October 4 to 10 is World Space Week.
In honour of this I’m making my book – Sibo in Space – available on the website. It can be read freely for the next two weeks.
Visit www.sibo.co.za and just click on the link.
Thought for Space Week this year I’d share some awesome (and slightly gross) facts that you could wow your friends with, unless they have also read the paper.
• Did you know that if you were in space…skin would be peeling off your feet? Eergh!
Because astronauts do not actually walk on their feet, the skin starts to soften and then flakes off.
• Here’s an even grosser fact: because there are no washing machines in space, the dudes wear their socks and jocks for longer than they usually would on earth!
When they take their socks off, they have to do it very, very gently otherwise those yucky dead skin cells will just float around all over the place.
• How’s this… one million earths would fit inside the sun.
• If you are vertically challenged… you should go to space.
In micro-gravity, because the spine is not being pushed down, it straightens out and a person can become a whole 5cm taller.
• One always imagines space is really far away but, in actual fact, you’d be in space in about an hour if you could drive your car 100km upwards,
Makes you wish your car could drive upwards doesn’t it?
• The solar system is around 4.6-billion years old… but scientists reckon it will probably last another 500-million years, so don’t worry, there is still time to do stuff.
• Space is entirely silent.
• One day on Venus is longer than an entire year on earth.
• One day on Mercury lasts around 59 days on earth.
• If metals touch in space they bond and stick together permanently.
• If you ever stepped onto the moon… your footprints would remain there forever.
Why is that? Because there is no weather on the moon, there is no wind or rain to blow or wash those footprints away.
• Neutron stars can turn at a rate of around 600 rotations per second – enough to make a person really dizzy.
• If you fell into a black hole… you would stretch like spaghetti.
So … if you had a choice of going to school on Venus or Mercury – which would you choose? Mercury of course.
Sibo
