39 Celestial Bits of Trivia About This Vast, Boundless Expanse Containing All Matter and Energy

Join us on a trip through the cosmos
39 Celestial Bits of Trivia About This Vast, Boundless Expanse Containing All Matter and Energy

One particular fact in here really got us thinking. By calling it the “uni”-verse, we’re implying that there’s only one of them. It’s a tad egotistical to think that just because we happen to inhabit this one, there can’t be any others out there. Heck, a little over 500 years ago, the world’s Eastern hemisphere didn’t even know about the Western hemisphere.

So maybe, we should slow our “uni”-versal roll a bit.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

CRACKED Jupiter's Great Red Spot The massive anticyclonic storm is bigger than Earth. But it's recently gotten the smallest it's ever been-only 10,250 miles across. It used to be 25,500 miles long in the late 1800s (so, over two Earths) and 14,500 miles across in 1979.

The Distance from Earth to the Moon

Distance from Earth to Moon You could fit all the planets (plus Pluto) between the Earth and the Moon-the average distance between them is about 240,000 miles. You'd even have 1,300 miles left over. CRACKED

The ISS

ISS and gravity If you went up to where the International Space Station orbits Earth, and you could stay in place, you'd weigh 90% of your normal weight. The reason things float on the ISS is because the station and crew are falling together around Earth at the same rate. CRACKED

The Earth’s Crust

CRACKED Earth's crust Earth's crust is like the skin of an apple - it's only 8 km thick under oceans and 32 km thick under continents. It takes up less than 1% of the Earth's space.

Mars

Olympus Mons Olympus Mons, the biggest volcano in the solar system, is much taller than any mountain on Earth, standing 16 miles high and covering an area the size of Arizona, which is 374 miles wide. CRACKED

Galaxies

There are two trillion galaxies (that we know of) As recently as 2016, we realized our previous estimates were 10 times too low. Over 90% of the galaxies in the current estimate have yet to be studied. The Milky Way is looking trivial now. CRACKED.COM

Venus

CRACKED Venus' atmosphere You would need a really strong, airtight outer shell to survive the pressure of the atmosphere, since just walking on the surface would put you under the same pressure as being 0.6 miles underwater on Earth.

Earth’s Orbit

Earth's orbit Earth's orbit is oval-shaped, so during the Northern Hemisphere's winter it's actually closer to the Sun, not farther away - which makes the Sun look 3.4% bigger. It's about 3 million miles closer, to be specific. CRACKED

The Number of Stars in the Sky

The Sun is only one among 300 sextillion stars. Our solar system revolves around the incredibly insignificant star that's one in 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. And those are just the estimated stars in the observable universe. CRACKED.COM

The Sun

The Sun takes up 99.8% of our solar system's mass. The yellow dwarf star (an average size for a star) is the most significant object in our solar system. Its gravity holds the whole thing together. CRACKED.COM

Earth-Like Planets

There might be six billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy Earth is pretty special to us, but the estimate is based on rocky, Earth-sized planets with a similar distance to a Sun-like star. CRACKED.COM

Elements

Most of the elements in your body were made in stars Most of the elements were created over billions of years during the lifetimes of multiple stars. Elements in your body heavier than iron went through at least one supernova. CRACKED.COM

The Multiverse

The Multiverse By calling it the Universe, we're assuming there's only one. The theory of inflation suggests an infinity of universes, proposing that other universes are constantly popping up in the inflationary sea, with the whole ensemble making up the multiverse. CRACKED.COM

The Brane and the Bulk

The Brane & The Bulk Physicists Steinhardt & Turok feel the Big Bang theory fails to explain certain things. They imagine our entire universe as one three dimensional sheet (or brane) moving through a four dimensional background called the bulk. CRACKED.COM

The Steady-State Universe

The Steady-State Universe Evolutionary Theory Steady-State Theory Opposing the Big Bang's starting point and ever-expanding universe, scientists propose an eternal universe in one steady state. They imagine the universe looks the same from any time and place, but it hasn't gained the scientific support that the Big Bang CRACKED.COM

Panentheism

Panentheism What if we're all just cells in God's body? Not to be confused with Pantheism, Panentheism (from the ancient Greek: all in God) suggests that the universe is inside God, and the theory has been present in religion and philosophy as early as 1300 ВСЕ. CRACKED.COM

The Big Splat

The Big Splat What if the Big Bang was actually a Big Splat of two colliding universes? Some cosmologists believe that our ever-expanding universe could expand right into another expanding universe, generating enough energy to create a whole new universe. CRACKED.COM

Dark Matter

Cosmic Ghosts Our universe is riddled with inexplicable forces that tear space apart, and hold spinning galaxies together. For now, they're called dark matter and dark energy, but since these spooky mysteries make up 95% of our universe, they leave much to theorize about. CRACKED.COM

Thermodynamics

TODAY IS THE MOST CHAOTIC DAY IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE-SO FAR The second law of thermodynamics basically says that entropy tends to increase, i.e. things tend to get messier and more chaotic, over time. This is an example of something that can't ever be reversed, which is known as the arrow of time. CRACKED

Earth’s Core

TIME IS DIFFERENT IN THE EARTH'S CORE The Earth's core is 2.5 years younger than the surface because of time dilation. It sounds like something from Star Trek, but it's true. CRACKED

GPS

GPS IS WAY MORE COMPLICATED THAN MAPQUEST MADE IT LOOK GPS uses special and general relativity to sync up time on clocks on satellites and the Earth, which enables super-precise positioning - and makes it possible for Google Maps to tell you accurately how long it'll take to Burger King. CRACKED

The OMG Particle

THE OMG PARTICLE In 1991, scientists detected an incredibly powerful particle that was almost traveling at the speed of light and had the same amount of energy as a baseball thrown with some force. They called it the Oh-My-God particle. CRACKED

Astronauts

ASTRONAUTS ARE YOUNGER THAN PEOPLE THE SAME AGE Astronauts on the ISS experience a slight slowing of their aging compared to people on Earth, because of the way gravity and speed affect the passing of time. CRACKED

The Hubble Space Telescope

CRACKED.COM THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE ACTUALLY LOOKS BACK IN TIME. WHEN IT TAKES A PICTURE OF A GALAXY 100 MILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY, WE ARE SEEING THE GALAXY AS IT LOOKED 100 MILLION YEARS AGO.

Source

The Largest Black Hole Ever Found

The largest black hole ever found shines with the brightness of a hundred trillion stars. CRACKED.COM TON 618 is a hyperlumi- nous quasar that possesses an ultramassive black hole that consumes galaxies' worth of matter. It is great- er than the mass of all the stars in the Milky Way gal- аху combined.

NASA

Water in Space

There's a floating reservoir of water in space that holds 140 trillion times all the water on Earth. CRACKED.COM NASA scientist Matt Brad- ford says that water is pervasive throughout the universe, and the reser- voir surrounding a black hole 12 billion light years away surely proves that.

NASA

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