14 Incomprehensible Universe Facts

[Carmen Elsa Irarragorri Wyland]

Whether the cosmos truly is 'all that is, was or ever will be', can never really be scientifically known. But what we do know is that the universe encompasses every single thing that science can hope to describe, and much more besides. The mysteries that remain to be solved are numerous, yet, marvelously, science has already uncovered some incredible, mind-bending facts about the universe that seem to go against thousands of years of received wisdom. Buckle your seat-belt for the 14 most unbelievable facts about our universe - it's going to be a thrilling ride:

1. The length of your DNA extends to Pluto, and back...6 times.

If you could unravel all of your body's DNA and lay it out end-to-end, it would reach 34 billion miles. The distance from Earth to Pluto is only 2.66 billion miles.

2. You could fit all of mankind into this.

99.9999999% of matter is just empty space. So, if you were to remove all this space from the atoms of human beings, you could fit all 7 billion humans into a single sugar cube.

3. We are really all made of stars 

Many billions of years ago, a star exploded. And the reactions that occurred during this almighty expansion created the calcium in your bones and the iron in your blood.

4. And part of us comes from the beginning of time.

The majority of the hydrogen atoms contained in your body were actually formed right at the beginning of time, otherwise known as the Big Bang. In a sense, then, we have lived forever.

5. TV static from the big bang

You remember the annoying static that you would see on your television set as you changed channels? Well, a proportion of that is, in fact, part of the afterglow from the Big Bang. 

6. The night sky is a window to pre-history

The Hubble Telescope used by NASA peers 13 billion years into the past. Yet this is not because it is designed to reach into the past. It is simply because the speed of light means what we can see is actually the light from stars that, in many cases, no longer exist.  

7. This footprint on the moon will last millions of years.

The moon has no atmosphere, and, thus, no wind or water that can ever erase Neil Armstrong's footprints. The moon is really a good place to leave your mark.

8. The silence of space.

Sound must travel through something, or else it vanishes. And because space is merely a vacuum, no sound can travel through it. Therefore, space is incredibly silent.

9. Identical metals in space naturally bind for eternity.

Fusing metals on Earth is not such a simple thing. But in space, if two metals are the same, once they meet they are instantly bound together. If they are not forcibly separated, they will remain like that forever.

10. A day on Venus is longer than its year.

A year in Venus, meaning how long it takes to orbit the sun, is the same as 224 days on Earth. But a day, meaning how long it takes for the planet to rotate on its axis, is 243 Earth days. Furthermore, this is the only planet that actually rotates backward. What a mixed up world!

11. Nearly 100% of the solar system's mass is that of the Sun.

Did you know that the scale of the sun is such that you would need 1.3 million Earths to replicate its bulk? The sun actually accounts for 99.86% of all mass in our solar system.

12. There are 3 sextillion stars.

The number of stars in the universe is something like 3 sextillions (that's 3 with 23 zeros). This is a greater number of stars than there are grains of sand on the Earth. That really put the scale of the universe into perspective.

13. An exploded star: a teaspoon of it weighs more than Mt. Everest.

A neutron star forms when a giant star finally explodes. These stars are incredibly dense and spin around 600 times in one minute. If one teaspoon of it weighs the same as Mount Everest, how dense is the whole star? The mind boggles.

14. We don't know anything about 95% of the universe

The actual objects we can see with our eyes (or potentially see) in the universe only amount to 5% of the entire cosmos. Of the other 95%, some 68% is invisible dark energy and 27% dark matter. 

[Carmen Elsa Irarragorri Wyland]

Yes, Savlove, so much that we do not know or see or even think about, is part of our reality.