PART 10: Space Facts!

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1. The Sun accounts for about 99.86% of the mass in our entire solar system. It's real big.

2. There's a planet made of diamonds! 55 Cancri e is a super-Earth where carbon, under extreme pressure, crystallizes into diamonds. Get your pickaxes, boys.

3. In space, there's no sound because there's no air for sound waves to travel through.

4. The first ever wood satellite was launched into space today!

5. The height of astronauts can change in space. Without the pressure of Earth's gravity, the spine can stretch up to 2 inches (5 cm) taller.

6. The coldest place in the universe is the Boomerang Nebula, which reaches temperatures of about -458°F (-272°C). This could not contest to the School Aircon.

7. The first living creature in space was a dog named Laika, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. But sadly, she died during the expedition.

8. The largest structure in the universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, a galactic superstructure made up of clusters of galaxies.

9. There are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth!

10. The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old and is expected to continue burning for another 5 billion years before turning into a red giant. Me when I was 7 after finding this info out be like:

11. The first human in space was Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut who orbited Earth in 1961.

12. If you were to fall into a black hole, you would experience "spaghettification," where the gravitational pull stretches you into a long, thin shape.

13. The Hubble Space Telescope has helped scientists discover galaxies that are over 13 billion years old. What an invention.

14. Exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) are being discovered all the time, with thousands confirmed so far!

15. Earth's Moon is slowly moving away from us by about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) per year, and in a few billion years, it will no longer be visible from Earth. Me when I was 7 after finding this info out be like:

16. Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835 when the Halley's comet was visible in the sky, and before he died, he predicted "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." and, he was right! He is a legend.

17. Venetia Burney, who at age 11 suggested the name "Pluto" for the ninth planet in our solar system, lived to 88 yrs old just to see it demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006. Poor Ven.

18. A solar eclipse helped end a six-year war in 585 BCE. When the sky suddenly darkened during a battle between the Lydians and the Medes in modern Turkey, soldiers took it as a sign to cease fighting.

19. Each year, 40,000 tons of space dust settles on the Earth.

20. In a 2002 study, astronomers found that the light coming from galaxies (and the stars within them) – alongside all the visible clouds of gas and dust in theUniverse – when averaged, would produce an ivory colour very close to white. They named this colour 'cosmic latte'. Sounds like something Starbucks would sell during Space month.

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