Space Facts Generator

• [Space fact 1] Evidence of living organisms contemporary with the Hadean-eon formation of the Earth was recently discovered in Western Australian, dating nearly 1 billion years before the current fossil record. Scientists discovered 4.1 billion-year-old zircon samples (before even oceans appeared on earth) that had pockets of organic carbon. Some scientists even speculate that life itself is older than the earth, suggesting that life first appeared about 10 billion years ago, which is far older than the Earth’s projected age of 4.5 billion years.

  Nature, Spacesource

• [Space fact 2] The international space station's 55-foot robot arm assembly is capable of lifting 220,000 pounds, which is the weight of a space shuttle orbiter.

  Science, Space, Technologysource

• [Space fact 3] Scientists believe that Earth’s stable climate is an anomaly that will end in the next billion years.

  Moon, Space

• [Space fact 4] The name “Earth” comes from Old English and Old High Germanic words (eorthe and erda, respectively) for “ground” or “soil.”

  Moon, Space

• [Space fact 5] Astronomers hypothesize three different possible scenarios for our universe: 1) we have a closed universe, which means the universe will eventually collapse into another singularity; 2) we have an open universe, which means that the universe will keep expanding forever until everything is so far apart that the universe becomes inert and dead; and 3) we have a flat universe, which means gravity is just right and will hold the universe together at just the right dimensions to allow things to go on indefinitely. This last scenario is also known as the Goldilocks effect, where everything is “just right.”

  Moon, Space

• [Space fact 6] The lowest note in the observed universe is caused by the rumbling of a black hole in the Perseus galaxy 250 million light years from Earth. It is 57 octaves below middle C

  Music, Spacesource

• [Space fact 7] Hubble has captured a set of galaxies that have such a strong gravitational pull that they warp time and light, an effect known as gravitational lensing and this specific set of galaxies creates the appearance of a smiley face.

  Space, Timesource

• [Space fact 8] Astronomer Carl Sagan estimated that the number of probable planets in the universe is at 10 billion trillion. But he also posited that they are so spread out that if we were randomly inserted into the universe, the chances that we would be on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion, or 10-33. In other words, “worlds are precious.”

  Moon, Space

• [Space fact 9] The asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars is not the leftover debris of a destroyed planet as it was previously believed. It is, in fact, the remains of a planet that never formed due to Jupiter's mass.

  Mystery, Spacesource

• [Space fact 10] Uranus orbits the sun every 84 Earth years.

  Moon, Space

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