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25 Shocking Facts About Astronomy

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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and comets. Here are some fun, interesting and eye-opening facts you may or may not know about astronomy-

1.Our Sun is just one out of a 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way is just one out of a 100 million galaxies in the universe. Imagine how tiny we are just compared to the sun!

2 (1)2.The Moon is lemon-shaped. This strange shape is thought to have been created during interactions with Earth soon after its formation.

3.The black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy is millions of times the mass of the Sun.

4.A day on Mercury lasts twice as long as a year.

5.Ninety-five percent of the matter in the universe is either dark matter or dark energy that can’t be detected.

6.There are stars we will never be able to see. As regions of space are whizzing away from one another at an ever-increasing rate, the first population of stars to form in the Universe are now too far away for us to ever hope of spying them, even using the best present or future telescope.

7.Only one two-billionth of the Sun’s energy hits the Earth.

8.There’s a bar in the sky. It may seem like a bartender’s dream, but way up beyond our atmosphere, there’s a gas cloud made from alcohol about 1,000 times the diameter of our entire solar system. That’s enough alcohol to supply 300,000 pints of beer every day to every single person on Earth for the next billion years!

9.Neptune has only completed one orbit around the Sun since its discovery. This planet takes a whopping 165 years to complete one full orbit around the Sun. Since it was discovered in 1846, Neptune only recently finished its first full post-discovery orbit in 2011.

10.A black hole is an object so dense that the gravity forces at its surface prevent anything from escaping. Not even light can escape out through the surface of a black hole. The surface is called the event horizon.

11.There’s a lot of trash out in space. There is a lot of garbage filling up our landfills on Earth itself, but there are over a million pieces of space trash orbiting the earth right now. Space junk is a real problem and even something as small as a paper clip could wreak havoc on our satellite system. Currently, there’s no great way to clean up space, but scientists are focusing on solutions

12.Vast amounts of water have been found in space. Europa’s (Jupiter’s moon) ocean may contain over twice the volume of water found on Earth. However, the most water ever discovered surrounds a black hole some 12 billion lightyears away. This region contains vast amounts of water vapour, the equivalent of 140 trillion times the volume of water in Earth’s oceans.

13.We can’t hear sound in space. You would need an eardrum comparable to the size of Earth to hear the small pressure variations of the magnetosonic waves that you’d find in space.

14.The sunset on Mars appears blue.

15.The Moon is getting farther away from Earth every year. It is moving away from us by 3.8cm per year.

16.The skin on your feet peel off in space. On Earth, we barely notice that process, our skin cells molt and and gravity pulls them away from our bodies, conveniently and invisibly. In space, however, there is no gravity to pull the dead cells away. Astronauts don’t have to wear shoes in space and so the calluses on their feet in space will eventually fall off. The bottoms of their feet become very soft like a newborn’s feet.

17.One million Earths can fit inside the sun.

18.There could be life in the solar system, somewhere. As we learn more about how “extreme” microbes live in underwater volcanic vents or in frozen environments, more possibilities open up for where they could live on other planets. These aren’t the aliens people once feared lived on Mars, but microbial life in the solar system is a possibility.

19.You can cry in space but your tears don’t fall. They’ll just form bubbles around your eyes.

20.Mars has the longest valley. If you thought the Grand Canyon was big, that’s nothing compared to Valles Marineris. At 2,500 miles (4,000 km) long, this immense system of Martian canyons is more than 10 times as long as the Grand Canyon on Earth. Valles Marineris is about as long as the United States!

21.You can’t walk on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune because they have no solid surface.

22.If you could fly to Pluto, the trip would take more than 800 years.

23.Olympus moon, which is 3 times higher than the Mount Everest, is the highest mountain known to man and is located on Mars.

24.An asteroid about the size of a car enters Earth’s atmosphere roughly once a year, but it burns up before it reaches us.

25.Must know fact- The universe and all the galaxies in it began in an explosion about 14 billion years ago. Galaxies are still receding from each other as a result of the initial explosion, and we can detect radio waves which show direct evidence of the initial “Big Bang”. These radio waves are called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

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