10 popular misconceptions about space

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Here and there amateurs meet to chat about the theory of the Big Bang and dark matter, who do not know elementary things. How not to look like a space fool and not fall for the simplest truths and facts? Here are 10 of the most common misconceptions about space.

Man explodes in space

A typical example of the delusion created by the cinema for the sake of entertainment. Well, you know, those eyes crawling out of the orbits and the swelling body, after which the person bursts like a soap bubble. Blood and intestines in all directions are added optionally, if the age rating of the film allows. Getting into outer space without a special spacesuit is really killing, but not as spectacular as we see in the films.

In fact, a person without protection can stay in open space for about 30 seconds without receiving irreversible health problems.

It will not be instant death. The person will die of suffocation due to lack of oxygen. If you want to see how this actually happens, check out Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. Here in this film the topic is revealed quite realistically.

Venus and Earth are similar

When it comes to space colonization, there are two candidates for the role of a new home for humanity: Mars or Venus. Venus is called the sister of the Earth, but only because of the similarity of these planets in size, gravity and composition.

We hardly enjoy living on a planet with thick, dense clouds of sulfuric acid reflecting all sunlight. The atmosphere is almost pure carbon dioxide, atmospheric pressure is 92 times ours, and the surface temperature is 477 degrees Celsius. Not a very friendly sister.

The sun is burning

In fact, it does not burn, but glows. You might think that there is not much difference, but combustion is a chemical reaction, and the light emitted by the sun is the result of nuclear reactions.

The sun is yellow

Ask a child or even an adult to draw the sun. The result is bound to be a yellow circle. Indeed, you can look at the Sun with your own eyes - it is yellow.

In fact, we see the Sun as yellow due to the Earth's atmosphere. Here you can argue, pointing to the pictures of the Sun from space, where it is also yellow. Indeed, only often such images are pre-processed to make our star recognizable.

The true color of the Sun is white. And to be convinced of this, it is not at all necessary to fly into space, it is enough just to know the temperature. Colder stars glow with brown or dark red light. As the temperature rises, the color shifts to red. The hottest stars with a surface temperature of 10 thousand degrees Kelvin emit light close to the opposite edge of the visible light spectrum, and give a blue color.

Our Sun, with a surface temperature of 6 thousand degrees Kelvin, is located approximately in the middle of the spectrum and gives a pure white glow.

In summer, the Earth is closer to the Sun

It seems quite logical that the temperature on the surface of the Earth is the higher, the closer it is to the body that gives heat, that is, to the Sun. But the reason for the changing seasons lies in the fact that the axis of rotation of the Earth is tilted. When the axis extending from the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, it is summer in that hemisphere, and vice versa. That is why they say that it is winter in summer in Australia.

At the same time, the thought that the Earth periodically moves away from the Sun and approaches it does not become a delusion. The Earth's orbit is elliptical, like most other planets. The average distance from the Earth to the Sun is considered equal to 150 million kilometers. However, at the moment of the planet's closest approach to the star, the distance decreases to 147 million kilometers, and at the greatest distance it increases to 152 million kilometers. That is, the Earth is indeed closer and farther from the Sun, but this fact does not affect the seasons.

Dark side of the Moon

The moon really always faces the Earth with one side, because its rotation around its own axis and around the Earth is synchronized. However, this does not mean that the other side of her is always in the dark. You've probably seen lunar eclipses. Guess, if the side, always facing us, covers part of the Sun, then where does the star's light fall at this time?

The moon always faces with one side to the earth, but not to the sun.

Sound in space

Another cinematic myth that, fortunately, is not used by all directors. In the same "Odyssey" by Kubrick and the sensational "Interstellar" everything is correct. Space is an airless space, that is, there is simply nothing for sound waves to propagate through. But this does not mean that the Earth is the only place where you can hear sounds. Wherever there is an atmosphere, there will be sound, but it will seem strange to you. For example, on Mars, the sound will be higher.

You can't fly through the asteroid belt

Hello Star Wars. There we saw the asteroid belt as a very dense cluster, through which only such cool pilots as Han Solo could pass.

In reality, space is different. He's bigger. Much more. Immeasurably more. And the distance between objects in the asteroid belt is also much greater. In fact, in order to fly through the belt and crash into at least one asteroid, you need to be the most unlucky person in the Universe.

For example, refer to the asteroid belt in our system. The largest object in it - Ceres, a dwarf planet - has a diameter of only 950 kilometers. The distance between two objects in the belt varies within hundreds of thousands of kilometers. At the moment, 11 probes have already been sent to study the belt, and all of them successfully passed it without any incident.

Great Wall of China visible from space

The myth appeared even before man was in space. And even before the first flight to the moon, someone claimed that the wall would be visible from a natural satellite of the Earth. Well, here's a picture not even from the Moon, but from a rather low orbit. Find the Great Wall of China.

A quarter of the country's budget is spent on space technologies

Of course, not in our country, but in the United States, but this is nonsense. Yes, the cost of a space program in the United States is higher than that of any other country, but there is no talk of any 25%. Here is a link to NASA's proposed budget for 2015. This is 0.5% of the US federal budget. The largest investments in the industry were made during the space race in the sixties, but even then, expenditures reached an average level of only 1% of the federal budget. The record is 4.41% in 1966, but those were very specific times.

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