50 amazing facts

These are 50 amazing facts :

* 1. Saturn's moon Titan has plenty of evidence of organic (life) chemicals in its atmosphere.

* 2. Life is known to exist only on Earth, but in 1986 NASA found what they thought might be fossils of microscopic living things in a rock from Mars.

* 3. Most scientists say life's basic chemicals formed on the Earth. The astronomer Fred Hoyle said they came from space.

* 4. Oxygen is circulated around the helmet in space suits in order to prevent the visor from misting.

* 5. The middle layers of space suits are blown up like a balloon to press against the astronaut's body. Without this pressure, the astronaut's body would boil!

* 6. The gloves included in the space suit have silicon rubber fingertips which allow the astronaut some sense of touch.

* 7. The full cost of a spacesuit is about $11 million although 70% of this is for the backpack and the control module.

* 8. Ever wondered how the pull of gravity is calculated between heavenly bodies? It's simple. Just multiply their masses together, and then divide the total by the square of the distance between them.

* 9. Glowing nebulae are named so because they give off a dim, red light, as the hydrogen gas in them is heated by radiation from the nearby stars.

* 10. The Drake Equation was proposed by astronomer Frank Drake to work out how many civilizations there could be in our galaxy - and the figure is in millions.

* 11. SETI is the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence - the program that analyzes radio signals from space for signs of intelligent life.

* 12. The Milky Way galaxy we live in: is one among the BILLIONS in space.

* 13. The Milky Way galaxy is whirling rapidly, spinning our sun and all its other stars at around 100 million km per hour.

* 14. The Sun travels around the galaxy once every 200 million years – a journey of 100,000 light years.


* 15. There may be a huge black hole in the very middle of the most of the galaxies.


* 16. The Universe is probably about 15 billion years old, but the estimations vary.


* 17. One problem with working out the age of the Universe is that there are stars in our galaxy which are thought to be 14 to 18 billion years old – older than the estimated age of the Universe. So, either the stars must be younger, or the Universe older.


* 18. The very furthest galaxies are spreading away from us at more than 90% of the speed of light.


* 19. The Universe was once thought to be everything that could ever exist, but recent theories about inflation (e.g. Big Bang) suggest our universe may be just one of countless bubbles of space time.


* 20. The Universe may have neither a centre nor an edge, because according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, gravity bends all of space time around into an endless curve.


* 21. If you fell into a black hole, you would stretch like spaghetti.


* 22. Matter spiraling into a black hole is torn apart and glows so brightly that it creates the brightest objects in the Universe – quasars.


* 23. The swirling gases around a black hole turn it into an electrical generator, making it spout jets of electricity billions of kilometers out into space.


* 24. The opposite of black holes are estimated to be white holes which spray out matter and light like fountains.


* 25. A day in Mercury lasts approximately as long as 59 days on earth


* 26. Twice during Mercury’s orbit, it gets so close to the Sun and speeds so much that the Sun seems to go backwards in the sky.


* 27. Nicolaus Copernicus was the astronomer who first suggested that the Sun was the centre, and that the Earth went round the sun.


* 28. The ideas of Copernicus came not from looking at the night sky, but from studying ancient astronomy.


* 29. As the earth turns, the stars come back to the same place in the night sky every 23 hours, 56 minutes and    4.09 seconds. This is a sidereal day (star day).


* 30. When Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon for the first time, he said these famous words: “That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”


* 31. From the moon, astronauts brought back 380 kg of Moon rock.


* 32. During the moon landing, a mirror was left on the Moon’s surface to reflect a laser beam which measured the Moon’s distance from the Earth with amazing accuracy.


* 33. The stars in each constellation are named after a Greek alphabet.


* 34. The brightest star in each constellation is called the Alpha Star, the next brightest Beta, and so on.


* 35. The distance to the planets is measured by bouncing radar signals off them and timing how long the signals take to get there and back.


* 36. Spacecrafts have double hulls (outer coverings) which protect them against other space objects that crash into them.


* 37. Manned Spacecrafts have life support systems that provide oxygen to breathe, usually mixed with nitrogen (as in ordinary air). Charcoal filters out smells/


* 38. Spacecrafts toilets have to get rid of waste in low gravity conditions, Astronauts have to sit on a device which sucks away the waste. Solid waste is dried and dumped in space, but the water is saved.

* 39. A comet’s tail is made as it nears the Sun and begins to melt. A vast plume of gas millions of kilometers across is blown out behind by the solar wind. The tail is what you see, shining as the sunlight catches it.


* 40. The Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet smashed into Jupiter in July 1994, with the biggest crash ever witnessed.


* 41. Giant stars have burned all their hydrogen, and so burn helium, fusing helium atoms to make carbon.


* 42. The constellation of Cygnus, the Swan, contains the very biggest star in the known universe – a hyper giant which is almost a million times as big as the sun.


* 43. Planet Uranus was discovered by William Herschel, who wanted to name the planet George, after King George III, but Uranus was eventually chosen.


* 44. The first rockets were made 1,000 years ago in China.


* 45. Robert Goddard launched the very first liquid-fuel rocket in 1926.


* 46. Over 100 artificial satellites are now launched into space every year, a few of which are space telescopes.


* 47. The lower a satellite’s orbit, the faster it must fly to avoid falling back to the Earth. Most satellites fly in low 
orbits, 300 km from the earth.


* 48. Hipparchus was the first astronomer to try to work out how far away the Sun is.


* 49. The red color of Mars is due to oxidized (rusted) iron in its soil.


* 50. Mars’s volcano Olympus Mons is the biggest in the solar system. It covers the same area as Ireland and is three times higher than our Mount Everest.




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