Charlie's Web Sector 14 - Fascinating Facts About the Universe
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Fascinating Facts
Fascinating Facts About the Universe
The Milky Way is considered a giant galaxy. In the local group of galaxies it is the second largest (after the Andromeda Galaxy, M31) with a diameter of about 100,000 light years, but it's mass is between 750 billion and one trillion solar masses making it likely the most massive member of the local group.
If the distance between the Sun and Earth were 1 inch, the next nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be four and a half miles away.
1/200th of all the stars in the galaxy are like our sun.
1/10,000th of all the stars in the galaxy are like our sun and are likely to have an Earth-like planet (with liquid surface water) orbiting in their habitable zone.
The above two facts would create a distribution of Earth-like planets around suns like ours of about 1 every 100 light years. Click here to see how long it might take us to travel a mere 4.4 light years to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
Only four spacecraft have ever left the solar system. They are Voyagers 1 and 2, and Pioneers 10 and 11.
The space shuttle's robot arm can easily manipulate massive things like the Hubble Space Telescope and components of the International Space Station in orbit, including the 20 ton Zarya module, but on the ground it can't lift it's own weight.
The density of the nucleus of Halley's comet is only 20% that of water.
Every second nuclear fusion in the Sun's core converts about 700 million (700,000,000) tons of hydrogen into 695 million (695,000,000) tons of helium.
The largest man made explosion in history was 60 megatons (60,000,000 tons). For comparison, the eruption of the volcano Krakatau in 1883 was about 100 megatons (100,000,000 tons). The 60 megaton explosion was made in 1962 by the Soviet Union on the arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was 20 kilotons (20,000 tons). The world's current nuclear arsenal is about 20 gigatons (20,000,000,000 tons).
Mercury, being the closest planet to the sun, has the most extreme range of temperatures in the solar system, from 90 K to 700 K, but Venus, the second planet from the sun, is actually hotter. Venus' dense atmosphere produces a run-away greenhouse effect that raises temperatures to over 740 K (above the melting point of lead), even though Venus is almost twice as far away from the sun as Mercury.
The density of Venus' atmosphere at the surface is 56 times the density of Earth's atmosphere.
At 740 K the surface of Venus is much to hot to have liquid water, but there isn't much in the atmosphere either. If all the water in Venus' atmosphere could condense onto the surface, it would form a global "ocean" less than one inch deep.
1.7 billion (1,710,000,000) years ago, the oceans of Earth were red with rust.
There are about a dozen 10-20 kiloton meteor explosions in Earth's atmosphere each year. Each of these are about the same explosive force as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which was 20 kilotons (20,000 tons).
On June 28, 1911 a dog in Nakhla, Egypt was killed by a meteorite from Mars. This is the first verifiable instance of any living thing on Earth being killed by invaders from Mars.
Earth moves along it's orbit at 30 km per second, covering it's own diameter in 7 minutes.
The impact of large asteroids and comets blow off part of a planet's atmosphere into space. This is called atmospheric erosion or explosive blowoff. It is likely that over geological time, Mars has lost 99% of the atmosphere it once had this way.
Jupiter is 142,984 km in diameter. By comparison, Earth is 12,756 km in diameter. The diameter of Jupiter is 11 times that of the Earth.
The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a storm that has been there for at least 100, maybe as long as 300 years. It long axis is about twice the diameter of Earth.
Jupiter is 318 times the mass of Earth and it's interior pressure may reach 100 million (100,000,000) times the surface pressure on Earth.
Jupiter has 16 known moons.
Callisto is approximately the size as the planet Mercury, making it the third largest moon in the Solar System, after Ganymede and Titan.
Io's volcanoes erupt sulfur and ice.
Pluto was discovered February 18, 1930, by Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and it's orbit around the sun is 248.54 years. This means since it's discovery, Pluto has only completed about 27.75% of it's orbit. Mark your calendars! Pluto will have completed exactly one orbit since it's discovery on September 3, 2178.
Pluto's diameter is only 2,301 km, making it less than half the size of any other planet and only two-thirds as big as Earth's moon.
Human civilization has been around for about 6000 years. The dinosaurs ruled the earth for about 160 million years (160,000,000) -- over 26,000 times longer.
Antarctic and Greenland ice cores show that the global climate has been wildly unstable for the past 2 million (2,000,000) years. During the past 6000-10,000 years though, the global climate has been unusually stable. Ironically, this is exactly the same time period during which all of human civilization has arisen. Do we owe everything we are to a freak period of climatic stability that we think of as normal? When will the Earth's climate return to it's genuinely normal state of wild variation?
The life spans of everyone you will ever know, from your grandparents and the oldest people you knew as a child, to your own grandchildren and great-grandchildren, cover a period of about 250 years.
The population of the United States is only about 5% of the population of the world. So who the heck do we think we are??
