The Solar System is incredible and to celebrate that here are 10 mind-blowing facts about the Solar System!
a scientist is “buried” on the moon
Don’t panic, you read this right!
Eugene Shoemaker is buried on the Moon. They put an ounce of his ashes into a vial and dropped it into a Moon crater.
Euguene was a geologist and astrophysicist who had a dream to go to the Moon. He made huge contributions to the world of all things space.
He died in a fatal car crash in Australia in 1997 and in 1999 the Lunar Prospector space probe, took his ashes to the Moon.
In fairness, saying he’s buried on the Moon is mostly clickbait as the probe was crashed into the Moon- but his remains are the only human remains on Earth – as far as we know!
spacecraft have visited every planet
We only have 8 planets in our Solar System so perhaps it doesn’t sound that impressive that we have sent spacecraft to all of them. It becomes more impressive when you consider how far away they all are. For example, Venus is 164.83 million kilometres from Earth- I’d tell you what that is in miles but the number is way too big for me to be able to read.
Space exploration has been taking place for 60 years and in that time at least one craft has been sent or flown past every planet in the Solar System. Unmanned of course.
earth has a comet visitor
Back in 1705 Edmond Halley discovered a comet which likes to visit Earth every 75 years or so- by visit, I mean “orbits Earth”- it doesn’t pop down for a cup of tea or anything. We call it Halleys Comet and the next time it’ll orbit Earth again is 2061. Mark the date in your calendar.
Side note- how cool would it be to have a comet named after you?
We are seeing the past version of the solar system
The Sun is 93 million miles away from Earth- it would take you an infinite amount of time to walk there.
Light from the Sun takes roughly 8 minutes to travel to Earth, so we’re seeing the Sun as it was 8 minutes previously- or to put it in a slightly cooler way, we’re looking into the past. This is true for everything in our Solar System- well not the Moon as that’s only 240,000 miles away so we only see around 1 second into the past when we look at the Moon.
Cool eh?
Mars is as cold as the South Pole
What does this mean? Basically that you’ll need your good winter coat if you ever visit as it’s something crazy like -60 degrees. I hope if we one day colonize Mars, someone packs the heaters.
it’s a tad breezy on some planets
If you think the wind is bad on Earth then, trust me, it’s even worse on some other planets.
Neptune is considered the breeziest planet in the Solar System as the average wind speed on the planet is over 700 miles per hour! Saturn is also pretty breezy as well. So make sure you tie your tent down if you decide to visit.
Some wind was measured at 1,200 miles per hour on Neptune.
Earth’s doom
Earth’s doom is written in the stars- literally.
In 5 or so billion years our system’s star will start to turn into a red giant, meaning it will be bigger and brighter. It’ll be so large there is a good chance it will reach the orbit of Mars- this means, our planet will have been swallowed whole.
you can’t stand on Uranus
I agree, this one sounds extremely obvious. Of course, you can’t stand on Uranus, you’d suffocate long before you got there.
The main point is Uranus doesn’t have a solid surface. It has a rocky core but the rest is just gas.
Peely skin
Because of the lack of gravity in space astronauts don’t use their feet to walk around on. This means the skin of their feet becomes soft and starts to fall off. It’s advisable for astronauts to be careful when they remove their socks as it isn’t uncommon for dead skin cells to start flying in every direction.
There’s still more to be discovered
Perhaps my favourite fact about the Solar System is the fact there is still so much to be discovered. We know so much about the Solar System, and space in general, already but in the grand scheme of things, there’s still so much to learn!
Remember we’ve only been exploring our Solar System, outside of telescopes, for the last 60 years.
The Oort cloud- the icy debris field beyond Pluto remains almost completely undiscovered. Scientists currently think that this Oort cloud is the edge of the Solar System, but until we learn more- it remains just a theory.
And there we have our 10 mind-blowing facts about the Solar System. Which was your favourite? If you have any other facts about the Solar System I would love to hear them in the comments!
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