10 Amazing and Interesting Facts About the Universe

The study of the universe has come a long way from the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler. In only a few hundred years the earth has moved from the center of our solar system to a pinprick of a planet among billions of galaxies. As astronomy continuously corrects past misconceptions with amazing new findings, we are lucky to live in a time of astounding images and discoveries that increase our understanding of the universe. Here is a look at ten amazing facts about our universe. These facts and more are available at the websites listed at the bottom of the page.

Ten Amazing Facts About the Universe:

1. There are billions of galaxies in the universe. If that sounds amazing, consider that each of these contains billions of stars. That means that there are more than an astounding ten billion trillion stars in the universe. That is an astronomical number like 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

2. Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second. Amazingly, if you could travel that fast, it would still take you 100,000 years to cross the Milky Way Galaxy alone.

3. It takes eight minutes for light from the sun to reach the earth. Astonishingly, that means if the sun went black, we wouldn't know it for almost ten minutes. Also, reread fact number two about how fast light travels. Wow!

4. Jupiter is the solar system's vacuum cleaner, pulling in meteors and comets. Scientists estimate that if it was not for this amazing fact, the number of these objects hitting earth would be about ten thousand times greater.

5. Amazingly, Saturn is less dense than water. If you dropped it into a pool of water it would float like an ice cube.

6. Conversely, Jupiter is heavier than all of the other planets in the Milky Way combined.

7. Consider this amazing statistic: Once per second, somewhere in the universe, a star explodes as brilliantly as an entire universe. Scientists are fascinated with these doomed suns and their fate.

8. A black hole is the cold remnant of a former star and is so dense that no matter-not even light-is able to escape from its gravitational pull.

9. Black holes may exist throughout the universe, even within our own Milky Way galaxy.

10. Astronomers classify stars according to size, from dwarfs to supergiants. A supergiant is a star that could be as many as a thousand times larger in radius than our own sun.

I hope that you enjoyed these amazing and interesting facts about our universe. For more information on the wonders of astronomy and our universe, visit the sources listed below.

Sources:

www.elegant-universe.webs.com

www.astronomyforbeginners.com

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/universe