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Exploring the infinite wonders beyond our pale blue dot
Space has captivated humanity since the first eyes looked upward and wondered what lay beyond the flickering points of light. It is the ultimate frontier — a boundless expanse that humbles us with its scale and thrills us with its possibilities. Every new discovery, from exoplanets orbiting distant suns to gravitational waves rippling through spacetime, reminds us that we are part of something far grander than ourselves. The cosmos does not just surround us; it made us, atom by atom, star by star.
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
— Carl Sagan
8 Curiosities
There are approximately 200 billion trillion (2×10²³) stars in the observable universe — roughly 10 times more than all the grains of sand on every beach on Earth.
Source: European Space Agency
Astronauts report that space smells like a mix of seared steak, gunpowder, and raspberries. The odor is caused by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — compounds found throughout the universe.
Source: NASA
One full rotation on Venus takes 243 Earth days, while its orbit around the Sun takes only 225 Earth days. To make things even stranger, Venus rotates backward compared to most planets.
Source: NASA Solar System
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the oldest light in the universe, emitted roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang. It has been traveling through space for 13.8 billion years and fills the entire sky.
Source: Planck satellite
55 Cancri e, an exoplanet just 40 light-years away, is a carbon-rich super-Earth believed to have layers composed largely of diamond. Its extreme heat and pressure transform carbon into crystalline form.
Source: Astrophysical Journal Letters
The universe is expanding at roughly 67–74 km/s per megaparsec, and the expansion is accelerating. Dark energy, which makes up about 68% of the universe, is believed to drive this acceleration.
Source: Nobel Prize 2011
The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are set to collide in about 4.5 billion years. Despite containing hundreds of billions of stars each, individual stars are so far apart that almost none will actually collide.
Source: NASA
While space is mostly a vacuum, NASA sonified pressure waves emanating from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster. The original sound was roughly 57 octaves below middle C — far too low for human hearing until NASA shifted it into audible range.
Source: Chandra X-ray Observatory
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