Joanna Lumley presents BRAINSTORM WITH BRITANNICA!

Family pullout packed with fun facts

Discover fascinating facts in our pullouts all week from the new children’s encyclopedia

Buckle up f or an i ncredible j ourney through our universe. Just think, at this very moment you are riding on an enormous ball of rock. And it is soaring through space at thousands of miles an hour in a swirling galaxy of billions of giant balls of fire.

That rock is, of course, our earth. And the giant balls of fire are stars, including our own Sun.

Hopefully, picturing that is enough to convince you that reality is so much more amazing than anything we could ever make up.

It also happens to be just one of the great many intriguing facts that feature in the compelling All new children’s encyclopedia, extracts from which you can read in the Mail all this week.

Over four days, we will explore space, the natural world, the human body, ancient civilisations and where research and technology has brought us … and might take us yet.

Today, we begin with all kinds of interesting facts and nuggets of information about the universe, which started as an unimaginably tiny speck of infinite energy from which it exploded into existence 13.8 billion years ago.

nobody knows how, when, or if the universe will come to an end. Which is a reminder that for every answer we find, there are dozens more questions: is there intelligent life somewhere else in the universe? Why do stars twinkle? What would happen if an astronaut fell into a black hole?

As f or why stars twinkle, i t’s because of our atmosphere. As the light from distant stars reaches our planet, it is bent (refracted) by the changes in temperature and density of the atmosphere. The ‘twinkle’ is just the zigzagging passage of light as it travels towards us.