Big Data has come to the aid of experts in analyzing many bewildering things that’s greater than any of us; our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, our origin. In our big data talk today, we’re going to look at some pretty strange information and statistics gathered about Earth and its neighboring planets.

We hear people talk of the vastness of the galaxy; the universe if you may. Though we know that there are billions of planets in the Milky Way, and billions of galaxies in the universe, we don’t even know the size of our own Solar System. In this infographic called Space Race, Visual.ly outlined just how big out own Solar System is.

How far can you go into outer space?

The height at which commercial aircrafts fly is 11 kilometers above ground, while the highest recorded skydive is 20 kilometers further. The peak of an unmanned balloon flight reached 53 kilometers and when you go up to 100 kilometers, you’ll reach Aurora Borealis, the majestic northern lights. The moon is about 384,000 kilometers away from Earth’s surface, but man has gone farther than that since they managed to travel 400,000 kilometers.

Going further to 1.5 million kilometers will bring you to the Sun-Earth Lagrangian Point 1, an area which serves as a parking lot for gravitation effects that balances out the Sun and Earth. Our farthest probe is Voyager 1 which is 17.94 billion kilometers away and is the farthest man-made object today.

But the visible universe is far greater than this. It will take you 22 million years of continuously scrolling your mouse on this scale before you reach the end. The distance is about 435 sextillion kilometers or 46 billion lights years. Absolutely mind-blowing!

See the entire Strange Big Data Series on Pinterest and Springpad!

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Dirty Mars

In another visualization, scientists did a mathematical analysis on the soil from Mars and results show that there may be life on the planet, probably bacterial. This greatly supports the theory that Mars could have been just like earth back in the day, but an unfortunate turn of events changed it into a cold planet that’s hostile for life to prosper.

“To paraphrase an old saying, if it looks like a microbe and acts like a microbe, then it probably is a microbe,” says neuropharmacologist Joseph Miller from University of Southern California.

Blowing Earth away

Back to earth, this amazing hint.fm Wind Map shows the tracery of wind flowing across the US. If this map is even slightly close to being accurate, then we actually have a very clean and renewable source of energy all over us that we don’t even know about. The website claims that the data doesn’t guarantee exactitude and shouldn’t be used “to fly a plane, sail a boat of fight wildfires.”

A virtually green highway

Speaking of renewable resources, IBM and ZSE recently partnered to create a virtual green highway for vehicles powered by electricity. The project will attempt to connect neighboring European metropolitans Bratislava, Slovakia, and Vienna, Austria with a green highway boasting public charging stations for electric vehicles.

“The aim of the feasibility study is to identify new opportunities around e-mobility in Bratislava and maximize the market potential, in an effort to reduce emissions,” said ZSE. “By analyzing the capacity needed from the distribution network for various types of vehicle charging / recharging, Bratislava can not only implement an optimal power grid, but also address the charging concerns shared by its citizens.”