It’s not just observing eclipses or a planet that creates delight. Celestial knowledge can be just as exciting. Especially when their implications run deep. Consider ten basic astronomy truths.
• There are exactly two universes. Everything from where you now sit to a distance of 13.8 billion light-years is the visible universe, also called the observable universe. It constitutes everything we can ever see and know about. Beyond that point begins the other universe. We know nothing about it because none of its light can ever get here. Much indirect evidence indicates the “other side” is vast and maybe even infinite. Though it’s the overwhelming majority of everything that exists it has no name.
• The notion there are countless other universes — the multiverse hypothesis — presumes those universes exist in different dimensions. But there’s never been any evidence for extra dimensions.
• Life on Earth depends on the Sun. But the real key is a tiny solar component just 1/50th of the Sun’s volume — its core. Seen separately it would appear as a blindingly dazzling star-like pinpoint. Each second it unleashes the energy of 96 billion one-megaton H-bombs.
• Most gravity-connected bodies follow elliptical paths, making that geometric shape a genuine cosmic underpinning. Pound two nails into plywood and drape a loop of string around them both. Tightly pull a marker outward against the string and you’ll draw an ellipse. Each of the nails is called a focus. In every planet’s orbit the Sun occupies one focus. The other’s an empty spot of space.
• The Moon’s most abundant substance is oxygen, always bound to another element.
• Empty space seethes with power. We have more names than knowledge about it. It’s been called “vacuum energy,” “dark energy,” the “cosmological constant” and “zero point energy.” It supposedly creates particles and antiparticles that briefly appear and then vanish, but this has never been observed.
• It’s widely repeated that Copernicus was the first to declare that Earth orbits around the Sun. This truth is even termed “the Copernican system.” But 18 centuries earlier, Aristarchus on the Greek island of Samos was applauded for saying the same thing.
• Meteors are slowed so much by our atmosphere that if they strike anything their impact speed is just 250-300 mph, down from their original typical entry speed of 80,000 mph. That’s why the most famous recent meteorites have merely penetrated a roof and a ceiling (Wethersfield, CT in 1971 and again in 1982), caused a simple bruise when it hit someone (Alabama, 1954) and penetrated a parked car’s sheet metal (Peekskill, NY, 1992). And they’re never hot when they land.
• Easy rebuttals to common conspiracy beliefs? When someone says, “It was a hoax, we never went to the Moon,” just ask, “Then where did the Saturn rockets go after lift-off?” If they merely orbited Earth, they would have been brightly visible to everyone. And our adversaries watching them on radar would have happily spilled the beans. To those who insist Earth is flat, just say, “Phone any friend who lives a few thousand miles to your west and ask them where they now see the Sun. If it’s setting at your location but they’re viewing it up high, Earth must be round. Pretty Simple.”
• Although many think the “ET” issue boils down to whether or not we’re alone in the cosmos, others such as Nobel prizewinner Werner Heisenberg were convinced we’re manifestations of a single awareness that is the universe’s basic nature, since consciousness is not derivable from any other component. By such reasoning, there are no “others.” The ET quest really boils down to searching for different physical forms utilizing the same consciousness as ourselves.
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