Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy
From physics to psychology to botany, science tries to explain every part of reality. While high school science classes may not have been your loving cup of tea, that doesn't mean science itself is slow — far from it. Here are some incredible facts that bear witness just how amazing the bailiwick surface area truly is.
Octopus Intelligence
You might not await a animate being with no backbone and a lifespan of merely a few years or even months to be very smart, but you'd be wrong. Octopuses utilise tools in the wild and captivity, recognize themselves in mirrors, perform daring escapes from aquarium tanks and even demonstrate unique personalities.
In one experiment, three octopuses were faced with a system of levers they could use to obtain food. Two of them did this. The 3rd, notwithstanding, destroyed the lever system and squirted ink at the experimenter. Information technology seems equally though that one wasn't happy to be part of the experiment.
Ghost Planets Are a Thing
The whole "is Pluto a planet" debate is nothing compared to speculation that there may be an unknown planet in the solar system — and it's believed to be about 10 times the size of Earth. The ghost planet, dubbed Planet 9, has been the object of a search since 2016.
The existence of Planet Nine was theorized when astronomers noticed a little rock orbiting the sun differently than the rest of the planets in the solar system. Their decision was that a much larger object had to be responsible for its pull.
Lizard Blood equally a Malaria Cure
Blood doesn't seem like an obvious cure for illness, but when information technology comes to certain types of claret, it may be merely that. The prasinohaema, a cadger institute in New Republic of guinea, has blood with a very high concentration of light-green bile pigment, more than whatsoever other creature, and scientists recall it could accept medical uses.
That's considering the pigment is a serious antioxidant. Further studies suggest that it could fifty-fifty help humans cure malaria, as the pigment in their blood is highly toxic to malaria parasites.
Ants Accept Born Compasses
Ants are impressive for many reasons, including their super strength, ability to communicate with pheromones and impressive building abilities. Nevertheless, nothing compares to how some of them use the very planet itself to survive and thrive.
Desert ants are able to sense the natural magnetic field created by the World and use information technology as a sort of compass to help them navigate above ground. This tin be particularly useful when they're far from the colony while scavenging for food.
Giant Sloths Existed
Sloths spend much of their lives relaxing, sleeping or eating, and well-nigh all while hanging around in copse. They're lazy and adorable. However, a few yard years ago, in that location was a sloth relative in the Americas with a very different approach to life.
Fossil evidence suggests that the extinct Pleistocene footing sloth was a huge beast. Different today'south sloths, it stayed on the ground while eating leaves from trees. Still, their posture was similar to today's sloths, pregnant they were adequately dull. Combined with a lack of fear for early on humans, they soon proved to make easy meals for Stone Age hunters.
Plants Are a Chatty Agglomeration
Plants may seem like they live lonely, isolated lives with no mode to communicate with others of their kind. However, that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, plants speak to each other all the fourth dimension.
Okay, so they don't speak English, just they can release chemicals through both their roots and the air to send a bulletin to other plants in their vicinity. These messages are designed to let them know nearly threats in the area such as insects or diseases.
Another Blood Cure
It'due south not just lizard claret that could harbor a cure to many of the ailments and diseases that plague humanity. Other animals on the planet can actually create and produce sure antibodies that humans tin't, which leads to their blood being pretty valuable in the medical sense.
Sharks and camels specifically have antibodies that are smaller than humans' and thus are able to flow through the trunk more hands. Research on them could lead to a new lease on life for cancer patients: so-called nanobodies have the ability to label certain cancers for before detection.
Caput Transplants Aren't Just Sci-Fi
When you call up of a head transplant, you lot might automatically motion-picture show a deranged evil scientist laughing over a patient on a steel slab with electricity going haywire all effectually them, only they may exist possible in the most future.
2 Chinese surgeons take started to create a style to take a perfectly working homo head and transfer it to some other body that suffers from spinal cord injuries or paralysis. The well-nigh interesting function is that they've actually been able to do it successfully on mice, rats and modest dogs.
Dinner Time Used to Exist Really Different
Modernistic dinner tables are generally full of typical staples such as steak, craven, veggies. While insects may also exist on the carte du jour in some countries, for many people, eating bugs is absolutely off-limits.
Information technology wasn't always that way, though. A genetic study performed on a range of mammals found that humans have many of the genomes necessary to make insects readily digestible, which suggests that our ancestors may have been digging into grubs as much as Timone and Pumbaa were in The King of beasts King.
Different Blood Types Accept a Huge Impact
There are four principal claret types — A, B, AB and O — and every person on the planet fits into one of them. Your type is determined by proteins on your red blood cells called antigens, and each type is further divided into positive and negative variations based on whether your blood has Rhesus antigens.
While blood type is of import to know if you lot ever become a blood transfusion, information technology also determines how susceptible you are to certain illnesses. People with Type O blood, for instance, are more than prone to peel cancer merely less likely to go center affliction and dementia
Life Might Exist in the Solar System Outside Earth
A lot of people think that the just planet in the solar system that can harbor life is Earth. Still, there are other places in our corner of the cosmic wood that might have the ingredients necessary to sustain life, if simply in microscopic course.
Mars receives the about media attention as a potential cradle of life in the solar system because of its underground water and formerly rich atmosphere, just it's not the just candidate. Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus likewise may be in the running. And while Venus's surface is likewise hot for life, microscopic life may exist some thirty miles upwardly into the planet's atmosphere.
Memories Aren't Always Real
Are your memories really your ain? That depends, really. A team of scientists managed to transfer genetic information from snail to snail, making ane have memories that it really hadn't experienced. This transplantation of memories was done by messing with the RNA in their bodies.
Although information technology might audio terrifying to be subject to this memory infiltration, it's actually being used for a good matter: the researchers believe that information technology could successfully help people suffering from Alzheimer'due south disease by alleviating their cognitive symptoms and helping them to continue their memories.
Drugs Are Lilliputian Hitchhikers
If Nancy Reagan is to be believed, all yous demand to practice is only say no to drugs. Seems simple, right? Well, it turns out that drugs might me more than mobile than you would think.
Co-ordinate to ane study, illegal substances and other illicit drugs can actually hitchhike their mode onto the easily and bodies of people who haven't had any directly contact with them at all. They ride forth on bills, tables, and other surfaces and set shop on your body. However, in such small quantities, they tin't do much.
Affliction Cures
The common cold lives upwardly to its name by being constitute everywhere. The viruses that cause it are found everywhere, and for virtually of human history, colds were just a part of life. However, that may now be changing.
Rhinovirus, one source of the common cold, may at present be forced to see its match due to a new discovery. Scientists take found a compound that targets virus proteins and stops them from being able to replicate in man cells, essentially stopping it in its tracks. The new finding could potentially pb to other medical advancements also.
Dinosaurs Were Tough Eggs to Cleft
You lot probably know dinosaurs laid eggs, but have y'all ever wondered how they managed to keep them warm without squishing them? Tyrannosaurus King was not a overnice beast, then it'southward hard to imagine how they avoided turning their future young into scrambled eggs.
In the example of large dinosaurs, their eggs must have been impressively large, also. However, information technology wasn't the size or even toughness of dinosaur eggs that kept them safe, but how they were laid.. Large dinosaurs ready their eggs up in a circular band around the nest to brand sure that when they were keeping them warm, they weren't accidentally crushing them.
Invisible Polar Bears
Infrared cameras are designed to capture heat from objects to create an image of where something is. The hotter something is, the more visible information technology becomes on the infrared imagery. Y'all'd call up that would mean that such cameras could detect any animate being, but the polar bear tin exist almost invisible on them.
It might be assumed that it's considering they live in common cold climates, just this event actually happens because of the bears' ability to trap estrus. Their fur and blubber keep the rut in, significant little to no heat escapes for the cameras to find.
Your Genes Don't Die When You Practice
We think of expiry every bit being the end of the body. Everything shuts downward, and that's it — game over. While that's largely true, it isn't completely, and the exceptions are fascinating.
New findings advise that a small number genes in the trunk stay turned on fifty-fifty after death. The enquiry could aid medical professionals in keeping organs preserved after decease and could also lead to better ways to figure out the crusade of expiry in murder victims.
The Length of the Milky Manner
Traveling all the manner across the Milky way is clearly science fiction, but you can be forgiven for hoping that some of our descendants might be able to pull it off someday. Who doesn't want to imagine a whole galaxy waiting to be explored?
The affair is, no affair how big you recall the milky way is, it's probably still bigger. Some recent estimates peg information technology at around 200,000 light-years in diameter. The speed of light is 299,792,458 miles per hour, and then that'south effectually 59,958,491,600,000 miles across. Imagine racking upwardly that many miles on your motorcar.
A Star Is Built-in
Past some estimates, there are effectually 9,096 stars visible to the naked center in the nighttime sky and 250 billion in the Milky Way — give or take 150 billion. Y'all likely know that stars are enormous balls of gas and plasma, but accept you lot ever wondered where they came from?
Stars come from nebulas, vast clouds of cold gas many low-cal years in bore. Over time, the gravity of these clouds causes them to get together inward and course clumps. The clumps become denser and hotter over time — so dense and hot that a nuclear reaction begins. At effectually 10 one thousand thousand degrees Celsius, the clump becomes a new star.
Boiling and Freezing at the Same Fourth dimension
We normally retrieve of freezing and boiling as mutually exclusive states, and in most cases, they are. With sufficient heat and pressure, matter turns to liquid or gas, while in the absence of those things, gases condense and liquids freeze. However, information technology's not always then elementary.
While we often think of substances as having set temperatures when they change form, pressure changes that temperature. And if you lot tin can arrange the temperature and pressure to just the correct point, a process chosen the "triple point" happens when all three states of matter exist inside a substance at the same time. It doesn't commonly occur in nature, but it makes for a neat science experiment.
Rock Beats Scissors, Water Beats Laser
If you lot watch movies like Star Wars or even Austin Powers, yous may retrieve that lasers are powerful, and to be fair, they certainly are. Subsequently all, we use them for everything from DVD players and surgery to rifle sights and naval weapons platforms. Just did you know they can be trapped in h2o?
Under the correct conditions, a class of total internal reflection can happen where the photons of the light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation move through the water but end up billowy around inside it instead of standing to motility in a straight line. This power to "bend" lite is also behind the cobweb optic cables we employ for the internet.
The Existence of Blackness Holes
One of the biggest mysteries in astronomy is the beingness of blackness holes. Formed by the collapse of stars, these super massive stellar objects pull in everything around them with their powerful gravity, even light.
While yous'd be crushed to death by a black hole's gravity long before you reached its center, scientists don't know what would happen if yous actually made it there. The gravity of blackness holes is and so intense that information technology fundamentally alters space and time around it, making these stellar bodies some of the greatest mysteries in the universe.
Cats E'er Country on Their Anxiety
For many people, cats are such an ordinary part of life that they don't warrant much thought. However, cats are physical and biological miracles in their own style. While it's not true that a cat always lands on its feet, it will far more than often than not, and the reason is surprising.
In add-on to muscular legs that blot shock and an unusually flexible skeleton, cats can also right themselves midair by arching their backs, and the higher up a cat is, the more time they accept to right themselves with this method. That said, don't test their abilities: cats can make mistakes, and overweight cats have extra difficulty righting themselves.
Your DNA Can Reach Infinite
The human being genome has 23 chromosome pairs stored in the nucleus of each cell. While Deoxyribonucleic acid naturally has a spiral shape, information technology's further twisted by enzymes that make information technology able to fit into such tiny spaces.
And so how long would your Dna exist if information technology wasn't coiled like that? If you stretched out all the DNA in a single cell and put the strands cease to end, they would come out to about ii meters in length. If you did that to all 37 trillion cells in your body, they would be twice every bit long as the unabridged solar system.
The Sheer Amount of Atoms
Atoms are everything–literally. They make upwards every solid, liquid and gas as well every bit more than exotic states of thing like plasma and form the basic building blocks of nearly everything we interact with in our daily lives
The typical human being is composed of around around seven billion billion billion atoms, and no, that's non a typo. That'southward just how many atoms are in the human body. When looking at it on a universal scale, the number of atoms in the known universe is basically uncountable, and that'due south pretty wild.
Y'all've Probably Walked Around the World
With the invention of computers and other conveniences that have gotten u.s. off our feet, much of the Western globe has adopted a more sedentary lifestyle. However, bold a person lives to the ripe old age of lxxx, they will on average accept walked around 216 1000000 steps over the form of their lifetime.
In other words, they'll have walked 110,000 miles.That's about v times the distance around the Earth. If you're 40, that means you're halfway through your third pass, and if you're 20, you're about a quarter of the way through your second.
Helium Defies Gravity
Helium is ordinarily known as the gas that can make balloons stay afloat for an entire birthday party — and the one that makes your voice sound funny. However, it can exist just every bit fun to play with in liquid form. (Although unless y'all're a scientist, you actually shouldn't.)
In liquid form, if helium is brought to just beneath -452° Fahrenheit, it becomes a superfluid that defies expectations. Information technology can climb upward over the sides of the dish information technology's in and even resist movement when it'due south being spun in circles. That's because information technology becomes a superfluid, a liquid that doesn't feel friction.
Claret Cells Move Fast
Your trunk is total of claret — about 5-half dozen quarts on average, to be exact. In a good for you person, the heart also beats around 70 times a minute, pumping out almost 2.5 ounces of blood every single fourth dimension it beats. It'southward always working to get blood circulating around the body.
Because of that, the heart pumps out near the entire body's store of blood every single infinitesimal. A single claret cell travels around the entire body in that time, and that's a pretty impressive speed record for something and so tiny.
Your Brain Never Stops Working For You
Every bit you climb into bed each night, you may feel like your body is shutting down. Our bodies become sluggish, and thoughts and concentration go more difficult to maintain. However, the encephalon doesn't quit working once the lights get out.
While scientists don't fully understand how sleep works, they do know that the brain does a lot of heavy lifting during that fourth dimension. Not only does the brain likely procedure and shop data gained during the waking hours, just it also purges itself of toxins. Slumber — and the lack thereof — is even tied to whether or not people develop dementia and other memory problems later on in life.
Flamingos Aren't Actually Pink
The beautiful pink feathers of the regal flamingo are certainly something to marvel at, but they're not born with that wonderful pink hue. In fact, their feathers are really more of a grayness-white color when they first hatch.
They finish up pink in the wild because of what they swallow. Their diet is rich in brine shrimp and bluish-light-green algae, both of which are rich in a substance called canthaxanthin. It's this chemical that gives flamingos' feathers their hue — and, incidentally, some sausages.
Source: https://www.faqtoids.com/knowledge/surprising-facts-change-how-you-look-at-science?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740006%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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