Earth, our home planet, is the fifth largest planet in our solar system and the only planet we know of where life exists. Even though Earth seems extremely large to us, it is actually a tiny spec in the vast expanse of the universe. Here are 7 space facts that will make you feel very small.
1. Our sun is one of at least 100 BILLION stars, just in the Milky Way. Scientists calculate that there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, each one brimming with stars. There are more stars than grains of sand on all of Earth’s beaches combined.
In 1995, the first planet beyond our solar system was discovered. Now, thousands of planets orbiting sun-like stars have been discovered, also known as exoplanets.
2. The Milky Way is a huge city of stars, so big that even at the speed of light (which is fast!), it would take 100,000 years to travel across it.
3. Roughly 70% of the universe is made of dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest — everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter adds up to less than 5% of the universe.
4. If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be the size of a nickel.
5. The sun accounts for almost all of the mass in our solar system. Leaving .2% for all the planets and everything else.
6. Edwin Hubble discovered that the Universe is expanding and that at one point in time (14 billion years ago) the universe was all collected in just one point of space.
7. Four American spacecraft are headed out of our solar system to what scientists call interstellar space. Voyager 1 is the farthest out — more than 11 billion miles from our sun. It was the first manmade object to leave our solar system. Voyager 2, is speeding along at more than 39,000 mph, but will still take more than 296,000 years to pass Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky.
Feeling small yet? Here’s a tool that will show you just how tiny we are compared to everything else out there: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/earth.html
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Important
This still makes me laugh
oops
Of all the planets in our solar system, Jupiter seems to stand out as this massive giants.
When scientists started uncovering the secrets of this mysterious planet, they discovered that Jupiter was probably a ‘star in the making’ during the early years of the solar system.
Jupiter has a lot in common with the sun than you think.
It is made of the same elements such as Hydrogen and Helium that are found in the sun and other stars!
But it is not massive enough and does not have have the pressure and temperature to fuse the existing Hydrogen atoms to form helium, which is the power source of stars.
Stars form directly from the collapse of dense clouds of interstellar gas and dust. Because of rotation, these clouds form flattened disks that surround the central, growing stars.
After the star has nearly reached its final mass, by accreting gas from the disk, the leftover matter in the disk is free to form planets.
Jupiter is generally believed to have formed in a two-step process:
First, a vast swarm of ice and rock ‘planetesimals’ formed. These comet-sized bodies collided and accumulated into ever-larger planetary embryos.
Once an embryo became about as massive as ten Earths, its self-gravity became strong enough to pull in gas directly from the disk.
During this second step, the proto-Jupiter gained most of its present mass (a total of 318 times the mass of the Earth).
But sadly soon thereafter, the disk gas was removed by the intense early solar wind (from our sun) , before Jupiter could grow to a similar size.
This destroyed all hopes that Jupiter had on becoming a star
If Jupiter had become a star,our solar system would have become a binary star system.
A binary star system is those systems having two stars.they both revolve around themselves in their own orbits.
It is interesting to note that most of the solar systems in the universe are binary,triple or higher multiple star systems but our sun is rather unusual.
In other star systems the mass distribution of the stars is equitable, but in ours the sun decided to not let that happen
Why? We have no clue ! Scientists are still trying to fathom these mysterious details of the birth process. But the more we know, the more we learn we don’t know :D
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Just a socially awkward college student with an interest in the celestial bodies in our universe.
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