Facts about space

Introduction

We all know that space is big, but how much do you really know about it? In this post I will give you some facts about space that might surprise you.

Space is a place.

Space isn't just a place--it's also a concept. Space is defined as the three-dimensional volume of the universe that surrounds us, but space doesn't have to be empty! There are stars, planets and other objects in the Universe that exist outside of space itself.

Space is not just made up of empty air or vacuum; it actually has substance (and gravity). The Earth's atmosphere acts like an umbrella above us when we're on Earth so we can breathe easily without being exposed to harmful radiation from outer space--but if you were standing on another planet orbiting around our Sun (like Mars), then there would still be some protection from harmful radiation from outer space.

The Solar System is a small part of the universe.

The Solar System is a small part of the universe, which is itself an extremely large and complex place. Humans are just one of many species in our galaxy, and even within our own solar system we're only seeing a tiny sliver of what's out there.

The Sun exemplifies this: it's far from alone! The Sun orbits around itself every day at about 8 light minutes (about 100 times farther than Earth), but it's surrounded by objects much larger than itself: planets and moons that circle it like distant satellites; comets like shooting stars; asteroids that pass by as they're pushed along by gravity; even asteroids with their own moons too!

There are more stars than grains of sand on Earth.

You might think that the number of stars in the universe is hard to count, but it's actually pretty easy. The total number of grains of sand on Earth is also unknown, but scientists believe it could be in the billions.

The stars are so far away that even if you traveled at warp speed (the speed limit for traveling through space), your journey would take millions or even billions of years before you reached them. Even then, there wouldn't be enough time for Einsteinian physics to work out any more details about their makeup or exactly how they formed--and no one knows what kind of physics would apply over such huge distances anyway!

There is no absolute zero temperature in the universe, it's always cold.

The absolute zero temperature is the lowest possible value of temperature. It's -273 degrees Celsius, or 0 Kelvin. The universe isn't cold enough to reach this point--it will never get there because it is expanding and cooling down rapidly as time goes on.

The universe isn't even close to reaching absolute zero:

Space has an average temperature of approximately 2 Kelvin (minus 471 degrees Fahrenheit). The hottest observable region in space is about 5 kelvin (-273 degrees Fahrenheit) at its surface; however, there are some places where temperatures can get much higher than this because they're surrounded by clouds of gas that are much hotter than the surrounding space itself!

Space doesn't have sound or smell.

Space is a vacuum. It's not filled with air or water, so there's no sound. The same goes for smell--space doesn't have either of those things because it doesn't exist in our universe!

The average person can't see even a tiny part of their own house from their backyard.

You can't see the stars from your backyard, the moon from your house, or even the sun.

You might think that if you have a telescope or binoculars at home and stand outside in clear weather conditions, then surely there will be some sort of view? But no: The average person can't see even a tiny part of their own house from their backyard.

Pluto almost hit Earth in 2015, but that had nothing to do with us.

Pluto is a dwarf planet. It's smaller than the moon and has an elliptical orbit around the sun that takes it about 4.4 billion miles away from Earth.

Pluto's orbit is also extremely eccentric--about 5,200 times farther from the center than Earth does--so it gets locked into an extreme looping path around our planet every 3,000 years or so, which makes it look like it keeps moving toward us and then away again!

This strange motion causes Pluto's spin axis to lean over slightly on one side as well as its spin rate to slow down (it rotates once every six hours). These motions caused astronomers to call these features asterisms: patterns formed when two stars appear close together in an otherwise empty sky but are actually far apart in space terms; they're called "fuzzy" because they're hard to see without binoculars or telescopes with large apertures (like Hubble).

We know so little about space, but we love it anyway!

It's hard to imagine that there's so much more left to learn about space. We have a pretty good understanding of how it works, but we still don't know everything.

In fact, space is a great place to think about the future and how our world might change in the next 50 years or more--and what kinds of technologies will be necessary for us to move forward as a species (or at least some subset of us). Space also helps us understand just how little we know about our universe: no one knows exactly where Earth is located within any given galaxy; scientists estimate that there may be up to 100 trillion stars in each galaxy alone; it takes light millions if not billions of years (!) before it reaches us from other galaxies...and so on!

Conclusion

We know so little about space, but we love it anyway! I hope that this article has given you a better appreciation for our universe and its mysteries. If you want more information on these topics, check out my other posts on the subject! One last thing: remember that there's no such thing as an absolute zero in the universe