15 Fabulous and Fantastic Facts About the Universe Published by Anuradha Ramkumar in Science - January 3, 2010 How much do you know about our Solar System and the Milky Way? Many of you would have known the famous quote of Carl Sagan about Universe? Let us look at some fantastic facts about universe. I am sure these are fabulous facts about Universe and are really amazing. Have you heard of this famous quote by Dr. Carl Sagan “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known”? This quote is very much true. How much you know about Universe? I thought I knew at least 50 to 60%, but I was wrong. I knew only 10% about Universe. I found a few fantastic facts about Universe and would like to share them with you. These are really fabulous and amazing facts. Let us get into the facts. 1. What happens if sun stops to shine suddenly? You will be able to realize that sun has stopped shining only after 8 minutes as the time duration for the light from the sun to reach the earth is 8 minutes. 2. Do you know how many stars our galaxy holds? Our galaxy has about 100,000,000,000 stars. Therefore, one can see roughly about 3,000 stars even on a clear night. 3. Did you see the Halley’s Comet in the year 1986? I think none of us who saw the Halley’s Comet in the year 1986 will be able to see it again as Halley’s Comet will be seen every 76 years. 4. If you are in moon, your weight will be 1/6th of the weight in earth. For example, if you weigh 50 kg in earth, your weight on moon would be 8.333 kg. Isn’t this a nice way to reduce our weight? Just kidding… 5. Did you know that the magnetic poles of sun switches every eleven days? This is referred to as “Solarmax.” 6. Take a wild guess on how many earth can fit inside sun, Jupiter and Saturn. Sun can hold 1 million earth, Jupiter can hold 1300 earth and Saturn can hold 800 earth; isn’t this fact incredible? 7. Every year moon moves 3 cm away from our earth. 8. In North Pole, it is not possible to see the sun for 186 days. 9. All planets in the solar system moves from east to west except Venus. 10. Jupiter has the fastest moon. It revolves Jupiter within a span of 7 hours. 11. The life expectancy of sun is 11 billion years. 12. Every 250 million years, sun and other planets of our solar system orbits around the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. 13. It is found that Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda galaxy will collide roughly after 3 billion years. 14. Hottest planet of our solar system is Venus. 15. Brightest star that you would see during night is Sirius. Extrenal source with images and links: 15 Fabulous and Fantastic Facts About Universe | PurpleSlinky