7 Fun Facts about Outer Space!
7 Fun Facts about Outer Space! 🪐🌠🧑🚀
Space is truly the final frontier, and there’s still so much for us to discover and learn about space! Here’s a couple fun facts about outer space:
Space is completely silent! Because space is a vacuum, there’s no air particles for sound waves to travel through.
Venus is the hottest planet, even though Mercury is closer to the Sun! The average temperature on Venus is 864°F, while the average temperature on Mercury is 800°F. Venus is hotter because its thick atmosphere traps the heat, even though Mercury is, on average, 72 million miles closer to the Sun!
Speaking of Venus, a day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus! A day is defined as one full rotation, while a year is defined as a full orbit around the Sun. It takes around 243 Earth days for Venus to rotate once, while it only takes 224 Earth days for Venus to orbit the Sun.
Mars has the tallest mountain and largest volcano in the solar system! Olympus Mons is almost 3 times taller than Mount Everest! It stands at 72,000 feet (about 13.6 miles), compared to Mount Everest’s 29,032 feet. It’s also the largest volcano, covering an area the size of Arizona!
The Sun accounts for 99.86% of the total mass of our solar system! The Sun’s mass is equal to 333,000 Earths!
Stars don’t actually blink or twinkle. The blinking we see is from Earth’s atmosphere. As the light from stars enters our atmosphere, it gets bent and distorted by varying air densities and temperatures, which makes it look like its blinking or twinkling. However, planets appear to shine steadily because they are closer to earth, so their light isn’t affected as much by this atmospheric interference.
Did you know that astronauts age slower in space? According to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, time passes at different speeds depending on how fast you're moving. In other words, time moves slower for objects that are moving (like an astronaut in space) compared to an object that's at rest (like someone standing on earth), meaning that astronauts in space age slightly slower than people on earth.
This isn't a fountain of youth though - scientists estimate that if you spent 6 months in space, you would only be 0.007 seconds (about as long as a blink of an eye) younger than if you had stayed on earth! This is a big enough difference though that it needs to be taken into account so our GPS satellites can provide accurate location data!
What’s your favorite space fact?