General Discussion

[center]I love learning about space, and telling my mom facts I've learned and just blowing her mind. Humans can't truly comprehend the size of the universe and anything in it, but it's really fun to try. Share your craziest space facts with me! I'd love to learn some new ones :) Here's a couple of my own: The biggest star we know of is called UY Scuti. Its estimated solar radii is 1708, Putting into perspective, the Suns radius (which is what a solar radii is based off of) is 432,288 miles. UY Scuti's is 738,347,904 miles in radius (estimated, of course). Like??? If placed where the Sun is, UY Scuti would reach out to Jupiters orbit. Crazy. [img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/UY_Scuti_size_comparison_to_the_sun.png/800px-UY_Scuti_size_comparison_to_the_sun.png[/img] The biggest just.. thing in the universe? A supercluster of Galaxies called the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. Light takes 10 [i]billion[/i] years to go from one end to the other. Oof

I'm a huge space nerd, so I got super excited when I saw this. Some neat facts: - Eccentricity is used to measure how circular an orbit is, with an eccentricity of 0 being a perfect circle, 0-1 being elliptical, exactly 1 being a parabola, and anything greater than 1 being a hyperbola. The eccentricity in our whole solar system is unusually low compared to the eccentricities of planets in other solar systems! (Although this might just have to do with how we usually discover solar systems with only a few planets) - The seven main types of stars are organized into the groups. The groups, from hot to cool, are O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. Our Sun is a G star! [img]https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1026665440941977610/1059356867479998554/image.png[/img] - There's this thing called the Bootes Void that has very few galaxies in it. It's about 330 million light-years wide!

[quote name="MintToast" date="2023-03-28 22:33:18" ] - The seven main types of stars are organized into the groups. The groups, from hot to cool, are O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. Our Sun is a G star! [/quote] This classification system was invented/refined by women astronomers at Harvard in the late 1800s to early 1900s! They were some of the first women that were allowed to work in the field, and their (very important) work was seen with far less respect than was deserved. The main ones who contributed to this system were Williamina "Mina" Fleming and Annie Jump Cannon. Cannon was deaf due to a childhood illness.

[quote name="Abject" date="2023-03-29 09:48:01" ] [quote name="MintToast" date="2023-03-28 22:33:18" ] - The seven main types of stars are organized into the groups. The groups, from hot to cool, are O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. Our Sun is a G star! [/quote] This classification system was invented/refined by women astronomers at Harvard in the late 1800s to early 1900s! They were some of the first women that were allowed to work in the field, and their (very important) work was seen with far less respect than was deserved. The main ones who contributed to this system were Williamina "Mina" Fleming and Annie Jump Cannon. Cannon was deaf due to a childhood illness. [/quote] [center]Heck yeah, you go girls :D Also, I was watching How the Universe works last night and they had an episode on Voids :) It was pretty neat!

[center][s]I don't want this thread to die, so here's another fact[/s] Less space-y and more cultural, the "normal" constellations we know of (like the big/little dipper, Orion, Draco, etc.) consist of patterns in the stars. The Incas, however saw things in the dark parts of the Milky Way called the Great Rift. Consisting of a Shepherd, fox, baby llama and mother(?) llama, partridge, toad, and serpent. [img]https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2014/08/inca-constellations.jpg[/img] Aboriginal Australians also saw these dark constellations. The most famous being the "Emu in the Sky." [img]https://spaceaustralia.com/sites/default/files/2021-05/Emu%20in%20the%20Sky%20Kuringai.png[/img] There's a couple other dark constellations, such as the Dark Horse. These dark constellations are really just dark nebulae. Made up of clouds of dust and gas so dense that light can't pass through it!

We're in space.

There is evidence of bacteria once living on Mars, it could have even been widespread. The evidence indicates that they could have been photosynthetic microorganisms in particular. Because our universe is so large and one of our neighbors was able to support life at some point, I wonder if the possibility of life(or even intelligent life) on other planets is higher than we think.
https://mars.nasa.gov/news/406/scientists-find-evidence-of-ancient-microbial-life-on-mars/

Also, doing your “business” in the ISS can get difficult and messy. There’s no gravity, so there’s a vacuum in the bathroom used to suck up stuff floating in the air. Watched a video of an astronaut explaining day to day life in a space station, it was really interesting.

The movie Interstellar got its space science so right, that its CGI black hole led to the publishing of three scientific papers about black holes.

[quote name="MyHartWillDrogon" date="2023-03-30 00:59:23" ] We're in space. [/quote] [center]That is very true lol xD [quote name="rainchime" date="2023-03-30 08:53:41" ] There is evidence of bacteria once living on Mars, it could have even been widespread. The evidence indicates that they could have been photosynthetic microorganisms in particular. Because our universe is so large and one of our neighbors was able to support life at some point, I wonder if the possibility of life(or even intelligent life) on other planets is higher than we think. https://mars.nasa.gov/news/406/scientists-find-evidence-of-ancient-microbial-life-on-mars/ Also, doing your “business” in the ISS can get difficult and messy. There’s no gravity, so there’s a vacuum in the bathroom used to suck up stuff floating in the air. Watched a video of an astronaut explaining day to day life in a space station, it was really interesting. The movie Interstellar got its space science so right, that its CGI black hole led to the publishing of three scientific papers about black holes. [/quote] I watched something on the ISS about that very thing as well lol. Lots of things are weird on the station, but that's gotta be one of the top >> I believe, no doubt that there is life out there. Earth can't be the only one. With billions of planets out there? I don't believe there's just nothing out there. And that's actually really cool about Interstellar :D I love learning about black holes. They're terrifying, but so interesting.

[quote name="Spaxx" date="2023-03-30 10:58:56" ] This was mentioned by a space youtuber as a "here's a fun thing to think about" and I can't get the thought unstuck so I'ma stuck it with you as well: So basicly, we all know nothing is faster than the speed of light. Right? :) Well, there are certain parts of space expanding away from us faster than the speed of light. This means that light from these places will never, in an infinite amount of time, reach Earth. Therefore you could argue that space could be faster than the speed of light. [/quote] [center]That's one theory of how the universe as a whole will end. It's called the "Great Freeze" or the Heat Death of the universe. The universe expands too fast and things cool and eventually everything dies because there's nothing left to power stars and the like. I think I've seen stuff saying that black holes would be all that's left, until they to die out because there's nothing left. They ate all that was left. space is really crazy EDIT: There's also the big crunch (which is the opposite of the big freeze), and the big rip (the universe rips itself apart)