The most unusual facts about space. Interesting facts about space for children. Other terrestrial planets

In this article we have prepared for you a lot of fascinating information about space and astronauts, as well as about the structure of the Universe in general. You may already know some things, but you will hear some things for the first time.

So, in front of you the most interesting facts about space.

Tenth planet of the solar system

Did you know that in 2003, American astronomers managed to discover the 10th planet located beyond? It was named Eris.

This discovery was made thanks to new and improved technology. Soon other space objects were also discovered. They, along with Pluto and Eris, were usually called transplutonian (see).

It is worth noting that such discoveries are also of interest to scientists because they are trying to find out what advantages and dangers this or that cosmic body may conceal.

Scientists are constantly searching for life on other planets. This is due to the frightening events that are unfolding today on. It's about about the threat nuclear war, epidemics, global disasters and many other factors.

Mysterious Moon

When telling interesting facts about space, one cannot fail to mention. After all, despite the fact that, compared to other celestial bodies, the Moon has been studied best, we still don’t know much about it.

Here are just some of the mysteries whose answers have not yet been found:

• Why is the Moon so large? It is important to understand here that in the solar system the planets do not have natural satellites(see), comparable in size to the Moon.
• What is the reason for the fact that the diameter of the lunar disk at the moment of total eclipse perfectly covers the disk of the sun?
• What makes the Moon rotate in a regular circular orbit? This question is difficult to answer, since the orbits of the remaining satellites are elliptical?

Where is the Earth's twin located?

According to some scientists, the Earth has a twin. It turned out that on the satellite, conditions are very similar to our planet.

A similar air shell is also present and observed there in sufficient quantities.

On at the moment Titanium is of particular interest in scientific circles and continues to be actively studied by specialists.

The Mystery of Mars

The Red Planet is a nickname it received because of its color. Water was discovered on this planet, and a suitable temperature and atmosphere for the existence of living organisms was determined.

In the mid-20th century, there was a popular song that apple trees would soon bloom on Mars. However, it still remains uninhabited.

Scientists are trying to find any signs of life, but conducting research is quite difficult. The main problem is the long distance to this coveted planet.

An interesting fact is that today Mars is the second most studied object in space after Earth.

Why did flights to the moon stop?

Since the Moon is closest to the Earth, it never ceases to interest people's minds. In 1969, they visited it and managed to collect important space data about this satellite. Today, scientists continue research in one form or another.

However, after American astronauts flew to the Moon, the program to study the satellite was suddenly stopped.

Naturally, this leads to many questions and causes bewilderment: why was a successful space exploration project closed without sufficient grounds?

There is an opinion that there was no flight at all, and all the photos and videos allegedly taken in space were simply falsified in an American film studio.

Considering the fact that at that time cold war was in full swing, such a forgery is quite possible to assume.

The first astronaut to visit the Moon, Neil Armstrong, argued that there was another form of life there, in the fight against which man could not emerge victorious. However, his opinion does little to clarify the situation as a whole.

Unfortunately, today many facts about this space object remain classified. Perhaps in the near future we will learn some new interesting facts about the Moon and what space researchers were hiding from us.

Space toilet

An interesting fact is that before sending the first man into space, scientists faced an unusual problem: what kind of toilet should the astronauts be able to use normally in a state of weightlessness?

It is only at first glance that it may seem that creating a toilet for astronauts is an easy task. In reality, everything is much more complicated.

The sewage system must function without interruption. For example, during takeoff spaceship and his subsequent spacewalk, the astronauts have to use special diapers.

As soon as they began to build the rocket, the designers paid special attention to the invention of plumbing devices. They were developed taking into account the individual anatomical characteristics of the crew members.

Every year, toilets in spacecraft became more and more versatile, thoughtful and comfortable.

Superstitions on board

Astronauts, like other people, have many superstitions.

For example, when going into space, they take a branch of wormwood with them so that its smell reminds them of Earth. Before launch, Russian cosmonauts always play the song of the group “Earthlings” - “Earth in the Porthole”.

The founder of practical Soviet cosmonautics, never allowed space flights to take place on Mondays. He himself did not comment on this, although because of this decision he had many conflicts with management.

Once, when the launch was finally carried out on Monday, by fateful accident a whole series of accidents occurred.

On October 24, 1960, a ballistic missile suddenly exploded at Baikonur. From that moment on, this sad date became associated with bad luck. And today, on this day, no types of work are usually carried out at the cosmodromes.

Unknown facts about space and Russian cosmonautics

The peak of popularity of Russian cosmonautics occurred in Soviet era. Scientists and designers managed to achieve phenomenal results that amazed the whole world.

However, against the backdrop of victories, there were also tragic moments that need to be treated with understanding. Space exploration was a new and unknown direction in science, so mistakes were inevitable.

Here are some interesting facts that you may not have heard of.

• On the monument erected in Star City, you can see a daisy that the astronaut is holding in his hand (see).
• Many people think that the first living beings sent into space were, but this is not so. In fact they were.
• Do you know why in the middle of the 20th century, 2 cosmodromes were built in the Soviet Union? This was done with the aim of misleading the enemy. Wooden structures imitating genuine space structures were erected from Baikonur at a distance of 300 km.

Fun discoveries and interesting facts about space

• Saturn has a very low density and is very light planet. If he could be immersed in water, he would not drown in it.
• Among all the planets solar system, is the biggest. Surprisingly, all the planets orbiting the Sun could fit inside it.
• The very first star catalog was compiled by the ancient scientist Hipparchus, who lived in the 2nd century BC. e.
• In 1980, the “Lunar Embassy” was formed, engaged in the sale of territories on the Moon. By the way, as of today, about 8% of the lunar surface has already been sold out. So if you are interested in space from a practical point of view, hurry up!
• An interesting fact is that the Americans spent huge amounts of money on developing a special pen that could write in space. After all, in a state of weightlessness, ink does not flow out of the rod, as it does on earth. Soviet cosmonauts We considered this problem somewhat far-fetched, and took ... a pencil into space to take notes.

NASA's Most Unusual Statements

Throughout its history, NASA has made many different statements, some of which were very unusual and even strange.

• Being in zero gravity, astronauts suffer from “space sickness,” accompanied by nausea and pain. This occurs due to disruption of the full functioning of the inner ear.
• The fluid in the astronaut's body tends to get into the head, as a result of which his nose becomes blocked and his face visibly swells.
• In outer space, a person becomes taller due to the lack of pressure on his spine.
• A snoring person on Earth, in conditions of weightlessness, will not make any sounds.

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Man has been looking at the stars, probably since his appearance on the planet. People have been in space and are already planning to explore new planets, but even scientists still do not know what is happening in the depths of the universe. We have collected 15 facts about space that will help you modern science I can't give an explanation yet.

When the monkey first raised his head and looked at the stars, he became a man. So says the legend. However, despite all the centuries of scientific development, humanity still does not know what is going on in the depths of the universe. Here are 15 strange facts about space.

1. Dark energy

According to some scientists, dark energy is the force that moves galaxies and expands the Universe. This is just a hypothesis, and such matter has not been discovered, but scientists suggest that almost 3/4 (74%) of our Universe consists of it.

2. Dark matter

Most of the remaining quarter (22%) of the Universe consists of dark matter. Dark matter has mass, but it is invisible. Scientists realize its existence only due to the force it exerts on other objects in the Universe.

3. Missing baryons

Intergalactic gas accounts for 3.6%, and stars and planets only 0.4% of the entire universe. However, in reality, almost half of this remaining "visible" matter is missing. It was called baryonic matter and scientists are struggling with the mystery of where it could be located.

4. How stars explode

Scientists know that when stars eventually run out of fuel, they end their lives in a giant explosion. However, no one knows the exact mechanics of the process.

5. High-energy cosmic rays

For more than a decade, scientists have been observing something that should not exist according to the laws of physics, at least according to earthly ones. The solar system is literally flooded with a stream of cosmic radiation, the particle energy of which is hundreds of millions of times greater than that of any artificial particle obtained in the laboratory. Nobody knows where they come from.

6. Solar corona

The corona is the upper layers of the Sun's atmosphere. As you know, they are very hot - more than 6 million degrees Celsius. The only question is how the sun keeps this layer so heated.

7. Where did galaxies come from?

Although science is lately came up with a lot of explanations about the origin of stars and planets, galaxies still remain a mystery.

8. Other terrestrial planets

Already in the 21st century, scientists have discovered many planets that orbit other stars and may well be habitable. But for now the question remains whether there is life on at least one of them.

9. Multiple Universes

Robert Anton Wilson proposed the theory of multiple universes, each with its own physical laws.

10. Alien objects

There have been numerous recorded cases of astronauts claiming to have seen UFOs or other strange phenomena hinting at an extraterrestrial presence. Conspiracy theorists claim that governments are hiding many things they know about aliens.

11. Rotation axis of Uranus

All other planets have an almost vertical axis of rotation relative to the plane of their orbit around the Sun. However, Uranus practically “lies on its side” - its rotation axis is tilted relative to its orbit by 98 degrees. There are many theories as to why this happened, but scientists do not have a single conclusive proof.

12. Storm on Jupiter

For the last 400 years, a giant storm has been raging in the atmosphere of Jupiter, 3 times the size of the Earth. It is difficult for scientists to explain why this phenomenon lasts so long.

13. Temperature discrepancy between the solar poles

Why South Pole The sun is colder than North Pole? Nobody knows this.

14. Gamma-ray bursts

Incomprehensibly bright explosions in the depths of the Universe, during which colossal amounts of energy are released, have been observed over the past 40 years at different times and in random areas of space. In a few seconds, such a gamma-ray burst releases as much energy as the Sun would produce in 10 billion years. There is still no plausible explanation for their existence.

15. Saturn's icy rings

Scientists know that the rings of this huge planet are made of ice. But why and how they arose remains a mystery.

Although there are more than enough unsolved space mysteries, today space tourism has become a reality. There is, at a minimum, . The main thing is the desire and willingness to part with a tidy sum of money.

Real sizes of all solar system objects

• The sun is 300,000 times larger than our planet Earth.
• The sun rotates completely around its axis in 25-35 days.
• It takes light 8.3 minutes to get from the Sun to our Earth, so if the Sun goes out, we won’t know it right away.
• Earth, Mars, Mercury and Venus are also called " inner planets", since they are located closest to the Sun.
• The distance between the Earth and the Sun is defined as the Astronomical Unit (abbreviated AU) and is equal to 149,597,870 kilometers.
• The Sun is the largest object in the Solar System.
• The Sun loses up to 1,000,000 tons of its mass every second due to the solar wind.
• The solar system is about 4.6 billion years old. Scientists estimate that she will live for another 5,000 million years.

Mercury

• Mercury and Venus are unique in that they do not have any satellites.
• Mariner 10 was the only spacecraft to ever visit Mercury. He managed to take photographs of 45% of its surface.
• The hottest planet in our solar system is Venus. Many people believe that it should be Mercury, because it is closer to the Sun, but since Venus has too much in its atmosphere carbon dioxide high density, a greenhouse effect is formed on the planet.
• A day on Mercury is equivalent to 58 Earth days, but at the same time a year is only 88 days! Let us explain that this difference is due to the fact that Mercury rotates extremely slowly around its axis, but rotates quite quickly around the Sun.
• Mercury has no atmosphere, which means there is no wind or any other weather.

• Venus is the only planet that rotates in the opposite direction relative to the other planets in the solar system.
• Venus has more volcanoes than any other planet in our solar system.

Black hole sucks matter from a star (computer graphics)

• Stars located near black holes can be torn apart by them.
• From the point of view of the Theory of Relativity, in addition to black holes, white holes should also exist, although we have not yet discovered one (the existence of black holes is also questioned).

Armstrong's footprint on the moon

• The first man on the moon was from the USA and his name was Neil Armstrong.
• Armstrong's first footprint is still on the moon.
• All traces and imprints of the lunar rovers will remain on the surface of the Moon forever, since there is no atmosphere there, and therefore no wind. Although theoretically all this could disappear due to meteor shower or any other bombardment object.
• The tides on our planet are formed due to the gravity of the Sun and Moon.
• NASA's LCROSS Research Satellite has discovered evidence of large amounts of water on the Moon.
• Buzz Aldrin became the second man on the moon.
• Interestingly, Buzz Aldrin's mother's name was "Luna".
• Our Moon moves away from the Earth by 4 cm per year.
• Our moon is about 4.5 billion years old.
• February 1865 and 1999 were the only months without a full moon.
• The mass of the Moon is 1/80 of the mass of the Earth.
• It takes light 1.3 seconds to travel the distance from the Moon to the Earth.

Mars and Earth

• The tallest mountain, known as Olympus Mons, is located on Mars. The height of the peak reaches 25 km, which is about 3 times higher than Everest.
• Mars has a much lower gravitational field, so a person weighing 100 kg on Earth would weigh only 38 kg on the surface of Mars.
• There are 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds in a Martian day.

Jupiter and some of its moons

• Scientific calculations suggest the presence of 67 moons of Jupiter, but so far only 57 of them have been discovered and named.
• 4 planets of the solar system are gas giants: Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn and Uranus.
• The planet with the most moons is Jupiter with 67 moons.
• Jupiter is also known as the dumping ground for the entire solar system (or Earth's shield), as large percentage asteroids are attracted by its gravitational force.

Saturn and its rings

• Saturn is the second largest planet in our world after Jupiter.
• If you were driving at a speed of 121 km per hour, it would take you 258 days to travel around one of Saturn's rings.
• Enceladus is one of the smallest moons of Saturn. This satellite reflects up to 90% sunlight, which even exceeds the percentage of light reflected from snow!
• Although Saturn is only the second most massive planet, it is the first in brightness!
• Since Saturn has low density, if you put it in water, it will float!

• The satellite Triton gradually moves closer to Neptune as it rotates.
• Scientists' calculations predict that Triton and Neptune will eventually come so close that Triton will be torn apart, and Neptune will have many more rings than even Saturn currently has.
• Triton is also the only large satellite in the entire solar system that rotates in the opposite direction to the rotation of its planet.
• Neptune takes 60,190 days (almost 165 years) to circle the Sun. That is, since its discovery in 1846, it has completed only one rotation cycle!
• The Kuiper region is a region of the solar system located beyond Neptune, which consists of heaps of various debris left over from the creation of the solar system.

• Uranus has a blue glow due to the methane in its atmosphere, since methane does not transmit red light.
• Uranus has relatively recently discovered 27 satellites.
• Uranus has a unique tilt, due to which one night on it lasts, just imagine, 21 years!
• Uranus was originally called "George's Star".

Pluto is smaller than Russia

List of dwarf planets and other small objects

• Pluto is even smaller than the Moon!
• Charon is a satellite of Pluto, but it is not much smaller in size.
• A day on Pluto lasts 6 days and 9 hours.
• Pluto (English: Pluto) is named after the Roman god, and not after the Disney dog, as some believe.
• In 2006, the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet.
• There are currently 5 dwarf planets in the solar system: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Eris and Makemake.

Soviet satellite

• First artificial satellite Earth was launched by the USSR in 1957 and was called Sputnik 1.
• The first man to go into space was from Soviet Union and his name was Yuri Gagarin.
• The second man in space was German Titov. He was Yuri Gagarin's understudy.
• The first woman cosmonaut was USSR citizen Valentina Tereshkova.
• Soviet and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev is the record holder for the time spent in space. His record reaches 803 days, 9 hours and 39 minutes, which is equivalent to 2.2 years!

International Space Station

• The International Space Station is the largest object that humanity has ever launched into space.
• The International Space Station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes.
• The Buzz Lightyear toy from the famous cartoon "Toy Story" was in outer space! He spent 15 months aboard the ISS and returned to Earth on September 11, 2009.

Comparison of the Earth with other space objects

• The Earth's daily rotation increases by 0.0001 seconds every year.
• Stars appear to twinkle in the night sky because the light coming from them is destroyed in the Earth's atmosphere.
• Only 24 people have seen our planet from space. But thanks to the Google Earth project, other people have downloaded the view of the Earth from space more than 500 million times.
• Recently, the movement “For flat earth" And it is no longer clear whether they are joking or arguing seriously. Any person with logic can independently carry out many observations and establish that the Earth has a spherical shape (more precisely, a geoid, a slightly flattened sphere).

Whirlpool Galaxy

• The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) was the very first cosmic spiral object.
• A light year is the distance that light travels in one year. This distance is equal to 95 trillion kilometers!
• The width of our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years.
• The gravitational force of large objects sometimes tears apart comets flying nearby.
• Any liquid that ends up in free movement in space, will take the shape of a sphere due to surface tension forces. The sphere will then have the smallest possible surface area that will be possible for this liquid.
• It's funny, but we know much more about space than we know about the depths of our oceans.

Prospero X-3

• The only satellite launched by Britain is called Prospero X-3.
• The chance of being killed by space debris is 1 in 5 billion.
• There are three types of galaxies in space: spiral, elliptical and irregular.
• Our Milky Way galaxy consists of approximately 200,000,000 stars.
• In the northern part of the sky you can see two galaxies - the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33).
• The closest galaxy to us is the Andromeda galaxy.
• The first supernova not from our galaxy was first observed in the Andromeda galaxy and was called Andromeda S. It exploded in 1885.
• The Andromeda Galaxy is visible in the sky as a small spot of light. It is the farthest object that you can observe with the naked eye.
• If you screamed in space, no one would hear you, since sound requires an atmosphere to propagate, and there is none in space.
• Due to the lack of gravity in space, astronauts can grow approximately 5 cm in height.
• There are a total of 166 satellites in our solar system.

R136a1 compared to the Sun and Earth

• The largest known star is star R136a1, whose mass is 265-320 times greater than the Sun!
• The most distant galaxy we have discovered is called GRB 090423, which is 13.6 billion light years away! This means that the light emanating from it began its journey only 600,000 years after the formation of the Universe!
• The most massive object known to us is Quasar OJ287. The predicted mass should be 18 billion times the mass of the Sun.

Hubble image shows some of the most distant galaxies visible using modern technology, each of which consists of billions of stars. It's just part of the Universe.

• Asteroids are byproducts of the formation of the solar system, which arose more than 4 billion years ago.
• The first mammal to go into space was the Soviet dog Laika. Before her, there were a number of unsuccessful launches with fatal consequences for animals.
• The term "astronaut" comes straight from Ancient Greece and literally consists of the words “star” (astro) and sailor (naut), so astronaut means “star sailor”.
• If you add up all the time that people spent in space, you get 30,400 days or 83 years!
• Red dwarf stars have the smallest mass and can burn continuously for 10 trillion years.
• There are about 2*10 23 stars in space. In Russian, this number is equal to 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!
• Since there is no gravity in space, ordinary pens will not work there!
• There are 88 constellations in our night sky, some of which coincide with the names of the zodiac signs.
• The center of a comet is called the "nucleus".
• Even before 240 BC. Chinese astronomers began documenting the appearance of Comet Galileo.

If you were to approach two respected astrophysicists and ask them, for example, about the nature of the origin of black holes, you would witness the beginning of a heated and lengthy debate. The fact is that scientists really believe that they know almost everything about space. However, new discoveries are made regularly, surprising ordinary people, and sometimes taking astrophysicists by surprise. For your attention – 10 incredible facts about space that amazes the imagination and forces you to reconsider your worldview!

10. Water pools in space

A giant cloud of steam caught in a gravitational pull black hole in the depths of the Universe

In 2011, astronomers accidentally discovered a giant cloud of vapor caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole deep in the Universe. Thus, they found the largest volume of water in history. The clouds, called "reservoirs" by astronomers, hold 140 trillion times more liquid than is contained in all of our planet's oceans combined.

It turned out that these clouds are not much younger than the Universe itself, and this interested scientists even more. Thus, Matt Bradford from NASA stated that this discovery is further proof of the fact that water existed in the Universe even at the earliest stages of its existence.

So if we ever escape from Earth, or if water supplies run out, we will know where to find it. All that remains is to build a giant intergalactic pump. But the main problem is not even this: the gigantic water cloud is located at a distance of 10 billion light years from our planet.

9. It will take you 225 million years to travel a light year

Length light years is about 9.5 trillion kilometers

To cover the distance that light travels in 1 year, a person needs to walk without stopping for more than 200 million years! The length of the path will be about 9.5 trillion kilometers. In other words, if you had started walking right before dinosaurs appeared on Earth, you would have reached the finish line approximately now.

Jessica Cheng, editor of Popular Science magazine, believes such a trip would cause an unprecedented number of problems. First, you would need almost 12 billion pairs of shoes. Secondly, you would burn 45 calories for every kilometer you walked, so you would need an unlimited amount of food to replenish your energy.

Cheng also says that in 225 million years you wouldn't be as far along as you might think. In astronomical terms, 1 light year is a tiny distance. At the end of the journey, you would still be much closer to the Sun than to any other star. The fact is that the distance to the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4.22 light years. That is, it would take almost 1 billion years to get there!

8. Eros - the asteroid of wealth

Eros is a cosmic treasury containing untold riches

In 1998, one of spacecraft explored the asteroid Eros that approached Earth and transmitted the data to scientists. The latter, after analyzing the information received, were able to make a loud statement. It turned out that Eros is a cosmic treasury containing untold riches. After analyzing the size of the asteroid, NASA suggested that if, like other asteroids, it consists of 3% metal, then it contains about 1.8 billion tons of gold deposits and other precious materials, such as platinum.

According to Dr David Whitehouse, BBC science editor, Eros is indeed a large cosmic body, but not the largest. Dozens of more massive asteroids are known. Whitehouse also took into account the volume of deposits of precious metals in the depths of Eros and calculated that the total value of this cosmic body reaches approximately 20 trillion dollars. This is more than the annual GDP of the United States of America. Unfortunately (and at the same time, fortunately), people are not destined to profit from these riches in the near future. We have not yet learned how to stop asteroids or extract minerals from them directly in space. Therefore, the only option for “appropriating” the gold and platinum of Eros involves his fall to Earth. But in such a scenario, no one would have been able to get rich: the collision would have been fatal for all of humanity.

7. Scientists know of 1,397 asteroids capable of destroying life on Earth

The trajectory of 1397 potentially dangerous space bodies has been calculated for many years to come

In an attempt to prevent dramatic scenes like Armageddon, NASA is monitoring 1,397 cosmic bodies in our solar system. Collision with them would lead to the end of existence human civilization. You can rest assured: any body with a diameter of more than 100 meters, approaching the Earth less than 8 million kilometers, will be detected in time by specialists from NASA.

Scientists model their orbits on computers and thanks to this they can predict where a particular asteroid will be at a certain point in time. The trajectory of 1397 potentially dangerous cosmic bodies has been calculated for many years to come. However, the threat of a collision with one of them in the foreseeable future remains quite high.

6. The ISS moves in Earth’s orbit at a speed of 8 km/s

The International Space Station orbits our planet at speeds far exceeding the fastest aircraft.

According to NASA, the International Space Station orbits our planet at speeds far faster than the fastest aircraft. It reaches approximately 29 thousand kilometers per hour (8 kilometers per second). This allows the ISS crew to see the sun rise every 92 minutes! By the way, there are sites where you can see space station​​in action and track its location in real time.

5. There are more stars in space than words ever spoken by people.

No one knows and will never know the real number of stars

According to the publishers of Scientific American magazine, there are many more stars in the Universe than words ever spoken by all people who have lived on Earth. This number is so huge that it is beyond human understanding. For example, Nicola Willett Mars believes that there are at least 70000000000000000000000 (70 sextillion) stars in the Universe. He proceeded from the assumption that there are more than 100 billion galaxies in space, each of which contains billions of stars. That is, the calculated number is nothing more than the result of a theoretical calculation.

The only thing we can say is that it is possible to judge the number of stars in the Universe only with a very to a large extent errors. No one knows and will never know the real figure.

4. The moon suffers from moonquakes

Seismometers placed on the landing sites of the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972 transmit a lot of useful information

When Clive Neal, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, and his team of 15 scientists analyzed data from sensors installed on the Moon, he came to a surprising conclusion: our satellite is seismically active.

Seismometers placed on the landing sites of the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972 transmit a lot of useful information to Earth. So, thanks to it, scientists were able to determine that there are at least 4 types of moonquakes:

• Deep moonquakes, the epicenter of which is at a depth of about 700 kilometers. Most likely, this is how the Earth’s gravity affects our satellite.
• Minor moonquakes caused by meteorite impacts.
• Thermal moonquakes. Their cause is the expansion and contraction of the surface layer of soil when heated by the sun's rays to +100°C and above and its subsequent cooling. It is known that the “night” in some areas of the Moon lasts as long as 2 weeks, and during this time the earth manages to cool down to -120°C.
• Small moonquakes. They most often occur at a depth of 20-30 kilometers from the surface of the Moon.

In fact, no one can say, without the risk of making a mistake, what exactly causes moonquakes. Their only known difference from earthly ones is that they last much longer. The fact is that the crust on the Moon is not so compressed by gravity, therefore during moonquakes the surface of our satellite vibrates, gradually fading, for a very long time, like a tuning fork. On Earth there is water and minerals that quickly dampen the energy of vibrations. Amazingly, during moonquakes, tremors are felt for up to 10 minutes!

The Blue Planet is a huge gas giant whose orbit passes very close to its star.

Using the Hubble telescope, scientists were able to discover an azure-blue planet in deep space. She got the name HD189733b. This planet is a huge gas giant whose orbit passes at a very close distance to the star. The conditions there are truly hellish: wind speeds in the atmosphere reach 7,000 kilometers per hour. And the estimated surface temperature of this “beast” is about 1000 degrees Celsius!

The planet may appear calm and Earth-like in appearance, but in reality its bluish hue comes not from the placid tropical ocean, but from silicate particles that scatter blue light. If humanity could travel between the stars, the conditions on HD189733b would seem to us perhaps the most aggressive and unsuitable for life. Unfortunately, we are not yet able to send at least a satellite to this planet - it is located at a distance of 63 light years from Earth.

2. Earth Has More Than One Moon

There are a number of “near-Earth” type asteroids that follow our planet as it rotates around the Sun

To the question “How many satellites does our planet have?” Most people will answer without hesitation: “One.” But this is only partly true. While the Moon is indeed the only celestial body moving in a strict orbit around the Earth, there are a number of "near-Earth" asteroids that follow our planet as it orbits the Sun. They are called "co-orbitals". At least 6 co-orbitals are known to be trapped gravitational field Earth. But don't try to look into the night sky to see them: these cosmic bodies cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Of course, one can agree with many astronomers who assume that these co-orbitals are not satellites in the traditional sense of the word. However, they have significant differences from other asteroids. Like Earth, they orbit the Sun in about 1 year, and sometimes even come close enough to our planet to exert little gravitational influence. That is, they can still be considered our satellites with great reservations.

Robert Jedick, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, says that at any given time there are 1 or 2 asteroids with a diameter of more than 1 meter orbiting in low Earth orbit. Maybe we should still reconsider our worldview and recognize that our planet has not one Moon, but several. Moreover, some of them come closer to us and move away at different times of the year!

1. There are less than 9 planets in our solar system

The International Astronomical Union decided to name the criteria by which one could judge whether a particular cosmic body is a planet

Forget what you were told in astronomy class at school. In fact, in our solar system there are not 9 planets, but only 8. Several years ago, the International Astronomical Union decided to name the criteria by which one could judge whether a particular cosmic body is a planet:

• Such an object must have a fairly large mass and a round shape (but not necessarily a perfectly spherical one).
• There should be no other planets nearby.
• The body must rotate around the Sun in a constant orbit.

First space object, who was demoted from honorary title and renamed it “small planet”, became Pluto. This happened in 2006. Note that the debate over whether Pluto can be called a planet has not subsided for many years in a row. After all, it is, in fact, a huge ice rock, not much different from asteroids. Thus, there are 8 “official” planets left in our solar system.

The depths of space hide countless secrets, many of which humanity has yet to unravel. Without a doubt, amazing discoveries await us ahead, which will turn modern ideas about the Universe upside down and bring us a little closer to understanding the secrets of the universe.

On January 27, 1967, an international document was signed that formed the basis of space law and declared Space the property of all mankind. And for this day we have prepared for you a selection of the most amazing facts about the universe

1. A day on the planet Venus lasts longer than a year. And all because this planet rotates around the Sun noticeably faster than around its own axis.

2. It is much easier to hide emotions in space, because due to the lack of gravity, it is simply physically impossible to cry there.

3. There is no wind on the Moon, so any trace left there will remain for centuries and even millennia.

4. How more planet, the stronger the force of gravity acts on it. So if on Earth a person weighs 60 kilograms, then on Jupiter (whose radius is more than 10 times the radius of the Earth) his weight would already be 142 kilograms.

5. The density of Saturn is almost half that of water. It turns out that if such a huge glass of water could be found, Saturn would float on its surface.

6. If you connect two metal parts in space, they will instantly weld to each other. On Earth, this is hindered by oxides that form on the surface of metals under the influence of our atmosphere.

7. Every year the Moon moves away from the Earth by almost four centimeters.

8. Due to the lack of atmosphere, all shadows on the Moon are completely black.

9. Anyone who is sure that there is nothing valuable in the outer space surrounding our planet should change their minds. In 2011, scientists discovered the planet PSR J1719-1438 b, almost entirely composed of diamond.

10. Lightning often occurs in space; scientists observe them on Mars and Saturn. In most cases, “black holes” are to blame for their appearance.

11. Everyone knows that falling stars visible from the Earth are actually meteors burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. But the stars themselves can also move, just very, very rarely; This happens to only one celestial body out of a hundred million.

12. The water discovered on Mars is heavier than that on Earth: it contains five times more deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen with an additional neutron.

13. It has been proven that there is no magnetic field. However, the stones brought by the astronauts from the satellite had magnetic properties.

14. If even an insignificant amount of solar matter (for example, the size of a pinhead) fell on Earth, it would begin to absorb oxygen at such an incredible speed that it would destroy all life within a radius of 160 kilometers in less than a second!

15. The largest volcano known to mankind is located on Mars. The giant named “Olympus” has a length of more than 600 kilometers, and its height is 27 kilometers. Which means it's three times higher highest point earth - Mount Everest.

16. Warming and giving us life solar energy originated in the solar core 30,000 years ago. She spent all these years trying to overcome the super-dense shell of the heavenly body.

17. Venus is the only planet in the solar system that rotates counterclockwise.

18. Official scientific theory claims that a person is able to survive in outer space without a spacesuit for as long as ninety seconds, but only if he immediately exhales all the air from his lungs.

19. Scientists from Harvard University have proven that some of the Earth's rocks are of Martian origin. True, a very small part: only 0.67 percent.

20. Earth's gravity makes us lower: in outer space, the human spine “unclamps” by more than five centimeters.