50 Weird Science Tidbits – 4
Feb 14 at 8:08pm by Aileen
Part 4: Items 31-40
More obscure facts and scientific oddities that most people haven’t filed in their brains…
31. How Crowded Are We, Really?
10% of all the humans who have ever lived are alive in the world right now.
32. And You Thought Stillness Was a Meditative Virtue…
The planet Earth travels through space in its journey around the sun at a stunning 67,000 miles per hour, and we’re all moving that fast along with it!
33. Good Old Dihydrogen Monoxide
The human body is about 60% water, which is 2/3 hydrogen. All the hydrogen – in our bodies and everywhere else in the universe – was created ~12 billion years ago in the Big Bang.
34. No Burped Compliments to the Chef on the ISS
Astronauts in space cannot belch – without gravity, gas cannot separate from liquids in their stomachs.
35. They’re Just Creatively Falling Down
Actually, there IS gravity in space. It’s just that astronauts in orbit are in a continual state of falling – gravity being equivalent to acceleration. There are no regions of space entirely without gravitational forces, just as there is no true vacuum in space – there are lots of loose atoms and particles out there.
36. And You Thought It Was Watson and Crick
DNA – the molecule of inheritance – was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss biologist Friedrich Mieschler, just a decade after Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution. Mieschler called the phosphate-rich chemical “nuclein.”
37. Mom Knows Whereof She Speaks
While Mom’s chicken soup won’t really “cure” your cold, it will make you feel much better. There are anti-inflammatory properties in the broth that have been shown to reduce congestion and ease fevers.
38. My, That’s a Funny-Looking Chicken
If the brain stem is left intact after beheading a chicken, it can continue to live (with some care in feeding). There is one documented case of a headless chicken living on for 18 months after he was supposed to have become Sunday dinner!
39. Beware the Random Bagel Test!
You will test positive for opiates on a drug test if you eat just two poppy seed bagels (or muffins) for breakfast.
40. Facts Sometimes Come Later Than Fiction
In Jonathan Swift’s immortal Gulliver’s Travels [1726], the author described the size and speeds of rotation for two moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos – more than 100 years before either were discovered!
The Entire Series:
1-10 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
11-20 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
21-30 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
31-40 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
41-50 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
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9 Responses for "50 Weird Science Tidbits – 4"
50 Weird Science Tidbits You Probably Didn’t Know by Science News Review
February 14th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
1[...] 50 Weird Science Tidbits – 450 Weird Science Tidbits – 350 Weird Science Tidbits – 250 Weird Science Tidbits You Probably Didn’t KnowAttack of the Killer Bee… er, Bee KillerMom was Right! You Are What You EatIt’s Deja Vu All Over Again!Uneven Ecological and Economic Impacts of Rich vs. PoorScience Press: Confusing the Issues and Frames?Genes and Not-Genes: Human Genome Shrinks Again [...]
50 Weird Science Tidbits - 3 by Science News Review
February 17th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
2[...] Part 4: 31-40 Part 5: 41-50 [...]
Anonymous
February 20th, 2008 at 4:54 am
3How fast is the sun going around the Milky Way?
Dak
March 12th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
4Wikipedia says the Sun goes at “~2.20×105 m/s (orbit around the center of the Galaxy)”
Nony Mouse
March 13th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
5He got closer to the speeds of the moons of mars than you’d expect, I’ll grant you. But not exact. The characters said something like 3 and 5 for distances, when it’s really something like 1.5 and 3.5, time of rotation have a difference of 10 and 21.5 vs really something like 8 and thirty.
So maybe he fairly accurately predicted a possible rotation size and speed, but they didn’t match up right.
Better than one would normally do on an essay question without a clue.
Aileen
March 13th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
6Thanks, Nony Mouse. Will edit to remove “exact.”
Mark
March 14th, 2008 at 3:45 am
7Well, astronauts may not be belching in space, but from reading several books written by astronauts, there is some interesting flatulence going on when astronauts first enter orbit. When a body, used to 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level, enters space in a craft with less than 4 or 5 pounds per square inch, the gas inside the body (intestinal tract) has to expand somewhere.
VSmirk
March 18th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
8Bagels and Poppy seeds? That one was debunked by MythBusters, if I recall correctly.
Kennytic Energy
March 20th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
9So if the Earth stops moving, we’ll all be flung outta space, if that were the case…awesome.
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