Facts About Science

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

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

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

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

 Every year, over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.

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

 Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.

 Every year lightning kills 1000 people.

 In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf .

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

Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.

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

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

Female black widow spiders eat their males after mating.

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

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

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

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

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

DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler.

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

The first synthetic human chromosome was constructed by US scientists in 1997.
The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo.
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.

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

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

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

An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.

‘Wireless' communications took a giant leap forward in 1962 with the launch of Telstar, the first satellite capable of relaying telephone and satellite TV signals.

The Ebola virus kills 4 out of every 5 humans it infects.

In 5 billion years the Sun will run out of fuel and turn into a Red Giant.

 Giraffes often sleep for only 20 minutes in any 24 hours. They may sleep up to 2 hours (in spurts – not all at once), but this is rare. They never lie down.

 There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.

An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.

On the day that Alexander Graham Bell was buried the entire US telephone system was shut down for 1 minute in tribute.

The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise made by a living creature.

A quarter of the world's plants are threatened with extinction by the year 2010.
Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.

At 15 inches the eyes of giant squids are the largest on the planet.

The Universe contains over 100 billion galaxies.

Wounds infested with maggots heal quickly and without spread of gangrene or other infection.

More germs are transferred shaking hands than kissing.

The fastest speed a falling raindrop can hit you is 18mph.
It would take over an hour for a heavy object to sink 6.7 miles down to the deepest part of the ocean.

Around a million, billion neutrinos from the Sun will pass through your body while you read this sentence.

The deepest part of any ocean in the world is the Mariana trench in the Pacific with a depth of 35,797 feet.
Every hour the Universe expands by a billion miles in all directions.

Somewhere in the flicker of a badly tuned TV set is the background radiation from the Big Bang.

Even traveling at the speed of light it would take 2 million years to reach the nearest large galaxy, Andromeda.

The small intestine is 7-8 meters long, making it the largest organ inside the human body. The large intestine is only 1-1.5 meters long.

It is possible to see a rainbow as a complete circle from an aeroplane.

There are 62,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. Laid end to end they would circle the earth 2.5 times.

A litre of vinegar is heavier in winter than in summer.

A barrel of juice or wine would take about a year or two to ferment naturally into vinegar.

The body’s largest internal organ is the small intestine at an average length of 20 feet.

It is easier to swim in a sea rather than in a river because the density of sea water is more compared to that of a river due to dissolved salts.

Ambulances were developed by Napolean’s surgeon in his Italian company of 1796-97.

The world’s most expensive water is heavy water used as moderator in nuclear reactors.

Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system with surface temperature above 450 C.

TCDD is a man-made chemical which is 150,000 times more deadly then cyanide.

Copper turns green when exposed to air for a pretty long time.

Nitrous oxide can make you laugh. That is why it is called laughing gas.

One of the most accidental discoveries was the one of microwave. This discovery happened after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

The temperature on the surface of Mercury exceeds 430 degrees C during the day, and, at night, plummets to minus 180 degrees centigrade.

The largest lizard in the world is the Komodo dragon which reaches up to 3 meters and sometimes longer was named because of it’s fiery tongue. It is often longer than a car.

Saccharin is 500 to 700 times more sweeter than sugar.

Butterflies taste with their hind feet and their taste sensation works on touch – this allows them to determine whether a leaf is edible.

Beetles are the strongest animals on Earth relative to their size. A rhinoceros beetle can carry 850 times its own weight in its back.

On the day that Alexander Graham Bell was buried the entire US telephone system was shut down for 1 minute in tribute

RHTHYM is a six letter word which has no vowel.

Rats are really fast lovers, especially desert rats that can copulate 122 times an hour.

Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoonful would weigh more than all the people on Earth.

If the Sun were the size of a beach ball then Jupiter would be the size of a golf ball and the Earth would be as small as a pea.

The world’s first baby conceived in a test tube outside the mother’s body was born in Oldham, England. Her name is Louise Joy Brown.

Solid carbon di oxide is called dry ice, because when it melts it does not change into liquid but vapourises directly.

Ice does not melt when kept in liquid ammonia.

Eyes always remain same in size since the time we are born and till the moment we die, unlike our ears and nose that are constantly growing throughout our life.

The Saturn V rocket which carried man to the Moon develops power equivalent to fifty 747 jumbo jets.

Astronauts brought back about 800 pounds of lunar rock to Earth. Most of it has not been analyzed.

The Walkman was launched in Japan by Sony in 1979.

Snails are definitely among the sleepiest animals as they can sleep for three years.

The highest recorded train speed is 320.2 mph by the TGV train in France.

60-65 million years ago dolphins and humans shared a common ancestor.

Quick silver is not silver, but it is another name of mercury. It is so heavy that piece of iron floats on its surface.

Perfumed talcum powder is made from mineral called Talc. It is the softest possible mineral known to man.

The evaporation from a large oak or beech tree is from ten to twenty-five gallons in twenty-four hours.

1961 the Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in Space.

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

Polar bears may look slow and fat, but they are in real life far from it since they can run at 25 miles an hour and jump over 6 feet in the air.

The longest regularly formed English word is Praetertranssubstantiationalistically which contains 37 letters.

Traffic lights with red and green gas lights were first introduced in London in 1868. Unfortunately, they exploded and killed a policeman. The first successful system was installed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914.

The fastest speed a falling raindrop can hit you is 18mph.

The grey whale migrates 12,500 miles from the Artic to Mexico and back every year.

Lions are excellent hunters especially when you consider that they usually hunt in coordinated groups and stalk their chosen prey.

One in every 2000 babies is born with a tooth.

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

Methane is extremely potent greenhouse gas and cows are among the largest methane emitters with each domestic cow emitting about 105 pounds of methane a year.

Take any three figure number in which the first figure is larger than the last, say 521. Reverse it, making 125 and subtract the smaller from the larger, making 396. Now add the result to the same number reversed, 693. The answer is 1089, and will be 1089 whatever number you start with