Our universe is full of mysteries. Our planet earth is just a small speck in the vast expanse of the universe. Man has wondered about the origin since ancient times and numerous theories have been proposed to explain its origin.
Here are some amazing facts about the universe-
- The universe is said to be around 13.8 billion years old as per current estimates. That’s around 200 million lifetimes in human life span!
- The word Universe is derived from the Latin word ‘Universum’.
- The Big Bang Theory describes the evolution of the universe. The universe was a hot dense mass which expanded and started cooling leading up to formation of stars and galaxies.
- Universe consists not only the stars and galaxies, but also the entire space, all matter, time and energy.
- Our galaxy – The Milky Way is one of the estimated 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
- 85% of the matter in the universe is thought to be Dark Matter – It is called Dark because it does not interact with electromagnetic field. It is difficult to detect and is not fully understood yet.
- The size of the entire universe has not been measured but the Observable Universe is estimated to be 93 Billion Light years in diameter. One light year is 9.46 trillion kilometres!
- The ISS (International Space Station) orbits around 350 Kilometres above the earth’s surface. It can be spotted in the clear night sky even without a telescope.
- Earth’s atmosphere was mostly made of Hydrogen to start with but changed over billions of years to the present state. These changes including addition of Nitrogen and Oxygen helped sustain life on our planet and made it so unique.
- The Karman Line at a distance of 100 Km from the earth’s mean sea level is considered the border between atmosphere and space. That is about 8 Mount Everests’ height. However there is no International law defining the edge of atmosphere and space.
