Amazing Facts » Interesting Space Facts

Have you wondered what is beyond this planet earth? What is the space made up of? What does the universe consist of? What are the facts unknown to us? Space is mysterious and beautiful, understand it more with this list of interesting facts about space. We have put together quite an extraordinary collection of intriguing facts on space that makes up an extremely entertaining read.

• There are currently approximately 3,000 comets existing in the solar system.
• The sun utilizes 225 to 250 million years to complete one round of an orbit of the Milky Way’s center.
• The Milky Way galaxy whirls rapidly that leads to the spinning of the sun and other stars and planets at the rate of 100 kmph.
• If you ever fell into a black hole in the space, you would end up stretching like spaghetti.
• The magnetic field around planets is formed because of the liquid iron present in their cores. When the planets rotate, the liquid iron within their core swirls thereby generating electric currents, which create the magnetic field.
• There are two regions in outer solar system named as The Kuiper Belt and The Oort Cloud that produce the comets.
• The sun rotates on its axis once every 25 days at its equator and once every 36 days at its poles.
• Solar flares can reach at an astounding temperature of 10 million degrees Celsius. They store the energy that equals to a million atom bombs.
• The most famous comet, Haley’s comet, is estimated to appear in July 2061.
• Earth’s atmosphere was formed and developed from the gases coming out of the volcanoes.
• No spacecraft was ever able to land on Jupiter due to its surface made of helium and hydrogen gas.
• The weight of a spoonful of a neutron star would be about 10 billion tones.
• Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system.
• The sun happens to be 24,000 to 26,000 light years away from the galactic center.
• If you imagine yourself traveling towards the sun in a normal Airline, with a normal speed of 645 kmph, you would reach the sun’s surface in 20 years.
• Each star in the constellation is named after a Greek alphabet. The brightest star is named as Alpha, the second brightest is named Beta, and the rest.
• The Sun generates extremely large amount of energy within its core. The heat generated causes expansion and if it were not for the sun’s enormous gravitational force, it would have exploded like a giant bomb.
• The three moons- Saturn’s moon Titan, Jupiter’s moon Lo and Neptune’s moon Triton have their own moons.
• During summers on Uranus, the sun does not set for 20 years, and during winters, the sun never rises for 20 years. In other words, there is darkness for 20 years. During autumn, the sun rises and sets after every 9 hours.
• Neutron stars are the fastest spinning objects in the space that rotate at the rate of 500 times in one second.
• The heat temperature of a star can reach up to 16 million degree Celsius. If a grain of sand was this hot, it could kill someone from of distance of 150 kilometers.
• The dark spots or patches on the surface of the moon are actually the traces left back by lava flows from Volcanoes. However, these spots are called as seas because they were once thought to actually be seas.
• The Jupiter’s moon, Europa, is the biggest target of research for existence of life in the solar system, because it assumed to have oceans of water beneath its dry and rough surface.
• Post the big bang of the meteorite, there was anti-matter and matter in the atmosphere. Anti-matter and matter destroyed each other and that resulted in their annihilation. However, matter won, and the universe was left with nothing but emptiness.
• If the universe keeps getting darker, gravity will stop its expansion and the universe will begin to shrink again.
• At least once every year, there is an asteroid, that is the size of a car, and which travels towards the Earth, but burns out before it reaches Earth.
• Astronomers have discovered a massive water vapor cloud that holds water 140 trillion times the mass of water available on Earth. This cloud of water vapor is around 10 billion light years away and is said to be the most astounding discovery of water.
• An Italian astronomer discovered the largest asteroid that is 965 kilometers wide located in the Asteroid between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It covers 33% of the entire belt’s mass.

In 1977, the spacecraft’s Voyager 1 and 2 were launched, with their mission being to visit Jupiter and Saturn. However, Voyager 2 moved on to visit Uranus and Neptune, and Voyager 1 has now virtually entered interstellar space. The spacecraft Voyager 1 is literally away from Earth, and its distance is equivalent to the distance between the planet Pluto and the Sun. Both spacecrafts, craft carry a golden record that contains greetings from Earth and other information, which sums up the Earth in a record. Although, these messages were recorded as electronic impulses, it can also be translated into written form. words. Hope the aliens love our jazz!

We have reached so far and so beautiful, yet there is a lot more than what appears to be unknown. Maybe more and a lot beautiful and extraordinary. These facts will leave you stunned to know how vast and never-ending the universe in which we currently are proud to be a part of. Enjoy.

Image courtesy: huffingtonpost.com