- You don’t have to look very far to find weird space stuff.
Space is the place for weird stuff and the far reaches of the universe can get downright bizarre. But you don’t need to go that far to find some strange things.
In fact, you don’t have to leave the solar system in the first place. There are plenty of fascinating phenomena happening right here on our doorstep — relatively speaking.
Here’s a collection of facts about our solar system you may not have known about. But it’s all true.
1) The Solar System Is a Lot Bigger Than You Think
First of all, when we say things are happening on our “doorstep,” that’s still probably a lot farther away than you realize. After all, the solar system is absolutely huge.
The solar system is roughly 19 Astronomical Units (AU) in diameter. One AU is the distance from the Earth to the sun, which puts the solar system’s diameter at about 1.8 billion miles.
That’s still a bit of an abstract measurement, so let’s put it like this. The Voyager 1 spacecraft left Earth in 1977. In 2012, it became the first manmade object to enter interstellar space.
But it still hasn’t even left the solar system, if we define the solar system as the Sun and everything that orbits it. In that case, Voyager won’t leave the solar system for at least another 14,000 years, NASA says.
2) Saturn’s Rings Are Mostly Water
Astronomers are obsessed with finding water on Mars. But there’s a much easier place to get water in space, although it’s farther away.
All you have to do is go to Saturn — but not onto the planet. Instead, Saturn’s rings are one gigantic ice rink.
The rings of Saturn consist of approximately 90% water. Of course, all that water is frozen into solid chunks that orbit the gas giant.
3) Pluto Isn’t the Only Dwarf Planet We Have
There was some public outcry when Pluto was demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet in 2006. But you don’t have to feel too bad for Pluto — it still has friends.
On top of Pluto, there are five other dwarf planets in the solar system. We’ve known about four of them — Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris — for a while.
But we didn’t discover the sixth dwarf planet until 2015. It’s such a newcomer (at least to us) that we don’t even have a simple name for it yet.
Officially, this sixth dwarf planet is called 2015 TG387. But it’s also received a nickname — The Goblin.
Whether or not that becomes its real name remains to be seen.
4) Earth’s Immediate Surroundings Are Full of Garbage
How many times have you gone somewhere nice, like a campground, only to find it full of trash? Humans seem to be hardwired for littering because we’re doing the same thing to space.
Earth’s orbit is simply of crap. There are at least 500,000 pieces of space junk orbiting the planet.
Instead of candy wrappers and plastic bottles, though, this garbage consists mostly of pieces and remnants of satellites and spacecraft, on top of tools dropped from space stations. And all that junk is a bit of a problem.
First of all, it might collide with functioning satellites or space stations. But it could also fall back to Earth — like the SpaceX capsule that crashed into Australia.
5) The Solar System is About Half-Dead
Nothing is built to last, not even the solar system. And to give you a healthy dose of existential dread, you should know it’s about halfway through its life cycle.
According to current estimates, the solar system is about 4.5 billion years old. And those same estimates state that it probably has around five billion years left.
Of course, that’s a longer time span than any of us can really fathom. But still, the middle-aged solar system isn’t getting any younger.
6) Uranus Opens Up at Night to Release Gas
You didn’t think we’d get through a list of things in the solar system without mentioning Uranus, did you? The planet is often the butt of jokes, what with the unfortunate name for English speakers.
But it doesn’t help at all that Uranus is constantly breaking wind. At any given moment, the planet is spewing clouds of gas into space.
Scientists aren’t exactly sure why Uranus is so gassy, but it probably has something to do with the planet’s bizarre magnetic field. Essentially, Uranus opens up at night and releases its gaseous emanations.
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