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
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
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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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