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50 Essential Facts About the Universe

The 50 facts that you MUST know on your way to becoming an astonomy expert!

You can’t directly see a black hole because light cannot escape them	Black Holes
Black holes are not holes. They are actually extremely dense objects
Black holes may be portals to other parts of the universe
Almost all black holes began their lives as stars
Black holes have 4 types: primordeal, stellar, intermediate and supermassive
The Milky Way is a disk of stars 120,000 light years across and 1,000 thick	Milky Way
The ancient Greeks believed it was milk spilt by the godess Hera
There are between 100 billion and 700 billion stars in the Milky Way
Because we are inside the Milky Way we can't truly see what it looks like
We orbit the centre of the Milky Way at a speed of 828,000 km/h
Einstein dismissed the theory at first, preferring to belirve the univere was static	Big Bang
Edwin Hubble proved the universe is expanding, lending weight to the theory
The Big Bang created everything. Even space and possibly time
All matter in the universe was originally contained in a single point
The static on your TV or radio is radiation emitted by the Big Bang
Invisible dark matter makes up 85% of the universe and 25% of its weight	Oddities
Though it looks round, the Moon is actually shaped like a lemon
The Milky Way's centre tastes of raspberries and smells of rum
The Sun loses 4 million tonnes of mass each second through nuclear fusion
The full name for a quasar is a quasi-stellar radio source
There are 88 constellations in total	Constellations
They were first named around 4,000 BCE. They were used to predict seasons
All the constellations get their names from Greek mythology
Hydra is the largest constellation by area. It takes up 3.16% of the sky
The smallest constellation is Crux. It only takes up 0.17% of the sky
The first supernova to be recorded happened in 185 CE	Supernavae
A supernova can give off more light than an entire galaxy
A supernova occurs about once every 50 years in the Milky Way
A nearby supernova (within 30 light years) could destroy all life on Earth
93% of the mass in our bodies comes from supernovae
When you look at a star you are looking into the past	Stars
The bigger a star is, the shorter its life will be
Most stars are red dwarfs
80% of stars are binary. That means they orbit around a twin star
There could be 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe
Exoplanets are worlds orbiting stars other than the Sun	Exoplanets
22% of Sun-like stars have Earth-sized planets in their habitable zones
So far we have discovered over 4,000 exoplanets
Planets where liquid water exists are called "Goldilocks" planets
Exoplanets are named after their stars along with a number
1 light year is about 9.5 trillion kilometres	Distances
The nearest star to Earth is Alpha Centauri 4.37 light-years away
Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy, is 2.9 million light years away
The furthest galaxies we know about are 13 billion light years away
The observable universe (all we can see) is 93 billion light years across
There are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe	Galaxies
There are 4 types of galaxy: spiral, irregular, SO and elliptical
The Andromeda Galaxy is heading our way at a speed of 140 km/second
There is a galaxy called "The Whirlpool". It was discovered in 1773
There are 2 small galaxies nearby. They are called the Magellanic Clouds