Hello and welcome to my big fact hunt and this time round it's ten amazing facts about
our galaxy, the universe and everything.
And first up a fact that's also news - the Kepler Space Telescope has discovered 715
new planets.
The discovery nearly doubles the number of known exoplanets, and means that there are
now 1,700 of them.
Twenty years ago, we didn't know of any planets outside our solar system.
Not even one.
95 per cent of the new planets are smaller than Neptune, which is about four times larger
than Earth.
And four of them were in the Goldilocks Zone - that's the habitable belt that is neither
too close nor too far away from a star to mean that water could, theoretically at least,
exist on them.
The shooting stars you see in the sky are meteors, obviously, but there are real shooting
stars and they're as rare as one in one hundred million.
Hypervelocity stars were first observed in 2005 moving at 530 miles a second, which is
ten times faster than a normal star.
Scientists just don't know what's causing them to be flung out of their galaxies but
believe it could be supernova explosions or supermassive black holes that are causing
them.
In 2009 there was another Cold War, this time on the international space station and the
battle lines were drawn over toilet use.
The Americans on board banned the Russians from using their bogs because they got so
fed up with them getting clogged up.
The Russian diet included foods that are generally considered healthier and more nutritious than
their Yankee counterparts but it generally made their fecal matter just a little bit
too thick and also pungent.
Very pungent.
It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase as thick as sh...
Next up, the largest known water reservoir in the entire universe is 12 million light
years away from us on Earth.
It's contains about 140 trillion, yep trillion times the amount of water that there is in
Earth's oceans.
It's spread across a black hole that is 20 billion times more massive than the sun as
water vapour and it spans a region that is hundreds of light years across.
The Astronauts on board the Apollo 11 were uninsured.
Insurance companies thought it was a suicide mission and refused to give them any cover.
So Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins decided to sign a series of autographs
that would be sold if they did end up dead.
They did make it back safely and some of the autographs have been sold at auction anyway,
making tens of thousands of dollars.
Next up, and you think the moon is on a steady orbit around the Earth?
Well, think again.
It's actually getting further away but admittedly, not by much in cosmic terms.
It's moving away from us by about 3.8 centimetres every year.
So when it was originally formed it was about 14,000 miles from Earth, now it's over 280,000
miles away.
So bye bye moon!
Think the Earth is rotating at a constant speed and always has been?
Nope.
The Earth is actually slowing down by between 1.4 and 17 milliseconds a century.
Which is a huge amount, obviously.
So when the dinosaurs roamed the planet days were closer to 23 hours each.
In 2012 an extra second was added to account for the lengthening solar day and the 35th
so called leap second to be added since 2008.
It's thought the slowing down is caused by tidal forces between the Earth and the moon.
But the 2011 earthquake in Japan shortened days on Earth by 1.8 microseconds.
The most distant galaxy yet discovered is 30 billion light years from Earth.
Z8_GND_5296 was discovered by the Keck telescope and it was formed 13.1 billion light years
ago, which also makes it the oldest known galaxy.
It was formed less than 700 million years after the big bang, which sounds like a lot
but it's not.
Next up, and the moon has Earthquakes, except they're on the moon so they're moonquakes.
There have been small quakes measured originating miles below the surface of the moon and they're
thought to be caused by the gravitational pull of the Earth.
Occasionally they're strong enough to crack the surface, which makes gas escape.
And finally, there's a galaxy called Centaurus A, and it's 14 million light years away from
us.
Contained within the galaxy is a black hole with a 50 million times that of our own sun.
That black hole generates radio-emitting particles that billow out into space and if your eyes
could radio waves, it would cover an area 200 times bigger than the full moon.
The lead scientist on the protect that produced these images said these galaxies are so rare
they're like the blue whales of space.
Ha, Yeah, you didn't think I could shoehorn a blue whale fact into space did you?
But I did.
So, while I go and bask in my own sense of self-importance why not check out the other
bad boys in the fact hunt playlist and if you don't want to, check out Sam's old video
on another 30 amazing unbelievable facts about the universe.
But please be warned, it will blow your mind.