1. A Single Photon Created In The Sun's Core Takes Between 10,000 And 170,000 Years To Reach The Surface.
This sounds impossible, especially when traveling at the speed of light. but it's true. When a photon is created in the Sun's core it is in the form of a Gamma Ray. These photons are incredibly energetic but are immediately scattered by the dense plasma in the core.
The Sun's interior is so dense a photon can not simply travel in a straight line. Instead, they do what physicists call "The Random Walk". Each photon is absorbed and re-emitted countless times by charged particles, making their path chaotic and incredibly indirect. On average they will only travel a fraction of a millimeter before being absorbed and remitted.
Each time this happens the photon loses a little energy, slowly dropping from a gamma ray to visible light when at the Sun's surface. As the photons arrive at the photosphere (surface), it will only take about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth. So when you feel that warmth of the Sun shining down on you, remember those are ancient photons, created long before modern human civilization was born.
2. Venus on average is not the closest planet to Earth.
Sure on a normal solar system map, Venus is always shown as the closest planet to Earth, but for much of the year, Mercury is actually closer in miles than Venus. Mercury’s smaller orbit means its distance from Earth fluctuates less dramatically than Venus’s, leading to a smaller average distance over time. Mercury's average distance from Earth is about 0.39 astronomical units (AU), while Venus's average distance is 0.72 AU. An AU is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers.
3. Earth Is Hit By About 48.5 Tons Of Space Rocks Every Day And 25 to 30 Of Them Make It To The Ground.
If you're wondering why we don't find these rocks everywhere if that many are raining down on us, there is a good reason. The Earth is a very large place and is mostly covered by water and desolate areas. In fact, urban areas only cover about 1 to 3 percent of our planet.
4. Less Than 1 Percent Of Our Galaxy Can Hear Any Radio Transmissions From Earth.
The speed of light seems extremely fast, however, when dealing with the size of the universe, it's quite slow. Our planet started broadcasting radio signals strong enough to leak into space about 120 years ago. That means any star within 120 lightyears could potentially hear us. If you're wondering, that is about 14,000 stars within range.
Compared to the whole Milky Way with a diameter of around 100,000 lightyears, our radio bubble is only 0.12 percent of the galaxy... so much less than one percent!
We already are moving on from radio communication to more efficient and larger bandwidth means like lasers. From there we will try to master quantum communication which will allow for faster-than-light communication. This may answer the question of why the universe seems to be void of any other civilizations. Simply put, radio transmission may be such a primitive and short-lived communication type for most civilizations. Once quantum comms are the norm, maybe we can finally start hearing what everyone else in the universe is talking about!
5. Clyde Tombaugh Is The Farthest Human From Earth (Well Part Of Him)
You will be forgiven if you don't know who Clyde is. He is the person who discovered Pluto in 1930. After his death in 1997, engineers of the New Horizons spacecraft asked if they could carry some of his ashes aboard the craft. The family agreed and a small container with the inscription: "Interred herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the Solar System's 'third zone' was installed on New Horizons. The spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto on July 14th, 2015. At the time of this writing, (Dec 2024) New Horizons is 61.55 AU from Earth with a round trip light time of 17 hrs 03 mins 51 seconds For comparison Voyager 1 is currently 166.5 Au from Earth and has a round trip light time of 46 hrs 05 mins.
6. Unlike Every Other Planet In Our Solar System, Uranus Spins on Its Side
Uranus rotates on its side, with an axial tilt of about 98 degrees. This unique orientation likely resulted from a massive collision with another celestial object. The object that collided is estimated to be about the size of Earth. This also causes Uranus to have some of the most extreme seasons in our solar system. With a long orbital period of 84 years and each pole facing sideways, the poles experience 42 years of daylight followed by 42 years of darkness. However, a Uranus day is only 17 hours, 14 minutes, and 24 seconds long.
7. Olympus Mons on MarsMay Not Be The Tallest Mountain In The Solar System
For decades the titanic-size Olympus Mons of Mars has been the king of mountains in our solar system. As time goes on, new missions are teaching us how little we know about our local system. New data shows a mountain called Rheasilvia on the asteroid Vesta might be 16 miles tall or 84,480ft, while Olympus Mons is a little under 14 miles tall or 72,000ft. This is amazing to think about when comparing either of these two mountains to Earth's tallest mountain, Mt Everest at 5.49 miles or 29,032ft.
8. The fastest Spacecraft Could Travel From Chicago To Fiji In About 1 Minute
Think about this... from Chicago to Fiji is 7240 miles. To cover that amount of distance in one minute, you would need to be traveling at over 400,000 miles per hour. No this isn't a typo, It's incredible to think we made a spacecraft that goes even faster than this! The Parker Solar Probe is currently traveling at 430,000 miles per hour in an elliptic orbit that takes it closer and closer to the Sun. Each time it goes by the sun, it dips into the corona. The Corona is the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere.
Parker Solar Probe is designed to swoop within about 4 million miles (6.5 million kilometers) of the Sun's surface to trace the flow of energy, to study the heating of the solar corona, and to explore what accelerates the solar wind. This is the first time a human spacecraft has touched the sun.
The Parker Solar Probe needs to travel extremely fast to get close to the Sun because it relies on the Sun's strong gravity to accelerate it, allowing it to reach the necessary speed to orbit at such a close distance. The closer it gets, the faster it goes due to the gravitational pull.
9. In 1995 We Took The Plunge Into Jupiter
Most people don't remember, because the probe didn't have a camera, but the spacecraft Galileo had a detachable probe to descend into Jupiter's atmosphere. The Galileo mission launched in October 1989 and didn't reach Jupiter until mid-1995. The probe was detached on July 13th, 1995, and entered the Jovian atmosphere on December 7th, 1995.
While the main Galileo orbiter was equipped with a camera, the probe was not. It did have six other important instruments; Atmospheric Structure Instrument, Neutral Mass Spectrometer, Helium Abundance Interferometer, Net-Flux Radiometer, Nephelometer, and Lightning/Radio-Emission Instrument.
Scientists were confused with the readings because there was much less water than predicted. It did detect lightning (also less than predicted) and kept transmitting for 61.4 minutes. The probe was about 112 miles below its entry level into the atmosphere reaching the crushing pressure of 22.7 earth atmospheres.
Later research indicated the probe descended in a particularly dry spot of Jupiter. This is why the predicted readings were so low.
10. Neptune Has The Fastest Winds In The Solar System
Reaching speeds of 1200 miles per hour all the way up to 1,600 miles per hour, these winds pack a serious punch. A combination of core heat radiation and a super cold atmosphere creates these winds. With temperatures around -360 Fahrenheit (-217 C), the cold reduces friction allowing for even faster winds. Unlike Earth, Neptune has no obstacles to block or break up wind patterns. Just like the Energizer Bunny, they keep going and going. These winds are even three times as strong as Jupiter's winds!
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