Astronomers claim that our Sun is not bright yellow but rather green. This is because the temperature of a star is determined by the color spectrum it emits. Each color has its own wavelength, and astronomers measure these wavelengths to ascertain how hot the star is. Cooler stars appear red, while the hottest stars look blue.
The Sun emits most of its energy at wavelengths close to green. However, since it also emits other wavelengths, all these colors blend together, and human eyes perceive this mixture as white. This is how it would look if you observed the Sun from the International Space Station.
From Earth, however, the Sun appears yellow because our planet's atmosphere scatters blue light very effectively. When all the blue wavelengths disappear, the remaining colors merge into yellow.
Astronomers state that if the Sun were truly yellow, its temperature would drop by about 800 °C. This would significantly reduce the habitable zone of the Solar System, leading to a frozen Earth.
Science tells us that the Sun is extremely hot, but it doesn’t actually burn. Burning is a chemical reaction between oxygen and fuel. The Sun, like most other stars, is a gas ball made of hydrogen and helium, and there isn’t much oxygen in this gas ball.
Instead, stars function like gigantic nuclear reactors that continuously fuse hydrogen atoms to create helium in their cores. This process releases an enormous amount of energy, which is why the Sun is so scorching.
Indeed, all the explosions in space depicted in movies are merely fictional.
A spacecraft cannot be blown apart by a massive explosion because there is no air in space. The absence of air means a lack of oxygen, and without oxygen, as you already know, there is no fire. Sorry, Star Wars fans.
It may seem there are too many stars in the night sky to count, but in reality, it can be done.
Scientists at Harvard have done all the work for you. According to the Yale Bright Star Catalog, there are 9,110 stars visible to the naked eye from Earth.
0Movies create the impression that you need to be a highly skilled pilot to navigate through the asteroid belt. However, this is not true.
The asteroid belt is not a solid band of obstacles. It contains trillions of rocks, but their sizes vary from cosmic dust to a quarter the size of the Moon.
About 100,000 objects in the belt are over 1 km wide, but the distances between them are vast. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter spans 225 million km in diameter. This is one and a half times the distance from Earth to the Sun. Thus, the space rocks are scattered millions of kilometers apart, making a collision with a spacecraft nearly impossible.
Another Hollywood myth is that human bodies explode in space.
Scientists say our bodies would more likely swell than explode. Nitrogen in the bloodstream would form bubbles, causing your body to double in size.
However, this wouldn’t kill a person; rather, it would be the lack of oxygen that would be fatal. After 15 seconds in space, the human brain would stop receiving enough oxygen through the blood, leading to fainting.
After another two minutes, organs would begin to shut down one by one, ultimately resulting in death.
People often perceive space as an incredibly cold place, but this is far from the truth. According to scientists, space has no temperature at all.
1This is because temperature is defined by the speed at which particles move and the amount of energy they possess. In the true vacuum of space, there are no particles to move. That’s why a vacuum has no temperature.
Of course, outer space is not a perfect vacuum. There are still particles and radiation that generate heat. Some areas of space are indeed very hot, such as the regions around stars. However, the farther you move away from stars, the more sparse the particles become, making those areas of space quite cool. In some dense gas clouds, temperatures can drop to -263 °C.
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. But oddly enough, it is not the hottest. However, its temperature is indeed extreme.
During the day, its surface temperature reaches 430 °C, while at night it drops to -180 °C.
But the hottest planet in the Solar System is Venus. Mercury's problem is that it lacks an atmosphere to retain heat from the Sun. In contrast, Venus has a very thick atmosphere that creates a greenhouse effect on the planet.
This is like global warming on steroids. Because of this, Venus becomes a scorching hell with surface temperatures around 475 °C.
Planets do not rotate around the Sun. All objects in our Solar System are in a state of equilibrium. And while the Sun is the most massive object in our planetary neighborhood, other planets participate in this gravitational tug-of-war.
Instead of revolving around the Sun, planets and moons rotate around a central point between them and our star. This point is called the barycenter.
For Earth, this barycenter is so close to the core of the Sun that it doesn’t make much difference. But for Jupiter, this point is located about 55,000 km from the center of the Sun. Thus, the gas giant and the Sun revolve around each other.
From space, Earth appears round, but in reality, it is an irregular ellipsoid. At the equator, it bulges due to the centrifugal force caused by the rotation of our planet.
2As a result, Earth is about 43 km wider at the equator than at the poles. Because of this, gravity is slightly weaker at the bulge, making it easier to launch spacecraft from equatorial regions than from the poles.
No one will hear your scream in space, and this is true, but only to a certain extent. For sound to travel, a medium is required, but in space, molecules are so far apart that sounds dissipate almost immediately.
All cosmic disasters, supernovae, and colliding black holes quiet down before they can be heard. However, in some areas of space, there are enough particles for sound to travel. For example, in the hot gas cloud surrounding the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster, there is so much gas that you can actually hear the black hole itself.