As soon as humanity turned its gaze to the night sky for the first time, since then the light of the stars has fascinated us forever! This has led to thousands of years of work on theories and discoveries related to our Solar system and the cosmic bodies in it. As in any other field, knowledge of space can often be based on false conclusions and misinterpretations. Some of these misconceptions are firmly entrenched in society, especially if the film industry is involved.In space, man explodes | Yes, this we have seen in many different films, and some of us – the most courageous, even reviewed these episodes several times! You know, those eyes coming out of their orbits and the floating body, and then the person bursts like a soap bubble. The entrails flying in different directions are added optionally – if the film age rating allows it. Getting into outer space without a special suit really kills, but not as spectacular as we see in the movies! In fact, a person without protection can stay in outer space for about 30 seconds without receiving irreversible health problems. It will be far from instant death. A person will die from suffocation due to lack of oxygen. If you want to see how it really happens, look at "Space Odyssey 2001" by Stanley Kubrick - there this topic is disclosed quite realistically!
Venus and Earth are similar | When it comes to space colonization, there are two main 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. It is unlikely that we will like to live on a planet with dense clouds of sulfuric acid, reflecting all the sunlight. The atmosphere there is almost pure carbon dioxide, the atmospheric pressure is 92 times higher than ours, the surface temperature is 477 degrees Celsius. In general, it is not comfortable at all! We definitely need better conditions!
Meteorites burn | You've seen it in every disaster movie! Take at least a scene from Armageddon, where fiery smoking meteorites attack New York! And even though we know that not every film is built entirely on scientific facts, if your yard gets hit by a meteorite, you are unlikely to rush immediately to grab it fell, leaving a trail of fire in half the sky. In reality, the situation is as follows. A piece of stone has been flown in space for billions and billions of years, where, by the way, was cosmically cold – only three degrees above absolute zero! After entering the atmosphere before the collision with the Earth, the meteor will have only a few seconds, so great is its speed. And that means, no matter what Michael Bay thinks about it, this piece of rock just doesn't have the time to heat up! Those that still reach the ground are usually slightly lukewarm! But where did the fireballs come from? Almost everyone saw the meteor shower they really burn! But in fact, we observed a spectacular fireball is almost irrelevant to the meteor itself. Is it just the air layer which is formed in front of the falling meteor in the atmosphere – it heats up, creating a kind of a burning Orb, but the temperature of the heavenly body is not affected.
The sun is yellow | Ask your child or even an adult to draw the Sun. The result is sure to be a yellow circle. Really, you can look at the Sun with your own eyes – it's yellow! We actually see the Sun yellow because of the Earth's atmosphere. Here you can argue, pointing to 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 real color of the Sun is white. And to make sure of this, it is not necessary to fly into space – you just need to know the temperature. Colder stars glow brown or dark red. As the temperature rises, the color shifts to red. The hottest stars with a surface temperature of 10,000 degrees Kelvin emit light close to the opposite end of the visible light spectrum and produce a blue color. Our Sun with a surface temperature of 6 thousand degrees Kelvin is approximately in the middle of the spectrum and gives a pure white glow. But, you know – drawing the white sun on white paper with white pencils would be too abstract! Earth is closer to the Sun in summer It seems quite logical that the temperature on the Earth's surface the higher, the closer it is to the body, giving heat, that is, to the Sun. But the reason for the change of seasons lies in the fact that the Earth's axis of rotation is tilted. When the axis coming out of the Northern hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun, it's summer in this hemisphere, and vice versa. At the same time, the idea that the Earth periodically moves away from the Sun and approaches it does not become a delusion. The Earth's orbit is elliptical, like of most other planets. The average distance from the Earth to the Sun is considered to be 150 million kilometers. However, when the planet is closest 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 really closer and farther from the Sun, but this fact does not affect the seasons!
The dark side of the Moon | Well, here certainly cannot be said about the album "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd! After all this, no one doubted that the Moon has a dark side! But the point is that the Moon has no dark side! This expression is one of the most common misconceptions. And its reason is due to the way the Moon turns around the Earth, as well as the fact that the Moon is always turned to our planet only by one side. However, despite the fact that we see only one side of it, we often witness that some parts of it become lighter, while others are covered with darkness. Given this, it was logical to assume that the same rule would be true for its other side! A more correct definition would be "far side of the Moon". And even if we don't see it, it doesn't always stay dark. The thing is that the source of the Moon in the sky is not the Earth, but the Sun! Even if we do not see the other side of the Moon, it is also illuminated by the Sun. It happens cyclically, as on Earth. However, this cycle lasts a little longer. A full Moon day is equivalent to about two Earth weeks.
Sound and explosions in space | There are two very popular misconceptions about how the principle of explosions in space works. The first one you could see in many science fiction films.
When two spacecraft collide, a giant explosion occurs. At the same time, it often turns out to be so powerful that the shock wave from it also destroys other spaceships nearby. According to the second misconception, since there is no oxygen in the space vacuum, explosions in it are impossible as such. The reality, in fact, lies somewhere between these two views. If the explosion occurs inside the ship, the oxygen inside it will be mixed with other gases, which in turn will create the necessity of chemical reaction for the appearance of fire. Depending on the gas concentration, the fire will do, so that's enough to blast the entire ship. But since there is no pressure in space, the explosion will dissipate within a few milliseconds after it hits the vacuum conditions. This will happen so quickly that you do not even have time to blink. Beyond that, there will be no shockwave, which is the most destructive part of the explosion. So, destroying another Death Star, it's not necessary to run as fast as you may - scientists say now you can fly away slowly, politely, with dignity and grace, using a fuel economy mode!
It's impossible to fly through the asteroid belt | There we saw the asteroid belt as a very dense cluster, and only great pilots like Han Solo can fly through it! In reality, space is different. It's bigger. Much bigger! Disproportionately! And the distance between objects in the asteroid belt is also much greater - on average, 650,000 cubic kilometres accounted for one asteroid! In fact, in order to fly through the belt and crash into at least one asteroid, you need to be the unluckiest person in the whole Universe! For example, you can refer to the asteroid belt in our system. The largest object in it is Ceres, a dwarf planet that has a diameter of only 950 kilometres. The distance between two objects in the belt varies within hundreds of thousands of kilometres. At the moment, 11 probes have already been sent to the study of the belt, and all of them successfully passed it without any incidents. Ok, whatever they say - Han Solo is still the best, isn't he!?
Comments
Post a Comment