Space trivia

Posted in Off Topic
Post Reply Create New Topic

Marjan
TrancePodium Staff
1 forum
Posts: 11088
Space trivia -
11 October 2007, at 19:48
Some interesting space facts, for those who are into these things

The planet Venus does not tilt as it goes around the Sun, so consequently, it has no seasons.
The planet Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love.
Since Neptune's discovery in 1846, it has made about three-quarters of one revolution of the Sun.
The pressure at the center of the Earth is 27,000 tons per square inch.
The pressure at the center of the Sun is about 700 million tons per square inch. Enough to smash atoms, expose the inner nuclei, and allow them to smash into each other, interact, and produce the radiation that gives off light and warmth.
The Sea of Tranquility is on the Moon. It’s not a real sea, but a maria, one of the regions on the Moon that appear dark when looking at it.
The seventh planet from the Sun, Uranus, is tipped on its side so that at any moment one pole is pointed at the Sun. The polar regions are warmer than the equator. At the poles, a day lasts for 42 Earth years, followed by an equally long night.
A cosmic year is the amount of time it takes the Sun to revolve around the center of the Milky Way, about 225 million years.
A day on the planet Mercury is twice as long as its year. Mercury rotates very slowly but revolves around the Sun in slightly less than 88 days.
A dog was killed by a meteor at Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. The unlucky canine is the only creature known to have been killed by a meteor.
The star Alpha Herculis is 25 times larger than the circumference described by Earth's revolution around the Sun. This means that 25 diameters of our solar system orbit would have to be placed end to end to equal the diameter of the star.
The star Sirius B is so dense, a handful of it weighs about one million pounds.
The Sun contains over 99.8 percent of the total mass in our solar system, while Jupiter contains most of the rest.
The Sun gives off a stream of electrically-charged particles called the solar wind. Every second, the Sun pumps more than a million tons of material into the solar wind.
The Sun is 330,330 times larger than Earth.
The sun is 93 million miles from earth, yet it's 270,000 times closer than the next nearest star.
A neutron star is the strongest magnet in the universe.
A new star is born in our galaxy every 18 days.
A pulsar is a small star made up of neutrons so densely packed together that if one the size of a silver dollar landed on Earth, it would weigh approximately 100 million tons.
A solar day on Mercury, from sunrise to sunset, lasts about six Earth months.
A space vehicle must move at a rate of at least 17 miles per second to escape Earth's gravitational pull.