Interesting Things

I’ve come across some interesting (at least to me) facts about the universe in which we live. I’ve compiled several having to do with space and the elements. I’ve tried to verify the truth of what I’ve presented, not relying on Wikipedia as a sole source (although I’ve credited Wikipedia a time or two). I’ve not sourced all of what follows, as some are compilations from several sources.

Enjoy.

How much plutonium in the Fat Man bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was converted into energy? About a gram, or a piece of plutonium about 1/3 the size of a penny, says Wikipedia.

How much hydrogen does the sun burn? According to NASA, about 600 million tons a second. Of that, 596 million tons of helium is produced, leaving 4 million tons a second that is converted to energy.

According to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, there are over 10 million distinct compounds of carbon, more than any other element.

Argon, on the other hand, along with several other gasses, is quite inert, not reacting with any other known substances and having no compounds.

A parsec is an astronomical unit of distance equal to about 19 trillion miles (3.26 lightyears). Wikipedia.

Helium is the only substance known that cannot be in solid form. Liquid helium cannot be made cold enough to solidify.

Under standard conditions, Lithium is considered to be the lightest metallic element, and is one of only two that can float on water.

When the moon is directly overhead, a person weighs slightly less on earth than when the moon is elsewhere, due to the gravitational “tug” of the moon on the human body. Moral: Always weigh yourself with an overhead moon.

Astatine is the rarest of the naturally-occurring elements, with only about an ounce naturally occurring in the entirety of the earth’s crust at any given time. It is continuously formed by the decay of heavier elements and itself decays into lighter elements, having a half-life of a little over 8 hours.

According to Roger Penrose, English physicist and Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, the total number of atoms in the known universe is about 10 80 (10 to the 80th power).

According to the Astrophysical Journal, about 65 billion neutrinos pass through a square centimeter of space on the surface of the earth every second. Most of these particles are generated by the sun.

The coldest place in the universe is on Earth. In Wolfgang Ketterle’s lab in Massachusetts (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). 0.000000000001 degrees Kelvin.

In 1999, NASA estimated that it would cost 62.5 trillion dollars to produce one gram (about .03 ounce) of anti-matter hydrogen, making it the most costly substance known at the time.

Osmium is generally considered to be the heaviest metallic element with a density about twice that of lead.

Light coming from the sun is actually about 30,000 years old. It takes that long for it to work its way from the core, where it is formed, to the surface.

One teaspoon of matter from a neutron star would weigh more on earth than the entire human population together.