10 Mindblowing Facts You Never Knew About the Solar System

10 Mindblowing Facts You Never  Knew About the Solar System Do you really think you know  everything about the Solar System? A silly and rhetorical question. .

. no one,  not even the greatest planetary scientists, could swear to possess all the data, measurements,  relationships, and stories that have to do with the physical reality of our cosmic backyard. .

. No matter how much one has studied or thought, there will always be something that suddenly  sounds new or completely bizarre,Like these ten facts. Enjoy watching!

There are asteroids with rings! In the vast cosmic landscape, there's an object  that continues to amaze astronomers with its peculiarities: Chariklo. This 250 km (155 miles)  diameter object, discovered in 1997, defies easy classification, representing a hybrid identity  somewhere between an asteroid and a comet.

Located between the orbits of Saturn and  Uranus, Chariklo stands out not only for its position but also for its ambiguous nature. But what really grabs attention is the presence of rings, a rare and fascinating feature  that it shares with giants like Saturn, albeit on a much smaller scale.  The system consists of two narrow, dense bands, 6-7 km (4 miles) and 2-4  km (2 miles) wide, separated by a gap of 9 kilometers (6 miles).

The rings orbit  at distances of about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Chariklo's center, a thousandth  of the distance between Earth and the Moon. Recently, the James Webb Telescope discovered  that Chariklo's rings are made of water ice, not dust and debris. This is truly  surprising and still under evaluation.

But wait. . .

Chariklo was the first, but three more  small ringed bodies have since joined the family! In 1993, Chiron, the progenitor of the  Centaurs and half the size of Chariklo, also showed it has a ring system. In 2017,  the large and bizarre Kuiper Belt Object Haumea (same diameter as Pluto and Eris,  but shaped like a rugby ball) entered the exclusive club with a ring of 2287 km (1421  miles) radius.

And in 2023, another surprise: Quaoar, a KBO about a thousand kilometers (621  miles) in diameter, revealed a ring system! Two distinct rings have been confirmed, at 2500 and  4050 km (1553 and 2516 miles) from the surface. Incredible, right?

Until 1977, when  Uranus's rings were discovered, Saturn was the only known ringed  object in the solar system! Today, we know that all gas giants have rings,  and even small asteroid-like worlds do too! Triton orbits the wrong way!

At first glance, Triton, a large moon  with a diameter of 2700 km (1678 miles), seems to have all the characteristics of a  natural member of Neptune's satellite system. It always shows the same face to Neptune, just  like the Moon does to Earth and the Galilean moons do to Jupiter, and its orbit is almost  perfectly circular - two features that usually indicate a satellite formed alongside its  parent planet. It would seem impossible to see Triton as an intruder.

Yet, there's something  strange about its orbit that, once identified, makes it clear that Triton could NOT have  originated there among Neptune's other satellites! An anomaly that, considering the object's  significant size, can only provoke disbelief. .

. What are we talking about? Well.

. . the  fact that Triton's orbit is retrograde!

In essence, Triton is like a big truck going  the wrong way on a highway! This is really strange because all the larger objects, having  formed from a single rotating disk of dust, orbit the Sun counterclockwise. To be clear, there are other moons in the Solar System that orbit their  planets in a retrograde direction, but they are tiny moons, essentially small  asteroids captured by the planets in various ways.

And all are located on the outskirts of  the satellite system that has captured them. Triton, however, is very close to Neptune: only 350,000 km (217,480 miles), less than  the distance between the Moon and Earth. Retrograde orbiting moons cannot form in  the same region of the solar nebula where the planets orbit, so Triton must  have been captured from elsewhere.

But where? And how? Stickney Crater on Phobos is the most  shielded spot from cosmic radiation!

The small Martian moon Phobos (22 km or 14  miles in diameter) is tidally locked with Mars, meaning it always shows the same face to  the planet, just like our Moon does to Earth. It's also very close to the Red Planet,  orbiting at about 6000 km (3728 miles) away. A recent NASA study on the feasibility and  benefits of building a space base inside Stickney Crater, a natural basin 9 km (5.

5  miles) in diameter and 1. 5 km (1 mile) deep, found that being shielded below by Phobos's mass  and above by Mars, the settlement would have almost unprecedented protection from galactic  cosmic rays and solar energetic particles. It was calculated that any object placed inside  Stickney Crater would receive only 10% of the radiation normally coming from outside,  equivalent to one-fifth of the radiation that hits the International Space Station.

The  same source also states that even the general surface of Phobos facing Mars (outside  Stickney) would receive at most only 25%. Aside from hypothetical lunar caves, Stickney  would be the most radiation-protected place in the inner solar system, with the huge advantage  for a space base of being an open-air location. The Sun never sets on Mercury: just keep walking!

After Pluto's demotion, Mercury is once again  the smallest planet in the solar system. With a diameter of 4879 km (3031 miles), less  than half that of Earth, it's even smaller than the moons Ganymede and Titan. Mercury orbits at an average distance of 58 million kilometers (36 million  miles) from the Sun, but its orbit is the most eccentric of any planet, getting as  close as 46 million kilometers (29 million miles) at perihelion and as far as 70 million  kilometers (43.

5 million miles) at aphelion. But the planet's celestial dynamics oddities  don't end there. Remember how our Moon rotates on its axis with the same period it takes  to orbit Earth?

This is called a 1:1 tidal synchronization. Well, Mercury's very  slow rotation, which takes 58. 65 days, is synchronized with its orbital period around  the Sun, which is 88 days, in a 2:3 ratio.

In practice, Mercury completes two  orbits for every three rotations, meaning that for a hypothetical Mercurian,  the Sun would set (or rise) every 176 days. And here we find the planet's most striking  feature, the one that has made it famous in many science fiction stories: the incredibly  slow movement of the terminator line! On Earth, the line that separates day from night  moves across the surface at a very high speed: at the equator, it reaches up to 1670 km/h  (1037 mph).

. . and it's obviously impossible to follow its movement on foot: only the  fastest planes and artificial satellites can keep up with the speed at which dawn and dusk  cross seas and continents.

The Moon's terminator, by comparison, moves at no more than 16  km/h (10 mph), which means 100 times slower! On Mercury, however, the terminator moves at  a maximum speed of only 3. 6 km/h (2.

2 mph)! Think about it. .

. Even an elderly person could  walk at that speed, thus keeping the Sun always near the horizon! What's the advantage? 

Well, walking within a zone where the temperature might reach bearable levels. This idea - believe it or not - has been considered for planning potential human missions  to Mercury, with the design of motorized and mobile bases built along the terminator. .

. And science fiction has embraced the idea too. .

. In Kim Stanley Robinson's novel "2312," the main  city on Mercury is called Terminator, and it's entirely built on a railway track that circles  the planet, moving slowly to stay in the habitable zone. The energy to move the city and for the  human inhabitants is generated by the thermal gradient across the various sections of the track. 

Of course, on Mercury, solar energy is abundant! Double pairs in the solar system Curious facts about the solar  system are sometimes so elusive that they remain hidden even after  centuries of study and observation. There's one, in particular, seemingly so  trivial and transparent that it escaped everyone's notice until a few years ago  when it was pointed out by Dennis Rawlins, a historian of astronomy known for his  quirky and unconventional character.

. . Rawlins was the first to notice that there are  two pairs of planets in the solar system that share a series of common characteristics:  the Venus-Earth pair and the Uranus-Neptune pair.

It's surprising that, for both pairs,  each of the following statements is true: • Each pair consists of two contiguous planets. • Each pair is made up of two planets  almost identical in size and mass. • Their position is central in the group  of inner rocky planets and in the group of outer gas giants.

Consequently, the pairs are  symmetrically positioned relative to Jupiter. • The inner members of each pair (Venus  and Uranus) are the only ones among the 8 planets to rotate in a retrograde direction. Rawlins believes that this oddity might  hide a profound cosmogonic significance, linked to some unknown mechanism  of planetary formation.

"Hey, guys, just a moment before we continue. . . 

BE sure to join the Insane Curiosity Channel. . .

Click on the bell, you will help us to  make products of ever-higher quality! " There's space for all the planets  between Earth and the Moon It seems like a really strange idea. .

.  and even after doing and redoing the calculations, it's still hard to believe. .

. You know the planets of the solar system, right? In our imagination, they are enormous  objects, and especially the gas giants, we tend to think of them as the epitome  of everything in the solar system that is oversized compared to our everyday context.

. . Now, on the other hand, think about the distance between Earth and the Moon.

. . Don't we  perceive it almost like a walk in the garden?

Nothing, compared to other distances. . .

So you would never believe someone who told you that if we placed all the planets side by side,  all seven would comfortably fit in the space that separates us from the Moon. . .

Right? But. .

. Try adding up their equatorial diameters:  Mercury 4879 km, Venus 12104 km, Mars 6792 km, Jupiter 142,984 km, Saturn 120,536 km,  Uranus 51,118 km, Neptune 49,528 km. .

. What's the total? It should  be 387,941 km.

. . right?

Now. . .

we know that the average  distance between the Moon and Earth is 384,400 km, the minimum is 356,600  km, and the maximum is 406,700 km. So, this demonstrates that all seven planets can  comfortably fit in this little corner of the universe that is cislunar space. Placed side  by side, like old bottles on a shelf.

. . While we thought of them as gigantic white whales  in the great ocean of the solar system.

. . This puts the relative volumes of space  and matter into an interesting perspective.

Mercury, the infernal planet, is full of ice! Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun  in our Solar System: on its sunlit side, temperatures reach 400 degrees Celsius (752  degrees Fahrenheit), yet water ice has been detected in some of its craters. This ice  is found at the bottom of craters where the Sun never shines, thanks to Mercury's axis  being tilted by only a couple of degrees.

But how much ice is there? Where did it come from? NASA's Messenger probe data from 2017 answered the first question: the average thickness of the ice  is about 50 meters (164 feet), with a maximum of 85 meters (279 feet) in some areas.

Before  this, it was believed that there could be no more than two meters (6. 5 feet) of ice. .

. As for the second question - where did the water ice on Mercury come from  - there's still no clear answer: it's not at all clear how comets and asteroids  could have delivered all that water to the planet. Some hypotheses suggest it arrived with  long-period comets from the Oort Cloud, an immense spherical region of space  surrounding the Solar System, composed of billions of comets, at a distance almost  halfway between the Sun and the nearest star.

Others think the comets might have come from  the Kuiper Belt, the giant doughnut-shaped ring of billions of icy objects that surrounds  the Solar System beyond Neptune's orbit. In short, we'll need more detailed  observations to know for sure. .

. but the important thing is that the poles  of the small planet could provide abundant water and energy for potential human  explorations in the near (or distant) future. In theory, you could travel from one side  of the Earth to the other in 42 minutes Suppose we dug a tunnel through  the center of the Earth, jumped in, and let gravity pull us through.

How long would  it take to reach the other side of the planet? The simple answer is, in theory, yes. First,  let's ignore friction, Earth's rotation, and other complications, and focus on the case of a hole or  tunnel that enters the Earth at one point, passes through its center, and comes out on the opposite  side of the planet.

If we treat the Earth's mass distribution as uniform, one would fall  through the tunnel and then rise to the surface on the other side in a manner very similar to a  pendulum swinging higher and higher. Assuming the journey started with zero initial velocity (simply  falling into the hole), your speed would increase, reaching a maximum at the Earth's center,  then decrease until you reached the surface, at which point the speed would be zero again. The  gravitational force exerted on the traveler would be proportional to their distance from the Earth's  center: it's at its maximum on the surface and zero at the center.

The total time required  for this journey would be about 42 minutes, and the traveler's speed at the Earth's center  would be 7. 9 km per second (4. 9 miles per second).

At this point, someone might ask. . .

once you  reach the edge of the hole on the opposite side, what would happen to the jumper? If there were no friction, there would be no loss of energy, so our traveler  - unless held by someone - would fall back towards the Earth's center and spend their life  oscillating between the two ends of the tunnel. This journey - obviously - could not take place  in the real world for several reasons, including the implausibility of building a tunnel 12,756  kilometers (7,926 miles) long, moving all the material in the proposed tunnel path, and passing  the tunnel through the Earth's molten outer core and its inner core, where the temperature is about  6,000 degrees Celsius (10,832 degrees Fahrenheit)!

What would happen to Earth if its  orbital speed suddenly dropped to zero? A question we often ask,  and many take for granted, is why the planet Earth, or other  planets, don't fall into the Sun. The answer lies in Isaac Newton's theory of  universal gravitation.

Remember the story of the apple falling from the tree?  The apple is attracted to the Earth, and once it detaches from the branch, it  falls with accelerated motion towards the surface. .

. but the Moon is also attracted to  the Earth, yet. .

. it doesn't fall! Why not?

For a simple reason: unlike the apple, the Moon  compensates for the centripetal gravitational attraction by traveling in an orbit at a speed  that allows it to develop a centrifugal force in the opposite direction. This concept can be  extended to the Sun and the planets orbiting it. The magnitude of the attraction is the same,  but the effect it generates on the body is proportional to the mass of the two bodies.

If the Sun were to magically disappear, all the planets would fly off tangentially  and leave their orbits, retaining the speed they had at the moment of separation. Earth, for  instance, would end up like the Moon in Space: 1999. .

. drifting through the solar system. But what if it were the orbital speed, or the centrifugal force, that suddenly dropped to zero?

Well, in this case - assuming such a thing were possible - it would be even less fun. Our planet  would start to fall towards the Sun. .

. slowly at first, and then at an increasingly rapid pace! The question then becomes.

. . how long would it take for Earth to fall into the Sun? 

Is there a formula that can tell us? There is a formula, albeit an  approximate one, and it's very simple: Fall time = Orbital period / 5. 66 And it tells us that Earth would plunge  into the Sun in about 0.

01767 years, or 64. 5 days, hitting the  photosphere at a speed of 616 km per second (383 miles per second)! The same formula obviously applies to all other planets in the solar system, so it  will be easy to calculate, for example, that Jupiter's fall would last 766 days (more  than two years!

) and Neptune's even 29 years! The Moon has the same apparent diameter as the Sun One thing that has always impressed  us about our solar system is that the apparent diameters of the Sun and the  Moon appear almost identical to us. This strange concordance of angular sizes,  as we know, gives rise to solar eclipses, one of the rarest and most exciting  astronomical phenomena offered by our sky.

Faced with these two "miracles,"  it's no wonder that for many centuries this was considered by religious thought  as one of the proofs of God's will to give the world two identical sources of light,  one for the day and one for the night. . .

Of course, today the vast majority of astronomers  believe it is just an interesting coincidence that the Moon can almost perfectly overlap the Sun,  as there is no physical reason for it to be so. Simply put, the Moon is about 400 times  smaller than the Sun, but the Sun is also about 400 times farther from Earth than the  Moon. This simple geometry tells us that the apparent disk of the Moon is almost exactly  the size of the apparent disk of the Sun.

But, pay attention to that "almost exactly". . . 

the distances between Earth, the Moon, and the Sun are subject to small variations  due to the eccentricity of their orbits. Thus, observed from the Earth's surface, the angular  diameter of the Sun varies between 31. 6 and 32.

7 arcminutes, while that of the Moon varies  between 29. 6 and 33. 5 arcminutes.

As you can see, the match is not perfect, and for this  reason, total solar eclipses occur only at certain times and have different durations. But if it's all a coincidence, would it be possible to calculate the odds that our Earth  is the only one in the solar system with a moon capable of just covering the solar disk? Well, assuming the Sun has those dimensions, someone has estimated that the odds of  Earth's only natural satellite being large enough to just cover it are about one  in two hundred!

Not many, but not few either! However, some say that the size of the Moon is  not entirely coincidental, but somehow justified by the very existence of our species. .

.  They argue that a planet without a Moon, or with a moon too small, would not benefit  from tides capable of starting the chain of life according to the "tidal pool" theory. On the  other hand, if it had been much larger than it is, the Moon would have disrupted the Earth's  surface with tides kilometers high, which would have had the opposite effect.

. .  So, according to a scheme that refers to the "anthropic principle" and "intelligent  design," since we exist, the Moon could not have been much different from what it is!

However, it should also be considered that on longer time scales, the Earth-Moon system is  not static. Each year, the Moon's orbit grows by about 3. 8 centimeters (1.

5 inches), and  our day lengthens by about 0. 000015 seconds. At this rate, in about 50 million years, the Moon will never completely eclipse the  Sun again, producing only increasingly narrow annular eclipses.

This orbital evolution  also implies that total solar eclipses in the distant past would have been much  more frequent and of longer duration.