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The sun is quite big, but did you know that the sun makes up 99.96 percent of our solar
systems mass? That leaves a small 0.14 percent for all the planets, asteroids and other matter
around the solar system.
Or how about that the surface temperature of the sun is 5505 degrees Celsius, while
six of the eight plants in our solar system have an average surface temperature below
100 degrees Celsius.
The coldest of them all, Neptune, which has a mass the equivalent of 17 Earths, takes
a long 165 Earth years to orbit around the sun just once. Since its discovery in 1846
it has only orbited the sun once, which happened in 2011. Think summer is too short hear on
Earth? Seasons on Neptune last for more than 40 years, but with Neptune's seasons being
harsh and unpredictable it wouldn't be a great place to live, not to mention the average
temperature is -200 Celsius.
How about Pluto, the recently demoted planet which is now a dwarf planet. Since being discovered
in 1930 it hasn't even done a full orbit around the sun since being discovered, and won't
after we all die, with Pluto doing its first full orbit since we discovered it in the year
2177.
Not to mention Jupiter which has a mass the equivalent of 317 Earth's, helps protect us
by capturing or redirecting the orbit of Asteroids, due to its massive gravitational influence.
One Astronomer once saw a comet heading towards Earth, but ended up being thrown out of the
Solar System by going past Jupiter. Not to mention that Jupiter's gravitational influence
is so large that it creates Kirkwood Gaps in the Asteroid Belt.
If you watch space movies you'll probably think that there's a lot of Asteroid's in
the Asteroid Belt. Half the mass of the Asteroid Belt actually comes from just four asteroids,
with Ceres accounting for one third of the Asteroid Belt all by itself. Asteroids which
are bigger than six miles are thought to have at least one collision with another Asteroid
every 10 million years and NASA says that when they throw one of their probes through
it there's a 1 in a billion chance of an Asteroid hitting it from the Asteroid Belt and you
would have to go out of your way to go and find an Asteroid in the Asteroid Belt. In
fact it's estimated that there's about 1 million kilometres of space between the Asteroids.
Hate lightning? It's been observed on Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, with Venus having half
of the 1.4 billion lightning flashes per year which we have on Earth.
And how about the water in our solar system? Mercury has frozen ice in deep craters below
the Surface, Venus used to have water but was evaporated away a very long time ago which
created a greenhouse effect. This is why Venus, although it is the second planet from the
sun is the hottest, because it has an atmosphere which traps in heat.
We know that there's a lot of water here on Earth and on Mars we have found Ice at the
poles and liquid water beneath the Surface. Ceres which we talked about earlier mostly
consists of ice and it's thought that on Jupiter there might be water droplets in certain gas
layers.
There's been no sign of water on Saturn, but some of its moons has liquid hydrocarbon oceans
or ice on them. Like Jupiter Uranus might have water droplets in certain gas layers
and Neptune is thought to have highly compressed liquid beneath its atmosphere. And lastly
Pluto, which while it isn't a planet of the Solar System has a Surface which is mostly
ice and could have a liquid ocean below the Surface. There's quite a lot of water in our
solar system.