Universe Wonders
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1 LIGHT YEAR = 9.461 trillion kilometres
Your Mind Will Collapse If You Try To Imagine
UNIVERSE SIZE COMPARISON
(Source: Estudio Arkano) (To enter full screen mode, click the square icon located above. )
Surprising phenomena within the universe
Space is completely silent.
In space, no one can hear you scream. This is because there is no air in space, it is a vacuum. Sound waves cannot travel through a vacuum. 'Outer space' begins about 100 km above the Earth, where the shell of air around our planet disappears.
The Universe has the same temperature everywhere
The temperature of the radiation present throughout space is incredibly consistent, varying by less than 0.001 degrees from a cold 2.725 Kelvin. This is equivalent to approximately -270.425 degrees Celsius (°C) or -454.765 degrees Fahrenheit (°F). Although this may appear normal, the consistency is actually a real mystery to scientists.
The Universe Is Getting Bigger.
Scientists have been studying space for a long time and they have discovered that space is actually getting larger! This occurred after a big event known as the "Big Bang" which happened approximately 13.8 billion years ago. In the beginning, the expansion was extremely rapid, taking place within just a fraction of a second! This means that the entire universe is expanding and we refer to this as "metric expansion.
There is a supermassive black hole at the heart of every galaxy
Black holes are objects in space created when matter collapses under the force of gravity, forming regions of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, as observed by astronomers.
95% of the Universe is invisible
The universe is far greater than what we can see. In fact, all the visible material that we know of, only makes up a tiny portion. The remaining 95% is completely invisible and remains a mystery to us. Scientists call this invisible stuff "dark matter" and "dark energy".
Even though we don't know much about them yet, they are fascinating mysteries that scientists are working hard to understand.
Nobody knows how many stars are there in space
Nobody knows exactly how many stars there are in the Universe. There are so many stars (billions and billions of them) that it is not possible to count them all. Our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, has several hundred billion stars.
There is Floating water in Space.
In space, there is a cloud of water that covers hundreds of light years, and its size is remarkable.The nearby black hole's x-rays and radiation make the cloud of water in space hotter than other clouds. As a result, the water in this cloud remains constantly heated.
Universe Contains 10 Times More Galaxies Than Previously Thought
One such estimate says that there are between 100 and 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Other astronomers have tried to estimate the number of 'missed' galaxies in previous studies and come up with a total number of 2 trillion galaxies in the universe.
The Big Bang
What Is the Big Bang?
The big bang is how astronomers explain the way the universe began. It is the idea that the universe began as just a single point, then expanded and stretched to grow as large as it is right now—and it is still stretching!
What's This Big Bang All About?
What's This Big Bang All About?
In 1927, an astronomer named Georges Lemaître had a big idea. He said that a very long time ago, the universe started as just a single point. He said the universe stretched and expanded to get as big as it is now, and that it could keep on stretching.
What an Idea!
What an Idea!
The universe is a very big place, and it’s been around for a very long time. Thinking about how it all started is hard to imagine.
Some More Information
Some More Information
Just two years later, an astronomer named Edwin Hubble noticed that other galaxies were moving away from us. And that’s not all. The farthest galaxies were moving faster than the ones close to us.
This meant that the universe was still expanding, just like Lemaître thought. If things were moving apart, it meant that long ago, everything had been close together.
Everything we can see in our universe today—stars, planets, comets, asteroids—they weren't there at the beginning. Where did they come from?
A Tiny, Hot Beginning
A Tiny, Hot Beginning
When the universe began, it was just hot, tiny particles mixed with light and energy. It was nothing like what we see now. As everything expanded and took up more space, it cooled down.
The tiny particles grouped together. They formed atoms. Then those atoms grouped together. Over lots of time, atoms came together to form stars and galaxies.
The first stars created bigger atoms and groups of atoms. That led to more stars being born. At the same time, galaxies were crashing and grouping together. As new stars were being born and dying, then things like asteroids, comets, planets, and black holes formed
A Super Long Time
A Super Long Time
How long did all of this take? Well, we now know that the universe is 13,800,000,000 years old—that’s 13.8 billion. That is a very long time.
What's in a Name?
What's in a Name?
That’s pretty much how the universe began. Because it got so big and led to such great things, some people call it the "Big Bang." But maybe a better name would be the "Everywhere Stretch." What do you think?
Famous People
Mae Jemison
Mae Jemison (1956–) is an American doctor, teacher, businesswoman and former astronaut who became the first black woman to travel in space, in 1992
DID YOU KNOW?
ONE DAY ON VENUS IS LONGER THAN ONE YEAR.
THERE IS A PLANET MADE OF DIAMONDS
THERE ARE MORE STARS IN THE UNIVERSE THAN GRAINS OF SANDS ON EARTH.
ONE MILLION EARTHS CAN FIT INSIDE THE SUN.
A FULL NASA SPACE SUIT COSTS $12,000,000.
THE SUNSET ON MARS APPEARS BLUE.
THE UNIVERSE IS MADE UP OF ROUGHLY 68% DARK ENERGY, 27% DARK MATTER , AND 5% NORMAL MATTER.
Galaxies
How Old Are Galaxies?
This is an illustration of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way is an ancient galaxy that was born only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Credit: NASA/JPL
Most galaxies are between 10 billion and 13.6 billion years old. Our universe is about 13.8 billion years old, so most galaxies formed when the universe was quite young!
Astronomers believe that our own Milky Way galaxy is approximately 13.6 billion years old. The newest galaxy we know of formed only about 500 million years ago.
What is the most distant galaxy
we know of?
In 2016, astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to measure a galaxy called GN-z11 that is 13.4 billion light-years away. Because it is that far away, Hubble sees the light from the young galaxy as it was when the Universe was just 400 million years old.
This animation shows the location of the farthest galaxy ever seen, called GN-z11. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Oesch (Yale University), G. Brammer (STScI), P.van Dokkum (Yale University) and G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz)
How can astronomers study things that are so far away?
How can astronomers study things that are so far away?
Astronomers use light to study things that are far away. In fact, light even gives us a way to look back in time!
Light always travels at a certain speed: nearly 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second. That means that light can travel about 6 trillion miles (about 10 trillion kilometers) in one Earth year. We call this distance a light-year.
This means that the farther away something is, the longer it takes for light from that object to reach us.
What can we learn by studying distant galaxies?
What can we learn by studying distant galaxies?
Astronomers have observed lots of galaxies at different distances. By comparing them, we can begin to understand how galaxies and their stars are born, how they change and how they die over time.
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