SPACE EXPLAINED BY MINUTEEARTH
Find out more about space and its effect on Earth in this awesome animated video, explained by MinuteEarth.
The guys at MinuteEarth have been teaching us about all kinds of things for years, using the trusted method of simple animations and interesting voice-overs. They also like to keep things short and to the point so that they're easily digestible. This makes them perfect for delivering handy facts you can impress your family with at the dinner table.
Thanks to COVID-19, many of us are stuck at home, so MinuteEarth decided to stitch four of their animated shorts on space together to keep us occupied a little longer.
The first is about why so many meteorites come from the same place. I bet you didn't know that more of a third of meteorites analysed that have fallen to Earth have the same chemical signature. This suggests they have all broken off a single asteroid. Why is that, though? Well, it turns out there is one likely source, an asteroid named Hebe, who lives in the asteroid belt between Earth and Mars. We'll let our host, Kate, explain why in the video below.
Up next, Kate answers the question of why we only see one side of our moon. Interestingly, this phenomenon happens with most moons and their host planets. It was only in 1959 that humanity got to see what the other side looks like when the Soviet satellite beamed back images for all of us to see.
The third instalment of our space adventure explains how greenhouse gasses actually work, and our relationship with Earth's atmosphere. It's a lesson in gas molecules and how they're made up, describing how everything interacts using a fantastic pinball machine to illustrate.
The final instalment of our space adventure takes us back in time to something called The Faint Young Sun Paradox. Here, MinuteEarth explains why, when our Sun was young and not nearly as hot as it is today, the Earth wasn't turned into an ice-covered ball. Instead, the mega-greenhouse effect around Earth at the time helped single-cell organisms to thrive.
If you want to learn more about all of this, please click the play button below and allow Kate from Minute Earth to tell you all about it.