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Trivia ~ Nature
~ Space~
Pluto's orbit crossed Neptune's in 1979, making Pluto the eighth planet from the sun. In 1999 it recrossed Neptune's orbit returning to ninth place.
How long would it take us here on earth to notice if the sun blacked out? This is an important question for our paranoid readers.
Since the sun is about 94 million miles away, it would take about 8 1/3 minutes for the last rays of light to hit the earth.
In our solar system, the planet whose axis is most tilted to its orbit is Uranus, a distant, blue-green gas giant. Its extreme tilt of 97.86 degrees means that each pole of the planet faces the Sun directly for about one quarter of its 84-year orbit.
No one knows how Uranus got tipped so far out of alignment with the rest of the solar system. One theory is that an encounter with another large planet twisted its spin billions of years ago. That other planet was, perhaps, flung out of the system in the encounter.
Because of its extreme tilt, Uranus also has the most extreme seasons. It is now early spring in the northern hemisphere, and gigantic storms have just been seen for the first time in the planet's thick atmosphere. As big as continents on Earth, these huge storms are the first of a number of weather changes that will occur as Uranus enters its next long, slow season.
Is the Earth really round?
Columbus knew it: what goes around literally comes around. If you start out in any direction on this planet and don't deviate from your course, you'll wind up back where you started -- 754 roadside fast food hamburgers later. You will not fall off the edge of the Earth.
But does that prove that the world is round? No, just that it's roundish. Actually it's an oblate spheroid. Say what? It's flat at both poles and sticks out a bit in the middle.
Hmmm. Flat at the top, flat at the bottom, with a bulge in the middle. Sounds like my 59-year-old neighbor. He's bald and has flat feet and middle-aged spread. But hey, his wife thinks the world of him.
If you ever find yourself suddenly walking on the moon, be advised that your watch will be off by about two minutes every hour. Not to worry – you will be dead from lack of oxygen before you miss any appointments.
How can solar storms damage orbiting satellites?
When the Sun acts up, it can send streams of electrons and protons towards Earth. These storms of solar plasma cause auroras and electromagnetic disturbances on Earth, and can also damage satellites.
There are two ways satellites are at risk from plasma storms. First, the particles in the plasma impact the metallic outer surface of the satellite, where they cause electric charges to build up. These charges can become strong enough to discharge in sparks, which can create electric surges that damage delicate components.
The second risk is from the fastest particles, which can have enough energy to damage components directly as they pass right through the electronics inside the satellite.
Light takes six hours to reach Earth from Pluto. That raises a question. Who on Pluto has a flashlight?
The multi-layered space suite worn by astronauts on the Apollo moon landings weighed 180 pounds on Earth and 30 pounds on the moon with the reduced lunar gravity.
Ganymede, Jupiter's largest satellite (Moon), is actually larger than the planet Mercury. It is 3,275 miles in diameter.
A typical nova explosion releases about as much energy as the Sun emits in 10,000 years, or as much as in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 nuclear bombs.
The first rocket "count down" was in a silent German science fiction film, "Die Frau in Mond" (The Girl in the Moon) in 1928. Director Fritz Lang reversed the count to build suspense.
If an object has no molecules, the concept of temperature is meaningless. That's why it's technically incorrect to speak of the "cold of outer space"; space has no temperature, and is known as a "heat sink," meaning it drains heat out of things.
When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300 C.
The Russians used a pencil. Enjoy paying your taxes--they're due again.
If you attempted to count the stars in the Milky Way galaxy at a rate of one every second, it would take around 3,000 years to count them all.
The smallest visible sunspots have an area of 500 million square miles, about fifty times the size of Africa. The largest sunspots have an area of about 7,000 million square miles.
The land speed record on the moon is 10.56 miles per hour, set in a lunar rover.
The moons of Mars are called Phobos and Deimos after two mythical horses that drew the chariot of Mars, the Roman god of war
As bits of trivia are presented on my e-mail list I will add them here. See them first by sending an e-mail to twotreestrivia-subscribe@topica.com
If you have other good Trivia to add please E-mail me
