Facts by Anton Skorucak (37)
318 Times as Massive as Earth
What is 318 times more massive than Earth? Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun (next in line after Earth…
Antimatter Discovery
In almost every science fiction movie ever made, you are bound to hear about antimatter –– matter-antimatter…
Batesian Mimicry
If you had ever been stung by a wasp, you would probably steer clear of any insect with bright yellow and…
Bicycle Chain for Fleas
Sandia National Laboratories has engineered the world’s smallest chain. The distance between chain link…
Carbon Dating From The Skies
Determining the age of relatively recent fossils, those of plants and animals that lived tens of thousands of…
Delivered by TIR
The content of this article has been delivered to you via internet fiber-optic links. Today most phone…
Diamonds Improved by Irradiation?
Besides hardness and texture, probably the most fascinating aspect of gems is their color. There are so many…
Earth's Magnetism
Most ancient civilizations were aware of the magnetic phenomenon. Sailors in the late thirteenth century used…
Gestation Periods of Mammals
A gestation period is the time from conception to birth: the length of a pregnancy. In humans it is about 266…
How Fast is Mach 1?
Mach 1 is the speed of sound. A Mach number is simply the ratio of an object's speed to the speed of sound in…
Hybrid Cars: The Magic Braking
You have undoubtedly seen one of the hybrid cars on the road. You probably heard that they are unlike any…
Ice That Burns
What looks like ordinary ice but fizzes and crackles when you set it on a table, and bursts into flame when…
Is Earth Getting Fatter Around the Belt?
Besides being used for transmission of this email message to you, communication satellites are used for some…
Is the Dead Sea really dead?
The Dead Sea is located on the boundary between Israel and Jordan at a lowest point on earth, at 400 meters…
Kepler's Conjecture
Take a bunch of oranges that are similar in size and try to pack them into a cardboard box. What is the most…
Laser Guide Stars
Did you ever wonder why we have to have the Hubble Space Telescope so high up in the Earth's orbit? Why not…
Lunar Explorations
Ever since the beginning of intelligent life on Earth, the moon has been a focal point of human curiosity.…
Mobius Strip
A Mobius Strip is an amusing three-dimensional object whose surface has only one side. Huh? Well, most objects…
Neutrinos to the Rescue
Have you ever wondered what the most abundant particle in the universe is after photons of light? The answer…
New York to London in Less Than Two Hours
If flying from New York to London in less than two hours sounds like science fiction, read on. On September 1,…
Perfect Numbers
Some numbers are more special than others. The ancient Greeks called a few of them perfect . The first perfect…
Poincare's Chaos
Over two hundred years after Newton published his laws of planetary motion the King Oscar II of Sweden and…
Quarks
Quarks are the most fundamental particles that we know of. Both protons and neutrons are made of quarks. We…
Single Molecule Electroluminescence
There are two main ways to make light. In incandescence , something is heated until it glows, like the…
Solid Smoke
Have you ever wondered what the least dense solid in the world is? For years the answer was silica aerogel ,…
The Early Universe Soup
In the first few millionths of the second after the Big Bang, the universe looked very different than today.…
The Great Permian Extinction
More than 250 million years ago, when the current continents formed a single land mass, known as the Pangea…
The Handsome Betta Fish
The betta is possibly the most handsome tropical fish out there. We say handsome because it's the male that is…
The Journey of the Monarchs
The life of Monarch butterflies is an amazing one. They develop as caterpillars from the roughly 400 eggs each…
The Science of Tears
When was the last time you had a good cry? Tears do a lot more than show how we feel, and scientists have…
The Weakest Force
Did you know that gravity is the weakest force in the universe? It's true! Physicists know of four fundamental…
Vitreous Humor, Sclera and Other Yukky Eye Stuff
Eyes are one of the most complex organs humans have. In fact the optic nerve connection to the brain is so…
Was Popeye Wrong?
When you think of Popeye the Sailor what is the first thing that comes to your mind? It is probably spinach.…
What are Hoodoos?
Hoodoos, also called goblins, fairy chimneys or earth pyramids, are tall, thin spires of rock that rise from…
Why does popcorn pop?
Popcorn is the most amazing food! It all starts with a kernel only a few millimeters across that explodes into…
Will the Sun Shine Forever?
The Sun is a giant nuclear furnace. In its core, at about 15 million °C, it fuses hydrogen into…
You, Graphite and Diamonds
Living things, including you and me, and diamonds, are made of the same substance: the element carbon (C).…