Scientific curiosities about the universe

Have you ever wondered how old the universe is? Well, according to research and the most accepted hypotheses, it is approximately 13,820 million years old .

The universe is continually expanding, due to its gravitational and rotational movement and the acceleration that it reaches, so that the space it occupies cannot be estimated exactly, although it is calculated that its diameter oscillates around 46 thousand millions of light years .

There are around 500 billion galaxies , as determined through space telescopes and computer simulations, the largest known galaxy being 30 times larger than the Milky Way .

How many stars are in the sky? Surely you have ever asked yourself this question. Well, astronomers say there are about 70 billion trillion . In order to assimilate this data or make a simulation, we could think that in the universe there are more stars than grains of sand on the beaches.

The biggest star there, known as UY Scuti, has a size 1,700 times greater than the sun .

In addition to the numerical data from before, these are other scientific curiosities of the universe, did you know them?

• The universe is dominated by four main forces : the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force.
• Galaxies not only have different sizes, but they can also have very diverse shapes such as elliptical, spiral, irregular and lenticular.
• Although the Sun is considered, par excellence, the star of our planet, the truth is that it is not our closest star, but that the closest star is Proxima Centauri , which is at a distance of 4.2 light years from the Land.
• The vision we have about the asteroid belts thanks to the movies is wrong, because in action movies it is simulated that they are very close to each other, while, in reality, the distance between the asteroids is several kilometers.
• Space debris from planet Earth exists in the universe . That’s right, the human being has not only polluted the ecosystems and spaces of our planet, but its capacity for contamination and destruction reaches more there, existing today remains of satellites, probes and rockets that float in space, thus, there are an estimated 500,000 pieces orbiting the earth. These are tracked and monitored by ground stations to control their movement, displacement and anticipate the damage they can cause.

We can talk about more curiosities of the universe focusing on the part of it that affects us the most: the Solar System. The number of planets in the Solar System varies according to research. Thus, although at first it was thought that there were nine planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, the truth is that, in recent years, various studies affirmed that Pluto did not it was a planet, reducing the number of planets in the Solar System to eight. However, at present, the possible existence of a new planet named Phattie by astronomers is being studied. It is an icy planet located in the outer Solar System.

Not only do planets exist within the Solar System , but we can also find more than 2,000 planets outside it, known precisely as exoplanets . On the other hand, it should be considered that for a celestial object to be considered a planet, it must meet a series of characteristics such as:

• Orbit around the Sun.
• Have a practically round shape, although no planet has a perfectly spherical shape.
• Have a mass and a force of gravity large enough to be able to clear celestial bodies from their orbit.

The Sun is in the middle of its life. It is estimated that the life span of the sun comprises 10,000 million years and is currently in the middle of this time period, so that, after this time, it will turn off.