Quiz

BuzzFeed Staff, UK 

Science

Have you been taken in by some common space myths?

The Hardest "True Or False" Space Quiz You'll Take Today

On June 5 1991, the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off with almost two and a half thousand baby jellyfish in their stead as part of a life sciences experiment. By the end of the mission, nine days later, there were [60,000 jellies](http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/From_Undersea_To_Outer_Space.pdf).

It's true!

"In 1991, there were 60,000 jellyfish orbiting Earth."

Before Neil Armstrong stepped out on to the surface of the moon, him and Buzz Aldrin spent a few hours on the surface in the Eagle after landing. So the first words were actually Aldrin's utterance ["contact light"](http://apollo11.spacelog.org/page/04:06:45:04/) once they touched down.

FALSE.

"'One small step for man' is the first thing anyone said on the moon."

They're called [Y dwarfs](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20110823.html), and are a type of brown dwarf – sometimes known as "failed stars".

Truth.

"There's a class of stars that are just 25ºC."

You can see the results of lots of human activity from low-Earth orbit, but the Great Wall of China isn't [actually visible](http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall.html) to the unaided eye.

False.

"The Great Wall of China is the only human-made object you can see from space."

[Awwwwww](http://www.space.com/19338-manatee-nebula-celestial-wonder.html).

It's true.

"There's a nebula shaped like a manatee that scientists named the 'Manatee Nebula' in a special ceremony in 2013."

Check with [Wolfram Alpha](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28384400+km%29+-+%28diameter+of+mercury+%2B+diameter+of+venus+%2B+diameter+of+mars+%2B+diameter+of+jupiter+%2B+diameter+of+saturn+%2B+diameter+of+uranus+%2B+diameter+of+neptune%29) if you don’t trust us.

Amazingly, it's true.

"All of the other planets in the solar system could fit between Earth and the moon."

[Yup](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1992ApJ...401..759M).

True!

"It takes 170,000 YEARS, on average, for a photon to travel from the centre of the sun to it's surface."

The sun is [huuuuuge](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Sun).

"The sun makes up 99.8% of the mass of the solar system."

The black hole V4641 Sagittarii was [widely reported](http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2000/v4641/) to be 1,600 light years away in the 90s, but a later [analysis](http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0103045v1) showed it was actually over 15 times further away than that.

False!

"The nearest black hole to Earth is just 1,600 light years away."

In the early days of space travel everyone used pencils. But since the 1960s, both American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts have used a [space pen](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen/) developed by the Fisher Pen Company.

It's false.

"Instead of spending money creating a pen that would work in space, the Russians just use pencils."

It looks yellow through Earth's atmosphere, but it actually [emits white light](http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsuncolor.html).

"The sun is yellow."

According to [NASA](http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/ask_astro/space_travel.html): "You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness." Once you ran out of oxygen, then you'd lose consciousness. Your skin would burn and swell, and eventually you'd die. But you wouldn't explode.

"If you went into space without a spacesuit on, you'd explode."

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