Mind-Blowing Facts About the Universe

  1. The universe is about 13.8 billion years old. It all started with the Big Bang!
  2. There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all of Earth’s beaches. Scientists estimate at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
    stars.
  3. A day on Venus is longer than its year. It takes Venus 243 Earth days to rotate once, but only 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun.
  4. Neutron stars are incredibly dense. A sugar-cube-sized amount of neutron star material would weigh about a billion tons on Earth.
  5. The largest volcano in the solar system is on Mars. Olympus Mons is nearly three times the height of Mount Everest.
  6. The universe is expanding faster than the speed of light. Galaxies at the far edges are moving away so quickly we will never see them.
  7. A teaspoon of a black hole’s material would weigh more than Mount Everest. That’s how extreme their density is.
  8. Dark matter and dark energy make up about 95% of the universe. Scientists still don’t fully understand what they are.
  9. The Sun’s light takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth. If the Sun vanished, we wouldn’t know until 8 minutes later.
  10. The Moon is slowly drifting away from Earth. It moves away at a rate of 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) per year.
  11. Space is completely silent. Sound waves need air or another medium to travel, which space doesn’t have.
  12. Our solar system takes about 225 million years to orbit the Milky Way. The last time Earth was in this position, dinosaurs roamed the planet.
  13. The Andromeda Galaxy is moving toward us. In about 4.5 billion years, it will collide with the Milky Way.
  14. A rogue planet is a planet without a star. Some wander through space, completely alone.
  15. The Sun makes up 99.8% of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter accounts for most of the remaining 0.2%.
  16. Mars has the largest canyon in the solar system. Valles Marineris is ten times longer and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon.
  17. In about 5 billion years, the Sun will become a red giant. It will expand and swallow Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth.
  18. Neptune has supersonic winds. These storms reach speeds of over 1,200 mph (2,000 km/h) — faster than the speed of sound!
  19. The closer you are to a massive object, the slower time moves for you. This is called gravitational time dilation.
  20. There might be an infinite number of universes. Some theories suggest the multiverse exists with endless variations of our reality.
  21. A day on Earth is getting longer. The Moon’s gravity is slowing Earth’s rotation, making days 1.7 milliseconds longer per century.
  22. The Sun loses 4 million tons of mass every second. This happens due to nuclear fusion and the solar wind.
  23. You could fit all the planets of the solar system between Earth and the Moon. Their combined diameters add up to less than 238,855 miles (384,400 km).
  24. Earth is bombarded by 100 tons of space dust every day. Tiny micrometeoroids constantly rain down on our planet.
  25. The Milky Way has a supermassive black hole at its center. It’s called Sagittarius A* and weighs 4 million times the Sun’s mass.

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