Part of GreenLantern's adventure in Rambling, Science
I’ve always been a big fan of little one-liner facts about our galaxy, space, and the universe that put things in perspective and show us how insignificant we really are. Here is a collection of my favorites.
The Earth is rotating on its axis at a rate of .286 miles per second at the equator, and is orbiting the sun at a rate of about 18.6 miles per second. The sun is orbiting the centre of the Milky Way at a rate of about 136.7 miles per second. The Milky Way is moving at a speed of about 621.4 miles per second towards a region of space 150 million light years away called the Great Attractor.
On its trip around the sun, the earth travels over a million and a half miles per day.
A “light year” is a measure of distance, not time. It is the distance that light travels in a year and is equal to about 9.5 trillion kilometres, or about 6 trillion miles.
There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches in the world.
There are an estimated 50 billion galaxies in the universe.
The matter in the universe is so thinly dispersed that the universe can be compared with a building twenty miles long, twenty miles wide, and twenty miles high, containing only a single grain of sand.
The universe began 13.7 billion years ago (i.e., 1,370 million years ago)
The contents of the universe include
o 4% atoms (ordinary matter)
o 23% of an unknown type of dark matter
o 73% of a mysterious dark energy
Our solar system was formed about 5 billion years ago
The earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago
The Sun is only one of the more than 200 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The Sun is 30,000 light-years from the center of our galaxy.
If the earth were the size of a quarter, the sun would be as large as a 9 foot ball and would be located a football field distance from the earth.
An area of the Sun’s surface the size of a postage stamp shines with the power of 1,500,000 candles.
If the distance between the Sun and Earth were 1 inch, the next nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be four and a half miles away.
Every second nuclear fusion in the Sun’s core converts about 700 million (700,000,000) tons of hydrogen into 695 million (695,000,000) tons of helium.
A galaxy of typical size, about 100 billion suns produces less energy than a single Quasar.
A Pulsar is a small star made up of neutrons so densely packed together that if one the size of a silver dollar landed on earth, it would weigh approximately 100 million tons.
If we are as insignificant as this list suggests, why would we have been made in “God’s image” way out in the boondocks of the universe?? If we all took the time to look more closely at ourselves and what we are doing to ourselves and our home, we’d realise we could actually make Everyday Better than Yesterday.
The second law of thermodynamics and entropy ensure that everyday is better than the next. We are born into a state of decay.