TOP 10 EXTREME ENVIRONMENTS

To Hot To Handle

space exploration extreme places environments

The bright areas on this x-ray image of the sun shows where the sun's magnetic fields are strong enough to trap the very hot gases. Credit: NASA

1. Stay Out of the Sun

No seriously, stay out of the sun. When it comes to extreme environments in our solar system, you can't do any worse than the fiery ball of nuclear madness at the center of it all. Surface temperatures there are typically around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the star's massive gravitational forces would flatten you instantly. And these are just the normal conditions on the sun, to say nothing of massive solar flares, which can reach temperatures 10 times that and even produce antimatter that eradicates traditional matter the instant it touches it.

When you really start looking around, it's not so much that the solar system hosts extreme environments, but that life as we know it has evolved to thrive within a very small set of parameters. When we step outside our comfort zone, we encounter nothing less than the rest of the observable universe.

Article posted May 18, 2009.

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