Here are 20 crazy space facts. From a constellation that has enough alcohol to produce a trillion pints of beer to a planet that rains molten glass, join us as we take a look at 20 amazing space facts that will blow your mind.
20. Almost every element that makes up your body was created inside a star in outer space. Think about that for a moment.
19. Venus and Mercury are the only two planets in our solar system that don’t have moons.
18. It is estimated that the Apollo astronauts’ footprints on the moon will stay there for at least 100 million years! They will eventually erode however, as the moon is constantly getting pounded by space debris and meteorites.
17. Venus is the only planet in our solar system that spins the other way.
16. There’s a gas cloud in the constellation Aquila that contains enough alcohol to make over a trillion pints of beer! That’s 300,000 pints for everyone on Earth, every day, for one billion years.
15. Mathematically speaking, white holes should exist in space however they’ve yet to be observed anywhere in the universe. Hypothetically, they are the antithesis of a black hole in that they couldn’t be entered from the outside yet light and matter could escape from them.
14. Our sun is so dense that it accounts for 99% of our solar system’s mass.
13. Since its discovery in 1846, Neptune has only made one full orbit of the sun.
12. We know more about outer space than we do about the deepest parts of our oceans.
11. There’s a planet just 63 light years away from Earth called HD 189733b. The huge gas giant is so hot and volatile that it rains molten glass. The atmosphere reaches a scorching 1000 degrees Celsius as it rains blistering hot glass sideways.
10. When in space, astronauts can’t tell if they need to pee so they’re trained to relieve themselves every 2-3 hours. Otherwise they could have a floating mess on their hands.
9. Earth’s diameter is 12,742 km. The sun’s diameter is 1.3914 MILLION km.
8. Travelling at the speed of light, it would still take 100,000 years to traverse the Milky Way.
7. If you unraveled all your DNA, it would be 34 billion miles long. That’s enough to reach Pluto and back six times!
6. Almost all the hydrogen atoms inside your body were formed during the big bang 13.7 billion years ago.
5. The International Space Station circumnavigates Earth every 90 minutes. That means it sees a sunrise every 5400 seconds.
4. A percentage of the white static seen on old TVs is afterglow of the Big Bang.
3. The ground you’re standing on now is only 100 km (62 miles) from space.
2. The spacecraft that put man on the moon ran on less computing power than the phone in your pocket.
1. Starquakes are a thing. They occur when the crust of a star shifts, resulting in a fluctuation of radiation intensity. They’re more powerful than earthquakes. If a 22 Richter scale equivalent starquake occurred within 10 lights years of Earth we would all die.
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So there’s our list of 20 amazing space facts. Did this listicle make you feel insignificant and small? Let us know on Twitter and Facebook.
