17 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Our Universe
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We are all inhabitants of this universe, within which we sit upon the Earth inside our solar system in the Milky Way galaxy. There are a vast number of things that scientists have discovered about our universe that you likely don't realize. From the astounding to the confounding, here are 17 things that you probably didn't know about our universe.
17. Each year the moon moves 3.8 cm away from the Earth
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
It's true, the moon is actually slowly spinning away from Earth and in a few billions of years, it could actually cause the Earth to become very unstable.
Source: BBC
16. The Sun makes up 99% of the mass in the entire solar system
The sun is roughly 109 times the diameter of Earth and could hold over 1 million of our planets.
Source: Space
15.There are 10 billion trillion stars in the universe at minimum
[Image Source: Pixabay]
In more scientific terms, this is more than 10 raised to the 22nd power stars.
Source: UCSB
14. About 275 million new stars are born each day
This equates out to about 100 billion each year.
Source: Curious
13. It takes a photon about 170,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to the surface
This occurs as energy slowly radiates outward through the Sun's radiation zone.
Source: Futurism
12. The most distant human-made object from Earth is the Voyager 1 spacecraft
[Image Source: NASA]
It has been traveling since 1977 and is still collecting data. It is the first man-made object to engage in interstellar travel.
Source: Space
11. The center of our galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum
Based on studies of the dust at the center of our galaxy, amino acids present suggest that this is how it might taste.
Source: The Guardian
10. Earth's rotation slows by about 17 milliseconds a century
This means that our days get longer by about 2 milliseconds every ten years.
Source: Science Alert
9. The biggest mountain in our solar system is on Mars
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Olympus Mons on Mars is 24 kilometers high.
Source: Cool Cosmos
8. The Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun
Driving non-stop at 60 mph, we would get there in 177 years. Although things might get a little hot before then.
Source: Space
7. There are mirrors on the moon that allow us to calculate its precise distance from Earth
These were placed there during the Apollo missions. We to this day shine lasers at them and monitor the moon's distance given that we know the speed of light.
Source: NASA
6. The Milky Way rotates at about 250 kilometers per second and completes a revolution every 200 million years
We're on a rotating sphere orbiting a star inside a rotation solar system inside a rotating galaxy inside an expanding universe. Trippy.
Source: Earth Sky
5. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth exactly one galactic revolution ago
Since it takes about 200 million years for a galactic revolution, the last time the Earth was in its current place, dinosaurs were here.
Source: Daily Galaxy
4. There’s a gas cloud in the constellation of Aquila that holds enough alcohol to make 400 trillion pints of beer
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
This was discovered in 1995 and is 1000 times larger than our solar system.
Source: Mental Floss
3. If the stars within galaxies were shrunk to the size of tennis balls, they would be 4,800 km apart
This is to illustrate that most of a galaxy is really just open space.
Source: Hard Science
2. Astronomers now estimate that there are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe
This new number was concluded in 2016, one order of magnitude bigger than the previous consensus of 100 billion.
Source: The Atlantic
1. Astronomers have found the mass of the black hole at the center of galaxies is consistently about 1/1000th the mass of the host galaxy
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Most galaxies have a black hole at the center of them and they have found this correlation to be fairly consistent.
Source: NASA
SEE ALSO: New Interactive app allows you to explore the Universe
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