I’m a space nerd and got tired of jumping between a dozen sites to check this stuff, so I built one app that pulls it all together live: https://spacehud.com

It's almost all visual rather than dry data and tables.

It’s just a hobby site... if you think anything else should be added let me know.

SPACE PARK?NCU president Hsiau Shu-san said that the name links Kinmen National Park’s historical and natural heritage on Earth with space exploration

By Rachel Lin and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Solar System may once have looked very different from today. Here are five bodies that people argue about, search for, and fear.

1. Nibiru: The Myth That Won't Die

In the 1970s, Zecharia Sitchin "read" in Sumerian texts a planet with an orbital period of 3,600 years. Experts in cuneiform disagree with him. Later, Nancy Lieder announced that Nibiru would collide with Earth, first in 2003, then in 2012. Nothing happened. A planet like that would be visible even to amateurs with a telescope, and it would have disturbed the orbits of other bodies long ago. It is not a scientific hypothesis.

1. Planet X: A Calculation Error

In the early 20th century, Percival Lowell searched for a hypothetical planet that supposedly caused "irregularities" in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. Pluto, discovered in 1930, turned out to be far too small for the role. The mystery was solved by Voyager 2 in 1989: Neptune's mass had simply been measured inaccurately. Planet X never existed, but the search led to the discovery of Pluto.

1. Theia: The Planet That Became the Moon

About 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized body slammed into the young Earth. The ejected material coalesced into the Moon. This is the leading theory of the Moon's origin. The name comes from the Titaness Theia, mother of Selene, the goddess of the Moon.

The isotopic composition of Earth and the Moon is nearly identical, which fits the theory.

Theia may have formed in Earth's orbit, at a Lagrange point.

A 2023 study suggests that two enormous blobs in Earth's mantle (beneath Africa and the Pacific) could be remnants of Theia.

1. Planet Nine: The Hunt Goes On

In 2016, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown noticed that the orbits of several distant objects (including Sedna) are strangely clustered, as if a large body were "herding" them.

Estimated mass: 5–10 Earth masses

Orbit: hundreds of AU, period of 10,000–20,000 years

Status: not found

Skeptics think the clustering comes from observational bias. Some exotic ideas have been proposed too, such as a primordial black hole. Hopes rest on the Rubin Observatory, which is scanning the sky. For the latest search results, check current sources.

1. Boreus: The Killer of Uranus's Heat

Uranus is tilted by about 98° and "rolls around its orbit on its side." Simulations (Kegerreis et al., 2018) show that the cause could have been an impact by a body 2–3 times the mass of Earth, most likely an icy one. It dissolved into Uranus, and the ejected material may have formed its rings and moons. This impact would also explain why Uranus emits almost no internal heat, unlike the other gas giants.

The impactor has no official name; in scientific papers it's simply "the impactor." The author of this post proposes informally calling it Boreus, after the Greek god of the north wind and winter: an icy wind that killed the heart of Uranus, god of the sky. The International Astronomical Union doesn't name hypothetical bodies, but Theia also started out as an informal name.

Bottom line: of these five, one is made up, one turned out to be an error, and three (Theia, Planet Nine, Boreus) remain serious scientific hypotheses. And at least two of them may still be hiding right inside planets.

What would you name the unnamed bodies of the Solar System?

I am envisioning (and being told hmmm impossible) a solid rocket motor that while chemically burning produces fission to increase thrust.

My idea turns out to have some similarity to the famed NASA "Pulse Plasma Rocket" , which features a barrel of low enriched uranium with an end section of the barrel being made of high enriched uranium, and with a low enriched uranium slug being fired down the barrel so that by the time it leaves the barrel it goes supercritical converting the slug into plasma which pushes on a magnetic nozzle.

In my solid chemical rocket, the metal that is burned in the formula is also a fissionable element. The propellent travels through a throat (and perhaps a long throat like the barrel) that acts as a neutron source which would fission some of the metal used in the chemical process, contributing heat to the exhaust gases. If lithium is used, then lithium fission produces deuterium which can be fused with hydrogen under the right conditions, so a more advanced version of the solid chemical rocket motor would try to produce some amount of this fusion as well in the process to further heat the exhaust gases.

The main response to the idea is that the particles of fissionable material would need to be exposed to an unavailable neutron source, because so many neutrons would be required as the fissionable material passes very quickly through the nozzle.

Does anyone think that perhaps with a long nozzle barrel or any other way that such a chemical rocket could then be boosted by fission?

Our 1yo is the biggest fan of space and the planets. He can distinguish and name all the planets! We try to keep his interest going and reinforce it and he learns so much so everything space like books, videos, stickers. We have been wanting to take him to some kind of place about space play place or kids museum but I cannot find anything for his age. Any recommendations?!?!

We’re located in AZ and happy to travel/roadtrip if it will be really cool for him!

In about 10^100 years, everything in the universe including black holes will die out and leave nothing but particles floating around. This is because Dark Energy is constantly pushing galixies away from each other in every direction evenly, and in fact, 94% of galixies we see today are physically impossible to reach even if we traveled at the speed of light.

That is so unbelievably terrifying to me, because it makes you wonder... Why are we here? Or an even better question, why was the universe even created?

All of the energy that created the big bang couldn't have just come from nowhere. Right? And that's the scary part to me. What was the source of all of that energy? A god? A simulation? Something beyond comprehension?

The whole fact that a massive and possibly infinite universe has a beginning and end is so baffling to me and I don't think I will ever be able to wrap my head around it.

It really pisses me off that these questions will go forever unanswered and one day I'll be dead and gone like everything else in the universe. But at the end of the day, it sure helps me feel better ranting about it.

What do you think created the universe? And a better question, why?