Space
The Kessler syndrome is a scenario where space debris hits a satellite, creating fragments that destroy more satellites in a chain reaction until orbit is choked with junk. Losing GPS and communications could set civilization back to 1970.
0
Graham's number arose from a simple mathematics problem, yet it is so large that writing one digit on every atom in the universe would not be enough. Even bringing as many universes as there are atoms in one universe still would not suffice.
0
The Kardashev Scale measures a civilization's advancement by energy usage. Type I harnesses all energy reaching its planet; Type II, all from its star; Type III, all from its galaxy. Humanity currently sits at about 0.7 on this scale.
0
SETI@home used volunteers' idle computers to scan space for extraterrestrial signals. Aimed at 50,000–100,000 machines, it drew 5.2 million participants and logged over 2 million years of computing—about 50x faster than the world's top supercomputer in 2013.
0
The space elevator concept involves dropping a 36,000 km cable from an orbiting satellite down to Earth, rather than building a tower upward. If realized, it could reduce space cargo transport costs to between 1/100th and 1/10,000th of rocket launches.
0
About 80–90% of a rockets total weight is fuel. To send 1 kg of cargo to space, roughly 10 kg must be launched. Most of a rockets kinetic energy is carried away by the expelled gas, not the rocket itself.
0
In 2013, during a game Super Mario 64 speedrun, Mario suddenly teleported. A $1,000 bounty yielded no answers for 8 years. The cause: space radiation flipped a single bit in the console's memory, altering Mario's position coordinates.
0