94 Expansive Facts About the Universe & The Stuff In It – Part 2

The Andromeda galaxy is larger than the moon in the sky, but it is usually too dim to be seen.

2. A Persian astronomer named Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi discovered Andromeda Galaxy way back in 964 A.D.

3. The Andromeda galaxy is actually 8 times larger than the moon in the night sky but is hard to make out unless there's minimal light pollution.

4. It is thought that the Star of Bethlehem may have been a Supernova occurring in the nearby Andromeda Galaxy.

5. The distance to the Andromeda galaxy is less than 10 times its diameter.

Bananas produce Antimatter at the rate of one Positron every 75 minutes.

7. 10 Milligrams of Antimatter would be enough to fuel a mission to Mars in as little as 45 days, but producing that amount of Antimatter would cost roughly $250 million.

8. Russia has a vast diamond field containing "Trillions of Karats", enough to supply global markets for another 3000 years. The field was discovered in the 1970s underneath 35 million-year-old asteroid crater in Siberia.

9. Thunderstorms create antimatter.

10. Jupiter is a "Cosmic Vacuum Cleaner." Its gravitational influence causes comets and asteroids to collide with it. The rate of impacts on Jupiter is about 2000-8000X higher than the rate on Earth. Without Jupiter, the probability of asteroid impacts with the inner planets would be much greater.

The asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs was powerful enough to send Earth rocks to Mars and even Europa. As a result, if we ever find life on those worlds it may actually have originated on our own planet.

12. A single asteroid can contain $20 trillion worth of metals.

13. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs also caused volcanoes to erupt everywhere, acid rain which burned flesh and vegetation, a sulfuric gas that blocked out sunlight for years, vaporized rocks as deep as the sea floor, and mega tsunamis up to 2 miles (3.22km) high.

14. NASA estimates that the value of minerals in the asteroid belt exceeds $600,000,000,000,000,000,000. Or nearly $100 billion per person alive.

15. Japan successfully landed an unmanned spacecraft on an asteroid, collected samples in 2005. The probe returned to earth in 2010.

A man named Gregory W. Nemitz claimed ownership of Asteroid 433 Eros, on which NEAR Shoemaker landed in 2001. His company Orbital Development issued NASA a parking ticket for $20.

17. NASA plans to lasso an asteroid and drag it to the moon for astronauts to walk on.

18. Earth is being shadowed by a minor planet called 2010 TK7, a 300-meter diameter Trojan asteroid that orbits the sun in a spiral pattern every 365.3 days, 60° ahead of Earth's track through space. It has a gravitational force 1/20000 that of Earth and was only discovered in 2010.

19. In March 1989, an asteroid passed through the exact position where Earth was only six hours earlier.

20. The Richter Scale doesn't stop at 10.0 and that asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was equivalent in energy release to a 13.0 earthquake.

J002E3, originally thought to be an asteroid orbiting the Earth, is actually part of the Apollo 12 mission that returned to Earth orbit after 31 years of orbiting the Sun.

22. The average distance between asteroids in space is over 100,000 miles, meaning an asteroid field would be very simple to navigate.

23. Two former U.S. astronauts started an organization, independent from NASA, dedicated to launch a telescope called "The Sentinel" that will orbit the Sun and detect any Earth-bound asteroid threats up to decades in advance.

24. New research indicates the asteroid that killed the Dinosaurs did so, not primarily due to dust blocking out the sun, but by ejecting ~500 cubic miles of tiny glass spherules at near escape velocity. Upon falling to earth they incinerated nearly all surface life in a matter of minutes.

25. The tallest known mountain in the solar system is on an asteroid (Rheasilvia).