Just 34 Freakin’ Cool, Mind-Blowing Facts About Space - BuzzFeed

I'm a Southern California-based writer on the Lifestyle team who likes to try and rank viral foods and read and recommend awesome books.

Between Project Hail Mary 's box office success and the recently successful Artemis II mission, it's a good time to be a space fan. But even if you don't really know all too much about space (and who could blame you? It's scary!), it's a good time to be fascinated by everything space-related that's been going on.

That said, here are just some super cool, incredibly fascinating space facts:

To set the stage, the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.

A singular teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh about 10 million tons. Yeah, a teaspoon. Neutron stars are a result of a big star dying and exploding as a supernova. What's left after the explosion is an incredibly dense core, which is a neutron star.

The biggest star in the universe that we know of is UY Scuti, a hypergiant star that can fit the volume of almost five billion suns inside it. UY Scuti is roughly 9,500 light-years away from Earth.

Light from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach Earth. So, if the sun suddenly disappeared (god forbid), it would take eight minutes for us to notice. Then, everything would just turn suddenly dark.

If you somehow found yourself in a situation where you fell into a black hole, due to the immense gravitational force, your body would undergo " spaghettification." I'm sure the term implies enough, but if you want to be frank, your body would compress from head to toe, all while being stretched out at the same time. Yikes.

Speaking of black holes, if you fell into one, you'd be able to see out, but no one would be able to see you, since light can't escape.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS, for short) is twice as wide as Earth and has been swirling in Jupiter's skies for more than 300 years. It's a gigantic storm that's been having its way in the atmosphere for ages, and scientists struggle to understand what causes the reddish color.

Saturn is the only planet in our solar system that has an average density less than that of water. So, if there were ever a bathtub or pool big enough, Saturn would float.

Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, is said to have flowing liquids and lakes of liquid methane and ethane.

Did you know that Mars contains many volcanoes? In fact, it's home to the largest volcano in the known solar system, called Olympic Mons. It's 100 times the volume of Earth's largest volcano, Mauna Loa, in Hawaii.

Our sun accounts for 99.8% of the mass of our solar system. Read that again. Yeah, my mind is blown.

Not to alarm anyone, but the moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of about 3.78 cm a year. But don't worry, it likely won't be a problem for billions of years.

Oh, but because of this, Earth's rotation is gradually slowing down due to the Moon's gravitational pull.

The Boomerang Nebula is known as the coldest place discovered so far in the known universe. It's located in the Centaurus constellation, about 5,000 light-years from Earth, and has a temperature of -272 degrees Celsius, or -457.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes it only one degree warmer than absolute zero — the lowest limit for all temperatures. In fact, it's the only object in space so far that has a lower temperature than the background radiation of the Big Bang.

NASA used sonification to capture the sound of the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster. Yes, sound doesn't travel in space, but the black hole's pressure waves cause ripples in the hot gas, producing the sound. Spoiler alert: It sounds horrifying.

Despite Mercury's extreme temperatures (like, up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit), it's believed to have ice at its north and south poles. However, the ice can only exist in regions permanently shadowed in deep craters.

It's rare, but there are stars called recurrent novae that explode multiple times instead of once.

Jupiter's moon, Io, is covered in active volcanoes, with some of them erupting lava dozens of miles high. In fact, Io is the most volcanically active place in the solar system.

On average, microgravity causes bones to lose 1–5% of their density each month. Because of this, astronauts are more susceptible to fractures and osteoporosis.

Speaking of bones, the spines of astronauts will straighten out while in space. Because of this, crew members' heights can increase by up to 3%.