Top 50 MORE Facts About Our Universe That Will Blow Your Mind
These facts are guaranteed to shock and awe. 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.
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00:00 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down even more of our picks for the most fascinating
00:04 facts about our universe and the technology we used to explore it.
00:10 The Earth's rotational speed isn't constant; it's affected by climatic and geological
00:15 phenomena.
00:16 To account for the difference between our precise time, measured by atomic clocks, and
00:20 solar time, we sometimes add a leap second to coordinated universal time… although
00:25 this has proven so disruptive that it'll be discontinued by or before 2035.
00:35 Falling into a black hole would mean certain death, but not just any kind of death; the
00:39 difference in gravitational pull below and above would stretch one out in a process called
00:44 "spaghettification".
00:46 The American flag that the Apollo 11 astronauts planted on the moon in 1969 was purchased
00:51 for $5.50 at Sears just three months prior to launch.
00:55 In 2001, Pizza Hut delivered a pizza to the International Space Station.
01:05 Imagine how much you could do every day if one day lasted for two months.
01:09 Well, just go to Mercury, where one day is equivalent to just over 58 Earth days.
01:15 There are 96 bags of human waste sitting on the surface of the moon.
01:19 Today it's estimated that there are two trillion galaxies in the observable universe,
01:23 but before the 1920s, many astronomers thought that the Milky Way was the entire universe.
01:29 Astronomy has come a long way.
01:31 The United Nations Outer Space Treaty prohibits nuclear weapons in space, and states that
01:36 all celestial bodies can only be used for peaceful purposes.
01:39 Territorial claims on celestial bodies are also forbidden.
01:43 You can't burp in space.
01:45 Because there's no gravity to separate the food, liquid and gases in your digestive system,
01:50 you'd just throw up in your mouth instead.
01:53 There's evidence that Mars once had flowing water on its surface, including a large ocean.
01:58 "Mars once was a planet very much like Earth, with warm, salty seas, with freshwater lakes,
02:04 probably snow-capped peaks and clouds and a water cycle."
02:08 Only in 2019 were we able to photograph a black hole for the first time.
02:13 And M87's star, the supermassive black hole, is in the middle of the Messier 87 galaxy.
02:18 It's three million times the size of Earth, and four million times more massive than the
02:23 sun.
02:24 In September 2015, scientists made the first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves,
02:30 confirming the only prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity that had yet
02:34 to be directly detected.
02:36 In 2015, the Cincinnati Bengals won a game on a 42-yard field goal in overtime that bounced
02:42 off the upright and in.
02:44 And while Mike Nugent is the one who kicked the ball, according to Neil deGrasse Tyson,
02:49 the Coriolis force created by the Earth's rotation was responsible for the direction
02:53 of the deflection through the uprights.
02:55 "And that force that makes that happen is the same force that sends hurricanes rotating
03:00 counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere."
03:03 There aren't any humans on Mars… yet.
03:06 But there are a number of active vehicles on the red planet.
03:09 As of writing, they are NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance.
03:13 Forget about the Grand Canyon.
03:14 Measuring more than 2,500 miles long, 120 miles wide, and up to 23,000 feet, Valles
03:21 Marineris on Mars is the largest canyon in the solar system.
03:25 If you thought asteroids weren't getting close to Earth these days, think again.
03:30 It turns out that our atmosphere gets slammed by an asteroid the size of a car pretty much
03:34 every year.
03:35 And, thankfully, it burns up before it can reach the surface and cause any damage.
03:39 Do you hate the cold?
03:40 Well, then may we suggest you never find yourself in a crater on the moon.
03:45 Some of them dip down to negative 280 degrees Fahrenheit, making them some of the coldest
03:50 places in the entire solar system.
03:52 The fastest wind speed ever recorded on Earth was 253 miles per hour.
03:57 Neptune's winds, which are the strongest in the solar system, reach up to 1,200 miles
04:01 per hour.
04:02 There are no mountain ranges, no valleys, no continental boundaries to get in the way
04:07 of the perfect fluid, dynamical flows.
04:11 In 1987, a hexagon-shaped cloud formation was discovered at Saturn's north pole.
04:16 It's estimated to be 18,000 miles wide and 190 miles high.
04:22 It made headlines when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, but at least it's not
04:26 alone.
04:27 Currently, the International Astronomical Union recognises five dwarf planets.
04:32 Pluto, Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris, astronomers generally recognise a further
04:39 four.
04:40 How many constellations are there?
04:41 Well, in 1922, a commission of the International Astronomical Union determined there to be
04:46 88 of them, and those 88 remain the only officially recognised constellations in our sky today.
04:53 While they remain hypothetical, general relativity suggests the potential for white holes.
04:58 As nothing can escape a black hole, nothing would be able to enter a white hole.
05:03 Nothing outside a white hole can ever enter, and everything inside must be ejected.
05:08 While it might look like a sphere, the moon is actually more lemon-shaped, due to rotational
05:12 and tidal forces that shaped it when it was young and still molten.
05:16 Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the most powerful storm in all of our solar system, is getting
05:21 smaller.
05:22 The storm has been there since at least 1665, but recent observations by the Hubble Space
05:27 Telescope indicate that the Great Red Spot is about half as great size-wise as it used
05:31 to be.
05:32 It takes about 27 Earth days for the sun to make one full rotation on its axis.
05:38 Based on the orbits of extreme trans-Neptunian objects, scientists have theorised the existence
05:43 of a large planet in the outer region of the solar system, referred to as Planet Nine.
05:48 This is different to the conspiracy theory that a mysterious Planet X will devastate
05:53 Earth, predicted to occur in 2003, then 2012, then 2017.
05:59 Yeah, you see how that works.
06:01 It's true that in space, no one can hear you scream.
06:04 There's no medium for sound to travel through.
06:07 But there are gravitational waves, which we can convert into sound waves in order to hear
06:11 them.
06:12 Thanks to LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, in 2015, we heard what it sounds
06:19 like when two black holes collide.
06:27 Pluto was discovered in 1930, and was our furthest planet until, to the dismay of Sheldon
06:33 Cooper and others, it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.
06:37 "I'm quite familiar with Dr. Tyson.
06:39 He's responsible for the demotion of Pluto from planetary status.
06:43 I liked Pluto."
06:45 Olympus Mons is a shield volcano on Mars.
06:48 A very big volcano.
06:50 At over 72,000 feet high, Olympus Mons is two and a half times taller than Mount Everest's
06:55 height above sea level.
06:57 Iapetus is Saturn's third-largest moon, but what makes it really interesting is its
07:02 colouring.
07:03 One hemisphere is very dark, and the other very bright.
07:06 We can't put a planet on a scale, so how do scientists weigh a planet?
07:10 Well, they measure the gravitational pull a planet exerts on other objects, such as
07:15 moons, by looking at how far those objects are from the planet, and how fast they orbit
07:19 around it.
07:20 Ever wonder how long it would take to drive around Saturn's brightest rings?
07:24 According to our math, at a speed of 75 miles per hour, it would take 296 Earth days.
07:30 We're trying really hard to be mature, and not make a childish joke about Uranus being
07:35 the coldest planet in the solar system.
07:38 That was harder than you know.
07:39 Astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
07:45 Oh, what's it called now?
07:47 Eurekdom!
07:48 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human being in space.
07:52 On April 12, 1961, Gagarin circled the Earth for 108 minutes at a speed of 17,000 miles
07:58 per hour.
08:00 With the arrival of the Juno space probe in Jupiter's orbit in 2016, every single planet
08:05 in our solar system had been visited at least once by unmanned spacecrafts.
08:10 If you thought Tom Cruise's sunglasses in Top Gun were reflective, just wait till you
08:14 get a load of Enceladus.
08:16 Due to the fresh ice on its surface, the Saturnian moon is the most reflective body in the solar
08:21 system.
08:22 Of the 290 moons so far discovered in the solar system, the moon isn't the biggest.
08:28 That honour goes to Jupiter's moon, Ganymede.
08:31 But it is still pretty big, coming in at fifth place.
08:34 Two planets have no moons at all, Mercury and Venus.
08:38 The temperatures on Mars are so extreme that were you to stand on the planet's equator
08:43 at noon, the temperature at your feet would be 75 degrees Fahrenheit, while at your head
08:48 it would be 32.
08:49 What's the best weight loss program?
08:52 Go to Mars!
08:53 A person who weighs 220 pounds on Earth would weigh only 83 pounds on Mars.
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09:14 If you could travel at the speed of light, it would still take you 26,000 years to reach
09:19 the centre of our galaxy.
09:21 At the speed of the fastest spacecraft we've built so far, it would take over 40 million.
09:32 Without gravity to pull the ink, scientists had to create a special "space pen" that
09:37 would work in space.
09:38 Halley's Comet can be seen from Earth once every 75 to 79 years.
09:43 The last sighting occurred in 1986; it will come around again around the year 2061.
09:50 The largest reservoir of water ever found in our universe was discovered in 2011.
09:55 The water, equal to more than 140 trillion times the amount in all of our oceans, surrounds
10:01 a quasar 12 billion light-years away.
10:04 When it comes to volcanoes, no one beats Venus, with more than any other planet in our solar
10:09 system.
10:10 We're talking more than 1,600 major volcanoes, and so many smaller ones that we haven't
10:15 been able to estimate them yet.
10:17 The crust of Venus, however, is dotted with thousands of volcanoes, including Maxwell
10:21 Montes, a volcano almost as tall as Mount Everest.
10:25 The Earth is 81 times heavier than the moon, which is why it orbits us and not the other
10:31 way around.
10:32 You may know that the universe is expanding, but did you know that the expansion is actually
10:36 speeding up?
10:37 This came as a surprise to scientists in 1998, who expected gravitational force to be slowing
10:43 the expansion down.
10:45 To explain this, they posited the existence of dark energy.
10:49 Scientists have confirmed the existence of over 5,000 exoplanets - planets outside the
10:53 solar system.
10:55 The closest are 4.2 light-years from Earth, orbiting Proxima Centauri.
11:06 The space between galaxies isn't empty, at least not exactly.
11:09 It's filled with a rarefied plasma, primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, called the
11:14 intergalactic medium, but the average density is less than one atom per cubic metre.
11:20 In about five billion years, the sun will become a red giant, engulfing the inner planets
11:25 and wiping out life on Earth.
11:27 Hopefully, if we're still around, we'll have a backup plan by then.
11:31 Is your mind metaphorically blown?
11:34 Let us know when it happened in the comments.
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