facts about universe

Amazing Facts About the Universe

This article is a collection of amazing facts about the universe in increasing order of awesomeness. Universe we live in, is a beautifully awesome, enigmatic place, infinite in extent and full of mysteries! Read and stay awed!

The Universe is the totality of all space, time, matter and energy. Our earth is a tiny island of matter and energy, in the vast ocean of space time, which the universe is! Just as they say, truth is stranger than fiction and so it is with the universe. The things that our scientists have found in the vast realms beyond our planet are unbelievable and beyond imagination. This article is a compilation of some astounding and amazing facts about the universe, which will bamboozle you! To know about the origin of the universe, read, 'How was the Universe Created'?

Astounding and Amazing Facts About the Universe
The universe as we know it to be, is an amazing and astounding place, full of surprises. Amazing facts about earth or interesting facts about the solar system, just pale in comparison to the grandeur and vastness of the rest of the universe. Let us know some amazing facts about the world and the ocean of space time that we float in!

Amazing Facts About the Universe: Galaxies
Here are some amazing facts about huge island of matter and energy called galaxy, that we live in!

• Galaxies are spiraling whirlpools of matter and energy, which are like small oasis in the vast empty spaces of our universe. We live in one such galaxy, which we call the Milky Way!
• One light year is the distance traveled by light in a year and it amounts to about 9.4605284 × 10¹⁵ meters! Our Milky way galaxy disk is about 100,000 light years in diameter and about 1000 light years thick! It has up to 400 billion stars like our Sun!
• There are estimated to be about 100 billion such galaxies in the universe. The nearest spiral galaxy to our milky way is the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2.6 million light years away! This galaxy is on a collision course with our galaxy, and will collide with it in some billion years!
• At the center of every galaxy, there resides a massive black hole! Even our Milky way galaxy has a massive black hole in its center.

For more on this read, 'Facts About Milky Way - The Galaxy'

Amazing Facts About the Universe: Black Holes
Here are some amazing facts about the strangest objects in the universe called 'Black Holes'.

• Black Holes form, when stars much larger than our Sun, run out of their fuel and collapse under their own gravity to zero volume, forming a hole in the fabric of space time!
• When it comes to black holes, the line from Dante's 'Divine Comedy', 'All hope abandon ye who enter here' is actually true! Nothing can escape the phenomenal and unsurpassed gravitational pull of a black hole, not even light!
• The boundary of black holes is called 'Event Horizon'. The surface area of this event horizon is directly proportion to the entropy inside a black hole! Entropy is the measure of disorder in a system.
• Black Holes are not entirely black. They emit radiation called 'Hawking radiation' and eventually disappear!

To Know more on this read, 'Getting into Black Holes'.

Amazing Facts About the Universe: Pulsars
Here are some amazing facts about the 'pulsating stars' or 'Pulsars'

• Pulsars are rotating neutron stars with huge magnetic fields, which emit electromagnetic radiation. They are formed from the core of a star exploding in a supernova!
• A pulsar is like a light house. Just as the light house beam passes periodically in front of us, the pulsar pulses pass our earth every 1.4 milliseconds to 8.5 seconds. This is because they are rotating at phenomenal speeds, while they emit radiation!
• When they were first discovered, the periodic nature of their radiation output was mistaken for a signal from an alien civilization! In fact, the first pulsar source was dubbed 'LGM' standing for 'Little Green Men'!

Amazing Facts About the Universe: Quasars
Here are some amazing facts about objects with the most phenomenal energy output called 'Quasars'.

• Quasars (Quasi-stellar objects) were first mistaken to be stars, but later they were discovered to be galaxies. They have a very high redshift, which means that they are traveling at a speed close to the speed of light!
• Quasars are the very distant and most energetic galaxies, with an energy output unsurpassed by any other object in the universe. The energy out put of a quasars is the same as about 1 trillion (10¹²) Suns!
• At the central core of the quasar, is a super-massive black hole, which is swallowing gas and dust, as it courses through space. The energy is thought to be emitted by the in falling matter, as it heats up!

Hope these amazing facts about the universe have intrigued you and fueled your curiosity and imagination to learn more about astronomy. Just get a telescope and take a look at the world beyond our earth, to see the grandeur of our universe, through your own eyes!