Space Trivia: 20 Mind-Blowing Facts About Our Universe

The universe is the ultimate quiz category: strange, enormous and full of facts that sound made up but are completely real. Here are 20 of our favourites to get you ready for any astronomy round.

Our Solar System

• A day on Venus is longer than its year — it spins so slowly that one rotation takes longer than one orbit of the Sun.
• The Sun makes up about 99.8% of all the mass in the Solar System.
• Saturn is so light for its size that, given a big enough bathtub, it would float in water.
• Jupiter is the largest planet — more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside it.
• Olympus Mons on Mars is the tallest volcano in the Solar System, roughly three times the height of Mount Everest.
• Sunlight takes about eight minutes to travel the 150 million kilometres to Earth.

Stars & Beyond

• There are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on every beach on Earth.
• A single teaspoon of neutron-star material would weigh billions of tonnes.
• Space is completely silent — sound needs a medium like air to travel, and space is a vacuum.
• The footprints left by astronauts on the Moon could last millions of years because there is no wind or water to erase them.
• Light from some stars you see at night left them thousands of years ago — you are looking into the past.

Mind-Benders

• Around one million Earths could fit inside the Sun.
• Neutron stars can spin hundreds of times every second.
• The largest known volcano, canyon and dust storms in the Solar System are all on Mars.
• Black holes are not cosmic vacuum cleaners — you would have to get very close before their gravity trapped you.

Memorise a handful of these and you will have an answer ready the next time a space question appears. Ready to test yourself? Jump into a free Space & Astronomy quiz and see how many you can get right.