Be sure to comment which was the weirdest, coolest and which one was the most interesting fact.
1) The Solar System doesn't end at Pluto.
Pluto isn't where the solar system ends. The edge of the solar system is 1000 times farther away than distance from Sun to Pluto. It is around 1921.56 AU. An Au is an astrological unit and is 150 million km. This means the solar system continues on past the Kuiper belt and into the Oort cloud region of the solar system. So we still have still a lot of unidentified objects in our solar system to discover.
2) The sun facts.
The sun is actually white. This is basically because it is made of plasma. Plasma is often called the fourth state of matter. It comes after gas. A good example of plasma is a lightning bolt.
3) Earth Rotation.
Due to earth's fast rotation you are spinning 21,639,744 km per day. Picture this, the milky galaxy way is spinning around the central black hole. The sun is moving around in the milky way. The moon is orbit earth while orbiting the sun. The earth is moving around the sun. You are moving around the earth. Hmm, good thing you aren't feeling the orbit due to earth's big gravity or you would be pretty dizzy.
4) We might have another sun.
 |
| Nemesis should look like this... |
This star is probably what caused the dinosaurs extinction. A cycle of earth's big asteroid collisions happens around once every 26 million years. This is because Nemesis flings comets and asteroids at earth and the other planets in the solar system.
5) We might have another planet.
Ever since the discovery of Neptune in 1846 scientists have tried to explain Uranus' and Neptune's weird orbit around the sun. Neptune and Uranus had loopy and weird orbits. Every so often Neptune orbit comes closer to the sun than Uranus' orbit. Many scientists discovered that Neptune and Uranus have a weird non-circular orbit around the sun. Many hypothesized that a planet with a mass big enough to mess up with orbits off some planets must be around the size off Jupiter. We are still searching for Planet X. Planet X is also sometimes called Nibiru. There are many conspiracies theories that NASA is trying to hide Planet X from the public, but you can choose to believe that or not.
6) All the gas planets have rings.
Believe it or not, all the gas planets have rings. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all have rings. Saturn are big and bright enough to see with your naked eye. Uranus' rings can be seen through a telescope from earth. Jupiter and Neptune's rings were not discovered until satellites orbited around those planets. Saturn and Uranus' rings were first to be discovered because they had the most visible rings.
8) Venus facts
Venus is the only planet to rotate around its axis clockwise. All the other planets rotate on their anti-clockwise, with the exception of Uranus which spins weirdly. Venus' day is longer than its year. Venus' year is 224 earth days long whereas its day is 243 earth days long. Venus can reach up to around 870 degrees.
9) Space Rocks and Pluto.
Pluto is very small its smaller than the United States of America. Earth's moon is bigger than Pluto!
Most asteroids and comets are smaller than Pluto.
So most asteroids don't have much of a chance of causing worldwide chaos, because their are tiny compared to earth. But in fact 50 tonnes of space dust falls on earth per day. Most asteroids burn leaving the remains of the asteroid, dust. Quite a bit of the Earth's dust comes from space.
Spacecraft's are even highly unlikely to hit an asteroid even when they are in the asteroid belt. You see picture you combine all the asteroids in the asteroid belt into a ball. You would only get around it to 4% off the mass of our moon. Plus the asteroids are spread out in an area between Mars and Jupiter. The distance between Mars and Jupiter is around 555 million km or 3.7 AU to be precise.
Mercury has no atmosphere or water. It also has no seasons. Mercury can be seen from earth with your eyes. Mercury's year is 77 earth days, making it the fastest planet to orbit around the sun. Mercury's temperature can range from 430 degrees Celsius to -170 degrees Celsius due to what side is facing the sun. You can't see Mercury in December because of the sun's glare that covers it. Mercury is also the least round planet.
Facts I missed...
-Jupiter's moon Ganymede is bigger than Pluto. It is also bigger than Mercury it isn't considered a planet because it is orbiting Jupiter.
-Scientists once thought that Neptune and Uranus rain diamonds. That is not true though.
-The Jovian planets is another way to call the Gas planets.
-The Kuiper Belt is around 20 to 200 times bigger than the Asteroid belt. It is also more denser.
-Some people call Uranus and Neptune the ice giants.
-You could fit all the planets in Jupiter and there would still be room to spare. This is from mass not size.
-Jupiter's big red spot is a storm that has been raging for around 300 years. The storm is 3 times the size of earth.
-A billion earths could fit in Saturn's ring.
-Neptune was the first planet discovered by mathematical calculations, before it was seen by a telescope!
-Neptune's winds are the fastest in the solar system so far... It can reaches speeds of 2,400 km per hour.
-Uranus is the only planet to be named after a Greek god called Uranus rather than a Roman god. The greek god Uranus is god of the sky.
-Uranus is larger in diameter but smaller in mass compared to Neptune.
-Solar wind? So is there wind in space? Well not really, wind is caused by the movement of air. Instead in space solar wind is just plasma particles. This is what gives us heat. The particles just drift off in space and are created by the sun, and get shot into space. You can think of it like dust particles that are in our air, but we can barely see them. Voyager 1 has recently passed the sun's solar wind boundary after reaching about 17.3 billion km from our sun.
-The farthest humans have travelled away from earth is the moon. The distance between the Earth and moon is quite large. In fact if you were to see how much of each planet individually you could fit from the length of Earth to the moon it would look like this...
Mercury: 78 times.
Venus: 31 times.
Mars: 56 times.
Jupiter: 2 times or 2.7.
Saturn: 3 times (Including its rings)
Uranus: 7 times.
Neptune: 7 times.
Of course after that gravity would kick in and our moon and the planets would all collide into each other.
