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1. A fast spaceship could take you to the future

Lightspeed travel causes time dilation, in which time passes more slowly for the traveller than for the universe outside. Therefore, a lightspeed voyage of several months could see many years pass at home, effectively sending the traveller into the future.

 

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2. Jupiter may be a failed star

Jupiter has the right combination of elements to be a star, but it lacks the mass (even though you could easily fit 1,300 Earths inside it). If it had attracted a little more mass when it formed, we would probably live in a binary star system (like Tatooine) and be dead from the massive amounts of radiation.

 

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3. We once received a signal that could have been from aliens (it also could have been from something else)

The WOW signal was a radio signal recorded in 1977 at a deep space radio observatory. It was a strong signal that lasted for just over a minute and was never repeated. There has been much speculation over the years as to what it actually was, as it doesn’t match any known natural emission, and its origin is still a mystery.

 

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4. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is about to leave the solar system

It may already have, although it’s not like there’s a line in space that it has to cross. Interstellar space is meant to begin where the influence of the sun ends.

 

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5. Everything on Earth is doomed

Yup, in about 4 or 5 billion years, the sun will swell up to a gigantic size and burn the planet to a cinder.

 

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6. It was easier to travel to the moon in 1969 than it was to fake the moon landing

As this great video points out, film technology was not yet at a stage where it could fake a continuous broadcast like the moon landing.

 

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7. The moon is a chunk of the Earth

The moon is a piece of debris left over from a massive collision between Earth and another planet-sized object in the early formation of the solar system.

 

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8. It’s entirely possible that there are many intelligent life forms in the universe, but we may never even know that they exist

Due to the vast distances between stars, the massive age of the universe and the fact that our technologically inclined society evolved relatively quickly, it’s entirely possible that civilisations have risen and fallen many times over, very far away, before we came along.

 

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9. Saturn will have no rings in the future

In another 50 million years or so, Saturn’s rings will either be absorbed by the planet, or flung off into space.

 

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10. Life may evolve on Titan

Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, has many of the things that one needs to create basic life, but it’s extremely cold. However, it will warm up in the future when the sun expands and could become hospitable to some form of life then.

publicado por Andreia Torres às 00:07