Do You Know

Amazing facts about the Universe

The universe we live in, is a beautifully awesome, enigmatic place, infinite in extent and full of mysteries! The Universe is the totality of all space, time, matter and energy. Our earth is a tiny island of matter and energy, in the vast ocean of space-time, which is the universe ! Just as they say, truth is stranger than fiction and so it is with the universe.

The things that our scientists have discovered in the vast realms beyond our planet are unbelievable and beyond imagination.

Hope these amazing facts about the universe will intrigue you and fuel your curiosity and imagination to learn more about Astronomy. Just get a telescope and take a look at the world beyond our earth, to see the grandeur of our universe, through your own eyes!

Galaxies

Here are some amazing facts about the galaxy, that we live in! Galaxies are spiraling whirlpools of matter and energy, which are like small oasis in the vast empty spaces of our universe. We live in one such galaxy, which we call the Milky Way! One light year is the distance travelled by light in a year and it amounts to about 9.4605284 Ã- 1015 meters! Our Milky way galaxy disk is about 100,000 light years in diameter and about 1000 light years thick! It has up to 400 billion stars like the sun. There are an estimated100 billion odd such galaxies in the universe.

The nearest spiral galaxy to our milky way is the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2.6 million light years away! This galaxy is on a collision course with our galaxy, and will collide with it in some billion years! We would be cosmic dust by then!

Black Holes

At the centre of every galaxy, there resides a massive black hole! Even our Milky way galaxy has a massive black hole in its centre. Black Holes form, when stars much larger than our Sun, run out of their fuel and collapse under their own gravity to zero volume, forming a hole in the fabric of space-time! Nothing can escape the phenomenal and unsurpassed gravitational pull of a black hole, not even light! When it comes to black holes, they are not entirely black. They emit radiation called 'Hawking radiation' and eventually disappear!

Pulsars

Pulsars or pulsating stars are rotating neutron stars with huge magnetic fields, which emit electromagnetic radiation. They are formed from the core of a star exploding in a supernova! A pulsar is like a light house.

Just as the light house beam passes periodically in front of us, the pulsar pulses pass our earth every 1.4 milliseconds to 8.5 seconds.

This is because they are rotating at phenomenal speeds, while they emit radiation! When they were first discovered, the periodic nature of their radiation output was mistaken for a signal from an alien civilization! In fact, the first pulsar source was dubbed 'LGM' meaning 'Little Green Men'!

Quasars

Quasars or quasi-stellar objects were first mistaken to be stars, but later they were discovered to be galaxies. They have a very high red-shift, which means that they are travelling at a speed close to the speed of light! Quasars are the very distant and most energetic galaxies, with an energy output unsurpassed by any other object in the universe. The energy out put of a quasars is the same as about 1 trillion (1012) Suns! At the central core of the quasar, is a super-massive black hole, which is swallowing gas and dust, as it courses through space. The energy is thought to be emitted by the in falling matter, as it heats up!