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10 cool facts about space

Clockwork13

By Clockwork13
in Science & Spaceflight

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Clockwork13

Clockwork13

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1. The night sky will look like this in 6 billion years: http://imgur.com/kq5Xrra

2. Mars was once just like Earth.

3. The black night is a probe orbiting the Earth. Funny thing is, it was never put up there by a human, and it appears to be millions of years old.

4. In a couple billion years, Saturn won't have rings, and Jupiter will probably be around the size of Neptune or smaller.

5. iSON appears to actually be a planet 11x the size of Jupiter, coming within the orbit of mars every approximately 3,300 years.

6. Earth will turn into a mars-like planet in around 4 billion years. Until it gets snacked up by the sun or gets flung away from the sun into space.

7. The chance of another form of life existing somewhere in the universe is 100%.

8. NASA has a large history of lying.

9. The star VY Canor Majoris is a billion times bigger than the sun.

10. Astronomers have found a planet entirely made out of diamonds.

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dharak1

dharak1

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Black knight is a myth, they say the shuttle spotted it when they were docking some part to the ISS but it was too heavy to bring down. In reality mass estimates of what is though to be the the black knight are around 17-19 tons. Within capabilities of the shuttle. What black knight is is some sort of tarp that was dropped while docking parts to the ISS. The shuttle had issues docking whatever part it was so it loosened the grip with the robot arm and bumped something, and dropping a few tools including the tarp. You can see the black tarp behind an astronaut in one of the pictures. I have no idea what mission it was, sorry.

EDIT: I looked it up and from a glance it appears to be STS-88.

Edited by dharak1
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brooklyn666

brooklyn666

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1. The night sky will look like this in 6 billion years: http://imgur.com/kq5Xrra

2. Mars was once just like Earth.

3. The black night is a probe orbiting the Earth. Funny thing is, it was never put up there by a human, and it appears to be millions of years old.

4. In a couple billion years, Saturn won't have rings, and Jupiter will probably be around the size of Neptune or smaller.

5. iSON appears to actually be a planet 11x the size of Jupiter, coming within the orbit of mars every approximately 3,300 years.

6. Earth will turn into a mars-like planet in around 4 billion years. Until it gets snacked up by the sun or gets flung away from the sun into space.

7. The chance of another form of life existing somewhere in the universe is 100%.

8. NASA has a large history of lying.

9. The star VY Canor Majoris is a billion times bigger than the sun.

10. Astronomers have found a planet entirely made out of diamonds.

1. The Milky Way and Andromeda will collide, but due to the massive distances between stars, we wouldn't see anything like that (not to mention that picture is from a perspective outside both galaxies).

3. This was already addressed above.

5. iSON is small (<1km) sungrazing comet, which broke up on it's most recent pass through the inner solar system. There is no brown dwarf in solar orbit with a period of 3,300 years. Or any brown dwarf for that matter.

7. This is a baseless number with absolutely no evidence to back it up.

8. This is not a space fact, and it's debatable.

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brooklyn666

brooklyn666

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4. While I agree with you on the loss of Saturn's rings, where is your evidence that gas giants shrink as they age? This doesn't seem likely.

I didn't mention that one because it appears to be true-ish. Studies at UC Berkeley show that Jupiter's core is most likely slowly shrinking.

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Seret

Seret

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2. Mars was once just like Earth.

We don't really know that. We know it had liquid water and an atmosphere, but it could still have been very different.

3. The black night is a probe orbiting the Earth. Funny thing is, it was never put up there by a human, and it appears to be millions of years old.

What a load of rubbish.

7. The chance of another form of life existing somewhere in the universe is 100%.

Really not enough data to go on for this one. One tool SETI folk use for discussing this is the Drake Equation. The answer you get out of it really depends on what you put into each parameter. We've got good numbers for some of the parameters, but others are wild guesses for which we don't even know the upper or lower bounds. All we know is that the number of civilisations in the universe is one or more.

10. Astronomers have found a planet entirely made out of diamonds.

No, they've predicted the existence of carbon-rich planets. None have been confirmed to exist AFAIK. Part of the planet's structure might be diamond, but certainly not all of it. It's pretty unlikely you'd get diamonds forming at surface pressures and temperatures, for example.

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Themohawkninja

Themohawkninja

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1. The night sky will look like this in 6 billion years: http://imgur.com/kq5Xrra

Possible, but I wouldn't call that a fact until 6 billion years from now.

2. Mars was once just like Earth.

Define "like Earth".

3. The black night is a probe orbiting the Earth. Funny thing is, it was never put up there by a human, and it appears to be millions of years old.

What are you talking about?

4. In a couple billion years, Saturn won't have rings, and Jupiter will probably be around the size of Neptune or smaller.

You mind explaining that?

5. iSON appears to actually be a planet 11x the size of Jupiter, coming within the orbit of mars every approximately 3,300 years.

Cite please.

6. Earth will turn into a mars-like planet in around 4 billion years. Until it gets snacked up by the sun or gets flung away from the sun into space.

This I could see as a real possibility, but I don't know enough about terrestrial magnetic fields to know just how accurate of a statement this is.

7. The chance of another form of life existing somewhere in the universe is 100%.

No, it's not. This is only true if and only if the universe is infinite, and we don't know if the universe is infinite.

8. NASA has a large history of lying.

NASA is run by humans... who knew?

9. The star VY Canor Majoris is a billion times bigger than the sun.

"Bigger" has different definitions when we are talking about a star. Is this bigger volumetrically? Mass? Radius? Something else?

10. Astronomers have found a planet entirely made out of diamonds.

I've heard this every so often, but I have yet to see a source, or hear a logical explanation. For one thing, such a planet would surely be the result of the carbon core of a star cooling just so, so that it is a diamond, and secondly, can we actually detect the way the atoms are arranged from such distances?

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Seret

Seret

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I've heard this every so often, but I have yet to see a source, or hear a logical explanation. For one thing, such a planet would surely be the result of the carbon core of a star cooling just so, so that it is a diamond, and secondly, can we actually detect the way the atoms are arranged from such distances?

Here's a starter:

Carbon planet

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theend3r

theend3r

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7. The chance of another form of life existing somewhere in the universe is 100%.

True. For example squirrels. They're also in the universe, are they not? :D

If you actually meant on another body then no, it might near certainty but will never be certain. Even if we found evidence, it could suddenly become extinct so even with undeniable evidence it isn't 100%.

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Clockwork13

Clockwork13

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Possible, but I wouldn't call that a fact until 6 billion years from now.

Define "like Earth".

What are you talking about?

You mind explaining that?

Cite please.

This I could see as a real possibility, but I don't know enough about terrestrial magnetic fields to know just how accurate of a statement this is.

No, it's not. This is only true if and only if the universe is infinite, and we don't know if the universe is infinite.

NASA is run by humans... who knew?

"Bigger" has different definitions when we are talking about a star. Is this bigger volumetrically? Mass? Radius? Something else?

I've heard this every so often, but I have yet to see a source, or hear a logical explanation. For one thing, such a planet would surely be the result of the carbon core of a star cooling just so, so that it is a diamond, and secondly, can we actually detect the way the atoms are arranged from such distances?

The theory for the diamond planet is that it was once a star, but it cooled of into a planet.

Can't tell if serious, or trolling.

11. We will be invaded by a ton of aliens in 5 minutes.

Edited by sal_vager
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Themohawkninja

Themohawkninja

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Jupiter loses some of its gas every year.

This is true, but you make some relatively explicit predictions, so you mind backing those up?

The Earth is losing gas as well, but that doesn't mean I can say that in a few billion years there won't be any gas on Earth. Unless you have the numbers to show for it, all you can say is that the bodies are losing gas.

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