Neptune (and Jupiter)

Neptune

So I was sitting, watching TV and enjoying my day off work, when I flipped over to the Science Channel.  The show "How the Universe Works" was being broadcast and I found the information fascinating, and thought I'd make an impromptu post (please forgive the lack of professionalism herein) about Neptune (with an interesting fact about Jupiter, to which, apparently, we all owe our lives).

"Dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds, Neptune is the last of the hydrogen and helium gas giants in our solar system. More than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth, the planet takes almost 165 Earth years to orbit our sun. In 2011 Neptune completed its first orbit since its discovery in 1846"
(NASA – Solar System Exploration).


It's amazing to imagine the enormous size of these bodies of mass all orbiting a great ball of radiation at the center of our solar system, and it's mind-bending to me to imagine how tiny our solar system is compared to the rest of the universe.  Trees seem pretty big to me; scale that up to the level of the universe and it's beyond my comprehension. Fascinating.

Jupiter

And now, as promised, an interesting fact about Jupiter.  Jupiter, it turns out, acts as a vital protective barrier between our home here on planet Earth and the onslaught of asteroids.  Jupiter draws in and blocks asteroids, and in many cases the explosions which result from these collisions are larger than the Earth itself! Many if not any of these asteroids could single-handedly wipe out all life on Earth, if it weren't for big-brother Jupiter, taking the hits for us.


Image Sources: 

1. Neptune
2. Jupiter

For Further Reading:

• NASA – Solar System Exploration – Neptune
• NASA – Solar System Exploration – Jupiter