10 Space Facts That Will Make You Feel Very, Very Small
Space is big. Really, really big. And the more we learn about it, the weirder it gets. Here are ten real facts that will make your problems feel wonderfully tiny.
1A day on Venus is longer than its year
Venus takes about 243 Earth days to spin once on its axis, but only about 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun. It also spins backwards compared to most planets, so the Sun rises in the west.
2A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh billions of tons
Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of giant stars. They pack more mass than our Sun into a ball about the size of a city.
3The Sun is 99.8% of our solar system
All the planets, moons, asteroids and comets together make up just a tiny fraction of the solar system’s mass. The Sun is basically everything.
4Sunlight is about 8 minutes old
Light from the Sun takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth. If the Sun vanished, you wouldn’t know for over eight minutes.
5Saturn could float in water
Saturn is less dense than water. If you could find a bathtub big enough, it would float. (Good luck with the bathtub.)
6The Moon footprints could last millions of years
With no wind or rain on the Moon, the astronauts’ footprints will likely stay put for a very, very long time — slowly worn down only by tiny meteorites.
7Olympus Mons makes Everest look small
This volcano on Mars stands about 22 km (13.6 miles) high — roughly 2.5 times the height of Mount Everest.
8There are probably more stars than grains of sand on Earth
Estimates for the number of stars in the observable universe are so huge that they likely beat the number of sand grains on all of Earth’s beaches.
9The Space Station sees about 16 sunrises a day
The ISS circles the Earth roughly every 90 minutes, so astronauts see a sunrise or sunset about every 45 minutes.
10Voyager 1 is more than 24 billion km away
Launched in 1977, it’s the farthest human-made object ever. Its radio signals take nearly a full day to reach us.
