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Fact File


In the Fact File section we bring you a new collection of quick facts each week. (Click on the links below for more facts)

 
 

2581/ A brown dwarf is a very small, dark object, with a mass less than 1/10 that of the Sun. They are "failed stars" – globules of gas that have shrunk under gravity, but failed to ignite and shine as stars.

2582/ A bucket filled with earth would weigh about 5 times more than the same bucket filled with the substance of the Sun. However, the force of gravity is so much greater on the Sun that a man weighing 150 pounds on our planet would weigh 2 tons on the Sun.

2583/ A car travelling at a constant speed of 60 miles per hour would take longer than 48 million years to reach the nearest star (other than our Sun), Proxima Centauri. This is about 685,000 average human lifetimes.

2584/ A cosmic year is the amount of time it takes the sun to revolve around the center of the Milky Way, about 225 million years.

2585/ A day on the planet Mercury is twice as long as its year. Mercury rotates very slowly but revolves around the Sun in slightly less than 88 days.

2586/ A dog was killed by a meteor at Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. The unlucky canine is the only creature known to have been killed by a meteor.

2587/ A galaxy of typical size – about 100 billion suns – produces less energy than a single quasar.

2588/ A neutron star is the strongest magnet in the universe. The magnetic field of a neutron star is a million million times stronger than Earth's magnetism.

2589/ A new star is born in our galaxy is born every 18 days. About 20 new stars are born each year. For comparison, there are 100,000 million stars in our galaxy.

2590/ A pulsar is a small star made up of neutrons so densely packed together that if one the size of a silver dollar landed on Earth, it would weigh approximately 100 million tons.

2591/ A space vehicle must move at a rate of at least 7 miles per second to escape Earth's gravitational pull. This is equivalent to going from New York to Philadelphia in about 20 seconds

2592/ A sunbeam setting out through space at the rate of 186,000 miles a second would describe a gigantic circle and return to its origins after about 200 billion years.

2593/ A teaspoon of neutron star material weighs about 110 million tons.

2594/ A typical nova explosion releases about as much energy as the Sun emits in 10,000 years, or as much as in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 nuclear bombs.

2595/ The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

2596/ The average human produces 10,000 gallons of saliva in a lifetime.

2597/ The first words spoken by Thomas Edison over the phonograph were: Mary had a little lamb.

2598/ A baby in Florida was named: Truewilllaughinglifebuckyboomermanifestdestiny. His middle name is George James.

2599/ The Gulf Stream could carry a message in a bottle at an average of 4 miles per hour.

2600/ A cow's only sweat glands are in its nose.

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