· The Sun is always losing weight in fact Scientists have worked out that it loses around 4 Million tonnes every second, this is the amount of hydrogen gas that the sun turns into energy every second.
· If the Sun became a Black Hole, it would be only a few kilometers across but it could swallow the Earth.
· Every Star would explode if the Gravity did not hold its material together.
· The Moon is moving slowly away from the Earth at the rate of 3cm per year.
· From Edge To Edge the Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across.
· A Human being living on Neptune would never live for one "Neptune Year". The Neptune Year is the time it takes Neptune to travel once around the sun.(165 Earth Days)
· The universe extents from the Earth for at least 10 Billion Light Years and its probably still expanding.
· A day in Mercury lasts approximately as long as 59 days on earth.
· The opposite of black holes are estimated to be white holes which spray out matter and light like fountains.
· The swirling gases around a black hole turn it into an electrical generator, making it spout jets of electricity billions of kilometers out into space.
· Matter spiraling into a black hole is torn apart and glows so brightly that it creates the brightest objects in the Universe – quasars.
· If you fell into a black hole, you would stretch like spaghetti.
· The Universe may have neither a centre nor an edge, because according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, gravity bends all of space time around into an endless curve.
· One problem with working out the age of the Universe is that there are stars in our galaxy which are thought to be 14 to 18 billion years old – older than the estimated age of the Universe. So, either the stars must be younger, or the Universe older.
· Glowing nebulae are named so because they give off a dim, red light, as the hydrogen gas in them is heated by radiation from the nearby stars.
· The gloves included in the space suit have silicon rubber fingertips which allow the astronaut some sense of touch.
· Oxygen is circulated around the helmet in space suits in order to prevent the visor from misting.
· Life is known to exist only on Earth, but in 1986 NASA found what they thought might be fossils of microscopic living things in a rock from Mars.
· Twice during Mercury’s orbit, it gets so close to the Sun and speeds so much that the Sun seems to go backwards in the sky.
· From the moon, astronauts brought back 380 kg of Moon rock.
· Spacecrafts have double hulls (outer coverings) which protect them against other space objects that crash into them.
· Spacecrafts toilets have to get rid of waste in low gravity conditions, Astronauts have to sit on a device which sucks away the waste. Solid waste is dried and dumped in space, but the water is saved.
· The lower a satellite’s orbit, the faster it must fly to avoid falling back to the Earth. Most satellites fly in low orbits, 300 km from the earth.
· Mars’s volcano Olympus Mons is the biggest in the solar system. It covers the same area as Ireland and is three times higher than our Mount Everest.
· The first successful planetary space probe was the USA’s Mariner 2, which flew past Venus in 1962.
· Pulsars probably result from a supernova explosion - that is why most are found in the flat disc of the Milky Way, where supernovae occur.
· The largest moon in the Solar System is the Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
· In April 2001, Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, ferried up to the ISS by the Russian Soyuz space shuttle.
· In summer in Uranus, the sun does not set for 20 years. In winter, darkness lasts for 20 years. In autumn, the sun rises and sets every 9 hours.
· Ceres is the biggest asteroid in the Solar System –
940 km across, and 0.0002% the size of the earth.
· Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity (1905) shows that all measurements are relative, including time and speed. In other words, time and speed depends upon where you measure them.
· The nuclear fusion reactions in the Sun’s core send out billions of light photons every minute but they take 10 million years to reach its surface.
· The moon is the only other world that humans have set foot on. Because the moon has no atmosphere or wind, the footprints planted in its dusty surface in 1969 by the Apollo astronauts are still there today, perfectly preserved.
· Jupiter’s moon Europa may have oceans of water beneath its dry surface and it is a major target in the search for life in the Solar System.
· The Solar System has nine planets including Pluto, but Pluto may be an escaped moon or an asteroid not a planet.
· The earth actually takes 365.24219 days to orbit the Sun, which is called one Solar Year. To compensate for the missing 0.242 days, the western calendar adds an extra day in February every fourth (leap) year, but misses out three leap years every four centuries.
· The afterglow of the Big Bang can still be detected as microwave background radiation coming from all over space.
· The future of the Universe may depend on how much dark matter there is. If there is too much, its gravity will eventually stop the Universe’s expansion – and make it shrink again.
· Since the invention of the telescope, no supernovae have been observed within our galaxy. Supernovae were recorded in 1572 and 1604, while Hans Lippershey invented the telescope in 1608 and Galileo was the first to turn his telescope skyward in 1609.
· The Earth is rotating on its axis at a rate of 460 metres per second at the equator, and is orbiting the sun at a rate of about 30 kilometres per second. The sun is orbiting the centre of the Milky Way at a rate of about 220 kilometres per second. The Milky Way is moving at a speed of about 1000 kilometres per second towards a region of space 150 million light years away called the Great Attractor.
· A "light year" is a measure of distance, not time. It is defined as the distance light travels in one year. Light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 kilometres each second, so in one year, it travels about 9,500,000,000,000 kilometres.
· According to string theory, the universe has not just three or four dimensions, but eleven dimensions, ten of space and one of time. We do not observe the extra spatial dimensions because they are curled tightly around each other.
· The oldest galaxies we can see are right next door to us in the present universe. Looking out into space, we see images of galaxies that become younger and younger the further out we look. We actually see images of the youngest galaxies in the universe the farther out we look.
