to fill 400
trillion, trillion pints of beer.
That would be enough to give 300,000 pints of beer to every person on Earth every day
for a billion years!
Yeah, Science!
Even though it’s really hard to top that off, there are some other incredible things
in the universe that boggle the imagination, such as how big objects in space can be.
Take our own Sun for example.
It’s really hard to get an idea of just how big it is.
Despite the amazing fact that it makes up for 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system,
and that it fuses about 600 million metric tons of hydrogen every second, the Sun is
big enough to fit 1 million Earth’s inside!
Now, that sounds big, but you haven’t seen anything yet!
The largest known and observable star makes our Sun look like a tiny bug in comparison.
Astronomers call it UY Scuti; a variable hyper-giant with a radius about 1,700 times larger than
the radius of the Sun.
To try and put that in some perspective, you could fit almost 5 billion suns inside the
sphere of UY Scuti.
To give another head exploding example, if we put UY Scuti where our Sun is in the solar
system, its photosphere would extend just beyond the orbit of Jupiter!
And in case you’re wondering where it is, you’ll be surprised to learn that it lies
near the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy, about 9,500 light-years away from Earth.
However, the large radius of UY Scuti doesn’t make it the most massive, or the heaviest
star.
That heavyweight title goes to a star cataloged as R136a1, which weighs a whopping 300 times
the mass of our Sun, but only extends about 30 solar radii.
And while we’re on the subject of stars, most solar systems are single or binary star
systems, like the Star Wars planet Tatooine.
In fact, 85% of all stars in the observable universe could be binary star systems like
Tatooine.
But now imagine standing on a planet and seeing not one, not two, but 7 Suns in the sky!
Such a star system actually exists and is named AR Cassiopeiae.
It is only one of two star systems that have 7 stars, the other is called Nu Scorpii in
the constellation of Scorpius.
No one is sure what the mass of those 7 stars are combined just yet, but you can be sure
it’s a lot!
Now, since we’re talking about mass, did you know that the combined total mass of all
asteroids in the Solar System is less than the total mass of Earth’s moon?
With all the talk of asteroids lately, you wouldn’t think that is true, but it is.
However, that doesn’t mean there aren't some big rocks flying around out there.
The biggest asteroid in our Solar System is Vesta, which measures a whopping 530 kilometers
[329 miles] in diameter.
And since we’re on the subject of asteroids, there aren't any huge space rocks that NASA
knows of that are going to hit the Earth anytime soon.
So we can relax… for now.
But asteroids aren’t the only thing scary flying through space.
We’ve all heard about black holes, but have you ever heard of one traveling through space?
In March, 2021, astronomers were surprised and shocked to discover a supermassive black
hole racing across the universe at the ludicrous speed of 177,000 kilometers per hour [110,000
miles per hour]
This supermassive black hole speeding through space is about 3 million times heavier than
our Sun!
It sounds really scary to think that somewhere out there, a black hole is running through
space and eating up everything that gets in its way.
But have no fear, the galaxy that it is located in is 230 million light years away in the
constellation of Taurus.
Researchers still aren’t sure what caused this black hole to be thrown across its galaxy,
and it remains a mystery.
We’re just glad it's not headed towards us.
But there is something that is headed towards us!
In fact, it’s hurtling towards us at 110 kilometers per second!
[68 miles per second] The Andromeda Galaxy.
But you don’t need to worry about it, because the merge won’t happen for about 5 billion
years.
However, did you know that you can actually look up into the night sky and see Andromeda
with the naked eye?
You’ll need to download one of those fancy applications that have star charts and look
for the brightest star in Andromeda named Alpharaz, then straight across to the left
and get the star Mirach in your field of view, then look upward and you should notice an
elongated hazy patch about as long as the full moon and half as wide.
Congratulations!
You’ve just found the Andromeda Galaxy!
The light from that little hazy patch that looks kind of like a cloud is actually the
total accumulation of light from over 400 billion stars!
Maybe one of the most amazing things about the universe is humans and the fact that we
even exist at all.
The most fun part about our existence is that researchers have found that humans share 97%
similar atoms with the rest of the galaxy.
You’ve heard the term that humans are made of stardust, and that’s actually quite true.
The atoms found in our bodies have more in common with the composition of stars, black
holes, and dark matter in galaxies.
We’re sure to learn a lot more in the coming decade, with our technology advancing at incredible
rates.
So make sure that you stay tuned here for more incredible and mind-blowing things about
the universe.
Thanks for watching!