If a star passes too close to a black hole, it can be torn apart.
For 20 years, a team of astronomers observed a star at the center of our galaxy orbiting a black hole. The star has now got close enough to the black hole for “gravitational redshift” to occur which is where the star’s light loses energy as the black hole’s gravity intensified.The hottest planet in our solar system is Venus.
Most people think that this would be Mercury, as it is the closest planet to the sun.
However, Venus has a lot of gasses in its atmosphere which creates a “Greenhouse Effect” that causes a constant temperature of 864° Fahrenheit (462° Celsius) everywhere on the plant’s surface.
Our solar system is 4.6 billion years old.
Well, give or take 30 million years(ish). Accurately speaking, it is 4.571 billion years old. Scientists estimate that in about 5 billion years, our Sun will expand becoming a Red Giant. In about 7.5 billion years its expanding surface will swallow up and engulf the Earth.
Enceladus, one of Saturn’s smaller moons, reflects 90% of the Sun’s light.
Because Enceladus’ icy surface reflects sunlight rather than absorbing it, temperatures reach as low as -394° Fahrenheit (-201° Celsius).
The highest mountain discovered is the Olympus Mons, which is located on Mars.
Its peak is 16 miles (25 km) high, making it nearly 3 times higher than Mount Everest. And not only is it tall, but it’s also 374,015 ft² (114,000 m²) wide – that’s an area the size of Arizona!
The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) was the first celestial object identified as being spiral.
The grand, spiraling arms of the Whirlpool Galaxy are made up of long lanes of stars and gas, sprinkled with lots of space dust. These arms act as star formation factories, compressing hydrogen gas and creating clusters of new stars.
A light-year is the distance covered by light in a single year.
Light moves at the velocity of about 186,411 miles (300,000 km) a second. So one light-year equates to roughly 5,903,026,326,255 miles!
The Milky Way galaxy is 105,700 light-years wide.
It would take a modern spacecraft 450,000,000 years to travel to the center of our galaxy!
The Sun weighs about 330,000 times more than Earth.
It is about 109 times the diameter of Earth and is so large the Earth could fit inside the sun about 1,300,000 times over! In fact, the sun is so gigantic that it contains 99.85% of all mass in our solar system.
Footprints left on the Moon won’t disappear as there is no wind.
But wait a minute… if there’s no wind to blow them away then why is the flag blowing? Well, it actually wasn’t blowing. That rippling you see is because of a stubborn telescopic horizontal rod that the astronauts were struggling to remove from the flag’s upper hem.
Because of lower gravity, a person who weighs 220 lbs on Earth would weigh 84 lbs on Mars.
When sending droids to the surface of Mars, this is something scientists plan for, being able to load the droid up with more equipment and build it from more robust materials.
There are 79 known moons orbiting Jupiter.
Jupiter is the planet in our solar system with the most moons, and it also has the largest moon in our solar system. That moon is called Ganymede and is 33,279 miles (5,262 km) in diameter – that’s bigger than Mercury and it is visible with just a pair of binoculars!
The Martian day is 24 hours 39 minutes and 35 seconds long.
So you’d therefore assume there are less days in a year on Mars than Earth, right? Wrong! Because Mars orbits the sun slower than the Earth, there are actually 687 Martian days in a Martian year!
NASA’s Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) found evidence of water on the Earth’s Moon.
Whilst water cannot exist on the Moon’s surface under its current conditions, scientists believe water ice could survive within the cold, permanently shadowed crates at the Moon’s two poles.
The Sun makes a full rotation once every 25 – 35 days.
So for us on Earth, one full rotation equals one full day. However, our gargantuan sun takes 25 – 35 Earth days to make one full rotation!
Earth is the only planet not named after a God.
Nobody knows how the Earth got its name; all we know is that it is derived from an amalgamation of both the Old English and Old Germanic words for “ground”.
Due to the Sun and Moon’s gravitational pull, we have tides.
This is because the Moon’s tidal force causes the Earth – and the water on it – to bulge out on the side closest to the Moon. These bulges are what cause the world’s high tides.
Pluto is smaller than the United States.
If you were to walk around the equator of Pluto it would be the same distance as walking from London to Denver (well, give or take 56 miles).
According to mathematics, white holes are possible, although as of yet we have found none.
A white hole is a hypothetical region of space-time which can’t be entered from the outside, although matter and light can escape from within. Basically, it’s the reverse of a black hole.
Mercury and Venus are the only 2 planets in our solar system that have no moons.
In total, there are 176 confirmed moons that orbit the planets in our solar system, with some of them being bigger than Mercury itself!
Source: NASA.gov
0 Comments