65 of The Most Mind-Blowing Facts About Our Universe

The JWST telescope planned to be launched in 2018 is 100X more powerful than Hubble and will be able to see the edge of the observable universe.

27. Scientists believed that during the Inflationary Epoch, roughly 10-36 seconds after the Big Bang, the universe expanded by a factor of at least 1026 or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, becoming the size of a grapefruit.

28. Light in itself isn't special. According to Einstein, the fastest speed reachable in the universe is 300 million meters/second. It just happens that light is the only thing we have detected that travels without limitations in a vacuum, which is why we associate the speed limit of the universe with it.

29. The Higgs boson is nicknamed 'the God particle' not because of its fundamental role in the universe, but because of Leon Lederman, a theoretical physicist who wrote a book about it in 1993, called it the 'Goddamn particle', as it was so difficult to observe.

30. The theory of an infinite universe was first proposed by a Greek philosopher named Archytas of Tarentum ~400 B.C., reasoning that even if he did reach the end of the universe he would still be able to extend his staff beyond the boundary.

In 1054 a supernova in the Constellation Taurus was observed that was bright enough to remain visible during daylight for perhaps as long as 23 days. The remnant of the supernova, which consists of debris ejected during the explosion, is now known as the Crab Nebula.

32. Our own galaxy, The Milky Way has other smaller galaxies known satellites galaxies that orbit around it.

33. These interstellar objects that are smaller than galaxies have been named dwarf galaxies that have several billion stars and there are even smaller objects called hobbit galaxies.

34. The Andromeda Galaxy is not the closest galaxy to ours, and in fact, there is one 100 times closer called Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy that is 42,000 light years far from the galactic center and it is a satellite dwarf of the Milky Way.

35. The Milky Way is currently in the middle of absorbing another smaller galaxy, the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy, one of our satellite galaxies.

The Milky Way, Andromeda, and all the nearby galaxies are being pulled into something that we can't see that is tens of thousands of times more massive than our galaxy, called The Great Attractor.

37. It is theorized that if or when the Andromeda and Milky Way Galaxies collide in 3-5 billion years, chances of even two stars colliding is negligible because of the huge distances between them.

38. When you're looking at the Sagittarius constellation you're actually looking into the center of our galaxy.

39. In 2013, South African and Swedish scientists discovered that dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way for orientation. They are the first animals proven to use our galaxy for navigation.

40. The visible size of the Andromeda galaxy is over 4 times that of our Moon when seen from earth. It is far too faint to be casually observed by the sky gazers. To an unaided eye, it just appears as a small, faint, fuzzy patch.

It takes the Earth (and the Sun) 226 million years to orbit around the Milky Way Galaxy. Which means Earth has made the orbit around our galaxy about 20 times since the planet is 4.5 billion years old.

42. Scientists have named a galaxy, "Death Star Galaxy" because it is shooting an energetic blast of energy from its supermassive black hole at its companion galaxy and thereby destroying it.

43. Half of all stars aren't in a galaxy

44. 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

45. There are about 24 galaxies in the observable universe for every single person alive on earth (170 Billion galaxies/7 Billion humans)

The "North Star" is actually a handful of stars orbiting each other

47. The Earth and our solar system are currently traveling through in an area with only 5% of the average density of the Milky Way Galaxy. It was likely blasted clear by a supernova 300,000 years ago.

48. In 2011, scientists estimated that there are at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way, of which at least 500 million are in the "habitable zone" of their star. As of January 2013, the number of estimated planets in the Milky Way has more than doubled.

49. Supernovae explode on an average once every 100 years in a galaxy. Assuming there are 170 billion galaxies in the universe, there are 53 supernovae exploding every single second.

50. The last time a star went supernova in our galaxy was in 1604, and we're overdue for another one.