Top 50 Facts About Our Universe That Will Blow Your Mind

Top 50 Facts About Our Universe That Will Blow Your Mind

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most fascinating facts about our universe and the technology we've used to explore it

#50:
The universe is really old. In fact, scientists have been able to determine the age of the universe to be 13.787 billion years old.

#49:
Unlike on Earth, the atmosphere on Mars is mostly made up of carbon dioxide. There is also lots of dust. Because of that, the red planet actually has BLUE sunsets.

#48:
We don’t know if he’s gone beyond infinity, but Buzz Lightyear has been to space. On May 31, 2008 a Buzz toy launched on a space shuttle and spent 468 days at the International Space Center - returning to earth on September 11, 2009. It’s the longest time ever spent in space on a single mission.

#47:
We all know (or at least we all should know) that it’s not safe to drink your own urine. However, on the International Space Station, that’s exactly what they do. They even drink their own sweat - albeit, after both sources have gone through a filtration process that makes the resulting water cleaner then what many of us drink down here on earth.

#46:
The sun might only be considered a medium-sized star, but you could still fit 1.3 million earths inside it. And medium or not, the sun accounts for an amazing 99.8% of the mass of our entire solar system.

#45:
While we only have one moon orbiting our planet, there are at least 290 moons in the solar system - with Saturn having 146!

#44:
There is a whole lot in our universe that we can’t see - in the form of dark matter and dark energy. In fact, 95% of our universe is invisible to us!

#43:
In the middle of our galaxy, the Milky Way, there’s a supermassive black hole - and it’s thought that this is the case for most, if not all, large galaxies.

#42:
It might feel like there’s never enough time in the day, but the truth is that due to the slowing down of the earth’s rotation, our days are actually getting longer - although only by 1.7 milliseconds per century.

#41:
On September 23rd 1846 German astronomer Johann Galle was the first to observe the planet Neptune. 165 years later, on July 12th 2011, Neptune completed its first full orbit around the sun since Galle’s discovery.

#40:
A spoonful of sugar might help the medicine go down. But a teaspoon of a neutron star is so dense that it weighs millions of tons.

#39:
Do you wish you were a little taller? Well, just become an astronaut. In microgravity, the spine stretches, making an astronaut about 3% taller. This is only temporary however and they return to their normal height soon after getting back to earth.

#38:
Diamonds wouldn’t be quite so valuable if you were living on 55 Cancri e! Located 40 light-years beyond our solar system, the exoplanet might be made of about one third diamond! Speaking of diamonds, scientists believe that it might rain diamonds on Jupiter and Saturn.

#37:
You think you had a long day? Just imagine if you lived on Venus, where it takes the planet 243 Earth days to do one full rotation on its axis.

#36:
If you have to go somewhere that requires you to wear a spacesuit, make sure you give yourself plenty of time. Putting one on takes about 45 minutes.

#35:
The International Space Station holds the Guinness World Record as the most expensive human-made object ever - costing over $100 billion.

#34:
Because of its massive gravitational pull, Jupiter has often been seen as a protector of the Earth - by pulling in comets and asteroids that might otherwise have reached our home planet. However, a more recent theory depicts Jupiter as more of a sniper - hurling dangerous projectiles at us.

#33:
The good news is that a leak in a spacesuit doesn’t mean instant death. The bad news is that it means losing sconios unconscious in 10-15 seconds, boiling bodily fluids, and death within a minute or two.

#32:
The explosion of a star is called a supernova. When a star goes supernova, what’s left behind is either a neutron star or a new black hole.

#31:
Stretching 357 feet from one end to the other, the International Space Station is about the size of a football field and weighs a massive 1 million pounds.

#30:
On March 6th, 2013 the MESSENGER space probe completed a 100% mapping of the planet Mercury.

#29:
A trip to the moon this year will take longer than it did last year, as the moon moves further away from us at a rate of 3.8 cm per year.

#28:
When astronauts poop in space, the waste is vacuumed up into canisters, which are put on cargo ships that burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

#27:
What planet in our solar system has the most moons? Well, it depends when you ask the question. Jupiter and Saturn have been going back and forth as the moon king over the years. Saturn has the current lead - 146 to 95.

#26:
In 2022, scientists identified a radio signal from a galaxy 8.8 billion light years away. The discovery indicated that the signal would’ve left said galaxy 4.9 billion light years ago. This isn’t just a really long time ago - it was about 400 million light years before our solar system was even formed.

#25:
According to our current cosmological model, the universe has no edges. And as such it has no center.

#24:
When wearing a space suit one obviously can’t scratch their nose. But thankfully some smart person thought of that and all space helmets come with a piece of velcro installed inside them for just such an itchy occasion.

#23:
Carl Sagan wrote that “the total number of stars in the universe is greater than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.” It’s a quote that conveys the mind-blowing vastness of space: there are approximately 100 billion stars in our own galaxy alone, and hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe.

#22:
The exoplanet Kepler 22b, 640 light years away in the Kepler 22 system, is of great interest to scientists, because it’s similar enough to Earth that it might be habitable. Although, it would take quite a while to get there.

#21:
In 1985 Coca-Cola’s slogan was “America’s real choice”. But on July 12th of that year it was space’s real choice as well - when astronauts on the Challenger shuttle made coke the first soda consumed in space.

#20:
We often think of larger objects weighing more than smaller ones. But of course, that isn’t always the case. Just look at the planets in our solar system! Saturn is the second largest and yet, because it consists mostly of liquid hydrogen and helium, it’s also the lightest one!

#19:
It’s impossible to know for sure how many stars there are in the universe. But if we multiply the number of stars in an average galaxy by the estimated number of galaxies, we reach the jaw dropping figure of around 200 sextillion.

#18:
If you thought the Earth’s 23.5 degree tilted axis was a lot, just take a look at Uranus. At almost 98 degrees, the planet is pretty much rotating sideways

#17:
Imagine having a birthday every 88 days. That’s what would happen if you lived on Mercury, where it takes 88 Earth days for the planet to make one trip around the Sun

#16:
Due to its extremely thin atmosphere, Mercury has no weather - no clouds, rain, or storms.

#15:
Unlike Chicago, the moon doesn’t have any wind (it can be affected by solar winds though)

#14:
Australia is only the 6th largest country on Earth, but it’s still wider than the diameter of the moon

#13:
If you hate being caught in the rain on Earth, just be thankful you aren’t on Venus, where it rains sulfuric acid. It doesn’t actually reach the surface though, evaporating from the extreme heat.

#12:
Ever put on a new outfit and feel like a million bucks? Well, imagine wearing a spacesuit! In 1974, NASA revealed that a spacesuit cost between $15-22. That’s $83-122 million today!

#11:
If we ever do colonize Mars, at least one thing will seem very similar to people coming from Earth - the length of a day, which on Mars is 24.6 hours.

#10:
The leading theory about the formation of the moon is that it was formed from the debris of a collision between Earth and a planet the size of Mars!

#9:
Some neutron stars can spin at an unbelievable speed of up to 600 or 700 times per second - the fastest ever recorded clocking in at 716.

#8:
With a whopping mean temperature of 867°F, Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system.

#7:
A few moons in the solar system have a retrograde orbit - orbiting in the opposite direction of their planet’s rotation. The largest of these is Neptune’s moon Triton.


#6:
If two pieces of the same type of metal touch in space with significant force they will bond together in a process called “cold welding”.

#5:
Because it takes time for the light from objects in space to reach us on Earth, what we see is actually not that object in the present, but how the object was when the light left it. When we look up at the stars, we’re looking into the past.

#4:
The moon is ‘tidally locked’ with Earth - meaning that takes the same amount of time to rotate as it does to revolve around our planet. It’s for this reason that we always see the same side of the moon.

#3:
Our Milky Way galaxy is on course to collide with the Andromeda galaxy. But don’t worry, it won’t happen for about 4.5 billion years

#2:
With no wind or rain to wash them away, the footprints left on the moon by astronauts in the 60s and 70s are still there - and they could potentially remain there for millions of years.

#1:
On August 15, 1977, Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope detected a strong signal from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It had the expected characteristics of alien origins, and became known as the ‘Wow’ signal, but hasn’t been detected since - remaining an enigma to scientists! Did we already detect intelligent extraterrestrial life?!

Which of these facts did you find most fascinating? Let us know in the comments