ASTONISHING Things About Space

We talk a lot about the things happening on Planet Earth. But what about the things happening in outer space? Here’s some of the coolest things about outer space you may not have learned before.
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9. Far, Far Away
In 1977, NASA launched a space probe called Voyager 1 into the sky and it’s been up there for over 40 years. To this day, Voyager 1 still communicates with the Deep Space Network, providing back data and listening to the network’s commands. The space probe currently can be detected 11.7 billion miles or 18.8 billion kilometers away from the planet Earth, making it the most distant man-made object ever.
8. The Silence Of Space
Watching Star Wars, you wouldn’t know it, but everything in space is silent. Sound vibrations can’t really travel through space all that well. Sound still can travel in space, but at the level humans hear, space for the most part sounds like nothing. Space acts as a vacuum and therefore has no medium for sound to travel through. But since space is never really completely empty, there may be a few places where sound can be better detected.
7. Four Arms, Not Two
In 2015, NASA confirmed that out own galaxy indeed has four arms, not two. For a while, we’ve known that The Milky Way falls into the category of a spiral galaxy in terms of its shape. And for decades, astronomers have been trying to figure out just how many arms this place has. Data provided by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, better known as the acronym WISE, showed the Milky Way has four arms. WISE used the galaxy gas and dust to trace the shape of the spirals.
6. The Planet Of Burning Ice
This paradoxical planet was named Gliese 436B after it was discovered in 2004 by R. Paul Butler and Geoffrey Marcy. It can be found 2.5 million miles away from its sun, which in terms of space, that’s actually kind of close, as Mercury is located 36 million miles from our sun. This planet completes its revolution around its sun in 2 days and 15.5 hours in Earth time. It’s called a planet of burning ice due to its exterior is of hydrogen and helium, with the water of its core compressed into ice.
5. All The Stars In The Universe
Although it may be difficult to discern the activity in other galaxies around the universe, if scientists take the star production rate in the Milky Way as the average, then that means 4000 million stars are born every day, meaning that every year, in the whole universe, 150 billion stars are born.
4. The Real Hottest Planet
We briefly mentioned how Mercury was the second hottest planet in the world. But hold up, isn’t it the closest planet to the sun? Since Mercury doesn’t have an atmosphere that retains and renews its heat, the heat it does get from the sun goes away faster than it does on Venus, making it cooler. On Venus, the average temperature reaches 875 degrees Fahrenheit whereas the maximum temperature on Mercury only goes up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. A Hollow Moon
You’ve probably heard of the Hollow Earth conspiracy, but most probably haven’t heard of the Hollow Moon. Stability on Earth relies a lot on the Moon, but what exactly do you know about that sphere in the sky? The Hollow Moon theory stems from the occurrence of “moonquakes.” In 1969, The American Space Agency created their own collision on the lunar surface just to see how the Moon would react. It ended up reverberating the way a bell does, and did this for about an hour. It was also said the Moon wobbled, as if it was hollow inside the way a bell is.
2. Smells Like Steak
We already discussed how space tastes like raspberries and rum. But what does it smell like? According to astronauts, the smell of space wafts in something familiar: the scent of welding fumes, hot metal, and even seared steak. Sounds like a grill. Astronauts gets a whiff of this outer space barbeque after they come back from space walks and remove their helmets. And this fragrance apparently comes from the high energy vibrating particles that get brought back into the ship.
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