Top Ten Space Facts

10. Space Smells

According to astronauts who have returned from space missions, space smells like a mixture of hot metal, welding fumes and seared steak.

9. Gravitational Lensing

There is a bizarre phenomenon that scientists call gravitational lensing which happens when gravity bends light to the point that objects appear in a different location to where they actually exist. A solitary black hole betrays its presence solely through gravity, which bends and warps the light of more distant objects.

8. Perspective

Due to an amazing coincidence of the Moon being 400 times smaller, and 400 times closer than the Sun, they both appear to be the same size.

7. International Space Station

At $150billion, the International Space Station is the most expensive object ever built. At the size of a football field, The International Space Station is only as roomy as a five-bedroom house, and travels at a speed of 17,500 mph. This means that Astronauts onboard the International Space Station view fifteen sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours.

6. Tall Tale

Astronauts typically gain two inches in height while in space. Due to the lack of gravity, the spines of astronauts elongate by up to three percent while they are in space. This is a similar effect to what happens while you sleep as less gravitational force is being applied to your spine while you lie down which is why we are fractionally taller when we wake up as opposed to going to bed.

5. Thirsty for Knowledge?

Two teams of astronauts have discovered a large reservoir of water floating in space that is the equivalent to 140 trillion times the water of our ocean. The water is in a cloud around a huge black hole that is in the process of sucking in matter and spraying out energy (such an active black hole is called a quasar), and the waves of energy the black hole releases make water by literally knocking hydrogen and oxygen atoms together.

4. True Colors

In space the Sun appears white as opposed to yellow here on earth. Due to Earth’s atmosphere, shorter and more energetic wavelength photons of light are scattered and deflected before they reach the ground. This means that we usually only see particles with longer wavelengths such as yellow, orange and red. This explains why to our eyes, the Sun appears yellow instead of white.

3. Crazy Weather

On Venus, it snows metalgalena and bismuthinite. The weather on Venus is extreme. The entire atmosphere of the planet circulates around quickly, with winds blowing as fast as 360 kilometers/hour. Cloud systems can travel around the planet completely in about 4 days. The winds blow in a retrograde direction, and are the fastest near the poles. As you approach the equator, the wind speeds die down to almost nothing.

2. Cool Stars

Last August NASA scientists offered a first look at a peculiar class of stellar wallflowers called Y dwarfs. Unlike typical stars, which burn steadily at thousands of degrees, the warmest of these Jupiter-size objects are just hot enough to bake cookies, and the coolest barely break room temperature.

1. It's A small World After All

Earth can be seen as a pale blue dot in the picture above – 6 billion Kilometers away. This photograph was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 at a distance of 6 billion kilometers away. In the picture above, Earth is sized at a fraction of a pixel (0.12) against the vastness that is space. Even from within our own solar system, this picture provides some insight into how small we are in the cosmos.