Top 50 MORE Facts About Our Universe That Will Blow Your Mind

Top 50 MORE Facts About Our Universe That Will Blow Your Mind

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

#50:
The Earth’s rotational speed isn't constant. It’s affected by climatic and geological phenomena. To account for the difference between our precise time, measured by atomic clocks, and solar time, we sometimes add a leap second to Coordinated Universal Time - although this has proven so disruptive that it’ll be discontinued by or before 2035.

#49:
Falling into a black hole would mean certain death. But not just any kind of death. The difference in gravitational pull below and above would stretch one out in a process called spaghettification.

#48:
The American flag that the Apollo 11 astronauts planted on the moon in 1969 was purchased for $5.50 at Sears just three months prior to launch.

#47:
In 2001, Pizza Hut delivered a pizza to the International Space Station.

#46:
Imagine how much you could do every day if one day lasted for two months. Well, just go to Mercury, where one day is equivalent to just over 58 earth days.

#45:
There are 96 bags of human waste sitting on the surface of the moon.

#44:
Today, it’s estimated there are 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. But before the 1920s, many astronomers thought that the Milky Way was the entire universe! Astronomy has come a long way!

#43:
The United Nations Outer Space Treaty prohibits nuclear weapons in space and states that all celestial bodies can only be used for peaceful purposes. Territorial claims on celestial bodies are also forbidden.

#42:
You can’t burp in space! Because there’s no gravity to separate the food, liquid, and gases in your digestive system, you’d just throw up in your mouth instead.

#41:
There’s evidence that Mars once had flowing water on its surface, including a large ocean.

#40:
Only in 2019 were we able to photograph a black hole for the first time. Named M87*, the supermassive black hole is in the middle of the Messier 87 galaxy. It’s three million times the size of Earth, and four million times more massive than the Sun.

#39:
In September, 2015, scientists made the first ever direct observation of gravitational waves, confirming the only prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity that had yet to be directly detected.

#38:
In 2015, the Cincinnati Bengals won a game on a 42-yard field goal in overtime that bounced off the upright and in. And while Mike Nugent is the one who kicked the ball, according to Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Coriolis force created by the Earth’s rotation was responsible for the direction of the deflection through the uprights.

#37:
There aren’t any humans on Mars…. yet! But there are a number of active vehicles on the Red Planet. As of writing, they are NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance.

#36:
Forget about the Grand Canyon. Measuring more than 2,500 miles long, 120 miles wide and up to 23,000 feet, Valles Marineris on Mars is the largest canyon in the Solar System.

#35:
If you thought asteroids weren’t getting close to Earth these days, think again. It turns out that our atmosphere gets slammed by an asteroid the size of a car pretty much every year. Thankfully it burns up before it can reach the surface and cause any damage.

#34:
Do you hate the cold? Well, then may we suggest you never find yourself in a crater on the moon. Some of them dip down to -280 degrees Fahrenheit, making them some of the coldest places in the entire Solar System.

#33:
The fastest wind speed ever recorded on Earth was 253 mph. Neptune’s winds - which are the strongest in the solar system - reach up to 1200 mph.

#32:
In 1987, a hexagon-shaped cloud formation was discovered at Saturn’s North Pole. It’s estimated to be 18,000 miles wide and 190 miles high.

#31:
It made headlines when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, but at least it’s not alone. Currently the International Astronomical Union recognizes five dwarf planets: Pluto, Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris. Astronomers generally recognize a further four.

#30:
How many constellations are there? Well, in 1922 a commission of the International Astronomical Union determined there to be 88 of them. And those 88 remain the only officially recognized constellations in our sky today.

#29:
While they remain hypothetical, general relativity suggests the potential for white holes. Just as nothing can escape a black hole, nothing would be able to enter a white hole.

#28:
While it might look like a sphere, the moon is actually more lemon-shaped due to rotational and tidal forces that shaped it when it was young and still molten.

#27:
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot - the most powerful storm in all our solar system - is getting smaller. The storm has been there since at least 1665, but recent observations by the Hubble space telescope indicate that the Great Red Spot is about half as great (size-wise) as it used to be.

#26:
It takes about 27 Earth days for the sun to make one full rotation on its axis.

#25:
Based on the orbits of extreme trans-Neptunian objects, scientists have theorized the existence of a large planet in the outer region of the Solar System referred to as Planet Nine. This is different to the conspiracy theory that a mysterious “Planet X” will devastate Earth, predicted to occur in 2003 … then 2012 … then 2017 … yeah, you see how that works.

#24:
It’s true that in space no one can hear you scream. There’s no medium for sound to travel through. But there are gravitational waves, which we can convert into sound waves in order to ‘hear’ them. Thanks to LIGO (The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) in 2015, we heard what it ‘sounds’ like when two black holes collide.

#23:
Pluto was discovered in 1930 and was our furthest planet until - to the dismay of Sheldon Cooper and others - it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.

#22:
Olympus Mons is a shield volcano on Mars… a very big volcano. At over 72,000 ft high, Olympus Mons is two and a half times taller than Mount Everest's height above sea level.

#21:
Iapetus is Saturn’s third largest moon, but what makes it really interesting is its coloring. One hemisphere is very dark, and the other very bright.

#20:
We can’t put a planet on a scale - so how do scientists weigh a planet? Well, they measure the gravitational pull a planet exerts on other objects, such as moons, by looking at how far those objects are from the planet, and how fast they orbit around it.

#19:
Ever wondered how long it would take to drive around Saturn’s brightest rings? According to our math, at a speed of 75 mph, it would take 296 Earth days.

#18:
We’re trying really hard to be mature and not make a childish joke about Uranus being the coldest planet in the solar system… That was harder than you know.

#17:
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human being in space. On April 12th, 1961 Gagarin circled the earth for 108 minutes at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour.

#16:
With the arrival of the Juno space probe in Jupiter’s orbit in 2016, every single planet in our solar system had been visited at least once by unmanned spacecrafts

#15:
If you thought Tom Cruise's sunglasses in “Top Gun” were reflective - just wait till you get a load of Enceladus. Due to the fresh ice on its surface, the Saturnian moon is the most reflective body in the Solar System.

#14:
Of the 290 moons so far discovered in the Solar System, the moon isn’t the biggest - that honor goes to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. But it is still pretty big - coming in at fifth place!

#13:
Two planets have no moons at all: Mercury and Venus.

#12:
The temperatures on Mars are so extreme that, were you to stand on the planet’s equator at noon, the temperature at your feet would be 75 degrees Fahrenheit while at your head it would be 32.

#11:
What’s the best weight-loss program? Go to Mars! A person who weighs 220 pounds on Earth would weigh only 83 pounds on Mars

#10:
If you could travel at the speed of light, it would still take you 26,000 years to reach the center of our galaxy. At the speed of the fastest spacecraft we’ve built so far, it would take over 40 million.

#9:
Without gravity to pull the ink, scientists had to create a special ‘space pen’ that would work in space.

#8:
Halley's Comet can be seen from earth once every 75-79 years. The last sighting occurred in 1986. It will come around again around the year 2061.

#7:
The largest reservoir of water ever found in our universe was discovered in 2011. The water (equal to more than 140 trillion times the amount in all our oceans) surrounds a quasar 12 billion light years away.

#6:
When it comes to volcanos, no one beats Venus - with more than any other planet in our solar system. We’re talking more than 1,600 major volcanoes, and so many smaller ones that we haven’t been able to estimate them yet.

#5:
The Earth is 81 times heavier than the moon - which is why it orbits us and not the other way around.

#4:
You may know that the universe is expanding - but did you know that that expansion is actually speeding up? This came as a surprise to scientists in 1998, who expected gravitational force to be slowing the expansion down. To explain this they posited the existence of dark energy.

#3:
Scientists have confirmed the existence of over 5,000 exoplanets - planets outside the Solar System. The closest are 4.2 light-years from Earth, orbiting Proxima Centauri.

#2:
The space between galaxies isn’t empty - at least, not exactly. It’s filled with a rarefied plasma, primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, called the intergalactic medium. But the average density is less than one atom per cubic meter.

#1:
In about five billion years, the Sun will become a Red Giant, engulfing the inner planets and wiping out life on Earth. Hopefully, if we’re still around, we’ll have a backup plan by then!

Is your mind metaphorically blown? Let us know when it happened in the comments.