Out of all the solar systems in the universe, what good luck that we inhabit one of the most spectacular ones! Granted, other solar systems may not have allowed us to exist. But still, based on our ever-growing knowledge, we serendipitously find ourselves somewhere truly worthy of awe.
The solar system’s secrets are being unveiled every day, and the following goings-on, happenings, and hidden wonders are among the most mind-blowing.
Related: 10 Puzzling Tales of Astronauts on Lunar and Planetary Missions
10 The “Hurricanes” on Venus are Faster Than Venus itself
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Venus is considered Earth’s twin planet because it’s not too dissimilar in size and composition. But it’s an evil twin: almost 900°F (482.2°) with an atmospheric pressure up to 100 times greater than Earth. And, oh yeah, the clouds are made of sulfuric acid. So you’d be crushed, burned, acid-rained, and also suffocated due to the carbon dioxide atmosphere.
If that wasn’t horrifying enough, Venus also has insane hurricane-like vortexes with winds faster than Venus itself. The winds down low are slow, but at the cloud tops, about 40 miles (64.4 km) up, they whip at nearly 250 miles per hour (4.2 km/h)—faster than Venus itself!
As per the European Space Agency, up this high, Venus’s atmosphere spins around some 60 times faster than the planet itself. On Earth, the swiftest winds reach only about 30% of our planet’s rotation speed. Better pack a windbreaker.[1]
9 Io Has Lava Lakes as Smooth as Glass
Any theoretical visitors that could survive on Io, even for a second, would glimpse an infernal nightmarescape with lakes of lava so smooth they resemble glass. This revelation comes courtesy of Juno, the solar-powered spacecraft buzzing closer to Jupiter’s north pole to soak up data and study the whirling, psychedelic, Vincent Van Gogh-like cyclones.
Hard-working Juno also catches glimpses of Jupiter’s moon Io, the solar system’s most volcanic member. It’s basically a giant volcano floating in space, a bit bigger than our Moon and about a quarter the size of Earth.
Not long ago, Juno swooped just 930 miles (1,497 km) above Io’s hellish surface. Looking down, it saw the incredible Loki Patera, a 127-mile (204-km) long lava lake with islands in a sea of magma rimmed with lava. Too bad we can’t see it. Oh wait, we totally can, and it’s mind blowing.[2]
8 “Fireball Camera” Captures an Awe-Inspiring Impact, Leaves Room for Doubt
The ESA’s “fireball camera,” in Cáceres, Spain, monitors the sky as part of the European Space Agency’s incredibly sci-fi-sounding Planetary Defence Office—except it’s for space rocks, not alien invasions. On the night of May 18-19, it captured an amazing sight: a meteor, likely a small piece of a comet, traveling at 28 miles per second (45 km/s).
The space bullet buzzed above Spain and Portugal before burning up over the Atlantic at an altitude of 37 miles (60 km). It’s estimated as being over 3 feet (just under 1 meter) in size and 1,100 to 2,200 pounds (499 to 544 kg). Without meaning to cause alarm, it’s intriguing to know that it was undetected before crashing down, likely because it approached Earth from a region of the sky that is particularly crowded with stars. That’s not very reassuring of the Planetary Defence Office.[3]
7 The Moon’s Lunar Lava Tubes and “Skylights” (are a Potential Future Home)
The most intriguing parts of the Moon are probably the ones we can’t even see. And no, I don’t mean on the far side, but on the deep side—as in, below the surface, or lunar regolith, for a fancier way of saying Moon-soil. The Moon has hundreds of steep-walled pits, some of which hide tantalizing caves beneath gaping maws.
These openings could be “skylights,” which open into deep, dank, and mysterious lava tubes formed billions of years ago when the Moon was active and lava-filled. Some tubes can stretch into the foreboding lunar interior for hundreds of miles, potentially, and be as wide as New York’s Central Park.
Interestingly enough, the tubes serve a practical purpose because they could house future lunar colonists. Despite not being so glamorous, the sub-lunar environments offer protection from radiation, temperature, and micro-meteorites.[4]
6 Titan Is Continuously “Farting” Itself an Atmosphere
Saturn’s hazy moon Titan is one of the most amazing places we’ll explore in the future, with the Dragonfly spacecraft launching in 2028 and landing in 2034. Titan has liquid on its surface and a legit atmosphere; it’s the only moon with a significant atmosphere, made of nitrogen (95%) and methane (5%). Titan is big, around 40% the diameter of Earth. However, its atmosphere is 1.5 times as dense as ours despite Titan’s lower mass and punier gravity.
Places that have atmospheres generally need a way to replenish said atmospheres, lest they slip away into space, transform into other chemicals, or freeze onto the surface. To explain Titan’s atmosphere, scientists point out that the moon is like one of those psychedelic jawbreakers with different colors in its interior.
Yet instead of questionably toxic sugars, Titan’s interior holds a secret ocean, a layer of pressurized ice, and a bunch of complicated organic materials being heated up and, for lack of a better term, farted out on a massive scale to replenish the moon’s orange haze.[5]
5 The Sky on Mars Glows Green at Night
The nighttime Martian sky glows green at its poles, and it’s not a consequence of image processing. In fact, the glow is so pronounced that future astronauts could marvel at it while exploring Mars’s polar regions. The expected-but-only-recently observed glow may remind you of an aurora, but it’s caused by a completely different process.
The sky glows green as single oxygen atoms pair together into oxygen molecules about 30 miles (48 km) up in the Martian atmosphere. This process begins on the dayside, where carbon dioxide molecules are split apart by energy from the Sun. The oxygen atoms then migrate to the night side, where they’re less energetic, and they can combine into oxygen molecules, emitting a green glow. Fun fact: this eerie air glow also occurs on Earth.[6]
4 Europa Is like an Uncooked Egg
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has snapped some spectacular views of the Jupiter system, including some recent images of Europa. This icy moon is 1,900-ish miles (3,057-ish km) wide, about 90% the size of our Moon, and its hidden interior ocean could be full of alien life.
Now, Juno shows evidence that Europa’s ice crust moves around, kind of like how an uncooked egg’s contents swish about within its shell. On the crust, some of Europa’s icy features are immense, including “steep-walled depressions” that can reach over 30 miles in width. These aspects agree with the “true polar wander” theory, which states that Europa’s ice crust is decoupled from its interior.
Juno also found potential evidence of “cryovolcanic plume deposits,” suggesting “present-day surface activity.” In other words, active volcanoes that erupt with frost and ice!
Finally, Juno discovered a chaotic new region with 4-mile (6.4-km) wide blocks of ice. To honor this mish-mashed chaos, scientists have whimsically dubbed this region the “Platypus.”[7]
3 Venus Could Have Baby Plate Tectonics
We live in a great decade for discovery. The secrets of the solar system are being illuminated as never before, and long-held misconceptions are constantly getting squashed. One viewpoint that appears to be getting overturned is that Venus has a “stagnant and thick” crust, unlike Earth’s jigsaw puzzle-like plate tectonics.
But the evidence discovered around coronae, which apparently form as hot material surfaces, suggests Venus is awash with scorchingly strange activity. The ongoing volcanic action may be affected by subduction, as part of the Venusian crust plunges into the planet’s interior.
This hot chaos may resemble Earth’s own tectonic plates when they were just getting started, giving us a temporal window that stretches more than 2.5 billion years into our own planetary past.[8]
2 Life Could Exist on Mars… Currently!
Mars is most tantalizing because it was once a water world that may have hosted life. Sadly, this ancient life is long gone… or is it? Evidence of past organisms would be revolutionary, but how about evidence of living organisms? Excitingly, it’s possible that life is still kicking just below the Martian ice.
Computer modeling and Earth evidence suggest that tiny organisms could be flourishing in pockets of meltwater beneath patches of Mars’s water ice; Mars also has a lot of frozen carbon dioxide, or “dry ice.”
Enough sunlight can shine through this ice to allow photosynthesis and the existence of things like algae, fungi, and the cyanobacteria that helped give Earth its oxygen. The melting is helped along by dark dust that solidified inside the ice. The dust absorbs “more sunlight than the surrounding ice, potentially causing the ice to warm up and melt up to a few feet below the surface.”
As a bonus, these environments are also among the most relatively accessible places to seek life. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.[9]
1 Pluto Got Its Big Moon Through the “Now Kiss” Meme
Pluto and its big moon, Charon, are freakishly close in size. So much so that they’re considered a double dwarf planet system: Pluto is 1,400 miles (2,253 km) across, and Charon is more than half that, at 754 miles (1,213 km) wide. They’re also only about 12,000 miles (19,312 km) from each other. For comparison, our Moon is more than 230,000 miles (370,000 km) away on average, and Earth is four times its size.
Equally fascinating, scientists now say Pluto possibly captured Charon through the “kiss-and-capture” process. Our Moon came about after a Mars-sized body, Theia, smashed into a pre-pubescent Earth. Yet these collisions can also happen in gentle slow-motion, as Pluto and Charon bumped into each other, remained connected for “tens of hours,” then separated as they spun apart. Their icy composition helped them stick together and not be overly smashed to bits—how romantic.[10]