100 Interesting Science Facts

1. The speed of light is generally rounded down to 186,000 miles per second. In exact terms it is 299,792,458 m/s (metres per second – that is equal to 186,287.49 miles per second).

2. It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.

3. October 12th, 1999 was declared “The Day of Six Billion” based on United Nations projections.

4. 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.

5. The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.

6. Every year over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.

7. When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great it could be heard 4,800 kilometres away in Australia.

8. The largest ever hailstone weighed over 1kg and fell in Bangladesh in 1986.

9. Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.

10. Every year lightning kills 1000 people. 11/ In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf .

12. If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.

13. Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.

14. The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.

15. The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

16. Female black widow spiders eat their males after mating.

17. When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.

18. ——-

19. If our Sun were just inch in diameter, the nearest star would be 445 miles away.

20. The Australian billygoat plum contains 100 times more vitamin C than an orange.

21. Astronauts cannot belch – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.

22. The air at the summit of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet is only a third as thick as the air at sea level.

23. One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a …pea.

24. DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler.

25. The molecular structure of DNA was first determined by Watson and Crick in 1953.

26. The first synthetic human chromosome was constructed by US scientists in 1997.

27. The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo.

28. Englishman Roger Bacon invented the magnifying glass in 1250.

29. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.

30. Wilhelm Rontgen won the first Nobel Prize for physics for discovering X-rays in 1895.

31. The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus – In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall.

32. Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967 – the patient lived for 18 days.

33. The wingspan of a Boeing 747 is longer than the Wright brother’s first flight.

If you found these interesting, visit the source for the last 67.

I enjoy bundles of interesting facts, anyone know what number 18 means? i am guessing binary or morose code, something of that nature.

Originally posted by Alaskan Man

14. The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.

I dont buy this one as scientific fact-this is theory.

Also, there are dozens of theories on how the moon formed-not one has been definitively proven.

reply to post by captaintyinknots


The astronauts brought back rocks from the moon.
NASA did carbon dating on them. 4.6 Billion years old

Starred and Flagged!

Thanks for this awesome post Alaska Man!

72/ Koalas sleep an average of 22 hours a day, two hours more than the sloth.

That's 1.9 hours less than my cat :p

Is 18 some sort of morse code joke I don't get?

Thanks for these...

I'll pass them on to my kids.

CX.

Originally posted by Alaskan Man
23. One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a …pea.

Not exactly sure how this can or ever could be proven as scientific fact. The Big Bang Theory isn't even a scientific fact.

Either way, really interesting read. Great thread.

I just read the whole thing! Absolutely awesome! I love stuff like that!



And of course S&F!

Great post Alaskan Man! I love these things too! If I knew how to give a star I would. Can someone tell me how?

[edit on 12-11-2009 by Bullion King]

Originally posted by Bullion King
Great post Alaskan Man! I love these things too! If I knew how to give a star I would. Can someone tell me how?

[edit on 12-11-2009 by Bullion King]

yeah, click on the little star icon in the upper left of the post you want to star.

Originally posted by Eurisko2012
reply to post by captaintyinknots

 

The astronauts brought back rocks from the moon.
NASA did carbon dating on them. 4.6 Billion years old

But then that is only if they really went to the moon in the first place

2nd line

Originally posted by Alaskan Man

15. The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

Interesting stuff -loved that one.

They're not realy 'scientific' but theres a few other cheeky facts at this thread:
www.belowtopsecret.com...

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

18 could be Morse code, but it would only be one letter...a G to be exact. I don't get it either.

dp sorry.

[edit on 12-11-2009 by VelvetSplash]

Originally posted by Eurisko2012
reply to post by captaintyinknots

 

The astronauts brought back rocks from the moon.
NASA did carbon dating on them. 4.6 Billion years old

Radiocarbon dating, or carbon dating, is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years.

Source: en.wikipedia.org...


So no, they didn't use carbon dating on moon rock to date it to 4.6 billion years old!

Originally posted by Eurisko2012
reply to post by captaintyinknots

 

The astronauts brought back rocks from the moon.
NASA did carbon dating on them. 4.6 Billion years old

1)Carbon dating is not exact.
2)It is still a theory
3)How do you carbon date the sun?

Without resorting to materials that aren't "terrestrial" in nature, we can easily go back to around 4 billion years for rock samples that are native. Here's how it works.

A supernova of some kind creates (by atomic fusion) elements heavier than iron. These elements cannot be created by "regular" fusion as part of stellar nucleosynthesis, but only in the supernova event. Among the trans-iron elements is uranium.

Gas, dust and debris in an area begin to be gravitationally attracted to each other and coalesce. A star and some planets form. One is the third planet from the star. The initial state of the planet is one of molten material. It cools over a long time and rocks form. The core remains molten. The rocks that form begin a "life" based on what is inside them. If they are reclaimed or "remelted" by vulcanism, they have lost their identity and, if set out on the surface of the earth, begin a new "life" based again on what is inside them.

As rocks form, some zirconium gets trapped in the rocks along with some silicon, some oxygen and a bit of uranium. The temperatures at which these rocks form prevents lead from being included. Crystals form. The rocks underwent transformation to become crystals of a mineral called zircon, which is ZrSiO4. But there is some uranium present when things are getting together, and it sneaks into the crystal during formation in the place of some of the zirconium atoms. The uranium is now locked up in a lead-free crystal with zirconium, silicon and oxygen. Zircon is stable, tough and chemical- and weather-resistant. A crystal can hang around for billions of years. Some do.

Uranium has a number of isotopes. All uranium has 92 protons, but the number of neutrons varies. All uranium is unstable; it is radioactive and will eventually decay. What it decays into varies, depending on the starting isotope. Half-lives vary, too. U-238 is the most common isotope of uranium, and it comprises over 99% of the stuff we find. So most of the uranium in that zircon crystal is 238U. The 238U decays with a half-life of 4.46 x 109 years (4.46 billion years). That's a long time. And it's very convenient for us.

The 238U decays (eventually) into lead, specifically 210Pb, which is stable. There are a number of intermediate decay products, but the chain is well understood and half-lives are accurately known. If a sample of 238U is sequestered in a tightly sealed container (like a zirconium crystal), it can be studied there and we can find out how much uranium is there, and, based on what is in there with it (those decay products), we can "look back" and figure out how long it has been in there. Nothing can have happened to this crystal to change the chronology sealed inside if the crystal is intact. This is the heart of uranium-lead dating. Dating things well over 4 billion years old with an accuracy of a few million years is very doable in the lab. It is a painstaking and tedious activity, but it is the bread and butter of some devoted folks. They spend all their lives honing their skills at this - and their skills are razor sharp.

We drag our equipment out into the field looking for zircon crystals. We must find them "in rock" and not lying around on the ground. But we can find some. When we do, we know these little guys have been like they are now for a long time. But how long? Back in the office, we apply our laboratory radiometric dating techniques (micro-beam analysis), and we can date zirconium crystal samples back to nearly 4 billion years with an accuracy of + or - a few million years (not a few tens of millions of years). Easily. And that's how we know the oldest samples of rock found on earth date back to almost 4 billion years. Moon rocks and some material from meteors date back even farther by up to another half a billion years. And that is the source of the 4.54 billion year figure that is so often quoted for the age of the earth.

None of these activities requires Star Trek technology, a magic wand or

This thread made my night,

thank you.

Originally posted by VelvetSplash

Originally posted by Eurisko2012
reply to post by captaintyinknots

 

The astronauts brought back rocks from the moon.
NASA did carbon dating on them. 4.6 Billion years old

Radiocarbon dating, or carbon dating, is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years.

Source: en.wikipedia.org...


So no, they didn't use carbon dating on moon rock to date it to 4.6 billion years old!

Well, at least we have the same sources.
How about radiometric dating?
There appears to be a lot of different kinds.
Thank God for Wikipedia!
Wikipedia - Moon Rocks

So yes, they did use radiometric dating to determine the ages
of the moon rocks.

[edit on 12-11-2009 by Eurisko2012]

[edit on 12-11-2009 by Eurisko2012]