Outer Space
1. We've all seen films in which someone's space helmet comes off, resulting in the person either exploding or instantly freezing to death. In reality, we'd meet neither fate if exposed to space, instead suffocating from lack of oxygen.2. We tend to think of space as being totally empty, even a vacuum, but the "space" between planets and other celestial bodies is not devoid of matter. It contains hydrogen plasma particles in low density, along with electromagnetic radiation.
3. There is no clear, definable line between where the Earth's atmosphere ends and outer space begins. However, an altitude known as the Karman Line -- 100 km or 62 miles -- is often used to distinguish between atmosphere and space, since this is the distance where a vehicle would need to reach a speed faster than the Earth's orbital velocity to leave its atmosphere.
4. Spacecraft cabins and suits need to be constantly pressurized with air due to the lack of atmospheric pressure required for our bodies to absorb the amount of oxygen we need. In fact, commercial aircraft must also pressurize their cabins as humans typically cannot process oxygen without pressurization past above 10,000 feet or so.
5. The U.S. definition of an astronaut is someone who has traveled at least 50 miles above the Earth's sea level. Over the years, the U.S. military and NASA have disagreed over the distance that earned a pilot "astronaut" status, but the case of three NASA test pilots who flew their X-15s above 50 miles in the 1960s was finally resolved in 2006 when they were finally awarded their "Astronaut Wings."
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6. Humans grow taller in space. On Earth, gravity keeps the vertebrae in our spines closer together, but in space this gravitational effect wears off and the vertebrae spaces out, allowing our spines to elongate by approximately 3 inches.
7. Multiple "spaceguard" organizations, named after a fictional asteroid-monitoring group in an Arthur C. Clarke novel, have been established to spot new and track existing near-earth objects (NEOs) which may be on a collision course with us. NASA currently funds multiple spaceguard efforts under a mandate from the U.S. Congress to locate 90 percent of all NEOs, and an international group called the Spaceguard Foundation collects and disseminates intelligence gathered by spaceguard groups around the world.
8. Professor Stephen Hawking, noted author of A Brief History of Time, says humans must colonize space for their own survival. "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space," he told the UK's Telegraph newspaper. "There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars." Hawking believes future technologies not unlike warp-like travel featured in Star Wars and Star Trek may be possible, and genetic engineering of humans may be necessary to allow the body to withstand the biological challenges traveling and living in space would present.
9. Do you know your space rocks? Meteorites are frequently tiny pieces of interplanetary debris that almost always burn up in Earth's atmosphere and are rarely large enough to make an impact on ground. The term meteor refers to the flash of light generated by the meteorite and not the debris itself. Asteroids are larger chunks of rock that originate from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. And comets tend to be dust or small debris frozen in a shell of ice, methane, ammonia, and other elements.
10. When Moby sang "We Are All Made of Stars" he may have been close to the truth. Astronomers have recently spotted the chemical building blocks of life in interstellar gas clouds for the first time. The recently built Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope has helped astronomers locate eight new molecules containing carbon, one of which features a peptide bond, necessary for the creation of amino acids -- a foundation for organic life as we know it. Now speculation centers on the theory that these or similar molecules could have "impregnated" Earth during its formation, planting the seeds for our planet's very first life forms.
NEXT... Check out "10 Biggest Explosions in History"
Sources: NASA; Wikipedia; www.telegraph.co.uk; www.hubblesite.org
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