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Earth
  • Earth is the densest planet in the solar system and the only one not named after a God
  • Earth is egg shaped
  • The Earth’s equater is actually growing fatter. Accelerated melting of Earth’s glaciers is taking the blame for the gain in equatorial girth. Reported in Aug. 2 issue of the journal Science
  • Earth gets heavier every year. Roughly 1000 tonnes of space dust land of its surface annually

Dead Sea
  • The Dead Sea is 365 m below sea level

kilogram
  • The kilogram is based on a reference cylinder that was made 118 years ago, and now kept under a glass prison in France
  • The kilogram cylinder appears to be losing 50 micrograms a year (when compared with the average of dozens of copies), and scientists are now seeking a new definition for the kilogram

snow
  • Snow is a good insulator of heat. 25 cm of snow insulates as well as 15 cm of fibreglass
  • No 2 snowflakes are identical because this statement is impossible to disprove

Eiffel tower
  • There are 1792 steps in the Eiffel tower

tree
  • A notch in a tree will remain the same distance from the ground as the tree grows
  • The world’s fastest growing tree is the Australian Eucalyptus. It can grow up to 10 metres in one year
  • More than a million trees are planted each year by squirrels that bury nuts and do not end up eating them
  • You can tell the age of a tree by counting the number of rings formed within its trunk

hummingbird
  • A humming bird flaps its wings up to 90 times in one second or over 5000 times a minute
  • A hummingbird weighs less than a penny
  • The eyes of hummingbirds are attuned to wavelengths of light outside the visible range that humans see in

hair
  • In a lifetime, you and I will have grown over 590 miles of hair

veins, vessel
  • Laid end-to-end, the arteries, capillaries and veins would stretch for about 60,000 miles in the average child and would be about 100,000 miles in an adult – enough to wrap around the world nearly four times.

telescope
  • The telescope on Mount Palomar, California, can see a distance of 7,038,835,200,000,000,000,000 miles
  • NASA’s GLAST main telescope weighs 3 tons but uses less than 1/2 the power of a hair dryer


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