What are the most fascinating science facts?

 

1. If you can fold the paper into half for 103 times, the thickness of the fold will be more than the breadth of the entire universe. Thickness of a paper to start with is 0.0039-inch. - (This is the power of exponentiation)
2. Largest Cell in Human body is the Female Egg; Smallest Cell in human body is Male Sperm(in terms of volume). (Man up sperm, man up :))
3. Simple act of Hand washing prevents chances of infections close to 48%. Hospitals hire industrial engineers in organizing the hand wash and sanitation equipments.
4. Healthcare system was well organized and laid out in Hammurabi’s code and payment for each procedure was well documented 4000 year before(not complete but yet comparable).
5. One discrete transistor costs around $8(inflation adjusted) in 1960 and today the latest "Haswell-MB" (quad-core, 22 nm)Core i7-4940MX has 1.4 Billion transistors in it and each of them costs a whooping 0.0000007824$. (Moore’s Law)
6. If there is single form of ideal coexistence(social order), it’s at doomsday vault, where seeds coexist with full life and hope. Here some of the most antagonistic countries occupy places very close to each other.
7. It may take 4000 years for a photon to escape the sun’s field.
8. There are more atoms in a Single spoon of water than the entire Atlantic ocean measured in spoons. (To be precise 7.84 times more atoms than the Atlantic in spoons)
9. Scientists are working on Post-quantum cryptography while production level quantum computers are even quite ambitions today.
10. Traveling Sales Man Problem- a problem of a given a set of cities and distance between each pair of them; find the shortest path over the entire set of paths - is still a hard problem to solve even for the most powerful computers even if you have as few as 100 cities to visit. (Bees solve its inherently for collecting honey from more than hundreds of flowers daily, checkmate you human)

What are the most fascinating science facts?

 1. Babies have around 100 more bones than adults

2. The Eiffel Tower can be 15 cm taller during the summer

3. 20% of Earth’s oxygen is produced by the Amazon rainforest

4. Some metals are so reactive that they explode on contact with water

5. A teaspoonful of neutron star would weigh 6 billion tons

6. Hawaii moves 7.5cm closer to Alaska every year

7. Chalk is made from trillions of microscopic plankton fossils

8. In 2.3 billion years it will be too hot for life to exist on Earth

9. Polar bears are nearly undetectable by infrared cameras

10. It takes 8 minutes, 19 seconds for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth

11. If you took out all the empty space in our atoms, the human race could fit in the volume of a sugar cube

12. Stomach acid is strong enough to dissolve razor blades

13. The Earth is a giant magnet

14. Venus is the only planet to spin clockwise

15. A flea can accelerate faster than the Space Shuttle

image source: Memory science: can you extend your short-term memory? | How It Works Magazine

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What are the most fascinating science facts?

 The pitch drop experiment

The pitch drop experiment taking place at University of Queensland is a long-term experiment which demonstrates the flow of a piece of pitch over many years. For the experiment, pitch was put in a glass funnel and allowed to slowly drip out. Since the pitch was allowed to start dripping in 1930, only nine drops have fallen. It was calculated in the 1980s that the pitch in the experiment has a viscosity approximately 230 billion (2.3×1011) times that of water.The eighth drop fell on 28 November 2000, and the ninth drop fell on 17 April 2014.

Pitch is a name for any of a number of viscoelastic polymers. Naturally occurring asphalt/bitumen, a type of pitch, is a viscoelastic polymer. This means that even though it seems to be solid at room temperature and can be shattered with a hard impact, it is actually fluid and will flow over time, but extremely slowly.

The image shows pitch in a pitch drop experiment.

Pitch drop experiment - Wikipedia

In what sectors of science and technology, is India ahead of China?

India in 1957 vs. India in 2026

India is ahead of China in several areas, many will dismiss these areas as niches rather than scale advantages though many amount to such. India since the 1960s built its atomic program around Thorium instead of Uranium. India possesses more Thorium than any other nation with estimates of one million tons being present in India. Thorium is a safer better atomic fuel than those based on Uranium. Thorium offers shorter half life for waste products and far less risk of overheating and meltdowns. India began with full ability to have complete self-sufficiency in Atomic technology once it possessed limited Uranium seeds. Indian Atomic Reactors once operational produce their own Thorium based atomic fuel. India’s advantage here is global and should be commended not played down.

India holds a definitive advantage in the IT field, a strong English base and talent pool is not matched by China, India is still the main recipient of outsourcing and software development globally. Trillions of dollars have been earned by Indian companies during the past 30 years in this field. This capital transfer to India was key in increasing tax revenues in India. For this reason and political leaning; India leads in open digital payment ecosystems, China does not compete with India in this field on an equal level. India also leads in the production of generic medicines. While many components are sourced from China, the over all production and scale of India’s industry is larger. India excels at being able to structurally analyze and create generic versions of even the most complex medicines in the world.

India has led the world in cost effective space programs, and results. Indian rocket technology along with its military use is globally remarkable and unmatched in cost. Sadly, India is yet to find an equivalent path for aviation, though this will change in the future. India while not the factory of the world, is indeed the office of the world. While many like to question India’s advantages, the fact remains that India is still the world’s fastest growing large economy, with the World Bank upping its projections for 2026 for India. India will be forced by changing global political dynamics to keep greater numbers of its work force and talent in India, creating a better path for increased manufacturing in India. India which is now the 4th largest economy in the world, is quickly poised to become the globe’s third largest economy. We can hardly call this a narrative of failure, as India has gone from a bankrupt starving nation 80 years ago to having one of the largest food reserves on the planet and over 700 billion dollars in foreign reserves. Sometimes we must look at where the story of modern India began to appreciate the sacrifice of Indians who both went abroad to advance their education, and to send money to their families in India during the early days of Independence, to the Indians who struggled in India to push India into the 20th century. India is a success story only second to that of China, in the past 15 years India has pulled more people out of dire poverty than any other nation, this fact should not be lost upon us. There was a time not long ago that my father left a dusty Palam Airport in 1957 to seek higher knowledge in the U.S. there was one runway, and a nation which could not even keep electricity running for runway lights in it’s capital city let alone for the public. If he were alive today, he would proudly commend the development of infrastructure in the nation he so much helped to educate. India chose to become a socialist leaning democracy in 1947, not a Communist state, Indians had the courage to stay on this path and reduce socialist outlook, as India regained dignity lost by hundreds of years of colonialism. India

What are the most fascinating science facts?

 

Scaly-foot gastropod (Chrysomallon squamiferum), the first known animal that can incorporate iron - iron sulfide - with its body, particularly its shell, and probably the only animals can do so.

Living at hydrothermal vents at Indian Ocean, this species doesn’t imbue iron sulfide into its body by themselves; it is done by bacteria (albeit the scheme how the bacteria work in the snail’s body to create iron sulfide remains speculated).

The island of Hawai’i and the nearby isles drift around 5–10 cm per year. They drift northwest from hotspots which emit magma that formed these islands millions of years ago.

The active hotspots below the archipelago is assumed to drift the islands further until at one point, it’ll submerge the archipelago. Also, there will be new islands formed from the hotspots’ activity.

Square-cube law is one of the principles that could explain why: humans can’t grow to such size as in picture above, why elephants can’t move swiftly and regulate their body temperature slowly, and why dinosaurs are heavily built.

According to this principle, humans will collapse under their own weight if they grow until 50 meters tall (or 20 meters). This also explains why ants can lift matters that are several times heavier than their body, and why humans can’t do the same regardless of exercises.

-

References

Absurd Creature of the Week: The Badass Snail That Has a Shell Made of Iron

Plate Tectonics and the Hawaiian Hot Spot

Square–cube law - Wikipedia

What are some lesser known science facts?

 

1. Water can boil and freeze at the same time, it's called the 'triple point', and it occurs when the temperature and pressure is just right for the three phases (gas, liquid, and solid) of a substance to coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium.
2. A single solar flare can release the equivalent energy of millions of 100-megaton atomic bombs.
3. Cats always land on their feet, thanks to physics, cats actually use the two halves of their bodies separately to ensure rapid rotation.
4. If you spin a ball as you drop it, it flies. Magnus effect, which occurs when the air on the front side of a spinning object is going the same direction as its spin, which means it gets dragged along with the object and deflected back. Meanwhile, the air on the other side of the ball is moving in the opposite direction, so the air flow separates.
5. Only one letter J doesn’t appear in the periodic table.
6. Bananas contain potassium, and since potassium decays, that makes them slightly radioactive. But it’s nothing you need to worry about. You’d need to eat 10,000,000 bananas at once to die of radiation poisoning.
7. Hot water freezes faster than cold water: This fact seems counterintuitive, but it’s called the Mpemba effect, after a Tanzanian student named Erasto Mpemba who told his teacher that a hot mixture of ice cream froze faster than a cold one. This is because the velocities of water particles have a specific disposition while they’re hot that allows them to freeze more readily. If proven correct, this finding could also have implications in daily life, like cooling down electronic devices.

8. Cold water heats up faster than hot water

The researchers who investigated the cause of the Mpemba effect made this discovery as well. They unsurprisingly named the phenomenon the inverse Mpemba effect.

9. We have a lot of DNA:

There are over 3 billion base pairs of DNA in human genes and over 25,000 genes in the human genome. An entire copy of that genome exists in each of the 10 trillion cells in the human body. If all of that DNA were lined up, it would cover the distance between Earth and the sun 100 times.

10. Helium can work against gravity: When helium is cooled to extreme temperatures, just a few degrees away from absolute zero (-460˚F or -273˚C), it turns into a superfluid, meaning it can flow without friction. It can climb up and over the sides of a glass. It can leak through molecule-thick cracks in a container. If it starts flowing like a fountain, it will never stop.

11. Vantablack: is a material developed by Surrey NanoSystems in the United Kingdom and is one of the darkest man-made substance known, absorbing up to 99.96% of visible light. It's made of carbon nanotubes – rods of carbon that are much, much thinner than any human hair – packed so close together in a maze-like matrix that light goes in, but can't escape.

Never stop learning.

What are the most fascinating science facts?

 

• Bees can be trained to detect bombs.

• Rain contains vitamin B12.

• During photosynthesis, plants emit light, called fluorescence, that humans can't see.

• Sunflowers can be used to clean up radioactive waste.
• You can start a fire with ice.
• There are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than body cells.
• Ice melting in Antarctica has caused a small shift in gravity in the region.

• Most dinosaurs are known from just a single tooth or bone.

What are the most fascinating science facts?

 

1. The human eye has a resolution of 576 megapixels.
2. The urine of a diabetic person contains so much sugar that it can be purified and made into whiskey.
3. Technically, our ears and noses continue to grow throughout our lives. This is not due to physiologic, rather physics factors, as gravity pulls the cartilages of our ears and noses down, stretching the skin and giving the impression of growth.
4. 75% of the world’s food stocks are made from 12 plants and five animal species. Think about that the next time you and your friends can’t decide on what to order.
5. Before the 17th century, science and scientists weren’t recognized as, well, scientists. They were actually called ‘’natural philosophers’’, because the concept of scientist wasn’t invented yet.
6. Grasshoppers have ears on their stomachs. On each side of the first abdominal segment of a grasshopper, right under the wings, they have membranes that vibrate when they are hit by sound waves
7. Lake Superior has an island, which has a lake, which has an island which has a pond which has a boulder. Wait, we’re not done yet – when the pond floods, it becomes the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the world.
8. The nuclear bombs detonated in 1945 are the reason why experts can detect fake oil paintings. Isotopes such as strontium-90 and cesium-137 that can be found in oil did not exist in nature before the bombings. So, if a picture contains these isotopes, one can safely assume it was painted after 1945.
9. You are 10 times more likely to get bitten by a New Yorker than a shark.
10. There are more different possible chess game variations (10^120) than there are atoms in the observable universe (10^80).
11. Scallops have up to 200 eyes.
12. Before radium was known to cause cancer, it was thought to have healing qualities. The public was so oblivious to its dangers that it was put in water, chocolate, suppositories and even inserted in the urethra to treat impotence.
13. Besides global warming, the next big thing that will change Antarctica’s ecosystem is penguin poop. For the last 5,000 years, penguins have provided the rocks in Antarctica with 16 million pounds of nutrient-rich poop, which can one day support plants and animals that can’t currently survive in Antarctica.
14. It would take you 900,000 Dromedary Camels, back to back, to cover the entire width of the Saharan Desert.
15. The award for the country with the most tornadoes per square mile goes to… the United Kingdom
16. Almonds are a member of the peach family.
17. Newborn babies pick up their parent’s accent while still in the womb.
18. Peanuts are legumes, not nuts. So technically speaking, people that are allergic to peanuts are actually allergic to legumes, not nuts.
19. There is a feeling similar to deja vu called ‘’deja reve’’. Instead of feeling like you’ve previously experienced an event in real life, deja reve makes you feel like you’ve previously experienced an event in a dream.
20. At birth, a baby blue whale weighs as much as its mother’s tongue.

REF: 101 Weird Science Facts For Showing off at Parties | Let's Get Sciencey

What are the most fascinating science facts?

 Astronauts used to carry pistol in Space (TP-82)

Soviet cosmonauts used to carry a Triple barrelled pistol in their space missions.

They did not carry these pistols to fight off the rogue aliens but they carried these pistols to fight with the Siberian wildlife (bears and wolves) in case of the landings.

These pistols can be used to hunt, to protect themselves and to create audio and distress signals.

Above is the picture of TP-82 pistol in the army museum

Australian birds spread wild fires

There are birds in Australia that spread the wildfires so that they can flush out their prey out of the jungle. The birds pick up the burning sticks and drop them off in different parts of the wilderness to spread the fire.

Black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons spread these fires.

Female Gladiators aka Gladiatrix

Female Gladiators were called Gladiatrix. They fought with their male counterparts (Gladiators) shoulder to shoulder for the entertainment of the crowd and to serve their masters.

Earth was covered by Giant Mushrooms

Before the trees existed on the face of the earth, earth was believed to be covered by big white mushrooms. These mushrooms were believed to be 24 feet tall and 3 feet wide.

Pigeon poop is crown’s property in United Kingdom

Yes, you read it right. Pigeon poop is the property of the crown in the united Kingdom because it can be used to make gunpowder.

This was declared by King George 1 in the eighteenth century.

Wheels on the chair were invented by Darwin

Charles Darwin was known to be the first to put wheels on the chair as he liked to move from one place to another for the purpose of his research.

No specific time zones on South pole.

There are no specific time zones in Antarctica and arctic. Some of the reasons can be that no one lives there.

However, there are research stations on the south pole they are free to choose as to which time zone they want to operate in.

Horse feet tells about how the Rider Died

The feet of the horse in the statutes actually explains how the person riding the horse died.

1. If both the feet of the horse are on the ground - the rider died of natural consequences
2. If front legs of the horse are in air - the rider died in war
3. If one leg of the horse is in air - the rider died of wounds from the battle.

Some people think that equestrian statue is a myth and not a true fact. What I have read is there are some exceptions to this rule as well.

Millions of years ago - Penguins were 6Ft. Tall

The bones discovered in Seymour Island which are believed to be around 40 million years old are gigantic.

The penguin was termed as Mega Penguin and the species believed to be 6ft. tall is Palaeeudyptes klekowskii Myrcha.

The above image shows the comparative analyses of the penguins as we know them today and the penguins which went extinct.

Ghost marriages

Ghost marriages are prevalent in China and France, however it is prevalent all over the world.

The common belief is that the departed soul should not remain without a partner in the afterlife. It is a 3000 year old custom which can be observed in china even today.

World's largest desert is ANTARCTICA

We often imagine deserts to be hot with the sun shining at it's maximum, but factually Antarctica is the world's largest desert.

Point NEMO

Point Nemo is the farthest place from civilization on planet earth. Many of the spacecraft debris are accumulated at Point Nemo.

It is also known as the pole of inaccessibility.

Black and white Vision

Did you know that babies can only see white and black for first month of their birth ?

Yes babies can only see white and black for the 1st month. The reason that studies attribute to this phenomenon is that their retinal nerves are not fully developed.

Eiffel tower grows in summers

Have you ever heard of a non living thing growing?

Well, it does, the Eiffel tower grows in the summer season and can grow up to 6 ft. The reason is the iron expands in summers due to the heat.

The smallest dinosaur was 16 inches

Microraptor as the name suggests is the smallest dinosaur ever found. The fossil was discovered in China and it was estimated that at maximum microraptor would not have been bigger than 16 inches i.e equivalent to the size of the modern day pigeon.

Electricity generation from snow fall

Did you know that energy can be generated from snowfall ?

The scientists have developed a device called Triboelectric Nanogenerator or Snow TENG.

It is very thin and is very convenient to use. It can generate its own electricity and does not need any batteries of any sorts.