Top 10 Facts - Space (Part 1)
Source thumbnail : LEMMiNO (Youtube Channel)
Fact #1 : If you put Saturn in water it would float
The density of Saturn is so low that if you were to put it in a giant
glass of water it would float. The actual density of Saturn is 0.687
g/cm3 while the density of water is 0.998 g/cm3.
At the equator Saturn has a radius of 60,268 ± 4 km – which means you
would need an extremely large glass of water to test this out.
Fact #2 : We are moving through space at the rate of 530km a second
Our Galaxy – the Milky Way is spinning at a rate of 225 kilometers
per second. In addition, the galaxy is travelling through space at the
rate of 305 kilometers per second. This means that we are traveling at a
total speed of 530 kilometers (330 miles) per second. That means that
in one minute you are about 19 thousand kilometers away from where you
were. Scientists do not all agree on the speed with which the Milky Way
is travelling – estimates range from 130 – 1,000 km/s. It should be said
that Einstein’s theory of relativity, the velocity of any object
through space is not meaningful.
Fact #3 : Uranus was originally called George’s Star
When Sir William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, he was given the
honor of naming it. He chose to name it Georgium Sidus (George’s Star)
after his new patron, King George III (Mad King George). This is what he
said:
"In the fabulous ages of ancient times the appellations of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were given to the Planets, as being the names of their principal heroes and divinities. In the present more philosophical era it would hardly be allowable to have recourse to the same method and call it Juno, Pallas, Apollo or Minerva, for a name to our new heavenly body. The first consideration of any particular event, or remarkable incident, seems to be its chronology: if in any future age it should be asked, when this last-found Planet was discovered? It would be a very satisfactory answer to say, ‘In the reign of King George the Third."
Uranus was also the first planet to be discovered with the use of a telescope. Yo George ... What's up? xD
Fact #4 : If two pieces of metal touch in space, they become permanently stuck together
This may sound unbelievable, but it is true. Two pieces of metal
without any coating on them will form in to one piece in the vacuum of
space. This doesn’t happen on earth because the atmosphere puts a layer
of oxidized material between the surfaces. This might seem like it would
be a big problem on the space station but as most tools used there have
come from earth, they are already coated with material. In fact, the
only evidence of this seen so far has been in experiments designed to
provoke the reaction. This process is called cold welding.
Fact #5 : The hottest planet in our solar system is Venus. Most people often
think that it would be Mercury, as it’s the closest planet to the sun.
This is because Venus has a lot of gasses in its atmosphere, which
causes the “Greenhouse Effect”.
Fact #6 : Neutron stars can spin at a rate of 600 rotations per second.Neutron stars are one of the possible evolutionary end-points of high
mass stars. They're born in a core-collapse supernova star explosion and
subsequently rotate extremely rapidly as a consequence of their
physics. Neutron stars can rotate up to 60 times per second after born.
Under special circumstances, this rate can increase to more than 600
times per second.
Fact #7 : The whole space is completely silent.Sound waves need a medium to travel through. Since there is no atmosphere in space, space will always be eerily silent.You may be asking how astronauts can talk to each other in space. Lucky for them, radio waves can travel through space. No problem there, Houston.
Fact #8 : There is an uncountable number of stars in the known universe.
We basically have no idea how many stars there are in the universe.
Right now we use our estimate of how many stars there are in our own
galaxy, the Milky Way. We then multiply that number by the best
guesstimate of the number of galaxies in the universe. After all that
math, NASA can only confidently say that say there all zillions of
uncountable stars. A zillion is any uncountable amount.An Australian National University study put their estimate at 70
sextillion. Put another way, that's 70,000 million million million.That is a lot of millions.This
figure is basically a guess, though.
Fact #9 : 99% of our solar system's mass is the sun.Wow... I can't believe that , But that's fact , right? allright moving on.Our star, the Sun, is so dense that it accounts for a whopping 99% of
our entire solar system. That's what it allows it to dominate it
gravitationally. Technically, our Sun is a "G-type main-sequence star"
which means that every second, it fuses approximately 600 million tons
of hydrogen to helium. This means that it also converts about 4 million
tons of matter to energy as a byproduct.
Being the type of star that the Sun is, it also means that when it
dies, it will become a red giant and envelop the earth and everything on
it. But don't worry: That won't happen for another 5 billion years.
Fact #10 : the Sun is actually white, not yellow.Surprised? The reason the Sun looks yellow to us on Earth is that our atmosphere
scatters light from the Sun; so the apparent color of the sun changes.
This same scattering effect is why the sky looks blue in the day time instead of black, like at night.Specifically, what is going on here is the Earth’s atmosphere scatters
light in the blue and violet wavelength range, so the remaining
wavelengths of light appear yellow. This same effect is why the sky
will also often appear yellow when the Sun is disappearing over the
horizon, as well as why the sky/Sun can appear more red at times during
this phase of the day.As the sun is setting, more of the shorter wavelength blue is being
scattered because of the decreased angle of the sun relative to you;
thus the light has to pass through more atmosphere to get to you. This
increased diffusion results in less of the blue wavelength being visible
to you and thus what remains appears yellow. Similarly, if it is dusty
or there are a lot of other larger particles in the air, this will
filter out larger wavelengths, resulting in a red sky and red sun.
Sources :
http://mashable.com/2014/03/05/sun-stars-space-facts/#BH7bH5.cXZqa
http://listverse.com/2007/11/13/top-10-cool-facts-about-space/
http://www.thefactsite.com/2012/01/100-random-facts-about-space.html
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