There are more than a million known asteroids in our humble solar system, most of which are fairly small and irregularly shaped. There are some outliers, however. Some asteroids are nearly spherical, and some are so big they have their own moons — around 150 of them are in this category, in fact. There are even binary and trinary asteroids that orbit one another like celestial twins and triplets, which surely makes hurtling through the vacuum of space less lonely than it would be otherwise. (In February 2022, astronomers even discovered a quaternary asteroid — 130 Elektra, which has three moons.) Like their moonless counterparts, the majority of these asteroids can be found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and are believed to be remnants from the creation of the solar system.

Every planet has at least one moon.

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Spare a thought for Mercury and Venus, which have a grand total of zero moons between them. Astronomers believe this is because they’re so close to the sun, which would likely capture any natural satellites orbiting them.

The first asteroid moon discovered was Dactyl, a mile-wide natural satellite orbiting the asteroid Ida and initially spotted in 1994. Other asteroids with moons include 45 Eugenia, 3122 Florence (which has two moons), and 87 Sylvia, which is roughly the same size as West Virginia and was the first trinary asteroid discovered. It’s also among the largest known asteroids in our solar system. As for the largest asteroid to ever hit Earth, it wasn’t the one that killed the dinosaurs (RIP). That distinction may belong to the asteroid that caused the Vredefort crater in South Africa, which once may have been around twice as large as it is now. A recent study concluded that the asteroid that made the crater may have been between 12.4 and 15.5 miles across when it made impact some 2 billion years ago. Hopefully, we won’t see one like it again any time soon.

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Some researchers have seemingly turned back time 2,000 years just by planting ancient seeds. Amazingly, a Judean date palm seed that was unearthed at a dig site in eastern Israel in the 1960s is today a thriving tree called Methuselah, named for the long-lived biblical patriarch. 

Some plants can launch their seeds.

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Many plants rely on the wind or animals to help disperse their seeds, but not all. Chinese witch hazel plants can launch their seeds nearly 60 feet. Scientists believe the plant evolved its propelling abilities to successfully spread without overcrowding its environment.

Archaeologists working at the ancient fort of Masada unearthed a handful of date palm seeds, using two for radiocarbon dating to confirm their age. The remaining excavated seeds sat in storage until 2005, when researchers at Israel’s Arava Institute took a chance on planting three of them. Only one of the seeds germinated, springing to life as the sole living example of its species, which likely went extinct around 500 CE. The experiment encouraged scientists to attempt more ancient plantings with date palm seeds found at other dig sites, and today the ancient-yet-young Methuselah has at least six companions that are as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Methuselah has since grown into a healthy tree, making pollen that has successfully fertilized modern date trees and produced fruit. However, it’s not the oldest surviving seed to get a second chance. In 2012, Russian scientists unearthed 32,000-year-old seeds from Siberian permafrost. After extracting frozen plant tissue from the delicate seeds, researchers were able to successfully germinate and grow a relative of the modern-day S. stenophylla, aka the narrow-leafed campion — an achievement that could point the way to reviving other plants frozen in time.

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No two planets are the same — even when it comes to their sunsets. As the sun dips below the horizon on Earth, the sky blossoms into warm hues of oranges, pinks, and reds. But that’s not the case everywhere in the galaxy. Sunsets, of course, have to do with the properties of the visible light spectrum, in which light takes on a variety of colors. Our sky appears blue, for example, because when light reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, gases (oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen) and molecules scatter the shortest wavelengths of light (violet and blue) the most. When the sun sets, it’s lower in the sky, and light travels farther through a denser atmosphere. As more of the light is scattered, the short blue wavelengths disperse, and more of the longer red and yellow wavelengths actually reach our eyes. 

Ash from volcanic eruptions dulls sunsets on Earth.

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Volcanoes inject sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere when they erupt. Because these aerosols introduce more obstacles in the atmosphere, only light at the far (i.e., red) end of the visible spectrum can make the journey, which in turn creates dazzling sunsets.

Although Mars is our planetary neighbor, its skies are almost completely the opposite. During the day, the skies above the red planet are, well, red, but at the end of a Martian day, a blue haze forms. Although the same physics are at work, the planets’ different atmospheres produce contrasting results. Mars’ atmosphere (or lack thereof) is mostly carbon dioxide and iron-rich dust. It’s this dust, made of larger particles than in Earth’s atmosphere, that scatters the light in different ways than on Earth, creating red skies during the day. When the sun sets, the Martian dust preserves more of the short blue wavelengths. In 2020, NASA applied this gaseous light physics to create a “sunset simulator” that shows off the end-of-day light displays on other planets, moons, and exoplanets — proving that the galaxy is indeed a kaleidoscope of color.

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