17 'facts' about space and Earth that you thought were true — but have been debunked by science

black hole stars galaxies warped space nasa

Whenever someone asks me about outer space, I get animated.

No surprise there: I've made a living speaking to experts and writing about the topic for more than a decade, and have read obsessively on these topics for much longer than that.

I've heard a lot of peculiar "facts" over the years — and even believed and shared a few myself — that I eventually learned were totally false.

Below are some of the most common myths, misconceptions, and inaccuracies I've encountered that should be thrown into a black hole.

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MYTH: The sun is yellow.

If you look at the afternoon sun, you'd be forgiven for thinking it looks yellow — but the light it gives off is technically white.

The Earth's atmosphere makes the star appear yellow. The gases bend the light in an effect called Rayleigh scattering, which is what also makes the sky appear blue and causes sunsets to blaze into brilliant oranges and reds.

It also doesn't help that astronomers classify the sun as a yellow main-sequence G-type star, or "yellow dwarf" — which has nothing to do with color.

Sources: NASA, NOAA, Washington University, University College London

MYTH: The Asteroid Belt is dangerous.

Movie scenes of spaceships flying through a dense field of tumbling, colliding rocks are not realistic.

The Asteroid Belt — a zone 200 to 300 million miles from the sun — is an incredibly lonely and desolate void.

In fact, if you pulled all the asteroids in that belt together, they'd only weigh about 4% of the mass of Earth's moon.

That's why NASA gets really excited when it catches even one asteroid colliding with another.

Sources: NASA, TodayIFoundOut.com

MYTH: Going into space makes you weightless.

Most scientists agree that space begins 62 miles up, where the Earth's atmosphere is more or less a vacuum.

Yet going past this point does not magically make you weightless. If you're in an accelerating rocket, you will feel many times Earth's gravity. It's only when you start falling that you feel weightless.

To orbit something is to fall forever around that object. The moon around the Earth, the Earth around the sun, the solar system around the Milky Way Galaxy... They're all falling towards one another in a crazy cosmic dance.

If you're 250 miles above the Earth, you have to travel 17,500 mph around the planet to experience continuous free-fall (the same speed that the International Space Station and its astronauts travel).

Sources: FAI, NASA

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