Incredible Facts About Our Universe

When you try to wrap your brain around how infinite the universe really is, it can be a staggering defeat. Trying to ponder the inner workings of just our solar system will stump the most prestigious astrophysicist. Every new bit of discovery can contradict our current mainstream understanding. It’s a vicious cycle of defeat. For all of history, man has been trying to make sense of it. Maybe we aren’t supposed to ever figure out everything? Wouldn’t life be boring if we all knew everything? Seriously what a snooze fest life would be. Humanity needs curiosity in order keeps us going and thriving as a species. Although we’ve come a long way in technology and science, shockingly we still only know 5 percent there is to know about the Earth’s oceans! We’ve only just discovered or theorized a fraction of things like an why there is an alcoholic gas cloud floating in the center of our galaxy or how Einstein’s Theory of Relativity works. This list contains a few, of the many, incredible facts about the universe that will undoubtedly make you stop and think man’s favorite thought "wow, really?”

Burning Ice Planet

In the constellation Leo, there is a frozen planet where it’s surface ice would cook you alive. Since when does ice burn? Well on the Neptune sized exoplanet Gliese 436b located about 33 light-years away, it does. 'Hot ice' is thought to exist there. Astronomers theorize that the exoplanet embodies exotic and unknown states of water that cause its surface to be covered in burning ice. The pressure on the planet forces the ice to stay solid, but the extreme surface temperature of 570° F (300° C) superheats the water, causing steam to radiate from the ice. On this planet you’d get frozen and heated to death.

Space is apparently smelly.  

Though it is impossible to actually smell space directly with your nose or through a spacesuit, astronauts report that upon returning from a spacewalk, their gear smells burnt like a seared steak, hot metal or welding fumes. Scientists think the source of this odor could be byproduct from dying stars. If this is true, then the entire universe smells basically like some food left in the oven a little too long.

The universe is one big Intergalactic beer garden.

Approximately 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, everything is drunk. Scientists have observed that there is a cloud of alcohol with a staggering diameter that spans 1,000 times larger than our solar system. The amount of ethyl alcohol present in the cloud could serve up to 400 septillion (nope not a misspelling. It's 400, followed by 24 additional zeros) drinks.

Uranus is a rebel.

There's always the one person in the crowd that can't be tamed who sticks out like a sore thumb. Our solar system is no exception to that rule. Most think they know that all the planets spin on an axis similar to the Sun’s, but there is one in our crowd that refuses to conform. We all know the planets abide by certain laws of nature, do we really? The planet Uranus rotates on a slight tilt. Some theories hypothesize the planet might have been hit by another planetary body which it knocked off its axis. The planet’s abnormal axis causes chaotic seasons as different areas become slightly closer or further from the Sun during it's orbit. Uranus spins almost completely on its side in relation to the Sun. This results in very long seasons – each pole gets around 42 Earth years of continuous summer sunlight, followed by a wintry 42-year period of darkness. Uranus’s northern hemisphere enjoyed its last summer solstice in 1944 and will see in the next winter solstice in 2028.

Our next door neighbor

The Andromeda galaxy is our closest galactic neighbor. This galaxy is roughly 2.5 million light-years away. Though it’s diameter is about 140,000 light-years across, it isn’t bright enough to be seen in the night sky by the naked eye.

Our Solar System is a slow poke.

Our Solar System takes approximately 225 million years to travel around on it’s orbit in the Milky Way. The last time Earth was in it’s current position, the dinosaurs were just beginning to roam the land.

Biggest known mountain can’t be contained.

Its almost hard to believe when you look at our mountains here on Earth like Mt. Everest, that there could actually be anything else bigger. Surprisingly there is, and it’s not that far away. The biggest mountain in our solar system is on Mars. This mountain, which is actually a volcano, is called Olympus Mons. It isn't just big, it’s so incredibly enormous it literally sticks out of Mars’ atmosphere. At it’s base, the mountain stretches a mind blowing 550 km across.

Our bodies are technically immortal.

No need to find the fountain of youth, you're already it. The iron in your blood is actually thought to be derived from the Big Bang. The atoms that make up our bodies are billions of years old. In fact 90 percent of our bodies are made up of them. These elements were formed billions of years ago. As Carl Sagan said, “The cosmos is within us, we’re all made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

White Noise

You all know that annoying screen when your TV isn't tuned to a channel correctly – that TV-banging static and white noise. Around 1% of that white noise is actually radiation left over from the Big Bang, better known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This interference between overlapping signals actually allowed Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson to discover the CMB in 1965.

The impossible is possible.

We've come along way since Einstein, but recent discoveries of those enigmatic quasars have screwed up theories proposed by so many Scientists around the planet. Our understanding of what is actually impossible seems be possible with quasars. These magnificent occurrences happen when gas swirls around a black hole very quickly, and friction causes it to heat up, emitting light. Astronomers have a discovered a group of 73 quasars that are over 6.5 times larger than the average quasar group. This structure is over four billion light-years wide, and actually cannot be explained by the Theory of General Relativity. Theoretically, it shouldn’t even exist.

Stars spin fast, mind numbingly fast.

Pulsars are magnetized neutron stars that spin incredibly fast and blast out a beam of radiation, kind of like a lighthouse beacon. The fastest known pulsar is PSR J1748-2446ad, located around 18,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Though it is of average size for a neutron star, it spins at an astonishing 716 times per second. This is nearly a quarter of the speed of light, and exceeds what theories say is possible.

What's that dark matter I keep hearing about?

All the stars, galaxies, and black holes in the universe only compose about 5% of its mass. As incredible as it sounds, the other 95 percent of mass is unaccounted for. Scientists who have studied it decided to label this phenomenal mysterious material “dark matter” and to this day they are still not sure where or what it is.

The biggest diamond in the universe.

In 2004 scientists discovered the largest diamond ever. In fact it’s a collapsed star. Measuring 4000 km across and having a core composed of 10 billion trillion trillion carats it’s roughly 50 light years from the Earth.

 The Universe is old, like real old. 

The common theory is that the universe began with the Big Bang, and is estimated to be approximately 13.7 billion years old (plus or minus 130 million years). Astronomers calculated this figure by measuring the composition of matter and energy density in the universe, which enabled them to determine how fast the universe expanded in the past. As a result, researchers could turn back the hands of time and pinpoint when the Big Bang occurred. The time in between that explosion and now makes up the age of the universe.