Four Interesting Short Stories to Inspire and Entertain

Gazing up at the Night Sky.

When viewing the night sky, you’re looking back in time.

The reflected light from the Moon left its surface about 1.3 seconds before it reached your eyes.

The Sun is about 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) from Earth, so light leaving the Sun takes just over eight minutes to reach us.

You are seeing the Sun as it was just over eight minutes ago.

Now consider the most distant object you can see with the naked eye:

The light from the Andromeda Galaxy that you are seeing now began its journey about 2.5 million years ago, so you are seeing the galaxy as it appeared 2.5 million years in the past.

From a single location on Earth's surface, you can see with unaided eyes roughly 2,500 stars on a clear, dark night.

By the way, light travels at an astonishing 300,000 kilometres per second (186,000 miles per second). Amazing!

British spelling

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It Was the Beginning of Everything.

Scientists estimate that the universe came into existence approximately 13.8 billion years ago.

It was also the beginning of space and time; the infant universe could now embark on its long evolutionary path.

As the universe expanded and cooled, there came a period known as the cosmic dark ages with no stars, planets, or any other celestial objects.

Imagine a sky that is pitch black; that's how it was for roughly 100 to 200 million years until the first stars burst into life, lighting up space.

Now, go back about 4.5 billion years; this is when our planet was forming.

Primitive microorganisms were living on Earth at least 3.7 billion years ago.

The evolutionary path of life has been long, but we have finally arrived.

Billions of species have lived and died on our remarkable world, yet we are the only ones able to look up at the stars and wonder why we are here.

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Galaxies: Giants of the Universe.

Where Do We Live in Space? Inside the Milky Way.

Galaxies are massive systems containing vast numbers of stars, all held together by gravity.

There are three main types of galaxies. The first is a spiral galaxy, such as our own Milky Way. Most spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotating disc of stars with a central bulge that contains a large concentration of stars.

Another type is the elliptical galaxy, which has the shape of an elongated sphere.

The third type is the irregular galaxy, which has no regular or symmetrical structure.

It is estimated that there could be up to two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Some smaller galaxies contain millions of stars. The largest galaxies contain hundreds of billions to trillions of stars.

Yes, the universe is an enormous place, perhaps even too vast for the human mind to comprehend.

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Pluto Was Reclassified as a Dwarf Planet.

Pluto had its planet title taken away in 2006, leaving 8 planets in orbit around the Sun.

Pluto is now classified as a dwarf planet. With a diameter of 2,377 kilometres (1,477 miles), it is smaller than our Moon.

It takes an incredible 248 Earth years to complete one full journey around our local star, the Sun.

The space probe New Horizons made a close flyby of Pluto in 2015, providing stunning images and a wealth of new information about this mysterious dwarf planet and its five moons.

What does it take to be classified as a planet in our solar system?

It must orbit the Sun.

Its gravity must be strong enough to pull it into a nearly spherical shape.

It must be massive enough to clear other objects from its orbital neighbourhood around the Sun.

Pluto failed to meet the third requirement.

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