The concept of space is so intriguing that it fascinated our ancestors, and to this day, humans have been trying to figure out the big mysteries that it possesses. Even with all the technology that we have, we barely know anything about it.
However, what we do know for sure is that it’s scary as hell, literally! From black holes to monster moons, space comprises so many disturbing things that our brains won’t even be able to digest a few of them. If it still fascinates you, then scroll down to check out some terrifying facts about it that netizens have shared!
#1
That the universe is expanding, but not into anything. Space itself is stretching, and there’s no edge, no center, no “outside.” It’s not just vast, it’s fundamentally beyond how our brains are wired to understand reality.
Image source: TheLegitimateGoose
#2
Terrifying? Maybe not terrifying…but the fact that all the stupid stuff we are doing to earth and each others doesn’t mean squat in the grand sense of things. Our earth could suddenly be destroyed by so many things in so many ways by some extraterrestrial event….and it won’t matter, we won’t matter. This is all we’ve got and we’re making a right mess of it all.
Image source: IronRakkasan11, freepik
#3
Time is not linear due to the constant expansion of space therefore time is expansive.
Phytanic replied:
also time is a function of gravity. the earths core is ~2.5 years younger than the crust
Velocity_Rob replied:
I can relate to that. I feel like my core is still only 28 but my crust is definitely 40.
Image source: Argybargyass, ahmadzada
#4
If we are truly alone in the universe and mankind wipes itself out, the universe will continue to exist without any life, no one to comprehend the universe. That seems sad and scary.
If we are not alone, then that is an equally scary prospect.
Image source: northernbloke, EyeEm
#5
There are voids in the universe that are so big that if you were teleported to the center with a spacesuit on, you would just see pitch darkness in all directions.
EDIT: Whoah. This blew up quickly. Thank you for the silver! EDIT: And the Wholesome! And the Helpful!
Image source: Ronald_Deuce, freepik
#6
The sun is unbearably loud. All stars are very loud.
Enough_Estimate7141 replied:
This is a stunning thought.
Image source: anon
#7
On a grand scale, everything is getting further and further apart. Stars will one day disappear from the sky.
Image source: sunbearimon, freepik
#8
It’s a big bunch of stuff zipping around with no regard for us and there’s almost nothing we can do to influence it.
A giant rock could be flung into our planet and wipe out all life, and the universe would go on without a blip. We don’t matter in the least.
Image source: NetDork, tawatchai07
#9
How incomprehensively large the universe is.
UrdnotZigrin replied:
There are about 400 billion stars in our galaxy, with an average of slightly more than one planet per star. That means that within our galaxy, there are over 400 billion opportunities for life to have evolved. This isn’t even counting all of the moons, comets, asteroids, etc. within our solar system, or even the idea that life could evolve twice on the same world.
On top of that, we live in a pretty average-sized galaxy that is one of over two trillion galaxies estimated to be within the observable universe. Given that the Cosmological Principle essentially says that space is the same in all directions, that would mean an average of over 400 billion chances for life to appear, 2 TRILLION times.
There is life elsewhere in this universe. No matter how rare the existence of life is, even if it’s a 1 in a trillion chance, that’s still more than 800 trillion chance of life appearing.
Image source: Routine_Mine_3019, wahyu_t
#10
The sheer size of everything. There is a black hole called TON 618 that has a diameter 30 to 40 billion times our solar system with a mass of 40 billion suns.
Image source: psycharious, freepik
#11
You’ll never set foot on another planet, and humans are unlikely to ever set foot in another system at all.
Hell, it would take even the Voyager craft 83,500 years to reach the next nearest star and that left in the 1970’s and is already nearly dead.
Chances are, humans will die as a species on Earth, but certainly without ever having seen any other system.
#12
If we built a ship, and some portion of the population left in it to explore like Star Trek, we would never see those people again.
llathosv2 replied:
Nobody seems to appreciate that your point is about relativity.
Image source: Mean_Jury2467, freepik
#13
Astronomer here! There are a lot of things posted here that are not really likely to happen any time soon or affect your life on Earth much. So, if you want something to worry about, may I introduce you to the Carrington Event of 1859. Basically Carrington was a scientist who noticed a flash from a huge cluster of sunspots, which was the biggest coronal mass ejection from the sun ever recorded (aka a ton of material ejected from the sun at high speeds). It hit Earth within a day- aurora were seen as far south as Hawaii, wires on telephone poles burst into flame, and telegraph operators even reported contacting each other *when not connected*. If a similar event were to strike Earth today, it would cause billions of dollars in damage, because blown transformers are super hard to replace and a lot of satellites wouldn’t be able to handle it (and it goes without saying you’d have a serious radio blackout for a bit until it ended on a ton of essential frequencies).
The crazy thing about the Carrington event though is we really have no idea how often such events happen. But we do know that in 2012 there *was* a Carrington-level solar flare that barely missed Earth…
Edit: for those making “next in 2020” jokes, this is not super likely this year. We do know these biggest flares happen during solar maximum- the sun has an 11 year cycle of sunspots and the period with the most is solar maximum. We are just coming out of a minimum so the next max would be 2025-2026 or so.
However we really don’t know how common these big flares are. Interestingly data from other stars shows they seem to be much more common around other stars than our own, with huge implications for life in some cases.
Edit 2: apparently this was on a YouTube channel this week coincidentally, you don’t need to be the 100th person chiming in to mention it.
Image source: Andromeda321, vecstock
#14
That we, as a planet, are literally flying through Space.
I dont just mean around the Sun, because our Solar System is flying through space as well.
Along with our Galaxy too. Where Earth was one minute ago is a point in space that we will never return too.
Image source: from_the_east, freepik
#15
The fact that Voyager 2 Space probe after over 40 years has not even hit a pebble…..
disgruntled-capybara replied:
I find the Voyager probes to be fascinating, especially because last I knew, Voyager 2 is still functioning and sending back a limited amount of data. But even the whole mission–suddenly bringing all these worlds into sharp focus that had never been seen up close before. All the questions answered and places explored. And there it is, still floating along and talking to us. For now.
Image source: melekh88, NASA/JPL
#16
I can’t accept the fact that there is no end in space. But if there is indeed an end, then… what’s beyond it?
I’m stucked in absurdity.
Edit: In the numerous answers I’ve received, the one that seems to come back the most is “the universe is curved, you would end up back where you started”. Seems fair enough. Then again,that wouldn’t mean there is no limit. On the contrary, that would just mean we are trapped in (or on the surface of) a sphere, but there is still a limit to this sphere. So the question remains… what’s beyond it?
Image source: Tartokwetsh, ArtPhoto_studio
#17
The number of theories as to why, if intelligent life besides humanity exists, it hasn’t contacted us on a large scale yet. To wit, some of them are:
1.We lack the capacity for interstellar communication
2. Earth is essentially a space backwater, and that humans are so relatively primitive that alien life has decided it’s better to leave us alone, like a nature preserve
3. The same, except the aliens are afraid of our savagery relative to theirs
4. There is no (intelligent) life besides ours
5. We have been in contact, but cannot perceive said beings
6. Extraterrestrials are too distant to be contacted.
Image source: FlyingDreamWhale67, kjpargeter
#18
It’s not actually empty and every time astronauts go outside of the space station they risk pieces of debris flying through their bodies like bullets.
Image source: AnotherBogCryptid, Andrei Armiagov
#19
No one can hear you scream.
Relevant_Maybe_9291 asked:
Does this all mean if something exploded in space like a missile or a ship it doesn’t make a sound?
theObfuscator replied:
Yes and no. Sound needs a medium to travel through. Conventional explosives are nothing more than extremely rapidly expanding gas and heat. If you were close enough to an explosion in space for this expanding gas to impact you, you would feel and “hear” it. If you were far enough away to see it but not have the explosion itself reach you, the sound cannot move through the vacuum that exists between you and the edge of the explosion’s influence.
Image source: so_dope24, EyeEm
#20
There are things out there that could k**l you before you can conceive of your own demise. Fun ones are a gamma ray burst pointed straight at Earth or a false vacuum decay!!
You’ll either be melted or turned into non existence!!
Image source: OSUfirebird18, freepik
#21
Here’s one closer to home. The Kessler Effect is the theory that a single destructive event in Low earth orbit could create a cascade where satellites break up into tiny fragments taking out other satellites, breaking up into smaller fragments and so on, until the earth is completely surrounded by a massive cloud of tiny flying death shrapnel which would make leaving this planet almost impossible. If you look up how much space debris there is already up there and how many satellites currently orbit, plus the continued growth of the commercial space industry… I think about it a lot.
Image source: SENDmeSMALLtitsPICS, QuantumEdge
#22
If you gathered together all the matter in the universe we can observe right now and squished it together until it had the density of water (1gm/cm^3) it would fit into a cube about 1 light year on each side. There are several disturbing things about this:
-A single light year is almost unimaginably huge
-A cubic light year is a ridiculous volume of space
-The observable universe is 33 orders of magnitude larger than that
-It is almost entirely empty.
Image source: bravehamster, wirestock_creators
#23
The largest black hole we have discovered has a diameter of 490.000.000.000 km. Earths diameter is roughly 13.000 km.
Image source: Weak-Round-3772, vadimsadovski
#24
The farthest galaxy we can detect was 13.4 billion light years away when it emitted the light we see today.
That light (not the galaxy, the light itself) is three times as old as the Earth.
Image source: Ronald_Deuce, www.slon.pics
#25
It’s size and age alone is disturbing. I have had an ongoing existentialcris crisis since I was a child when I realized just how small and vulnerable we are.
“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space” – Douglas Adams.
Image source: SmalltimeDog, jcomp
#26
Rogue planets
Such objects have been ejected from the planetary system in which they were formed or have never been gravitationally bound to any star or brown dwarf. If a rogue planet invade our Solar System, things could go very wrong.
Image source: SuvenPan, pikisuperstar
#27
The Bootes void. An area of space where there should be 50,000 or so galaxies (compared to other areas of the same size)but there’s only about 60. Could just be empty space for some unknown reason, or it could be an ever expanding intergalactic empire using Dyson spheres. Also I think it appears to be growing but that could just be galaxies moving away from the void
Edit: so it turns out it’s 2000 and obviously it’s not gonna be aliens but the theory is still cool af.
#28
MOBILE
BLACK HOLES.
Image source: Blubari, kfccc588
#29
On the surface of Mars right now is a Blur CD
God help us if aliens find that first.
[deleted] replied:
You need to answer this, and it is vitally important. What blur cd?
the_Athereon said:
Beagle 2 crash landed with a Blur album saved on board its computer. The intent was to broadcast the music playing from the surface of Mars.
[deleted] asked:
The second vital question, does that album include parklife? If not all hope is lost
Image source: the_Athereon, amazon
#30
Vacuum decay is one of the scariest concepts to me. We don’t know if it exists, and we won’t know until it’s too late.
Tom_Brokaw_is_a_Punk replied:
On the other hand, you’ll never know. You’ll just blink out of existence one day. So nothing to worry about.
Image source: Marycate11, freepik
#31
Voyager 1 will outlive planet earth.
EDIT: Wow! Didn’t expect this post would generate so much interest. Couple of clarifications. First, I was referring to Voyager 1 not 2 – so fixed that. (Which is not to say that Voyager 2 also won’t also outlive planet earth.)
Second, my source mentions that it is “plausible” to imagine that Voyager 1 will outlive our planet given how incomprehensibly vast space really is. You can watch the interesting and rather fun video here https://youtu.be/PmmHfhwFlQQ.
Image source: skakodker
#32
We still don’t know exactly how it came into existence.
[deleted] replied:
true.
Fine tuned?
Coincidence?
Big Bang?
Something else?
it always existed?
Image source: DeathSpiral321
#33
What was before the big bang? I think it is just impossible for a human to comprehend pure nothing or infinity. I myself had a stroke at age nine due to a ruptured vertebral artery and lost a third of my visual field. I can confirm that it is not black, a good analogy is it is like what you see behind your head. on the other hand, infinity is so large that if you spent your whole life writing a one then zeros on paper, that insane number would still be 0% of infinity. I just think there is no way to fully understand the universe and there never will be. This is why even ancient societies explained things with gods because they didn’t understand how the reality we live in started and I don’t think we ever will.
Image source: canned_shrimp
#34
I think everything is terrifying about space, and I f*****g love it.
But one thing it scare me a lot, it’s if space in infinite, imagine what kind of gigantic monster can be in there.
Image source: Scovundra
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