FUSE December 2013 | Page 6

Would you like your work published in FUSE? You can send us your articles, stories, poems, artwork or anything you would like your fellow Fusers to view! Send them to us at [email protected], along with your name and age, to be in with a chance of having them published! Featured Fuser In this issue we are very lucky to have a piece of creative writing sent in to us by Miranda Box, aged 5, inspired by our Creative Writing Challenge set last issue. We provided three images from which readers could create their own story! “ My name is Miranda and I’m 5½. I love ballet, drawing, reading stories and science. I’ve been reading on my own since preschool. Sometimes I go to a class in school for gifted children and they are older than me. I enjoy the different activities like dice towers. Two things that make me laugh are tickles and the word “piffle”. I don’t like being on my own for long. My favourite author is Roald Dahl and I’ve just finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I loved Potential Plus UK’s BIG Family Weekend. If there was a Top Trumps for it, the event with the highest fun score would be the Planetarium.” The images that inspired Miranda! Did you know? QQ If you were to place Saturn in water, it would float. NN If you placed a pinhead sized piece of the Sun on the Earth, you would die from standing within 145 km (90 miles) from it. CC Space is not a complete vacuum. There are about 3 atoms per cubic metre of space. DD Only 5% of the universe is made up of normal matter, 25% is dark mater and 70% is dark energy. QQ Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoon of them would be equal to the weight of the entire Earth’s population. NN The Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon but is 400 times further away from Earth, making them appear similar sizes. CC Seasons last 21 years on Uranus, while each pole has 42 years of sunlight fol lowed by 42 years of darkness. Click the pages to view full size DD The pistol star is the most luminous star known and is 10 million times the brightness of the Sun. QQ Saturn’s moon Titan has liquid oceans of natural gas. NN 90-99% of all normal matter in the universe is hydrogen. CC A full moon is nine times brighter than a half moon. DD Every year, the Moon is moving away from Earth by 3.8 centimetres. QQ Mars appears red because its surface is covered with iron oxide (rust). NN Rogue planets are not bound by any star and so ‘free-float’ through Space. CC Sweeps 10 is the planet with the shortest orbital period found. It orbits its star in only 10 hours. 6 | FUSE DD The closest black hole to Earth is only 1600 light-years away. QQ It’s estimated that there are between 10^22 and 10^24 stars in the Universe. NN The largest structure found in the universe is the Sloan Great Wall, a super cluster of galaxies 1.37 billion light-years across. CC Neutron stars can rotate up to 500 times in 1 second. DD Even if you were able to travel close to the speed of light (186000 miles per second) it would still take 100000 years to cross the Milky Way galaxy. QQ Proxima Centuari is the nearest star to Earth after the Sun. NN The temperature on Mercury varies so extremely that it will rise up to 430C during the day and drop as low as -140C at night. CC All 27 of Uranus’ moons are named after William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope characters. DD With 63 moons, Jupiter has the largest number of moons for any planet in our solar system. QQ Jupiter is so big that twice the mass of the rest of the solar system’s planets would still not be enough to equal its mass. NN A dwarf star is so dense that it would take 8 men to lift a single teaspoon of its matter. CC Due to it’s size, Pluto is no longer considered a planet and is now known as a Dwarf Planet. DD A new star is born in our galaxy roughly every 18 days. QQ The planet Venus does not tilt as it goes around the Sun, so consequently, it has no seasons. NN It takes 165 years for Neptune to orbit the Sun, meaning it has only recently completed its first orbit since its discovery in 1846. 7 | FUSE