Ten flabbergasting space facts from the QI Elves
Those curious creatures over at QI have a new book out, 1,342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted – here are some of our favourites.
1
To get to the nearest star at a tenth of the speed of light would take 42 years and need fuel weighing as much as the Sun.
2
Ten-trillionths of your sun tan comes from stars in galaxies beyond the Milky Way.
3
NASA scientists working on Mars rovers work to a Mars day, not an Earth day.
4
In the average 40 minutes it takes the commuters of the world to get to work, the International Space Station has travelled from London to Australia.
5
Man has probed 20 billion kilometres away from the Earth but less than 12 into it.
6
Astronauts aboard the ISS change their underpants every four days.
7
When a potential meteorite turns out to be just a rock, geologists call it a ‘meteowrong’.
8
The Sun is rained on by droplets of plasma the size of Ireland.
9
Neptune was discovered within an hour of astronomers starting to look for it.
10
Since the first crew left for the ISS on 31 October 2000, there has not been a single day when the entire human race has been on the Earth.
1,342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted is written by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin and Anne Miller and is published 3 November 2016 (Faber & Faber, £9.99)
