Jupiter

BOOM! An explosion of supersonic waves, interplanetary heat, dust, fumes... The Earth’s atmosphere has been invaded by a cosmic rock the size of Everest! A few seconds ago, this rock, weighing trillions of tons, was hurtling towards Earth. It could fly from New York to Anchorage faster than you could fry yourself an omelet! This monster’s name? The Chicxulub incident. Epic name, right!66 million years ago, it crashed into the Earth. Back then, dinosaurs ruled the planet. But not for long! The epic collision took place in modern Mexico, in the Yucatán Peninsula, right near Cancun, where the dinosaurs were vacationing! Well probably not. Still, the huge space rock hit the ocean, but even all that water couldn’t stop the inevitable.The collision caused a huge amount of energy to be released. The horror on a planetary scale had begun! Imagine a mini sun lighting up the surface of the Earth, with tsunamis the height of the Statue of Liberty bursting from the epicenter of the watery impact. Hmm. Not good.

Recently, Chinese scientists discovered something interesting on the Moon... An unusual crystal. Moreover, they found out that this crystal contains an element that can literally replace nuclear fuel! Let’s find out more. The composition of the Moon has long remained a mystery to us. Half a century has already passed since the Apollo mission. Unfortunately, we haven’t traveled to the Moon much since then, so it’s not surprising that it’s not so easy for us to study it. But recently we’ve made a breakthrough in this area! In December 2020, Chinese scientists sent a Chang’e-5 probe to the Moon. The mission was named after the ancient Chinese deity of the Moon, Chang’e. Quite poetic, isn’t it?

I hope you feel well-rested. Because I’ve got a tough task for you. Don’t worry — it’s fun! You’re going to visit different planets of our Solar System and try to run on each of them! Let’s figure out where you can run the fastest and where you can barely walk! The fastest man on Earth, Usain Bolt, can run with an average speed of about 23 miles per hour. But his top speed is higher — up to 27 miles per hour! Sadly, we can’t all be Usain Bolts. The average person runs at a speed of 6 to 8 mph. But maybe, there’s a planet out there where you can beat the famous Jamaican sprinter’s records? But first things first, what will affect your speed when you run on other planets? For one thing, gravity. Depending on how strong it is on the planet you visit, it’ll influence your weight. And in most cases, the heavier you are, the more slowly you run.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. More than 1,300 Earths could fit inside this gas giant. It’s also two and a half times more massive than all the other planets of the Solar System — combined! But if you think this is mind-boggling, I’ve got some great news for you! Very recently, a team of astronomers has discovered a much, much bigger planet with the help of the Subaru Telescope and the NASA Hubble Space Telescope.It’s a Jupiter-like protoplanet orbiting a very young star called AB Aurigae. The star is probably still forming and is no more than 5 million years old. For comparison, our Sun is 4.6 billion years old. The young star is located around 531 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Auriga.

If you landed on Mercury, the first thing you’d notice would be how close it is to the Sun. It’s actually the closest planet to the big ball of fire and the smallest. But it’s not the hottest planet. Venus takes credit for that. It takes Earth 365 days to orbit the Sun, and it takes Mercury more than 3 months. Well, 88 days, to be exact. The days are boiling hot, with the temperature reaching above 800 °F (425 °C). But on the other side of the planet that the Sun doesn’t reach, the temperatures drop to −300 °F (-180 °C). Mercury’s atmosphere can’t hold any heat when it’s nighttime, just like a desert. Deserts have no atmosphere, which is why they have no moisture, and no clouds or rain.If you manage to get from one end of the planet to the other and always stay in between the scorching heat and freezing cold, then you can survive. But oxygen isn’t a friend to Mercury’s atmosphere. So you’d just live for as long as you can hold your breath. Plus, there’s a magnetic field that has solar winds from the Sun that create plasma tornadoes.

Let’s face it: as stars go, our Sun is actually, well ... pretty boring. C’mon, there’s nothing unusual about it. There are millions of similar yellow dwarfs in the universe. And yet we love it. After all, it’s the only star we have, and it gives us life. However... it wasn’t always like that. Once upon a time, the Sun had a twin... possibly an evil one! What happened to it? Well, let’s find out. This here is a giant molecular cloud. They’re also sometimes called dark nebulae. Here, there are many interstellar clumps full of gas, dust, and piles of stars. These clouds have no clear boundaries and often take weird crazy forms. You can even see some of them with the naked eye. Look at the clear sky at night — they look like dark spots all across the bright Milky Way.

Let’s pretend that humanity faces a huge threat from outer space. We’ll imagine that a giant planet-eating octopus comes to our solar system to eat Venus, Mars, Earth, Jupiter, and other planets, except Saturn. Therefore, people decide to move to the big planet with giant rings. Fortunately, they already have cool technologies that allow them to make such trips. So, we quickly get into giant ships, take off, and fly to Saturn. Life on the planet itself is impossible because it has no solid ground. The ship won’t be able to land there. This is a giant gas ball that is 9 times wider than Earth.

Tired of boring old Earth? Want to know what lies beyond the starry night sky? You’re not the only one. People have been asking the same question for centuries. Luckily, scientists got you covered. They have discovered a lot about amazing places light-years away from our Blue Planet. Just one light year is about 6 trillion miles; mind-blowing, huh? So, hop on, the spaceship of knowledge is lifting off.

Now, as much as we love epic space battles with blasters cutting through the black void and causing cheerful booms, that’s not exactly what happens when something explodes in the big black. Space is basically a vacuum, meaning it has no oxygen. And oxygen is an essential part of any process of burning we have here on Earth. You might argue that stars can burn and explode into supernovae, but that’s not exactly true either.

There are a lot of space objects all around the Universe, from stars to planets, to satellites, comets, and asteroids. But our closest celestial body is the Moon, which has been subject to much research, theories, and even myths. As our only natural and permanent satellite, the Moon is in the top ten list of biggest satellites in our Solar System.

The large ball of fire thousands of miles away from us is the brightest object in our Solar System, as well as the biggest. If Jupiter was the size of a basketball, then the Earth would be a tiny little grape. But the Sun makes even Jupiter look like a joke. That big burning ball in the sky is made up of hydrogen and helium and is 864,000 miles in diameter, making it more than 100 times wider than our little blue planet. It’s 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit just on the surface and 27 million degrees at the core.

Consider the rogue planet, the cosmic wanderer that nobody wants to take home. Basically, a rogue planet is a planet that has been ejected from its own star system and is now floating aimlessly through space like a cosmic loner. These planets aren’t just a theory; scientists have actually detected some in our galaxy! In fact, estimates suggest that there may be lots of these cosmic nomads floating around the Milky Way! And they aren’t just small, rocky worlds like Earth. Some of them are actually massive gas giants, many times larger than Jupiter! These behemoths could potentially have their own moons and even their own mini-systems orbiting around them.

Mercury gets a bad rap for always being hot, but that’s not entirely true. The planet’s got no atmosphere, so its temperature swings are wild. When it’s facing the Sun, it can get up to a blistering 800°F, but when it’s turned away, it drops to a frigid −290°F. The reason for this is that Earth has a cozy atmosphere that keeps our temps in check. Mercury doesn’t have that luxury, so it’s at the mercy of the Sun’s rays. But despite all that, Mercury’s still worth checking out. It’s close to the Sun, which makes it a prime spot for studying how solar radiation affects planets. And even though it’s not exactly hospitable to life, there are still plenty of mysteries to unravel.

Have you ever wondered what stars look like in galaxies far, far away? Researchers can generally only see the brightest stars, so with the data they managed to collect, they simply thought these stars were similar in size and weight to the ones we have in our own galaxy. It’s hard to explore the space around us though. When they study stars in other galaxies, it’s like they’re trying to see a tiny ant crawling on a leaf. Not easy, but some new fancy models allowed them to find more information about distant galaxies. They used a big telescope to study light from 140,000 different galaxies, some of which are billions of light-years away from us. They realized stars in distant galaxies are mostly larger than those in our Milky Way. They’re heavier too.

It’s been decades since the last manned moon landing, Apollo seventeen, which happened in December nineteen seventy-two. Isn’t it time we thought about going back to our dusty satellite... and maybe even staying there?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if every planet in our solar system was the size of Earth? Well, it’s time to dive into this mind-boggling scenario! Let’s imagine what each planet would look like if they were as big as our beloved blue planet. Would the barren, red landscape of Mars suddenly become a lush green oasis? Would the massive, swirling gas giant Jupiter just disappear? And how would it affect our solar system as a whole — are we all doomed? Buckle up and let’s find out.

Imagine a still, frozen world. It’s ancient — about 4.5 billion years old. It’s barely heated by the rays of the Sun and covered with a thick layer of ice. This world is smaller than our Moon but a bit larger than Pluto. Its name is Europa — the sixth satellite of Jupiter and one of the biggest moons in the Solar System. But the coolest thing about this far-away place? It might host life. Astronomers consider Europa one of the most promising places in the Solar System to search for new life forms. All because this moon has a huge saltwater ocean with a depth of 40 to 100 miles. Yes, it IS hidden under a layer of ice that is estimated to be from 10 to 20 miles thick. But it is still potentially habitable. Astronomers claim that plumes of water erupt from cracks in the ice shell and release the contents of the moon’s ocean into space.

It’s becoming colder by the minute. The temperature drops below zero very quickly, and although there’s no snow, the cold is becoming unbearable. Hoarfrost appears on the ground, the grass and the trees, and ice forms on bodies of water at an incredible rate. Shivering people all over the planet raise their eyes to the sky, and their jaws drop in disbelief: the Sun has become twice as small as it used to be. It now looks like a distant speck, and it won’t be able to heat the Earth any longer. But the worst thing is, there’s a huge, blazing rock coming right at the horrified spectators from the sky, and the impact with that thing will undoubtedly do a lot of damage.

The Moon. Our little companion. Our only friend in the big, dark, cold space. It’s not surprising that any events related to it, like solar or lunar eclipses, excite us. But how about... the black Moon? The blue Moon? A supermoon? Have you ever heard of them? Well, let me tell you about it and how you can observe them. Let’s get your calendars ready. The distance between the Earth and the Moon is 238,900 miles. Feels not so far, doesn’t it? But trust me — most people GREATLY underestimate this distance! Did you know that every planet in the Solar System, including Jupiter and Saturn, would fit between the Moon and us? I couldn’t believe it myself!

Now, what would Earth look like if it was the only planet in the Solar System? Or what would happen to our planet if the Moon went missing? Or what if dinosaurs had never gone extinct? We’ve all heard the story: over 66 million years ago, a big asteroid hit Earth. Almost 75% of creatures that roamed the planet at that time were wiped out in mass extinction. Amongst them, dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Velociraptor... All gone. But because of that, we’re all alive! According to science, the human race was developing more safely without these gigantic creatures hunting us. But what if that asteroid had crashed to the ground a few miles away from the place where it fell? What would the world be like today? Imagine walking down the street to your local supermarket and coming across a truck-sized T. rex. Could that ever happen in this alternate universe we’re talking about?

Apples you usually grab in the supermarket seem super fresh, but they can be up to a year old. It’s all about how they’re stored: first, they’re covered with wax. Next, the wax is dried with hot air, and finally, the apples go into cold storage.

Way back in the Victorian Era, a strange celestial body appears to have popped up in our solar system. Was it an asteroid? Or maybe a comet? It took us until October 2017 to notice it and to start studying it closely. It was named Oumuamua [Oh-moo-ah moo-ah] — which is Hawaiian for “scout”. Not only is its shape extremely unusual — highly elongated and narrow — but it’s also speeding so fast that it appears the Sun’s gravity doesn’t affect it so much.

It’s dark and incredibly cold. There’s no oxygen. There’s no water. There’s no life. But the James Webb Space Telescope doesn’t seem bothered by all this. Its main goal is to find the very first galaxies that formed billions of years ago in the early Universe and observe the stars making up distant planetary systems. Its mission is to... but wait! What is THAT?! The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered something absolutely amazing — a star-planet hybrid with very strange clouds! This bizarre world, called VHS 1256 b, is actually a brown dwarf. Those are bigger than planets but too small to classify as stars. They emit some light of their own and are quite hot. But their mass is simply not enough to fuse hydrogen into helium — like full-fledged stars do.

It’s the year 2031, and the first human has just set foot on the red surface of Mars. It was a long flight that lasted 172 days. It was a tough journey. There were lots of technical issues. There were some physiological obstacles. Astronauts had to deliver tons of equipment and energy-generating and life-supporting systems to the Red Planet. Those responsible for the mission had to understand how to deal with low-pressure atmosphere and catastrophic sandstorms. How to keep people safe on Mars’ surface, and how to bring them back to Earth after their work is done. It does sound like a science-fiction story. But soon, it’s going to be our reality. But the coolest thing? It’s not the limit. After exploring Mars, people might set even more ambitious goals. And this is what some of them may look like.