Space, the black abyss that we humans have all but forgotten to look up at and marvel. Space, the favourite theme of Hollywood to make blockbuster movies on and indeed the final frontier of humanity.

I don’t know about you, but growing up, astronomy was a very intriguing subject for me. A part of the reason was that there was a ton of stuff we didn’t know about the universe and that was very exciting for me, because that meant we were seeking the answers.

We haven’t progressed much since then, inspite of learning a ton of new information and probably will need hundreds of thousands of years to even come close to knowing about even a meaningful amount of information about this unimaginably vast universe.

Therefore, it is important that we keep updated and as important as it is to learn new things, it is just as important to unlearn and relearn them. Not doing so is the reason why myths exist. Talking about myths, here are 5 that we you probably believe about space.

1. The Sun Is Yellow

If you take a look at the sun, it will seem yellow to you, heck even the sunlight looks yellow and yet, if you hold a white paper in your hand in the sunlight, it will appear white and not yellow.

That is because the sun is in fact white in colour and sunlight is in fact white light, something you must have learnt in school too. The sun only appears yellow because of the effects of the atmosphere on the rays of its light which is called the Rayleigh scattering.

However, if you went to space (how cool would that be) and took a look at the sun directly, you would notice that it was a white blob of light.

2. Moon’s Distance To Us

The moon is at an average distance of 384,400 km from the Earth and though we all know that, that number is huge, we can barely put it into perspective.

Therefore, I think almost all of us think that the Moon is much closer to us than it actually is. After all, the moon does appear too large to be too far away, right?

What if I tell you that you could fit all the planets of the Solar System (including Pluto) between the Earth and the Moon and still have about 4000 km to spare? Suddenly that distance doesn’t sound too little, does it?

3. Nothing Travels Faster Than Light

You must be aware of the very popular (and quite annoying) conclusion of Einstein that says, “Nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum.”

While that is correct, there are some phenomena that don’t follow this rule. Take space itself for example. We know that space is expanding and therefore the distances between galaxies is expanding too. There is no limit to how fast this expansion can happen, and thus it can exceed the speed of light.

Then there is quantum entanglement. When two particles are entangled, actions performed on one of them immediately affects the other particle even if those particles were separated by millions of miles. Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance”.

4. There Is A Dark Side of The Moon

Many people understand by “dark side of the moon” that half of the moon never receives sunlight and is fated to remain in darkness forever. This is completely false.

What it actually means is that only one half of the moon faces our planet at all times. It has to do with how the moon rotates as well as revolves around the Earth such that only one half is ever seen to us.

So, even though the other half is never see by us, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t receive sunlight. All parts of the moon receive sunlight in its 28 days phase. And no there are no transformers on the dark side of the moon either.

5. The Asteroid Belt Is Teeming With Collisions

Ever looked at the illustrations of the asteroid belt in your text books and thought that it must be such a violent place? Me too. The asteroid belt is a region in space between Mars and Jupiter which is occupied by numerous, irregularly shaped asteroids.

I always thought the asteroid belt was like how they showed it in sci-fi movies where there are asteroids continuously colliding and causing a raucous. I also always thought that space travellers in the future would have to make awesome manoeuvres to go through this belt.

That is not the case whatsoever. In fact, the asteroid belt is a very lonely place where asteroid collisions do not happen that often at all. That is because, although there is a huge number of asteroids present in the belt, the distances involved are so huge that seldom do they collide with each other.