The human need to investigate and transport the imagination to the most mysterious places has been a recurring practice since ancient times. Investigating the curiosities of the Solar System is a journey that many have dared to undertake. Although it is true that today we have technologies that allow us to know beyond the limits of our planet, previously this did not represent an impediment to questioning the existence of life itself.
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Human ingenuity and curiosity are unstoppable. So much so that even before we had powerful telescopes and space probes, the existence of the Solar System was already known. Although of course not with the precision with which we can investigate it today. Even so, there is much left to discover about the cosmic, but while we learn more about it, we bring you 15 curiosities about the Solar System that you probably didn’t know.
Curiosities of the Solar System
More sun than planets
The Sun, our main star, is of such immensity that you would even be surprised to know that it makes up more than 99% of all the mass in the Solar System. Not even by combining the masses of all the planets could they equal the size of the Sun.
A big empty
Despite the fact that the Solar System is made up not only of the 8 planets that we know, but also of minor planets and cosmic objects, they do not equal the large amount of space that there is in it. The entire mass that lives in it is too small compared to the void that exists between each element of the system.
How old are you
According to NASA, the Solar System is 4.5 billion years old. It was formed from a dense cloud of gas and stellar dust. The data indicate that the cloud collapsed probably due to the shock wave of a nearby supernova. Then he made it his own, forming our home.
What place does it occupy?
The Solar System itself already represents a large void, but the home of our set of planets lives within another even larger void; the . It orbits the center of this at about 828 thousand kilometers per hour and is part of one of the spiral arms called the Orion arm or the local arm.
The second largest object
The Sun is the largest object in the planetary set, followed by Jupiter, the massive planet is 318 times larger than Earth and 2.5 times larger than all the remaining planets combined.
It has its own protective layer
Like Earth and all planets, the Solar System has its own protective magnetic field. It is formed by ions from the sun that travel in the form of solar winds and extend beyond the orbit of Pluto. The result is a kind of protective bubble that surrounds the entire Solar System.
Does it have a border?
Speaking of protective layers, we also think about edges. Where does the Solar System end? A thousand times farther than Pluto is, we find the last gravitational barrier that supports our Sun and it is called . It is made up of billions of leftover objects such as asteroids and comets.
How many moons live in it?
We know that the Solar System is made up of a Sun, 8 planets and a handful more dwarf planets like Pluto. But how many moons are there? According to data, our system has more than 150 moons, the planet with the most moons discovered so far is Saturn, with its current 81 satellites, surpassing Jupiter’s current 79.
Venus, the hottest planet
The average temperature of Venus is around 450°C, making it the hottest planet in the entire Solar System.
Ice water everywhere
Ice exists throughout the Solar System, contrary to what was previously thought. We now know that ice exists on Mars, the Moon and other bodies such as Europa, Jupiter’s moon, and Ceres, a minor planet.
The shortest day
Among the curiosities of the Solar System we find that Jupiter takes 1,433 Earth days to complete one revolution around the Sun, however a Jovian day lasts just 10 hours.
Magnetosphere larger than that of the Sun
And as you might expect from the massive neighborhood planet, Jupiter has the largest magnetosphere of all the planets and even larger than the Sun. This is the layer of the magnetic field responsible for deflecting the , the stronger the magnetic field, the larger the magnetosphere. To put ourselves in context, Jupiter’s magnetic field is 20 thousand times stronger than Earth’s.
Different types of planets
The composition of the planets in our system varies greatly, there are the so-called terrestrial planets that are composed mainly of rock and metal. But there are also gas giants that are mainly composed of hydrogen and helium. , Venus, Earth and Mars belong to the first denomination. While Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are gas giants, also called “ice giants”.
It is possible to fly on Titan
Titan is a moon of Saturn, but it is not just any satellite since it has unique characteristics in the entire Solar System. According to astrophysicists, flying on Titan would be much easier than on Earth thanks to its low gravity and its thick, low-pressure atmosphere, two elements necessary to take flight.
Asteroid belt
Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, lies a belt that extends at least 500 million kilometers thick and is densely populated by asteroids. It is estimated that there are at least 960 thousand of these objects orbiting in the so-called asteroid belt of the Solar System.