Planet

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.

Seems like to feel at home on any planet we need the four crucial elements: air, water, earth, and fire. I’m gonna tell you what you need to squeeze to get a glass of water on Mars, how to grow your salad there, charge your phone without getting an astronomical electricity bill, and even generate some fresh air!

Poor Pete. Pete is so scared of bugs all he wants is to find a place on Earth where he can be safe from them. After years of research and traveling, he eventually finds the place to go: Antarctica! Pete makes it there, confident that bugs wouldn’t survive in the cold. Ahhhhhhh! Little did he know that insects are on every continent of this planet. Well, not really. He was kind of right about Antarctica: it isn’t home to a lot of bugs. In fact, there is only one true species of insect that calls this place home: it’s a wingless midge called Belgica antarctica. This fly is tiny [0.08 to 0.23 inches long], but it’s still Antarctica’s largest terrestrial bug.

Fungi are everywhere. You may see mold on an old lemon in your fridge. It’s a fungus. You may notice fungi on your mattress and the tiles in your bathroom. There may be several million species of fungi in the world, and most of them are unexplored. Of the fungus among us, some are pretty harmless, such as those that appear in the dark corner of your fridge. And others can turn a living creature into a zombie. And this is not some movie, but reality.

You’re walking along a hot desert under the scorching sun. You run out of supplies, there is no more water. You dream about rain, but there are no clouds in the sky. With each step, you lose more and more strength and... fall. You notice a small pond nearby. Is it real water or just a mirage? You can’t get to your feet, so you crawl there. The water is getting closer by the minute, but not because you’re moving towards it. It’s the water approaching you. In a few minutes, the pond area increases. Here, you’re already in it. A small lake has formed, 60 feet deep, at the place where the piece of the desert was.

The world is full of ordinary things, but every once in a while, we come across something truly bizarre that makes us question our perception of reality. We’ll explore some of the weirdest captures from around the world, showcasing just how astonishing our planet can be.

There are things about nature you know for sure — or don’t you? Let’s check how much you know about the incredible world we live in! How many of 14 points will you guess? Let us know!

Is it possible for a planet to have not 1, not 2, but many suns? Let’s imagine what would happen to us if the Sun suddenly decided to break into a bunch of small stars.

It’s dark outside — almost 2 AM. You go outside and look at the sky. And here it is — bright, full Moon. You might think you know a lot about Earth’s natural satellite, but let me ask you this, “How did it form?” The answer is “nobody knows”! But, of course, there are theories. The most popular one, called “the giant-impact theory,” claims that the Moon formed during a collision between Earth and another planet. This planet must have been smaller than ours, the size of Mars. And the collision itself probably happened around 4.5 billion years ago.

When we say ‘extinction’ — say it with me: “extinction” — we usually think of dinosaurs that went for lunch with a humongous asteroid and wiped out from the face of Earth. We don’t think of ourselves possibly going away in the near future. But what we forget is that there have been five mass extinctions that our planet witnessed in the last half a billion years, not just one. And we can be nearing the sixth one, where one of the species to possibly disappear are humans. The first great mass extinction came about 440 million years ago, in the — Period. Back then, life was mostly thriving in the oceans and along the coastlines. Biodiversity was great at the time: there were thousands of different species. Trilobites, sea scorpions, and all kinds of weird-looking mollusks and even fish — you name it, Ordovician had it.

Have you ever seen a skyscraper that can change its shape? The creators of the F&F Tower in Panama City had a concept and only $50 million, which isn’t a lot in skyscraper money. So, they couldn’t afford a mistake, and they finished a concrete structure with the 39 upper floors rotating 9 degrees around an axis from the first attempt without spending any extra time or materials. Dubai’s Rotating Tower will look different every time you see it once it’s finished. Each of its 80 floors will rotate 360 degrees individually around the center of the building. The lucky residents will be able to control that rotation, which means they can choose their view from the window. A complete lap should take about 90 minutes. And no, the tower won’t be a huge waste of electricity — it will produce its own energy! Wind turbines between the floors will drive the rotations.

Did you know that there’s an astronomical object in which space and time actually swap places? How does it work? And what exactly does “swapping space and time” mean? Well, let’s figure it out. Imagine that you’re on a spacecraft. The vehicle can only move straight. Your path leads to some inevitable point, and you have no idea what lies ahead. You can only hope that it won’t be too bad. Meanwhile, everything around you is complete madness. A chaotic collage of many historical events. What do you see? Ancient humans and dinosaurs? The birth of the universe? A... future? Who knows. That’s what the universe would look like if we swapped time and space. And, theoretically, this is what you’d see if you fell into a black hole and somehow were able to survive. But how is something like this even possible?

Imagine leaving your house one morning and seeing not one but 2 stars shining in the sky! The first one is our good old Sun, and the other is... Jupiter! But how has a PLANET turned into a star? And what will now happen to Earth and its inhabitants? Before we find the answer to these urgent questions, we need to revise some things we know about Jupiter. The largest planet in the Solar System is a gas giant, which means it’s made up mostly of gases. Due to the pressure and temperature differences, these gases separate into layers. This creates those red and white bands that can be clearly seen from Earth.

The hunt for interesting exoplanets and life forms somewhere out there in the vast expanse of the Universe keeps going; no stopping here! We’re basically searching for a second Earth — a planet that’s similar to our home and where we could finally find some space friends. We’re not picky, any form of life is fine, even some bacteria-sized organisms. And this search has mostly been going on in the habitable zone around other stars. We also call this the Goldilocks zone. That’s a region where conditions are “bearly” just right for liquid water to exist, whether we’re talking about the surface of a planet or a moon.

Imagine a planet where every breath you take electrifies your body like a shot of espresso. The sky above you is an intense shade of blue, while colossal trees stretch towards the heavens, their vibrant green leaves growing at an astonishing rate. Daily exercise becomes a thrill like no other. With the abundance of oxygen, you become a supercharged version of yourself. Running feels effortless as you dart across the landscape, lifting weights that would normally seem impossible. It’s as if the world itself is infused with a surge of energy. Everything is moving faster.

Did you know that humans are real space people? You were born in Space. Heck, even I was born in Space. We all were born in Space! But for humans to be here on Earth, so many conditions have to be precisely correct that it is highly improbable that we even exist. But we do. First, we — and any other space creatures who might be out there — have to live on a planet orbiting a yellow-ish white star, not a red star or a blue star. Not a blue star because they burn out too quickly — in a few million years — there wouldn’t be time for evolution to do its relatively slow magic and produce intelligent beings. Blue stars also tend to swell up and turn red — when they collapse and explode! It makes it highly unlikely that any civilization could prosper near a blue star.

Ah, yes. February 14, 2000. Just a regular Valentine’s Day, some flowers and some candy, the beginning of the new millennium, and... A good day to make history. NEAR Shoemaker (which stands for Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) spacecraft, launched in 1996 [February], finally got a date with asteroid 433 Eros. It wasn’t about swiping right but going around Eros and completing the first soft landing on an asteroid ever.NEAR almost didn’t make it there, because an engine misfire from 1998 brought it into the wrong trajectory, and it missed the target. Yet, engineers decided to let NEAR do the circle around the Sun for one more year — and it eventually made it.NEAR Shoemaker was created to find, target, and stalk some smaller space objects for around a year and collect important data about them. This spacecraft got more than 160,000 pictures of the asteroid’s surface which helped with research in the years to come — before that, some scientists took asteroids for just some random flying piles.

So you’re going on a journey to a black hole? You will need a lot of provisions because the nearest black hole is 1,011 light-years away. This black pearl was found in the solar system called HR 6819. It was hidden in orbit with two other stars, which you can see with the human eye. Scientists have been studying this system since the 80s, but this winter, it revealed its main secret. This particular black hole is considered relatively small. But despite this, its mass is four times bigger than our Sun, and it’s 2,500 light-years closer to Earth than the next nearest black hole.

Why is Australia so strangely empty? Why haven’t we discovered so much of the Ocean? Is our planet a perfect sphere? And was the Earth once more purple than green? I bet you didn’t know these facts about our planet, so let’s find it all out!

You’ve spent your entire life researching microorganisms. The last few years, you have been creating a device that can shrink you in size. And finally, it’s ready. At first, you want to shrink yourself to the size of a thumb, so you can probably see some microbes with the unaided eye. And then, after more experimenting, you hope to shrink to the size of a bacterium yourself. To make the journey safe, you put on a special suit, similar to a space suit. It’s equipped with a life support system.You direct a beam from the device at yourself. The beam must change your mass and volume. To return to the previous state, you must stand on a round platform the size of a hockey puck. You put it near your feet, so you can easily climb on it when you get smaller, press the button, and activate the machine.

We fly away from Earth to look at it from a distance. It glows like a holiday tree! Big cities look like yellow spots at night. And during the day we see strange structures, like a palm tree-shaped island in the UAE or a dark band that runs all the way through China — the Great Wall. These are traces of human existence. Now let’s point our telescope at other planets. Mars? It’s just an empty, endless desert. Venus? Only rocks and volcanoes. Even if we look into distant space, all the planets out there are deserted and lifeless. Not a single trace of an extraterrestrial civilization.

You’re standing on the bridge of your super-modern spaceship. Today, your mission is to fly to the uncharted areas of space. You travel past beautiful nebulae, spinning pulsars, and black holes. Soon, you’ll arrive at the planet where life might exist in the most unusual forms. You’ll “shake hands” with a strange bug the size of an elephant and maybe even establish diplomatic relations with it. This might happen in the future. For now, humanity is just trying to get farther into space.People first took to the air in 1783 when French engineers built the world’s first hot air balloon. But it only rose above the ground for a third of the height of the Statue of Liberty. In 1903, the Wright brothers made the first flight in a controlled airplane. Since then, people have been reaching higher and higher. These days, modern airplanes can climb to an altitude of 8 miles! It’s like 34 Empire State Buildings stacked one on top of another.

Hey, if I said “what time is it?”, you’ll probably look at your phone, laptop screen, or wristwatch to find out. But how do these devices know the time? In your devices, the time is set automatically by the program. But how does this program know the exact time? People set up wristwatches before the sale. But then how do these people know the time? (Does anybody really know what time it is? Hey there’s a song there.) Anyway, how do we determine this time, and what happens if all the clocks in the world stop? Wait a minute! Or longer...

You’re dozing off in your window seat on a plane — it’s getting dark since it’s almost 11 PM. Suddenly, something wakes you up. You glance out of the window and see a really strange phenomenon. Something that creeps you out... There are bright red huge flashes illuminating the sky at a distance. They resemble some nightmarish jellyfish. Those are sprites — also called red sprites due to their color. They’re also known as cloud-to-space lightning. These varied visual shapes flickering in the night sky are large-scale electric discharges (which is a clever word for a lightning strike).