10 facts about space that few people know

From time immemorial, people have peered into the dark night sky, into the bright grains of stars twinkling on its huge canvas, marveled at the bizarre spots on the silvery lunar disk…

Many scientists, since ancient times, trying to capture all this boundless splendor with their own imperfect mind, made numerous assumptions, put forward the most intricate hypotheses – and what is there?

How is our universe organized? Why do stars shine differently? Why does the moon change phases? Does anyone live there? And on other planets?

In the XNUMXth century, mankind finally overcame the earth’s gravity and was able to see the vast expanses of space in all their grandeur, not from the surface of their native planet, but directly “from the place of the main events.”

Modern telescopes allow us to look into neighboring galaxies, but, alas, we still do not even really know what is happening on the outskirts of the solar system.

Boundless, great and mysterious, the cosmos is so huge that we cannot fully comprehend its scale. Nevertheless, over the past century, earthly scientists have learned a lot of interesting facts about our Universe.

Here are just 10 of them:

10 Space junk junkyard revolves around the earth

The first artificial satellite of the Earth (the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik-1) was launched into orbit on October 4, 1957, that is, only 61 years ago.

But during this time, mankind, alas, managed to “litter” around our blue planet very much. According to various sources, today from 350 to 500 thousand objects weighing from a couple of grams to 15 tons fly in Earth orbit at great speed: here are the “remains” of spent satellites, and the stages of spaceships that did not have time to burn out in the atmosphere, and lost during space missions of the past, details and objects, etc.

They often collide with each other, scattering into thousands of even smaller parts. And each of these objects is capable (with a particularly “successful” hit) of damaging either an astronaut’s spacesuit or even an entire space station, given their speed (9834 m/s) and inertia.

And now leading cosmologists are struggling with the problem of how to collect (or destroy right on the spot) all this space junkyard.

9. Martian volcano Olympus – the highest peak of the solar system

The highest peak on planet Earth is, as everyone knows, Everest (or Chomolungma) – 8848 m. Impressive? And by the standards of space – absolutely not.

The highest peak of the solar system is located on Mars – this is an extinct volcano Olympus, which is almost 3 times higher than Everest. Its height is 26,5-27 km, and the diameter at the base is about 540 km. This is truly a royal (or rather, divine) size!

8. There are no sounds in space

Many of us like to watch large-scale and colorful fantasy action movies with interstellar battles, where huge space cruisers explode very beautifully with great noise. So, this is, to put it mildly, not true.

Firstly, in outer space there will be no large-scale explosion with a cloud of flame – for a flame, oxygen is actually needed. And where does it come from in the vacuum of space?

If only from the bowels of the ship itself. But then it will not be a huge and terrible “BA-BOOM!”, but a quick and dim “Fuhhh …” And, alas, you won’t hear a roar either, because at least some kind of medium is needed for the propagation of sound waves (air, water, etc.) .d.), and in space we have, again, only a vacuum.

7. On Venus, a day is longer than a year.

Venus is perhaps the strangest planet in the solar system. Firstly, it is the only one among all the planets that rotates counterclockwise. Why? And no one will tell you for sure: scientists are still arguing about the causes of this phenomenon.

Secondly, this is the hottest planet – the temperature on its surface reaches 462º C. By the way, here the atmospheric pressure is 92 times higher than the earth’s. Somehow, Venus does not really live up to its name – it turns out to be a creepy goddess of love.

Well, and one more big oddity: this planet rotates around the Sun faster than it turns around its own axis. As a result, it turns out that a day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days (wow! More than 7 Earth months!), And a year is only 225 Earth days. A day is longer than a year! How do you like that?

6. Saturn doesn’t sink

Huge Saturn, whose equatorial diameter is 9,5 times larger than the earth, is nevertheless a relatively “light” planet, since its density is the smallest in the solar system: only 0,687 g / cm3, this is less than the density of water. (By the way, the most “dense” planet is our native Earth).

The fact is that Saturn does not have a solid surface at all: it consists of 96% hydrogen, 3% helium, and the remaining 1% methane, ammonia and other gases.

Therefore, if somewhere in the Universe there was a huge container of water (with a diameter of a little more than 120 thousand kilometers – just something!), Then Saturn would not drown in it, but float on the water surface like a balloon. Well… it would be an incredible sight!

5. 99.86% of the mass of the solar system is the mass of the Sun

When you see the solar system in a picture, you can hardly imagine the true size of the planets. Of course, they are usually drawn on an approximate scale: Mercury is the smallest, Jupiter is the largest, somewhere there, on the edge, you can see the side of the huge Sun …

But here are some impressive numbers for you: the mass of Jupiter is 2,5 times greater than that of all the other (combined) planets; Jupiter can hold 1000 Earth-sized planets; and the Sun is 300 thousand (!) times larger than the Earth, and its mass is 99,86% of the total mass of the entire solar system (that is, the rest of the planets and asteroids account for only 0,14%).

And still, by cosmic standards, our Sun is a small star. And the largest star known to mankind at the moment is UY Scutum. And it is 1700 times larger than the Sun! If it were in the solar system, it would occupy all space up to the orbit of Jupiter.

4. Neutron star spins at 500 revolutions per second

One of the most amazing objects in our universe are neutron stars. It would seem that by the standards of space they are quite “babies” – up to 20 km in diameter. But at the same time, their mass exceeds (!) the mass of our Sun.

In fact, a neutron star is an ordinary star, compressed by incredible force to such a density that one spoonful of this substance is equivalent in mass to about 1000 great pyramids of Giza!

At the same time, neutron stars also rotate around their axis at an unimaginable speed (up to 500 revolutions per second), creating such a monstrously strong magnetic field that it literally “disassembles into atoms” everything that approaches it at a fairly close distance.

3. “Cold welding” works in space

We all know that on Earth, in order to connect two pieces of metal together (that is, to weld), they must be heated very strongly so that they can merge with each other at the molecular level at the point of contact.

In open space, however, this happens without heating: here you can simply attach two metal objects (made of the same metal) to each other, and they immediately stick together tightly.

This is the same “cold welding” – in this case, metal particles are connected by vacuum. Hmm… Then why don’t, for example, the space station and the module docking to it “stick together”? Or why doesn’t every artificial satellite drag a tail of space debris “stuck” on it in orbit? Yes, because on Earth they are specially covered with a layer of oxides that prevent metal objects from “welding”.

2. A man can survive in outer space without a spacesuit for 90 seconds

Again, let’s recall science fiction films about space: in them, usually, a person, suddenly and against his will thrown into an open vacuum, either quickly (literally in a matter of seconds) freezes to the state of an ice block, or very unaesthetically explodes from the inside.

In fact (but only in theory, because so far, thank God, no one has tested this in reality) a person can survive in space for up to 90 seconds if he manages to immediately exhale all the air from his lungs.

But, of course, to hold out for these “only one and a half minutes” is an incredibly difficult task. If there is still a little gas left in the lungs, they will simply burst in the very first seconds. After a few more seconds, all the moisture in the human body will begin to boil and evaporate, really turning into a crust of ice on the skin.

At the same time, the skin will suffer from severe sunburn and cosmic radiation (and subcutaneous tissues will be very quickly affected after it).

The unfortunate person will feel all this, because his heart and brain will continue to live for exactly one and a half minutes. Horror! It’s scary to even imagine…

1. There is an alcoholic gas and dust cloud in the constellation Sagittarius

But this fact involuntarily recalls the old song of the Dune group: “If there was a sea of ​​​​vodka, I would become a submarine.” So, gentlemen, alcoholics: if you have at hand a very fast spacecraft, then “only” 26 thousand light years from

Earth, in the constellation of Sagittarius, you can find a huge cloud Sagittarius B2, consisting of billions of liters of gaseous vinyl alcohol. Hmm … Although it is hardly possible to drink it …