Interesting stories about space. Interesting facts about the universe

How much does a space suit cost and how does it work? How to calculate the force of gravity between celestial bodies and at what speed does the Milky Way galaxy rotate? How old is the universe and what will happen if you fall into a black hole? You can find answers to these and a whole range of other questions in this compilation of facts about space.

The Cygnus in the Constellation Cygnus is a very large star in the known universe - a hypergiant. It is almost a million times larger than the Sun.

The planet Uranus was discovered by William Herschel, who wanted to name the planet George, after King George III, but ultimately chose Uranus.

The first rockets were made 1000 years ago in China.

Robert Goddard launched the first liquid propellant rocket engine in 1926.

More than 100 artificial satellites are currently launched into space every year. Some of them are space telescopes.

The lower the satellite's orbit, the faster it must fly to avoid falling to Earth. Most satellites fly in low orbits - 300 km from Earth.

Hipparchus was the first astronomer to try to figure out the distance to the Sun.

Mars' red color is attributed to oxidized (rusty) iron on its surface.

Jupiter has no surface for spaceships to land on because it is composed primarily of helium and hydrogen. Jupiter's gravity compresses hydrogen so hard that it turns into liquid.

The first successful planetary space probe was Mariner 2, which flew past Venus in 1962.

Voyager 2 has flown 6,000,000,000 km and is moving out of the solar system after passing close to Neptune in 1989.

To conserve fuel when flying to distant planets, space probes can use the gravity of nearby planets to eject. This is called a slingshot.

Hubble's Law showed that the universe becomes everything. This led to the idea of ​​the Big Bang.

The first astronomers thought that regular pulses from deep space could be signals from aliens, and pulsars were jokingly called LGMs (short for Little Green Men - MZCH - little green men).

The pulsars were probably created by a supernova explosion - which is why most of them are located in the plane of the Milky Way's disk.

Space, perhaps, is at the moment one of the greatest mysteries for all mankind. People do not get tired of exploring space, discussing it, putting forward a variety of theories, making a variety of assumptions, but still space remains something incredible, mysterious, unidentified to the end. And does it have an end that can be reached, guided by science? Most likely no. Probably, the cosmos throughout the entire existence of mankind will, to one degree or another, remain a mystery, an unsolvable mystery, like a huge Sphinx, the question of which cannot be answered. But still they study it, and therefore we know a lot about space, which amaze, and sometimes frighten. Let's take a closer look at some interesting facts about space and the Universe.

1. About forty new stars are born in our Galaxy every year. How many of them appear in the entire Universe - it is difficult even to imagine the answer to this question.
2. Silence reigns in space, as there is no medium for sound propagation. So those who like to be quiet would surely like space.
3. For the first time, man looked at space through a telescope about four centuries ago. It was, of course, Galileo Galilei.
4. Surprisingly, in space, all flowers we know will smell completely differently. And all because the smell of a flower depends on many different environmental factors.
5. An interesting fact about space and planets - the sun is about a hundred and ten times larger than the earth. It is even larger than Jupiter, which is known to be the giant of our solar system. But at the same time, if we compare the Sun with other stars in the Universe, then it will turn out to be incredibly tiny. For example, the Big Dog star is 1,500 times larger than the Sun.
6. The first terrestrial creature in space is Laika the dog, which was launched into space on Sputnik 2 in 1957. The dog died on the ship due to lack of air. And the satellite itself burned out in the Earth's atmosphere due to a violation of its orbit.
7. The first man in space is Yuri Gagarin. With a slight delay after Gagarin, Alan Shepard, an American cosmonaut, flew into space.
8. The first woman in space is Valentina Tereshkova.
9. Most of the atoms that make up human bodies were formed during the melting of stellar mass.
10. On Earth, thanks to the presence of gravity, the flame tends upward, while in space it spreads in all directions.
11. A person can never reach the edge of the Universe, since there is a curvature of space in space, due to which a person, moving constantly in a forward direction, will eventually return to the starting point. Scientists have not yet been able to fully explain this.
12. The average distance between stars is thirty-two million million kilometers.
13. An interesting fact about black holes in space is that they are the brightest objects in the universe. In general, the gravity inside the black hole is so strong that even light cannot escape from there. But during its rotation, the black hole absorbs not only a variety of cosmic bodies, but also gas clouds, which begin to shine, twisting in a spiral. Meteors also start to burn as they hit the black hole.
14. Approximately ten tons of cosmic dust falls to Earth every day.
15. There are more than one hundred billion galaxies in the Universe, so there is a huge possibility that people are not alone within the boundaries of this Universe.

The most interesting facts about space can be collected and written down for an incredibly long time, since our Universe contains a huge number of secrets and mysteries, which we now, thanks to the development of science, can approach at least a few steps.

What do we know about space? Most of us cannot answer the simplest questions about this mysterious world, which, despite this, attracts and interests us. This article presents the most interesting general information about space, which will be useful to everyone.

• We (all living beings) fly in space at a certain speed, which is 530 km / second. If we take into account the speed of movement of our Earth in the galaxy, then it is equal to 225 km / second. Our galaxy (Milky Way), in turn, moves in space at a speed of 305 km / second.

• A giant space object - the planet Saturn actually has a relatively low weight. The density of this giant planet is a couple of times lower than that of water. Thus, if you try to submerge this cosmic body in water, this will not work.
• If the planet-Jupiter were hollow, then all the planets of our planetary system "Solar" known to us could fit inside it.
• Reducing the frequency of rotation of the planet-Earth will move the Moon away from it by about four centimeters annually.
• The first "star catalog" was compiled by Hipparchus (scientist-astronomer) in 150 BC.

• When we in the night sky pay attention to the most distant (dim) stars, we see them as they were about fourteen billion years ago.
• In addition to our luminary, we have one more close star "Proskim Centauri". The distance to this space object is equal to 4.2 light years.
• The "red giant" named "Betelgeuse" has a huge diameter. For comparison, its diameter is a couple of times larger than the orbit of our Earth around the star.
• Each year, the galaxy in which our planetary system is located produces about 40 new stars.
• If one spoon (teaspoon) of the substance is removed from the "neutron star", then the weight of this spoon will be equal to 150 tons.

• The mass of our star is more than 99% of the mass of its entire planetary system.
• The age of the light emitted by our luminary can be equated to only 30 thousand years. It was thirty thousand years ago that a certain energy was formed in the luminary, which reaches the Earth to this day. By the way, solar photons reach the aforementioned planet, on which we live, in just eight seconds.
• The eclipse of our star can last no more than seven and a half minutes. The lunar eclipse, in turn, has a long duration - 104 minutes.
• The "solar wind" is the reason for the loss of mass of our star. In 1 second, this star loses more than 1 billion kg due to this "wind". By the way, one "windy particle" can destroy an ordinary person, approaching him at a distance of 160 kilometers.
• If our Earth spun in a different, opposite direction, then the duration of the year would be less by a couple of days.
• Every day our planet is experiencing a "meteorite bombardment". Why can't we see this? Most of the space objects falling on us are very small, so they do not have time to reach the surface and dissolve in our atmosphere.

• Our planet has more than one satellite. Modern scientists have determined that four objects are flying around it at once. Of course, the most famous of these is the Moon. In addition to her, an asteroid (5 kilometers in diameter) flies around us, which was discovered in 1896. To be more precise, this object revolves around the star, but with a certain frequency, the same as ours. Therefore, he is constantly with us. It is impossible to see him with the naked eye.
• The thickening of "cosmic matter" is the reason for the periodic increase in the mass of our planet. Every 500 years, its mass increases by about one billion tons.
• Ursa Major is not a constellation, as many believe. In reality, this is "asterism" - a visual cluster of stars that are very impressively distant from each other. Some of the stars of the "Dipper" are located even in different galactic formations.

Initially, the planet Uranus, discovered by W. Herschel in 1781, was called "George's Star". This was ordered by George III, who wanted his name to be called the last discovered planet of the "Solar System".

If two parts of a meteorite come into contact in outer space, they will be welded together. If this happens on our home planet, then they will not connect, since metals tend to oxidize on our planet. The equipment that astronauts use while working outside the space station spontaneously oxidizes on Earth, so it does not stick together in outer space.

Created by engineers, satellite vehicles during flight in space obey certain physical laws, which were first described by Newton.

Since 1980, plots of our companion, the Moon, have been officially sold, and they cost a lot. To date, about seven percent of the surface of a natural satellite has been sold. The cost of forty acres is now no more than $ 150. The lucky person who bought the plot receives a certificate and photographs of his "lunar land".

• In 1992, the official couple Jen and Mark went into space. To this day, they are considered the first and only spouses who have visited space together. The couple flew into space on the ship "Endever".
• All those who have been in space for a certain time (1-2 months) grow by about five centimeters due to sprains, which then, after returning to Earth, can negatively affect health.
• A satellite orbital system can photograph three million square kilometers of the Earth in half an hour, an airplane in twelve years, and a man by hand in approximately 100 years.
• In 2001, they conducted an interesting experiment, after which they found out that cosmonauts snoring at home in outer space are deprived of this bad habit.

Almost all children are addicted to space. Someone only for a short time, until they learn about how the world works. And someone - seriously and for a long time, dreaming of one day to fly to the moon or even further, repeat the feat of Gagarin or discover a new star.

In any case, the child will be interested to learn about what is hiding behind the clouds. About the Moon, about the Sun and the stars, about spaceships and rockets, about Gagarin and Korolev. Fortunately, there are many books to help kids, schoolchildren, and even adults discover the Universe. And here are some excerpts from them:

1. Moon

The moon is a satellite of the earth. This is what astronomers call her because she is constantly close to the Earth. It revolves around our planet and cannot get away from it, because the Earth attracts the Moon to itself. Both the Moon and the Earth are celestial bodies, but the Moon is much smaller than the Earth. The Earth is the planet, and the Moon is its satellite.

Illustration from the book "Fascinating Astronomy"

2. Month

The moon itself does not shine. The glow of the Moon that we observe at night is the light of the Sun reflected by the Moon. On different nights, the Sun illuminates the Earth satellite in different ways.

The Earth, and with it the Moon, revolves around the Sun. If you take a ball and light it with a flashlight in the dark, then on one side it will appear round, because the light from the flashlight hits it directly. On the other hand, the ball will be dark because it is between us and the light source. And if someone looks at the ball from the side, he will see only part of its surface illuminated.

The flashlight is like the sun, and the ball is like the moon. And we from the Earth look at the Moon on different nights from different points of view. If the light of the Sun strikes directly on the Moon, it appears to us as a complete circle. And when the light of the Sun falls on the Moon from the side, we observe a month in the sky.

Illustration from the book "Fascinating Astronomy"

3. New moon and full moon

It happens that the moon in the sky is not visible at all. Then we say that the new moon has come. It happens every 29 days. On the night following the new moon, a narrow crescent moon appears in the sky, or, as it is also called, a month. Then the crescent begins to grow and gradually turns into a full circle, the moon - the full moon comes.

Then the moon decreases again, "falls", until it turns into a month again, and then the month disappears from the firmament - the next new moon will come.

Illustration from the book "Fascinating Astronomy"

4. Lunar jump

Want to know how far you could jump if you were on the moon? Go out into the yard with chalk and tape measure. Jump as far as possible, mark your result with chalk and measure the length of your jump with a tape measure. Now measure from your mark six more of the same line. This is what moon jumping would be like! This is because there is less gravity on the moon. You will be in the jump longer and you will be able to set a space record. Although, of course, the spacesuit will prevent you from jumping.

Illustration from the book "Fascinating Astronomy"

5. Universe

All we know for sure about our Universe is that it is very, very large. The universe began about 13.7 billion years ago when the Big Bang happened. Its cause remains one of the most important mysteries of science to this day!

Time passed. The universe expanded in all directions and finally began to take shape. Tiny particles were born from the vortices of energy. Hundreds of thousands of years later, they merged and turned into atoms - "bricks" from which everything that we see is composed. At the same time, light arose, which began to move freely in space. But it took another hundreds of millions of years before the atoms united into huge clouds, from which the first generation of stars was born. When these stars split into groups, forming galaxies, the universe began to resemble what we see now, looking at the night sky. Now the Universe continues to grow and every day it only gets bigger!

6. The birth of a star

Do you think the stars are only visible at night? But no! Our Sun is also a star, but we see it during the day. The sun is not much different from other stars, just the rest of the stars are much farther from the Earth and therefore seem so small to us.

Stars form from clouds of hydrogen gas left over from the Big Bang or from the explosions of other older stars. Gradually, the force of gravity joins the hydrogen gas into clumps, where it begins to rotate and heat up. This continues until the gas becomes dense and hot enough for the nuclei of hydrogen atoms to fuse. As a result of this thermonuclear reaction, a flash of light occurs and a star is born.

Illustration from the book "Professor Astrocat and His Journey into Space"

7. Yuri Gagarin

Gagarin was a fighter pilot in the Arctic, then he was selected from hundreds of other military pilots to the cosmonaut corps. Yuri studied well and was ideally suited for height, weight and physical fitness. On April 12, 1961, after the famous 108 minutes of flight in space, Gagarin became one of the most famous people in the world.

Illustration from the book "Space"

8. Solar system

The solar system is a very busy place. Eight planets, including our Earth, revolve around the Sun in elliptical (slightly elongated annular) orbits. Seven more are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Venus, Mars and Mercury. The revolution of each of the planets lasts differently, from 88 days to 165 years.

by The Wild Mistress's Notes

1. If you could put Saturn in a huge bathroom, it would float. The planet is less dense than water.

2. A teaspoon of neutron star matter will weigh about 112 million tons on Earth.

3. If you could travel at the speed of Light (almost 300,000 km per second), it would take you 100,000 years to go around our galaxy!

4. Betelgeuse, a bright star in the left shoulder of Orion, it is so big that if it was located in the place of our Sun, it would swallow the Earth, Mars and Jupiter! This star is 1000 times larger than the sun in diameter! According to some scientists, it should explode in the next 2-3 thousand years. At the peak of its explosion, which will last at least two months, the luminosity of Betelgeuse will be 1,050 times higher than that of the Sun, making it possible to observe its death from Earth even with the naked eye.

5. When you look at the Andromeda galaxy (which is 2.3 million light years away), the light you see was 2.3 million years old. Thus, you see the Galaxy as it was 2.3 million years ago.

6. The light from the Sun goes to us for 8 minutes, so we see the Sun as it was 8 minutes ago. It could explode 4 minutes ago, and we won't know about it!

7. The Earth is not spherical! In fact, it has the shape of a flattened spheroid, it is flattened at the poles and convex at the equator exactly in the direction of its axis of rotation.

8. Jupiter weighs more than all other planets combined

9. If the Sun were the size of a point in the usual sentence, then the nearest star would be 16 km away. from her.

10. Earth's gravity compresses the human spine, so when an astronaut enters space, he grows about 5.08 cm.

At the same time, his heart contracts, decreases in volume, and begins to pump less blood. It is the body's response to an increase in blood volume, which requires less pressure to circulate normally.

11. At the equator you are 3% lighter than at the poles, due to the fact that the centrifugal force of the Earth acts on you.

12. If you are standing on the equator, you rotate at a speed of about 1.5 km / h, just like the Earth, whose atoms rotate at a speed of 108,000 km / h around the Sun.

13. In the orbit of our planet there is a dump of waste from the development of astronautics. More than 370,000 objects weighing from several grams to 15 tons revolve around the Earth at a speed of 9,834 m / s, colliding with each other and scattering into thousands of smaller parts.

14. The mass of the Sun is 99.86% of the mass of the entire solar system, the remaining 0.14% is accounted for by planets and asteroids.

15. Solar matter the size of a pinhead, placed in the atmosphere of our planet, will begin to absorb oxygen at an incredible speed and in a split second will destroy all life within a radius of 160 kilometers.

16. The explosion (flash) of a supernova is accompanied by the release of a gigantic amount of energy. In the first 10 seconds, an exploding supernova produces more energy than the Sun in 10 billion years, and generates more energy in a short period of time than all objects in the galaxy combined (excluding other exploding supernovae). The brightness of such stars easily overshadows the luminosity of the galaxies in which they flashed.

17. On February 5, 1843, astronomers discovered a comet, which was given the name "Great" (aka the March comet, C / 1843 D1 and 1843 I). Flying close to the Earth in March of the same year, she "lined" the sky in two with her tail, the length of which reached 800 million kilometers.

Earthlings watched the tail stretching behind the "Great Comet" for more than a month, until, on April 19, 1983, it completely disappeared from the sky.

18. In 2011, astronomers discovered a planet composed of 92% of superdense crystalline carbon - diamond. A precious celestial body, which is 5 times larger than our planet and heavier than Jupiter, is located in the constellation Serpent, at a distance of 4,000 light years from Earth.

19. In space, tightly compressed metal parts weld spontaneously. This occurs as a result of the absence of oxides on their surfaces, the enrichment of which occurs only in an oxygen-containing environment (the earth's atmosphere can serve as a clear example of such an environment). For this reason, NASA specialists The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency owned by the US federal government, reporting directly to the Vice President of the United States and funded 100% from the state budget, responsible for the civilian space country program. All images and footage captured by NASA and its subsidiaries, including from numerous telescopes and interferometers, are published in the public domain and may be freely copied. all metal parts of spacecraft are treated with oxidizing materials.

20. Contrary to popular belief, space is not a complete vacuum, but it is close enough to it, because there is at least 1 atom per 88 gallons of cosmic matter (and as we know, there are no atoms or molecules in a vacuum).

21. Venus is the only planet in the solar system that rotates counterclockwise. There are several theoretical grounds for this. Some astronomers are sure that such a fate befell all planets with a dense atmosphere, which first slows down and then twists the celestial body in the opposite direction from its original rotation, while others suggest that the cause was the fall of a group of large asteroids on the surface of Venus.

22. Since the beginning of 1957 (the year of the launch of the first artificial satellite "Sputnik-1"), mankind has literally managed to seed the orbit of our planet with various satellites, but only one of them was lucky enough to repeat the "fate of the Titanic". In 1993, the European Space Agency's Olympus satellite was destroyed by an asteroid collision.

23. The nearest galaxy to us, Andromeda, is at a distance of 2.52 million years. The Milky Way and Andromeda are moving towards each other at great speeds (the speed of Andromeda is 300 km / s, and the Milky Way is 552 km / s) and will most likely collide in 2.5-3 billion years.

24. A person can survive in open space without a spacesuit for 90 seconds if he immediately exhales all the air from his lungs.

If a small amount of gases remain in the lungs, they will begin to expand, followed by the formation of air bubbles, which, if released into the blood, will lead to embolism and inevitable death. If the lungs are filled with gases, they will simply burst.

After 10-15 seconds of being in open space, the water in the human body will turn into steam, and the moisture in the mouth and before our eyes will begin to boil. As a result, soft tissues and muscles will swell, leading to complete immobilization.

The most interesting thing is that the next 90 seconds the brain will still live and the heart beat. Reported by the public Science and Technology.

In theory, if, during the first 90 seconds, an unsuccessful astronaut who has suffered in open space is placed in a pressure chamber, then he will get off with only superficial injuries and slight fright.

25. The weight of our planet is not a constant value. Scientists have found that every year the Earth recovers by ~ 40,160 tons and dumps ~ 96,600 tons, thus losing 56,440 tons.