Space holds many secrets. It contains places where
human beings can be stretched into spaghetti shapes,
or boiled, or frozen solid: that’s why astronauts wear
protective clothing in space. Welcome to a mysterious –
and endlessly fascinating – world.
What is space?
Is that space?
On a cloudless night, you
can see thousands of stars.
Space is the name we give
to the huge empty areas in
between the atmospheres
of stars and planets.
Apart from the odd rock,
space is sprinkled only
with dust and gas.
The universe
How old is the Universe?
268
Nothingness
– vast
areas of space are
completely empty.
Stars
– every star is a
burning ball of gas.
Our Sun is a star.
Astronauts
– people
who explore the world
beyond our Earth.
Weightlessness
– everything floats as
if there’s no gravity.
What is space?
When people think of
space, they think of:
Rockets and satellites
– are what scientists
use to explore space.
Silence
– there is no
air in space, so there is
absolutely no sound.
Too big to imagine
Astronomers measure distance
in space in light years. One
light year is the distance light
travels in one year: that’s
10 million million km
(6 million million miles).
A nebula is a cloud
of dust and gas in
space. This is the Helix
nebula, about 700
light years away, seen
from NASA’s
Spitzer
Space telescope.
