Alcohol clouds, diamond planets, heart-stopping temperatures… The Universe has all kinds of phenomena and celestial bodies that we can comment on as a curiosity at our dinners and family meals.
The Cosmos is such an extremely large place that practically everything is possible in it. And what is not possible here, surely is possible in the multiverses that some theoretical physicists defend that exist.
Today We are going to discover 40 curiosities of the universe Telling them at Christmas dinner will make us look like a real Carl Sagan.
The Universe is an immense place. Human beings will probably never know exactly how big it is, much less explore it in depth. Not only because thinking that one day we will have all the technology to travel through the immensity of space is being very optimistic, but we are also not going to have time. The human species will be extinct before we discover what the Universe hides.
Fortunately, you can observe what is in it through telescopes and hypothesize about some of its phenomena. Next we are going to discover 40 curiosities about the cosmos.
1. Diameter of 93,000,000,000 light years
The observable Universe is, according to current estimates, a size of 93 billion light years. This means that, taking into account that light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second, it would take 93,000 million years to cross its 10,000,000,000,000 kilometers. It may seem like a long time, and it is, but it has been in existence for much longer, about 13.8 billion years.
2. The Sun takes 200 million years to complete one revolution around the Milky Way
Our closest star, the Sun, is located in one of the arms of the Milky Way, our spiral-shaped galaxy.
The Sun orbits the Milky Way at a speed of 251 kilometers per secondan astonishing speed indeed. However, since our galaxy is so tremendously large, about 53,000 light years, the journey that our star makes to complete a revolution around the Milky Way takes about 200 million years.
3. 13.8 billion years old
It is believed that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, since that number of years is believed to have been when the Big Bang occurred. Since then, the Universe has been expanding rapidly and galaxies have been moving further and further away from each other. This phenomenon is strange because, taking into account the action of gravity, the fact that galaxies move away can only be explained by the existence of what has been called “dark energy”, a force contrary to gravity and that would allow this repulsion.
4. What was there before the Big Bang?
The greatest mystery of the Universe is knowing what was there before it existed. The most likely thing is that it will remain a mystery forever, since theoretically and empirically it is impossible to know. The oldest moment we can go back to is only the trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the explosion, the moment in which the Cosmos had its highest temperature. What happened before that fraction of time will always be a mystery and imagining it will only be an exercise in great creativity.
5. It’s flat
Albert Einstein, the famous German physicist, already predicted it with his also famous theory of relativity. This scientist assumed that the universe was not a sphere, but a flat body, something confirmed by observations made with the most modern telescopes. It is believed that the reason our universe is flat is because of the trade-off between the matter and energy we know and dark energy.
6. There are millions of millions of galaxies
Galaxies have sizes ranging between 3,000 and 300,000 light years in diameter. separated by enormous distances from each other. However, the Universe is so absolutely large that it can accommodate millions upon millions of galaxies. Our Milky Way would be nothing more than another of the 2,000,000,000,000 galaxies that make up our Universe.
7. What we see is not what it is
When we look at the sky, what we see is actually what was happening in the past. As light takes its time to reach us, The image we see of a celestial body such as a star or a galaxy is actually the one projected long ago. Even the celestial bodies closest to us are seen delayed.
For example, we see the Moon as it was 1.2 seconds ago, while we see the Sun as it was 8 minutes ago. The closest star, Proxima Centauri, we see what it was like 4.2 years ago. There are stars that, even though we can see them in the sky, have been dead for hundreds or even thousands of years.
8. We can see the birth of the cosmos on television
When the Big Bang arose, the explosion produced a gigantic echo that continues to resonate throughout the Universe today, although in a much weaker way. This echo is called cosmic background radiation and it is possible to capture it with an old TV. Simply pick up one of these devices and stop tuning, causing you to see the typical screen of snow or a bunch of gray dots. 1 percent of them are caused by interference from cosmic background radiation with the television antenna.
9. On Venus a year lasts less than a day
Venus is the slowest rotating planet in the Solar System. Its rotation on itself is so slow that it takes longer to rotate on its axis than to make a complete revolution around the Sun, that is, its day (243 Earth days) is longer than its year (225 Earth days).
10. Pulsars: the scariest fair attraction
Neutron stars are celestial bodies that rotate very quickly. Among them are pulsars, bodies so fast that they would be the most terrifying fair attraction we could imagine. Its rotation speed is 24% of the speed of lightwhich means that if we “ride” one of them our body would spin at 70,000 kilometers per second.
11. The farthest selfie from Earth
The farthest selfie from Earth was taken before smartphones even existed. In 1990, the Voyager 1 mission, on its journey to the edge of the Solar System, stopped for a moment to take a photo of the Earth. He was 6 billion kilometers from the planet, but he still received instructions from the camera operators and took the image of our planetwhich looks like a modest blue dot.
12. We are stardust
Everything we see is made of matter, including ourselves. The iron that circulates in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our bread or the aluminum in electronic devices emerged billions of years ago in the heart of a star and traveled through the Universe until they reached our planet. As Carl Sagan said, we are stardust.
13. A trip at the speed of light would be the last trip
No one can exceed the speed of light. Go at such speed It would cause the hydrogen atoms in our body to impact against the walls of the vehicle with an energy close to 10,000 sieverts per second. equivalent to the explosion of thousands of nuclear power plants.
14. Space is full of alcohol
Sagittarius B is a gigantic cloud composed of gas and dust that floats inside the Milky Way, about 26,000 light years from Earth. Astronomers have discovered that this cloud contains about 10 trillion liters of alcohol.
15. And water
As for the liquid element, NASA believes that there is at least 140 trillion times more water in the entire Universe than is contained in all of Earth’s oceans.
16. The coldest place in the Universe
Absolute zero temperature corresponds to -273.15 °C. On the Kelvin scale it corresponds to 0 ºK, since this scale was invented specifically so that the absolute absence of energy was represented with the null value. There is nothing colder than those temperatures, it is not possible.
The closest thing in the Universe, or at least that is known for now, is the Boomerang Nebula, an expanding cloud of gas and dust. This celestial body is located about 5,000 light years from Earth, and is believed to have a temperature of -272 ºC, just one degree hotter than absolute zero.
17. The highest temperature ever reached
In the same way that there is an absolute zero temperature, there is also an absolute hot temperature. This may shock many people, because although at first it makes sense that there is a maximum low temperature, the fact that there is a maximum warm temperature is surprising because one might think that an object can heat up and heat up almost to infinity. But the truth is that there is a maximum temperature, and in fact this was reached as soon as the Universe emerged.
It is hypothesized that the highest temperature ever reached, the “absolute hot”, would be the temperature reached one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, at which time all the matter that was going to form the Universe was found. so close together and compressed that its temperature was 141,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 °C. The laws of Physics prevent there from being anything hotter, this temperature being known as the Planck temperature.
18. Will it come to an end?
There are many theories about what could happen to the Universe, whether it will have an end or not. At the moment they are just that, theories, but all of them are chilling if one stops to think about the possibility that everything, absolutely everything in this Universe, could disappear without a trace. Some physicists are optimistic and see the Universe as something infinite, although others believe that sooner or later it will die, although by the time it happens our species will have been extinct for millions of years.
There are as many endings proposed for our Universe as there are tastes in an ice cream parlor: cooling down, being devoured by black holes, tearing apart, contracting, time stopping, with a new Big Bang… Choose your favorite ending.
19. The biggest star
At the moment, UY Scuti is the largest star in the known Universe. This star is located about 9,500 light years from Earth, with a diameter of 2,400 million kilometers. It is so, so big that, If we tried to go around it with a ship at 900 km/h, it would take us 3,000 years to do it. Compared to UY Scuti, the Sun is a rather small star, only 1.4 million kilometers in diameter.
When supermassive stars die, they leave behind a nucleus in which protons and electrons fuse into neutrons, causing it to acquire enormously large densities. These bodies are known as neutron stars.
With diameters of only 10 km, smaller than the island of Manhattan, these bodies can weigh up to twice as much as the Sun. In fact, a piece of these stars just the size of a soup spoon would weigh more than all the cars and trucks on Earth combined.
21. Stars like a golf ball
Another hypothetical type of celestial body is preon stars, very small stars that would be formed exclusively of free subatomic particles. Preon stars would have a density 47 million times higher than that of neutron stars. Basically it would be like condensing the entire mass of the Sun, a body 1,400,000 kilometers in diameter, into an object the size of a golf ball.
22. A diamond planet
55 Cancri e is a very valuable planet, literally. It is a planet whose composition is believed to be 33% pure diamond. This planet is twice the size of Earth and is believed to have a value of 27 quintillion dollars, that is, 27 followed by 30 zeros. Currently, it is estimated that there are about 90 trillion US dollars on Earth, or what is the same, 90 followed by 12 zeros.
23. The biggest diamond
Astronomers have discovered what, at the moment, is the largest diamond in the known Universe: BPM 37093. Affectionately called Lucy, in honor of the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, it is about a gigantic crystallized block that travels about 50 light years from us and measures almost 50,000 kilometers long.
24. Stars that live 200 billion years
The most abundant stars in the Universe are red dwarfs, which, as their name suggests, are also the smallest stars. Having a small size, together with the low energy they have, having a surface that is less than 3,800 ºC, makes these stars spend their fuel very slowly.
Because of this, red dwarfs can live for about 200 billion years. Taking into account that the history of the Universe is believed to be only 13.8 billion years old, enough time has not yet passed for a star of this type to die, not even half the life of the oldest ones has passed.
25. A black hole has infinite density
Black holes form when stars 20 times larger than the Sun collapse. These celestial bodies are one of the greatest mysteries of astrophysics and theoretical physics, and are considered a singularity in space. They have infinite mass and no volume, something incomprehensible from our experimental physics. Their density is infinite, which is why the gravity they generate is so high that not even light can escape their attraction.
26. The densest subatomic particle in the Universe
The Planck particle is a hypothetical subatomic particle that could be compared to a black hole, but in miniature. This particle would have a mass 13 million quadrillion times greater than that of a proton, but it would be several trillion times smaller.
Related article: “The 9 postulates of Dalton’s atomic theory”
27. Ring-shaped galaxies
There are ring-shaped galaxies in the Universe. These stand out for the fact that they are very strange, not at all common, it is believed that one in every 1,000 galaxies have this shape. It is hypothesized that this type of galaxy forms when a larger galaxy passes through them. causing the smallest one to deform through the action of gravitational phenomena, taking the shape of a ring.
28. Multiverses
The Multiverse Theory maintains that our Universe could be just one of infinite cosmoses. There would be Universes of all kinds. There would be those identical to ours, advanced or behind in time, others where only a small detail is different and others in which practically nothing is the same.
If they existed, being in a space-time different from ours, it is believed that it is impossible not only to communicate with them, but also to It would be impossible to verify its existence Well, if we existed, we would be separated by literally nothing, and what can pass through that nothing is absolutely nothing.
29. String theory
Quantum mechanics is that theory that is introduced in high schools talking about subatomic particles such as neutrons, electrons and protons. The theory of general relativity could be defined as that which explains what happens in our world.
These two theories are fundamental to physics, but they have the small problem that they do not fit together. For this reason, the great efforts of theoretical physicists have focused on developing a theory that unites the world of the subatomic and the empirically demonstrated.
The result of this is String Theory, which at the moment seems to function as a theory of everything. This argues that subatomic particles are, in reality, vibrating strings. Depending on their vibration, these strings not only determine the nature of the particles but also transmit the forces.
This theory is not perfect, since accepting it would have to presuppose the existence of 11 dimensions in our Universe, but for now it is the best there is.
You may be interested: “The 30 branches of Chemistry (explained)”
30. Gravity doesn’t fit into quantum mechanics
Gravity is what makes quantum mechanics and general relativity not fit. The other forces can be explained by the existence of subatomic particles, such as electromagnetism with electrons, but not gravity.
It is still a mystery what explains why two bodies of any size attract each other, even if they are thousands of light years away. String Theory would be what offers a solution saying that there would be some species of strings that move the Universe, coiling around each other and being able to travel and communicate with celestial objects.
31. The Milky Way and Andromeda will collide
The Milky Way and Andromeda, the closest galaxy to ours, are approaching at a speed of 300 kilometers per second.
Although this speed is extremely great, we should not worry yet because Andromeda is about 2.5 million light years away, so the impact will happen in a long time, about 5,000 million years. Before that happens, there will hardly be any remains of our civilization.
It should also be said that the fact that they will collide is quite relative. Given the distances between stars within galaxies, it is mathematically unlikely, if not impossible, that a collision between them could occur. What will simply happen is that the Milky Way and Andromeda will join together to form a larger galaxy.
32. We know very few planets
Astronomers have discovered nearly 4,300 exoplanets in our galaxy. At first it may seem like a lot but, taking into account that the Milky Way could be home to 100,000 million stars and that most of them have to have at least one planet orbiting around them, there are very few planets that we know of in total.
And if we think that there are many more galaxies in our Universe, the total number of planets must be abysmal, a number that our species will surely never know.
33. Other habitable worlds
Of all the exoplanets that have been discovered to date, 55 of those worlds are believed to be potentially habitable.
Taking into account that there are many more planets that must exist in the Universe, and that a significant percentage must have the ideal conditions to host life, it is quite likely that we are not alone. Let’s hope that if there is life on other planets, they will be friendly.
34 Ghost Particles
Neutrinos (not to be confused with neutrons) are a subatomic particle with no electrical charge and such an extremely small mass that they are practically impossible to detect, as if they were ghosts. These particles are so small that they can travel at speeds close to that of light. and although nearly 68 million neutrinos pass through every square centimeter of our body, we do not feel them. They pass through matter but without interacting with it.
35. The birth of the stars
Nebulae are enormous clouds composed of gas and dust, with sizes ranging between 50 and 300 light years. With the action of gravity and the passage of millions of years, its particles condense to the point where their density and temperature grow more and more. When a temperature of 12 million degrees Celsius is reached, nuclear fusion reactions begin and that is when it becomes a star.
Related article: “The 7 types of stars (and their characteristics)”
36. Black stars
When we think about stars or the Sun itself, it would seem like an oxymoron to talk about black stars, but the truth is that it is a reality. When the Sun dies, this star will become a white dwarf, which is basically remains of its core with very high densities. In fact, all of the Sun’s mass will be condensed into a sphere the size of the Earth.
Theoretical physicists have hypothesized that white dwarfs will eventually cool, to the point where what remains is a black star, which will no longer have energy and emit no light. It should be said that it is a hypothetical star, since in the entire history of the Universe, not enough time has passed for a white dwarf to die.
37. There is no center
If three things should be clear to us about the Universe, it is that it is enormous, it is constantly expanding and it has a flat shape. Due to these characteristics it is difficult to establish a center as such.
We find ourselves talking about something with astronomical sizes, in the literal sense of the expression, and because of this the concept of center here makes no sense. It is not possible to establish a central point in something that is immense.
38 You can travel to the future, but not to the past
Taking into account the laws of general relativity, the only constant thing is the speed of light. Everything else will depend on the observer. The greater the speed with which an object or person moves, the less time passes for that body compared to those that do not move.
This means that It is possible to travel to the future, although at the moment we do not have the necessary technology as to make an object move at a speed high enough for this to happen. What does seem impossible, at least taking into account the laws of physics, are trips to the past.
39. A supernova thousands of light years away would extinguish life on Earth
One of the most violent phenomena in the Universe are supernovae, star explosions that occur when a massive star, about 8 times larger than the Sun, dies. Its violent explosion can reach temperatures of 3 billion degrees, emitting gamma radiation capable of passing through the entire galaxy. Should this happen, it is possible that all life forms on Earth would die.
40. The death of the Sun
The Sun is a yellow dwarf, so it has a life expectancy of about 10 billion years. Considering that it was formed 4.6 billion years ago, it is still not even halfway through its life. Now, when it dies in 5,500, the Earth will disappear with it, because before the star becomes a white dwarf, it will increase in size, swallowing us up. Without a doubt, a tragic ending.
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This article has been reviewed by our editorial team at PsychologyFor to ensure accuracy, clarity, and adherence to evidence-based research. The content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice.
