25 UNBELIEVABLE FACTS ABOUT THE SOLAR SYSTEM

WHY OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD COULD BE THE STRANGEST PLACE IN THE COSMOS

- Elizabeth Howell, Vicky Stein and Daisy Dobrijevic

1 The Solar System is really big

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched in 1977. More than three decades later, in 2012 it became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space by crossing the heliopause – the edge of the heliosphere. That's the boundary beyond which most of the Sun's ejected particles and magnetic fields dissipate. “If we define our Solar System as the Sun and everything that primarily orbits the Sun, Voyager 1 will remain within the confines of the Solar System until it emerges from the Oort Cloud in another 14,000 to 28,000 years,” NASA says.1

2 Even just our neighbourhood is really big

Depending on how carefully you do the calculations and how you arrange them, all of the planets in the Solar System could fit in between Earth and its Moon. The distance between Earth and the Moon varies as it orbits around us, as does the diameter of each of the planets – they’re wider at their equators, so Saturn and Jupiter would have to be tilted sideways for this to work. But imagine lining them all up, pole to pole. They’d just barely squeeze in between us and our closest companion in space, blocking out the sky with their rings and gas giant bulk as they did so.