You see the sun, stars and moon but how many facts about the Solar System do you know? Do you ever contemplate the infinite wonder of the Universe? Ever consider that there might be life on other planets? Maybe you’re like me and would love to understand more about how planets orbit or even worse, fry your brain with the crazy question of planets – how and why? I can’t answer any of those questions for you but I can share with you some interesting facts about the Solar System.
If you have read a few facts about the Solar System elsewhere, then this one may surprise you. Jupiter is not where God lives, but it is the thing that stops most of the Solar System's asteroids that are heading for Earth. It is so big that it draws them in and absorbs them. Without Jupiter, our planet would have suffered so many nuclear winters that life would never have evolved into mammal form.
If you send up a man in a spaceship, and kick him out with his space suit on, you can break up with him guilt free. Whilst flying around in space without any gravity, he will be unable to cry. People in space have looked down at Earth, and a tear would have formed in their eye, except that tear ducts are ducts and do not pump, ergo you cannot cry whilst floating around our Solar System.
The sun is a massive entity, and it is one of the facts about the Solar System that people do not seem to be able to comprehend. Our planet is a pea next to a basketball by comparison. Over 99.86% of the entire mass of our Solar System is comprised of the Sun. It is a very big ball of burning gas, and even though we cannot be sure, most scientists are sure it is over 15 billion years old.
They are capable of destroying the Earth. The closest one of most recent years was in the 1990s, and it charged a weather El Niño to the point where the Earth slowed down slightly by a fraction of a second as it was spinning. It sped back up again once the El Niño weather was over.
It was declassified as a planet, and is no longer a planet but is actually an orbiting comet. Now Pluto will just be remembered as a goofy cartoon dog created by Disney (why did he call him Pluto anyway?). It took scientists around thirty years to finally come out and tell the truth about Pluto. They say it is too small to be a planet, as you would have the squish seventy Plutos together in order to make the earth.
This is one of the great facts about our Solar System that was discovered by astronauts with too much time on their hands. If you fall asleep in your space suit as you are floating around the Solar System, it is impossible to snore. Apparently, a gravitational pull is required for people to snore, and since there is very little gravity pulling on a person in space, it is apparently impossible to snore.
It is the odd one out when it comes to facts about the Solar System. It could have been suitable for life at some point in its history, but somehow it accumulated a thick layer of greenhouse gasses. These gasses have trapped in the heat from thousands of years of sunshine and turned it into the hottest planet in the Solar System. Also, whilst it is being different, it is also the only planet that spins in the opposite direction to all the others. How this has happened defies explanation, unless it was created before all the others, but how?
I could have shared facts about the Solar System that included size of planets, number of stars etc, but I thought these would be more fun. Perhaps I’ll do some more basic facts another time. Are you fascinated by our Solar System or just accept it’s there?
Sources: listverse.com, makemegenius.com