My six-year-old has been obsessed with space for over a year now and loves to tell me facts I had previously gone 40 years without knowing. So I thought I would share some of the fun and wacky things I have learned about space as presented by a six-year-old (but yes, they are 100% real and accurate):
- Because there is no gravity in space, astronauts’ stomachs don’t separate gas from liquid, so they can’t burp properly without liquid as part of the equation. The same goes for the other end, too.
- When objects are being pulled into a black hole, the front of them moves faster than the back, and they stretch. This is called “Spaghettification.” Really.
- A star called Methuselah is puzzling scientists because it measures older than the big bang. But the way it is created indicates it has a star parent, which also means there was an even older star at some point that created it.
- Uranus rotates on its side because, at one point, another planet smashed into it and tilted it off its axis (which is also how we got the moon).
- Also, Uranus smells like farts and rotten eggs.
- Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, has all six of the elements crucial for life, so it is one of the closest potential places for extraterrestrial life forms to exist.
- Recent scientific discoveries indicate that it is highly likely that both Mars AND the Moon have water.
- Jupiter’s moon, Io, is covered in volcanic activity and actually turns itself inside out over time.
- There are over 500,000 pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth.
- On the ISS, astronauts lose the calluses on their feet because they aren’t walking anywhere. They may, however, develop calluses on the tops of their feet because they hook their feet around objects to direct their movement.
