5 Mind-Blowing Things We Bet You Didn’t Know About The Universe

For anyone who’s viewed the night sky through a telescope or simply gaze upwards, the universe holds more mysteries than we could ever possibly resolve in one sitting. Luckily for you Humor Nation has uncovered strange and exciting details about the space around us. To answer some of your burning questions, here are mind blowing facts about the universe you didn’t know! And don’t forget to share this article with your friends and comment your views before you take off. Like the all knowing monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey” this intergalactic rectangle will lead you into a wormhole of knowledge about Earth and beyond.

Let’s Take A Look At 5 Mind-Blowing Things We Bet You Didn’t Know About The Universe!

1. The Universe Is Old.

The universe is old if you’re watching this you may not be battled in the grand scheme of things even an elderly human is still a gleam in the universe’s eye. But the plane of existence in which we reside is widely believed to be 13.8 billion years old, give or take fifty nine million years. The average human would have to live a hundred and seventy four point seven million lifetimes to be as ancient as the Big Bang.

Scientists came to that number by measuring the area which celestial objects were traveling and reviewing the Cosmic Microwave Background of radiation left over by the Big Bang. This is basically the static you’d find between TV channels while changing to the Big Bang Theory on CBS, but if you really get down to it since we’re all made of elements and chemicals produced by the biggest of bangs. We’re essentially as old as time itself and might we say we look pretty great for our age there’s barely a wrinkle in time.

2. The Dark Side

Black holes! Speaking of wrinkles in time, the universe is chock full of them or rather full of black holes. Many of these inescapable whirlpools are millions of times the mass of our own Sun and are so dense that not even light can escape their gravitational pull. The entrance to the hole is called “The Event Horizon” and although black holes have never been photographed, we’ve seen the tugging of other objects caught in the grips of these interstellar monsters.

If you were to be pulled toward the black hole and pass through its event horizon you’d appear to be frozen in time like someone pressing pause on a remote. As you got closer to the hole the outside viewer would deceive you as turning redder and redder and moving slower and slower until you stopped altogether. At this point time would seem to halt and you would appear to be trapped forever on the surface melding with the other energy stuck there.

3. When A Sun Runs Out Of Nuclear Energy

The exterior layers are ejected to the surrounding space to create a nebula and the remaining core is considered a white dwarf. Pulsar is a fast spinning white dwarf generally about the size of New York City and just like the Big Apple it never sleeps. With two shafts of light extending light years in opposite directions it’s constantly spinning to its own rhythm.

With some pulsars note to rotate as fast as times 700 times per second. Since the Pulsar is leftover core material from a supernova otherwise known as a Neutron star. This super power orb fuels itself. Pulsars are so dense that according to NASA if you were to scoop up a square inch block of this stuff it would weigh about as much as Mount Everest.

4. Drake

Whoever discovers alien life deserves their own party on the nearest alcohol cloud, but they would owe a lot to Frank Drake. In 1961 Drake devised a calculation in which the number of stars with intelligent civilizations must be equal to several strict interstellar variables. Called the “Drake Equation” it determined the probability of advanced beings dwelling elsewhere in the cosmos the equation has been a foundation for extraterrestrial research.

Even though it wasn’t until the 1995 that we officially discovered the first planet outside of our own solar system. More recently scientists Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb discovered unexplained fast radio bursts of intense light coming from a deep corner of the galaxy that they believed to be artificial in origin. Based on what we know about the planets in our own galaxy they gave a healthy estimate that there could be around 10000 intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way.

5. Ghost Planet

Speaking of anomalies there’s one in our own backyard that could change the way we view our solar system. First spotted in 2014, astronomers notice that six objects in the frozen Kuiper belt on the far outskirts of our Suns orbit were all moving in the same direction, outside of the regions normal orbit. Some astronomers believe the best explanation for this is that there is an entirely new planet out there, it’s believed to be the size of Neptune making a regular orbit around the Sun. It would be only the third new planet discovered in our solar system since ancient civilizations.