“If The Sun Were To Disappear We Would Still Orbit It For About Eight Minutes” — People Are Sharing 16 Facts About Space, And My Jaw Has Never Hit The Ground So Fast
by Elizabeth Cotton · BuzzFeedSpace is fascinating. It's something we'll never truly be able to wrap our heads around, but every little detail we learn is phenomenal...
So, when u/GunnartheGreat6541 asked users on r/space to share their favourite jaw-dropping space facts, we decided to round up the best ones:
1. "There is a neutron star with a mass similar to our Sun, but it’s only about 30km across. That’s already pretty intense, but it’s spinning at about 43,000 rpm. It spins 716 times each second."
"That means the surface is moving at about 1/4 the speed of light. Just imagine something spinning that fast, and it still doesn’t spin itself apart."
2. "A conservative estimate for the number of planets in the known universe is approximately more than a septillion. If you could count one number per second, and you wanted to count to two septillion, it would take you the age of the universe times 4.6 million."
3. "My university astronomy professor was asked how 'full' space is. He said that if you made a building 20 miles high, 20 miles wide and 20 miles long, and put a single grain of sand in it, that would be how 'full' space is."
4. "The atmosphere on Venus is so thick that a 3kph wind has as much energy as a category five hurricane on Earth."
5. "If sound waves could travel through space, the Sun would be deafening. 100 decibels, basically the sound of a car blaring its horn right next to you, forever."
6. "A fave of mine to talk about is that they sent Voyager 1 in 1977. In 2012, it has finally JUST left our solar system."
7. "About 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the Earth and Sun were on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy*. So, Dinosaurs are from the other side of the galaxy."
"*The Sun completes an orbit of the Milky Way about every 225 million years."
8. "A photon (created in the core of the Sun) can take a million years to reach the surface of the Sun, and then about eight minutes more to get to you."
9. "Around 100 trillion neutrinos are passing through you per second. Day and night."
10. "In 2009, astronomers were able to identify a chemical called ethyl formate in a big dust cloud at the centre of the Milky Way. Ethyl formate happens to be responsible for the flavour of raspberries (it also smells like rum). Space tastes like raspberries and smells like rum! What a downright delightful thing."
11. "The Sun is equivalent to 99% of the total mass of the solar system. The other 1% is composed of the gas giants. Earth, all the other rocky planets. and all asteroids and comets are only a rounding error."
12. "In 4.5 billion years when the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies collide, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, they will pass through each other with not a single star from either galaxy colliding. Space is THAT big."
13. "Wood may be the rarest natural resource in the universe, as it's only been found on Earth."
14. "If the Sun were to disappear we would still orbit it for about eight minutes. The speed of causality is the speed of light. Imagine that."
15. "How much space there is between asteroids. Even in an astroid belt or field, the space between them is about the size of the moon or larger. Movies and video games in space are almost always way off on this, and make them look like they are way too close together."
Note: The average distance between rocks is more than a million miles.
16. "You aren’t living in the Cosmos. You ARE the Cosmos. And so is your phone. And a bird. And the dust under your bed. You aren’t somehow 'separate' from the Cosmos, observing it. You ARE it."
H/T to u/GunnartheGreat6541 and r/space for having this discussion!
Note: All submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.