Collection of Insane and Fun Facts
A new telescope built to study the Sun has released its first images. They show the surface of the Sun in the most exquisite detail we’ve ever seen – revealing convection granules the size of Texas, and tiny magnetic features – the roots of fields that extend far into space.
via sciencealert.com
In an unbelievable coincidence, the moon is exactly four hundred times smaller than the Sun but four hundred times closer to the Earth, so that both the Sun and the Moon appear to be precisely the same size in the sky – which gives us the phenomenon we call a total eclipse.
There’s a town in Norway (Rjukan) that’s in shadow for three full months of the year. As a result, townspeople have built giant mirrors on the mountainside to reflect natural light on their homes.
Even though the sun won’t die for another 5 billion years, humans only have about 1 billion years left on Earth because the sun will change and become hot enough to boil and evaporate our oceans.
There is a star in our galaxy that is 5 billion times volume of our sun.
Every second of every day, the sun converts 700 million tons of hydrogen into 695 million tons of helium. The other 5 million tons becomes energy. Every second.
The largest known star is 4,982,686,912 times bigger than the sun, and is only 9,500 light-years away. If placed at the center of the Solar System, its photosphere would engulf the orbit of Jupiter, although the radius is not known for certain and may be larger than the orbit of Saturn.
The sun’s core is so hot that a piece of it the size of a pinhead would give off enough heat to kill a person 100 miles away.
In 1859 there was a coronal mass ejection so intense it shocked telegraph operators and set their equipment on fire. Another such event missed Earth by just 9 days in 2012. Supposedly it was strong enough to take down our entire satellite system and cause significant damage to electrical grids on the ground. One paper even claims that it could have caused $2.6 Trillion in damages worldwide.
The sun and moon appear to be the same size because of an astonishing coincidence: the moon is 400 times smaller but 400 times closer.