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221/ The Earth's weighs 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000
tonnes.
222/ Saturn's cloud covered
moon Titan is covered with lakes of liquefied ethane natural
gas.
223/ Uranus spins on its side
as it orbits the Sun.
224/ Neptune's moon Triton
has volcanoes erupting black soot.
225/ On a dark, clear night
you can see 2,500 individual stars.
226/ The first reported nova
- erupting star - was in China in 1300 BC.
227/ Amateur astronomers have
discovered over 130 supernovas.
228/ An exploding supernova
can outshine an entire galaxy of stars.
229/ A black hole with the
same mass as the Sun is only six miles across.
230/ The centre of our Galaxy
contains a giant black hole, weighing as much as 2.5 million
of our Suns.
231/ A typical interstellar
gas cloud contains enough alcohol to fill the Earth!
232/ Radiation from the Big
Bang was first detected in 1964 in Bell Telephone Labs in
New Jersey.
233/ Over 90 per cent of the
Universe consists of invisible 'dark matter'.
234/ The Universe has no edge
- and no centre.
235/ In 1998 it was discovered
that the Universe is accelerating: Its expansion is getting
faster and faster.
236/ The world's biggest telescopes
- Keck 1 and Keck 2 - each have a mirror half the size of
a tennis court.
237/ Gamma ray bursts - mysterious
explosions at the edge of the Universe - were first detected
in 1969 by military satellites monitoring the Test Ban Treaty.
238/ In 1926, Robert Goddard's
first rocket reached a height of 40 feet.
239/ The first radio message
transmitted through space pre-dated satellites. The US Navy
radioed Washington to Hawaii in 1954 by bouncing a signal
off the Moon.
240/ Clocks aboard the GPS
navigation satellites are accurate to one second in 300,000
years.
Click on the links below for more great
facts...
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