Title: 10 mindblowing facts about the solar system
10) The solar system is really big
In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager mission. The first spacecraft, Voyager 1,
became the first human-made object to ever enter interstellar space. It was 2012.
This is amazing. But how long was the trip? Voyager 1 had to first cross the planets,
and then the so-called heliopause. This is the strange name given to the
boundary beyond which most of the Sun's ejected particles and magnetic fields dissipate. In order
to reach the heliopause, Voyager had to travel for 121 Astronomical Units or 11.18 billion miles.
This huge distance is nothing compared to the overall size of the solar system.
In fact, if we define it as the Sun and everything that primarily orbits the Sun, Voyager 1 will
remain within the confines of the solar system until it emerges from the Oort Cloud in another
14.000 to 28.000 years. You, your children, and your grandchildren will be long dead.
9) Uranus spins sideways
I'm sure you already know Uranus is basically a cute ball. This is what we have always been
taught in class, but this gas giant hides a secret: it is actually a weird planet.
First, the planet rotates on its side, appearing to roll around the sun like a ball.
Scientists don't know the actual reason for this strange behavior, but the most likely
explanation for the planet's unusual orientation – which is about 90 degrees sideways compared to
the other planets - is that it underwent some sort of titanic collision in the ancient past.
Imagine a huge object impacting with Uranus and forever changing its tilt. And because of this
extreme tilt, Uranus has what NASA thinks to be the most extreme seasons in the solar system.
First of all, a Uranus year is the equivalent of 84 Earth years.
And for a quarter of this time, the sun shines directly over the north or south pole.
Let's suppose you were living on the North pole of this blue and weird planet.
For more than 20 Earth years, you would never see the sun at all! Only your friend on the other pole
would be able to see our star. When this happens, one hemisphere is always colder than the other.
8) The Moon has no atmosphere
The Earth has an atmosphere that protects us from all kinds of bad radiation,
but not all the objects in the solar system are this lucky.
For instance, our splendid moon has no atmosphere.
No winds can ever blow over the surface of our beautiful satellite. This has very interesting
consequences. Imagine for a second living on the moon, and you place a light ball on its surface.
There will be nothing, apart from you or impacts with asteroids and meteorites,
to remove the ball from its position. This makes the Moon a sort of time capsule. Objects that
land on it can sit there, undisturbed, for millions and millions of years.
For instance, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission,
they left footprints on the surface. These signatures will just sit there
unless an impact destroys them. Asteroids basically act as rubbers,
and they erase precious traces of past events that happened on the surface of the Moon.
7) The sun contains 99.8 % of all mass in the Solar System
Compared to Earth, the Sun is enormous!
The radius of the Earth is something like 6371 km long,
while the radius of the sun is around 0.7 million km. But this is not the only difference.
Our majestic star weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth.
The Sun is so large that over one million Earth spheres could fit inside it.
It is very big, isn't it? But if you think about it, the sun is actually
an average star in the universe. There are a lot of stars way bigger and heavier than the sun.
For example, in terms of sheer physical size, the star UY Scuti is considered one of the biggest
known. It’s only 30 times the sun’s mass but has a radius more than 1,700 greater than the sun.
6) There are probably more than 200 moons in the Solar System
yes, you've got it right! 200 is the number of moons in the Solar System, and there might be
actually more! Scientists are always discovering more moons in The Solar System and arguing
over whether Saturn or Jupiter has more moons. Moons – also known as natural satellites – orbit
planets and asteroids in our solar system. Most of the major planets – all except Mercury and Venus
– have moons. Pluto and some other dwarf planets, as well as many asteroids, also have small moons.
Saturn and Jupiter have the most moons, with dozens orbiting each of the two giant planets.
The study of moons in our solar system has become really important to understand the
birth of life as we know it. For example, we know that water is a key ingredient for life.
Well, guess what? Scientists think there's a lot of water on both Saturn's and Jupiter's moons.
5) There's a snowman in the outer solar system
What scientists recently discovered is that there's a tiny object orbiting the Sun out in a
region of space called the Kuiper Belt, and it has the shape of a snowman: its name is Ultima Thule.
You can find the Kuiper belt well beyond the orbit of Neptune,
and since our snowman lies out in that region, we refer to it as a “trans-Neptunian object”.
Objects in the Kuiper belt are mostly composed of ice, and Ultima Thule is
no exception. Its orbit is 298 Earth-Years long, and it is so far that it is able to
receive only a very tiny fraction of sunlight. Planetary scientists think this object might be
the key to understanding planetary formation in our solar system. The distant orbits preserve
this kind of object in very cold temperatures, and that also preserves scientific information
about what conditions were like some 4.5 billion years ago when the Sun and planets were forming.
But how did we get to know the size and shape of such a small object?
We launched the New Horizons mission. This spacecraft had to fly by this special
object in the Kuiper Belt, but in order to do so, scientists programmed ground-based observations
of this little world as it occulted a more distant set of stars during its orbit. Those
observations gave New Horizons a good idea of the size and shape of Ultima Thule. Later, on Jan 1,
2019, New Horizon flyby's data began streaming back to Earth and continued until late 2020.
Based on data and images taken at Ultima Thule, planetary scientists realized it
was the first ever-studied contact binary object in the Kuiper Belt.
It's 31 kilometers long and has two "lobes" joined to form a "collar" around one part of the object.
The lobes are named Ultima and Thule respectively for the small and large components.
These two pieces give Ultima Thule the shape of a snowman.
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4) Pluto isn’t the only dwarf planet in our Solar System
The first time you may have heard the term ‘dwarf planet’ was when Pluto got demoted to one in 2006.
But how many planets are there in our solar system?
Well, we have Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris. These were also the only five that
we knew about up until very recently. Recently though, a new dwarf planet has been discovered,
which is officially called 2015 TG387 but has been given the nickname 'The Goblin'.
The size of The Goblin depends on the assumed albedo, which
basically is the reflectivity of an object. If it is a darker object then it would also
have to be larger; a higher albedo would demand that it be smaller.
The faint object has a visual magnitude of 24.64,
comparable to the visual magnitudes of Pluto's smaller moons: it is really dim!
It was initially estimated to be 190 miles in diameter, though more precise observations
suggested a smaller diameter of 140 miles, corresponding to a higher albedo of 0.21.
3) Jupiter's great red spot is shrinking
We all knew Jupiter is the solar system largest planet, but did you know it also
hosts the solar system's largest storm? This storm is known as the Great Red Spot,
and astronomers have been observing it in telescopes since the 1600s.
Recently studies from modern instruments like NASA's Juno probe
showed how the storm is hundreds of miles tall.
What's actually new is that this spot is now getting smaller.
The storm has been raging for centuries, and maybe now it is coming to an end.
The shrinkage is currently being monitored in professional telescopes and also by amateurs.
We just have to wait and see!
2) Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain in the Solar System
The tallest mountain on Earth is mount Everest, 29,031.69 feet high.
But what if I told you this is nothing, compared to the tallest solar system mountain?
If you went to Mars, you would see this enormous volcano, called Olympus Mons.
It is the largest Mars volcano, but it is also the solar system’s tallest mountain.
It is 15.5 miles tall!
Measuring 374 miles in diameter, it covers about the same amount of land as the state of Arizona.
Olympus Mons is located near three other volcanoes known as the Tharsis Montes.
The volcanoes in this area are all 10 to 100 times bigger
than Earth’s largest volcanoes: they are huge!
1) The Sun lies about 8 kiloparsecs away from the galactic center.
The Solar System (and Earth) is located about 25,000 light-years or 8 kiloparsecs to the
galactic center, So basically, if you were to think of the Milky Way as a big record,
we would be the spot that’s roughly halfway between the center and the edge.
But how can these volcanos get this big?
Well, that's because, unlike on Earth, there is no plate tectonics on Mars that
can drag a volcano away from its hotspot–they just sit in one
volcanically active place and grow bigger and bigger.
1) The Sun lies about 8 kiloparsecs away from the galactic center.
The Solar System (and Earth) is located about 25,000 light-years or 8 kiloparsecs to the
galactic center, So basically, if you were to think of the Milky Way as a big record,
we would be the spot that’s roughly halfway between the center and the edge.
Astronomers think the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with two major spiral arms, called the
Perseus arm and the Scutum-Centaurus arm. There are also several smaller arms and spurs. However,
the Solar System is located in a region in between the two arms called the Orion-Cygnus arm.
This arm extends for 3,500 light-years across and is 10,000 light-years in length!
It takes the Sun 250 million years to complete one rotation around the
Milky Way – this is what is known as a “Galactic Year” or “Cosmic Year”.
If you think about it, the last time the Solar System was in this position in the Milky Way,
there were still dinosaurs on Earth. This is honestly mindblowing, don't you think?
This video ends here! What's your favorite fact about the solar system?
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