- It would take almost nine years to walk to the Moon. If there were a road 400,000 km long.
- On the surface of a neutron star, the gravity is so strong you’d weigh several billion tons.
- Mars is red due to the presence of large amounts of iron oxide: rust!
- Astronomers have seen a star eaten by a black hole.
- All the iron in your blood and all the calcium in your bones were created in exploding stars.
- Jupiter's moon Io is more geologically active than Earth. Volcanoes constantly erupt there.
- The Earth is hit by about 100 tons of meteoric dust per day.
These factoids are from Phil Plait's archived 2012 Bad Astronomy Facts. He started the feature, consisting of daily astronomy facts in fewer than 140 characters, on January 4, 2012.
See the entire archive at Bad Astronomy. Link
(Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/J.Fritz)
Thanks for the post!