Did You Know? The The size of Pluto is smaller than the size of the USA? Downgraded in 2006.
Now you do! About 50 tonnes of space dust and rocks fall to Earth each day. In most cases, the pieces of rocks from space fall towards the Earth and most of these are destroyed on entry, leaving only a fine dust behind. In space, astronauts cannot cry, b/c there is no gravity, the tears can’t flow. If you shouted in space, someone right next to you couldn’t hear you b/c there is no air to carry your message.
Our star and its planets are a tiny part of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is a huge city of stars, so big that even at the speed of light, it would take 100,000 years to cross it. All the stars in the night sky, including our sun, are just some of the residents of this galaxy. Beyond our own galaxy lies a vast expanse of galaxies.
Random Facts There are at least 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. A galaxy is full of stars: Our sun is just one of at least 100,000,000,000 stars in our own Milky Way galaxy, and each of those stars could have their own planetary system. The Milky Way galaxy is in the Local Group, a neighborhood of about 30 galaxies. Our nearest major neighboring galaxy is called Andromeda. More than 1,700 extrasolar planets (or exoplanets) planets have been confirmed. There are thousands of potential exoplanets awaiting discovery confirmation.
Black holes are not empty spaces in the Universe. A black hole is a great amount of matter packed into a very small area, which results in a gravitational field so strong that nothing -- not even light -- can escape.
More Fun Facts… About 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System is made of the sun! The moon is drifting from Earth at a speed of 5cm per year. A full moon is 9 times brighter than a half moon.
The light from the sun takes 8min to reach the Earth. Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical predictions. Now let’s test what you know one last time!