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Matt Soniak
Your Fact Fix
by Matt Soniak - February 28, 2008 - 11:01 AM

Oooh! Hey, a book! Want a copy of this one? Then go submit a fact for our Amazing Fact Generator. Just leave a comment on this post with an amazing fact about outer space, your name and location. If the fact is both amazing and true, we’ll feed it to the Generator and credit it to you. The supplier of the most amazing fact will receive a copy of The Space Tourist’s Handbook: Where to Go, What to See, and How to Prepare for the Ride of Your Life.

Last week’s most amazing fact about television was supplied by TMo. Thanks to him, we now know that “In Mike Judge’s King of the Hill, the Mexican soap opera Peggy watches, Los Dias y Las Noches, was spun off into a live-action pilot with a priest/assassin protagonist. Fox didn’t pick up the show.” TMo wins a copy of Dick Van Patten’s Totally Terrific TV Trivia. We’ll be in touch about delivering the prize.

And if you need your fact fix, go take a few hits from The Generator.

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Comments (17)

  1. Neutrinos are tiny particles that travel at the speed of light through space and all matter, including us. In 1987 a supernova caused a shockwave which sent a burst of neutrinos straight through everyone walking the planet. Those lucky enough to be around got a little extra universe in their breakfast that day.

    posted by Erica on 2-28-2008 at 11:15 am

  2. Only one side of the Moon faces towards the Earth at all times. We have just recently (1959) seen the far side thanks to pictures taken from satellites.

    posted by Erica on 2-28-2008 at 11:26 am

  3. In 1960, a U.S. rocket veered off course after launch and crashed in Cuba killing a cow. The Cubans gave the cow
    an official funeral in respects of this victim of ‘imperialist aggression’!

    posted by Erica! on 2-28-2008 at 11:32 am

  4. Stars are really nice to look at.

    posted by Amos on 2-28-2008 at 11:46 am

  5. During its 8 min ascent into orbit, the space shuttle has different abort options depending on where during the ascent an engine shuts down. If the Trans-Atlantic Landing (TAL) abort (involving an emergency landing in Europe) is ever performed, it will reset the transatlantic crossing record from 2hrs 53min (Concorde) to 22 mins!

    posted by Nicholas on 2-28-2008 at 12:02 pm

  6. Titan, Saturn’s moon, has a hundred times more hydrocarbons on the surface than Earth has in all known reserves. There is so much on Titan that there is hydrocarbon rail falling from the sky.

    posted by Owen on 2-28-2008 at 12:24 pm

  7. Recent research at the University of Sydney has reveled that the Milky Way Galaxy is twice as big as originally though. It is a flattened spiral about 100,000 light years across and 12,000 light years thick. It was believed to be only 6,000 light years across before.

    posted by Owen on 2-28-2008 at 12:34 pm

  8. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to survive in the vacuum of space without a spacesuit, though only for a short amount of time.

    posted by EV on 2-28-2008 at 12:42 pm

  9. There is no “edge of the universe.” The universe contains so much matter that space has bent back on itself, thus making it, in a way, circular, much like the Earth.

    posted by Jake Le Master on 2-28-2008 at 12:51 pm

  10. The largest diamond ever discovered is ‘Lucy’, a crystallized white dwarf star that weighs at least 10 billion trillion trillion carats. It is only 50 light years from earth.

    posted by Owen on 2-28-2008 at 12:56 pm

  11. In the late 90s, only 6 planets outside of our Solar System had been discovered by Astronomers. Today, over 150 have been discovered and documented, many of them with rocky surfaces.

    Scientists are trying to determine if any of these would be viable to live on, so humankind can continue to exist after 1) our Sun explodes into a Supernova or 2) our galaxy is consumed by Andromeda, a larger galaxy which is on a collision course toward the Milky Way.

    posted by VB on 2-28-2008 at 2:40 pm

  12. Recently, NASA found that inside one gram of gas and dust in a cosmic cloud, there could be as many as 10,000 trillion nanodiamonds.

    posted by VB on 2-28-2008 at 2:44 pm

  13. Ms. Baker, a squirrel monkey that along with Able the rhesus monkey were the first animals to return to Earth after traveling in space, died November 29, 1984 at the age of 27 and is buried on the grounds of the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

    posted by Kellygirl on 2-28-2008 at 3:22 pm

  14. Simply knowing the color of a star can tell you a lot about it, including size, mass and temperature.

    posted by Jacob on 2-28-2008 at 5:11 pm

  15. The most powerful magnetic object ever perceived by man is a neutron star found in the Sagittarius constellation called SGR 1806-20. It’s magnetic field is one thousand trillion times great than the Earth’s magnetic field!

    posted by ARJ on 2-28-2008 at 9:52 pm

  16. Gravity is still just a theory.

    posted by Florida on 2-29-2008 at 10:48 am

  17. All the planets rotate counter-clockwise, except venus.

    Uranus was the first planet discovered.

    posted by Heather A on 2-29-2008 at 9:25 pm

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