Quirky Science Facts!

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Jay-qu

You shed and regrow your skin every 28 days, that's about 1000 times in a lifetime.

eww.. think of the dead skin of the billions of people

Think of all the food you are providing your pet Dermatophagoides spp.. You don't even have to open a can or a packet!. My cat is complaing now that I never feed him. No complaints like that from Dermatophagoides.

[Mercedes Benzene]

As far as we currently know, the star SGR 1900+14 in Sagittarius, carrys the strongest magnetic field in the Universe with an astonishing 100 trillion times Earths.

[Mercedes Benzene]

When scientist drilled through the ice of Antarctica’s Lake Vanda, they discovered that the water at the bottom of the lake was an amazingly warm 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Ice crystals actually heat the water by focusing on the bottom of the lake

[Jay-qu]

A cosmic year is the amount of time it takes the Sun to revolve around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, about 225 million years.

So you will be waiting a long time for your first cosmic birthday!

[Mercedes Benzene]

It was accepted practice to castrate certain inmates in 'lunatic asylums' in some parts of America until quite recently. These unfortunate individuals lived on average fourteen years longer than their intact companions.

::shivers::

[Jay-qu]

The blue whale can produce sounds up to 188 decibels. This is the loudest sound produced by a living animal and has been detected as far away as 530 miles.

[Mercedes Benzene]

One parsec is equal to 19.2 million million miles.

[Boerseun]

Ever wondered why the Shuttle's external fuel tank has such a nasty colour?

"The external tanks of the first two missions were painted white, which added an extra 600 pounds (273 kg) of weight to each ET. Subsequent missions have had unpainted tanks showing the natural orange-brown color of the spray-on foam insulation. The lighter, unpainted tanks have increased the payload capacity by almost the entire weight savings of 600 pounds."

There you go - wonder no more!

Bean counters - the bane of anything remotely aesthetic.

[Jay-qu]

nasty, I thought they would have made it that colour on purpose its really not that bad..

The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Ever wondered why the Shuttle's external fuel tank has such a nasty colour?
.

I am told re-entry cones of Chinese rockets are made of wood. It works a lot better than expensive, sometimes dangerous NASA tiles !!

ALSO
When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity.

To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 C.

The Russians used a pencil.

Says something about the world doesn't it?