25 FACTS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE

25 – The Milky Way

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 – Other Galaxies

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 – Dark Matter

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 “dark matter.” To this day, they are still not sure where or what it is.

22 – The alcoholic space cloud

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 – Nuking the Moon

In the late 1950′s, by way of something labeled Project A119, the United States 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 – The Ponzo illusion

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. Don’t believe it? Next time you’re looking at an oversized moon
block everything else out with your hands and watch it shrink.

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19 – The Moon smells like gunpowder

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 – Biggest diamond ever

In 2004, scientists discovered the largest diamond ever. In fact, it’s a collapsed star. Measuring
4,000 km (2,485 miles) across and having a core composed of 10 billion trillion trillion carats,
it’s roughly 50 light years from the Earth.

17 – Venus’ day is longer than its year

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 – Saturn floats

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 – Cold Welding

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. 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. They’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 – Space junk

Earth does, however, have over 8,000 objects orbiting around it. Most of these would be
classified as “space junk” or debris left over from spacecraft and missions in the past.

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12 – Lunar drift

Each year, scientists have determined that the moon moves about 3.8 cm further from the Earth.
As a result, Earth’s spin has slowed by about .002 seconds every day over the course of the last
century.

11 – The sun rays on your skin are 30,000 years old

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 Sun’s
surface.

10 – Constant motion

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.

9 – Galileo’s Theory of Special Relativity

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. It’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. Let’s take this a step further though as we move on to…

8 - The speed of light*

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 – about 60 mph – 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 point…

* 299,792,458 meters per second (approximately 300,000 km/s (186,000 mi/s)

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7 – The universal speed limit

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. This however, has some interesting consequences and leads directly into…

6 – Einstein’s Theory of relativity

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. Still don’t believe it? That’s why we’re moving on to…

5 – Moving clocks

Everything we 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.

4 – Add a nanosecond to your life by never climbing stairs

Because the force of gravity increases near the surface of the Earth, so does your acceleration,
meaning exactly what you’re thinking – time slows down. Once again, this is very relevant to
modern day society because, at different altitudes, clocks tick at different “speeds.” 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.

3 – Twins paradox

If you have been keeping up so far, then this won’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.

2- Venus is upside-down and Uranus is rolling

Venus rotates clockwise, while most of the other planets rotate counterclockwise. Actually, the
planet is upside down, so technically, it is rotating just like the other planets. Uranus is another
interesting object because it rotates sideways. That means that the north and south poles are in
the equatorial region.

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1 – Black holes

At one point, these intergalactic vacuum cleaners 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 – not even light
– could escape.

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