- The universe is about 13.8 billion years old. It all started with the Big Bang!
- 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. - 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.
- Neutron stars are incredibly dense. A sugar-cube-sized amount of neutron star material would weigh about a billion tons on Earth.
- The largest volcano in the solar system is on Mars. Olympus Mons is nearly three times the height of Mount Everest.
- 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.
- A teaspoon of a black hole’s material would weigh more than Mount Everest. That’s how extreme their density is.
- Dark matter and dark energy make up about 95% of the universe. Scientists still don’t fully understand what they are.
- The Sun’s light takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth. If the Sun vanished, we wouldn’t know until 8 minutes later.
- The Moon is slowly drifting away from Earth. It moves away at a rate of 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) per year.
- Space is completely silent. Sound waves need air or another medium to travel, which space doesn’t have.
- 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.
- The Andromeda Galaxy is moving toward us. In about 4.5 billion years, it will collide with the Milky Way.
- A rogue planet is a planet without a star. Some wander through space, completely alone.
- The Sun makes up 99.8% of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter accounts for most of the remaining 0.2%.
- Mars has the largest canyon in the solar system. Valles Marineris is ten times longer and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon.
- In about 5 billion years, the Sun will become a red giant. It will expand and swallow Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth.
- Neptune has supersonic winds. These storms reach speeds of over 1,200 mph (2,000 km/h) — faster than the speed of sound!
- The closer you are to a massive object, the slower time moves for you. This is called gravitational time dilation.
- There might be an infinite number of universes. Some theories suggest the multiverse exists with endless variations of our reality.
- A day on Earth is getting longer. The Moon’s gravity is slowing Earth’s rotation, making days 1.7 milliseconds longer per century.
- The Sun loses 4 million tons of mass every second. This happens due to nuclear fusion and the solar wind.
- 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).
- Earth is bombarded by 100 tons of space dust every day. Tiny micrometeoroids constantly rain down on our planet.
- 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.