These were the final words from NASA’s Opportunity rover, a faithful explorer that spent nearly 15 years unlocking the mysteries of Mars.
In June 2018, a planet-wide dust storm swept across Mars, blocking the Sun and cutting off Opportunity’s solar power. Unable to recharge, the rover fell silent—its last transmission a quiet, heartbreaking goodbye as the Martian skies grew dark.
Originally built for a 90-day mission, Opportunity defied the odds and worked tirelessly for 5,111 days, covering over 45 km (28 miles). Along the way, it found signs of ancient water and reshaped what we know about the Red Planet.
NASA tried everything to bring it back—sending more than 1,000 recovery commands—but on February 13, 2019, the mission officially ended. Earth’s final message?
“Thanks, Oppy.”
It’s truly amazing! The "Old Man of the Lake" is a famous floating tree stump in Crater Lake, located in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, USA. It is about 30 feet tall and has been floating vertically in the lake for over 120 years. Here’s how it became known:
First Noticed (1896) : The Old Man was first seen and documented in 1896 , making it one of the earliest recorded observations of this unique natural wonder.
Scientific Study (1902) : In 1902 , a scientist named Joseph S. Diller studied Crater Lake and wrote about the floating stump. He explained how the stump could float because air was trapped inside its hollowed-out interior.
Named (1906) : In 1906 , another man named William Gladstone Steel gave the stump its name, "Old Man of the Lake." Steel was very interested in protecting Crater Lake as a national park. He noticed that the stump moved around the lake due to wind and water currents and thought it looked like an old man standing in the water.
Since then, the Old Man has become a symbol of Crater Lake's beauty and mystery. Despite being mostly made of hemlock wood, it continues to float upright, surprising and fascinating visitors from all over the world. Its ability to remain vertical for over 120 years makes it one of nature's most intriguing phenomena.
These are the hottest objects in the universe from hot to unimaginably hot!
134°F (56.7°C) – that's the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth. It's the kind of heat that melts shoes, warps roads, and makes the air shimmer. And yet, that’s barely a flicker on the universe’s thermostat.
Dig down, and you’ll hit Earth’s core — a searing 10,000°F (5,300°C). That’s hotter than the surface of the Sun. But the Sun, of course, holds its own secrets. Its corona, that ghostly halo we glimpse during a total eclipse, burns at a staggering 5.4 million°F (3 million°C). And even that’s just the warm-up.
Far beyond our solar system, stars live fast and die hot. Wolf-Rayet stars, like WR 102, rage at over 377,000°F (210,000°C), shedding mass in furious stellar winds. They are dying giants — bright, unstable, and wild.
Then come the true monsters: entire galaxy clusters, like Perseus, where superheated gas floats in the void at 90 million°F (50 million°C). It’s not even a star — just empty space, lit from within by ancient cosmic violence.
Near the event horizons of black holes, matter spirals in, heats up, and explodes outward in what’s known as a black hole’s corona. There, temperatures can soar to 1.8 billion°F (1 billion°C).
And yet, somehow, humans have managed to create something hotter.
In Switzerland, inside the Large Hadron Collider, particles collide at speeds near light, creating temperatures of 5.5 trillion°F (9.9 trillion°C). That’s hotter than the universe just after the Big Bang. We built a momentary furnace that dwarfs the Sun.
But even then, the universe still wins.
If you keep going, to the heart of a quasar like 3C273 — where a supermassive black hole is blasting radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum — you’ll find temperatures as high as 18 trillion°F (10 trillion°C).
So next time you feel scorched by a heatwave, remember: the universe does hot on an entirely different level.