11 Mind-Bending Facts About Space
Space can be a tricky subject to grasp, but these mind-warping facts, adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube, will blow your mind.
Space Isn't as Far Away as You Think: The von Kármán Line, the official boundary between space and Earth's atmosphere, is only 62 miles above sea level. If you drove a car straight up at 50 mph, you'd reach space in an hour and 15 minutes. That's shorter than some daily commutes!
Hypothetically, You Could Drive to the Moon in a Year: The moon averages 238,855 miles away. Driving at 50 mph, it would take you nearly 200 days to reach it. Imagine fitting all the planets side-by-side between Earth and the moon - under the right conditions.
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Earth Has Its Own Space Junk Problem: The Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) is littered with millions of pieces of debris, most too small to track. These tiny particles travel at speeds roughly seven times that of a bullet.
Time Works Differently in Space: Venus, our neighbor, takes 225 Earth days to orbit the sun. Its days are longer than its years, as it takes 243 Earth days to complete one full rotation around its axis.
The Sun Accounts for Most of Our Solar System's Mass: The sun, the largest body in our solar system, makes up 99.8% of its mass. All other planets, comets, and asteroids combined make up less than 0.2%.
We Only Know a Fraction of What Space is Made Of: Visible celestial bodies like planets, stars, and comets make up just 4% of the universe. The remaining 96% is a mystery, mostly made up of dark matter and dark energy, which don't reflect or absorb light.
Our Galaxy Contains a Supermassive Black Hole: At the center of our galaxy sits Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole capable of consuming entire stars. It's 4 million times the mass of our sun, and we're safely far away.
Earth Takes a Long Time to Travel Around Our Galaxy: Our solar system takes 225 million years to complete one orbit around the Milky Way. Since the sun formed 4.6 billion years ago, we've only made the trip 20 times.
Earth's Rotation is Faster Than You Realize: Even without considering our galactic journey, Earth rotates at approximately 1000 mph at the equator. That's faster than the speed of sound, and you're traveling that fast even when you're asleep.
Supernovas We See Often Happened Thousands of Years Ago: The light from stars in the sky takes time to reach us, so when we see a supernova, it's actually an event that happened thousands of years ago. Space makes life feel short and makes you feel small.
