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20 Things... from Discover.com |
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Discover Magazine | 20 Things You Didn't Know About...
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Science, Technology, and The Future
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Water
11) Hair on your skin can hold water droplets too. A hairy leg may get sunburned more quickly than a shaved one.
17) Scientists at Oregon State University have identified vast reservoirs of water beneath the ocean floor. In fact, there may be more water under the oceans than in them.
18) Without water, ocean crust would not sink back into the earth’s mantle. There would be no plate tectonics, and our planet would probably be a lot like Venus: hellish and inert.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Viruses
 Image: Wikimedia commons
1 Viruses are not alive: They do not have cells, they cannot turn food into energy, and without a host they are just inert packets of chemicals.
2 Viruses are not exactly dead, either: They have genes, they reproduce, and they evolve through natural selection.
3 Scientists have been debating this issue since 1892, when Dmitry Ivanovsky, a Russian microbiologist, reported that an infection in tobacco plants spreads via something smaller than a bacterium. That something, now called the tobacco mosaic virus, appears on this page (magnified and colorized).
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Light
The first light in the universe, the light used to push spacecraft, and the light produced by kicking the head of a walrus.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Digestion
#15: In which painful condition does your body literally start eating yourself from within?
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Computer Hacking
What's the connection between Steve Wozniak, the Pope, and Henry Kissinger? That's right, it's hacking.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Sugar
Did you know that most of the sugar you eat comes from beets? And that sugar in deep space may be a chemical precursor to life on Earth? Find out these and more sugary facts.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Hurricanes
A typical hurricane releases some 600 trillion watts of heat energy, equivalent to 200 times the world’s total electrical generating capacity.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Eclipses
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Movies
4) Some things never change: Edison’s early film loops included one showing “cooch” dancers; another reenacted the decapitation of Mary, Queen of Scots—the first porn and horror flicks.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Tunnels
New York has a forgotten one, Texas has a $2 billion wasted one, and Switzerland's building the longest.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Money
11) In a study last year, researchers found more cocaine residue on U.S. bills than on any other currency. Also found on money: staphylococcus bacteria and fecal matter. 17) The world’s first ATM accepted only checks laced with identifying traces of radioactive carbon-14. The inventor claimed users “would have to eat 136,000 checks” for the radioactivity to have any dangerous effects.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Time
3) Daylight Saving Time began as a joke by Benjamin Franklin, who proposed waking people earlier on bright summer mornings so they might work more during the day and thus save candles. 19) Time has not been around forever. Most scientists believe it was created along with the rest of the universe in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Television
What did the world's first TV look like? How big is the largest plasma TV in the world? Which mission did NASA lose the video recordings of?
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Fat
Body fat can kill you, keep you warm, or power your boat.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Elections
5) On election night in 1952, TV viewers saw Walter CronÂkite sitting beside UNIVAC 1, which famously called the race for Eisenhower after only 7 percent of the vote had been tallied. 6) But it was a lie: Cronkite sat beside a cardboard panel with blinking Christmas lights. The real computer was projecting returns in Pennsylvania.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Genius
7) Many 19th- and 20th-century creative geniuses acquired a reputation for promiscuity. Examples include Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, and Bertrand Russell. 8) One theory suggests that male geniuses are unusually endowed with enthusiasm for risk taking, which is notoriously testosterone-linked.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Telescopes
From Galileo to the Hubble, viewing space has come a long way.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Sports Technology
From luge suits to computerized tennis ball trackers, sports technology has chartered a path for modern athletes to move faster, go higher, and stay safer.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Oil
16) In oil-rich Baku, Azerbaijan, villagers could once dig a hole in the ground with their hands, drop in a live coal, and start a fire. 17) In the United States, when people first noticed oil, they bottled it, slapped a label on, and sold it as a health tonic.
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... The Summer Solstice
10) Due to continued shifting of Earth’s axis, the Tropic of Cancer is now misnamed. On the current June solstice, the sun actually appears in the constellation Taurus. 8) Modern-day druids gather at England’s Stonehenge to mark the summer solstice. Many still don Celtic attire, even though a civilization known as the Beaker People finished Stonehenge a millennium before the Celts turned up.
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CNN Top Stories
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CNN.com delivers up-to-the-minute news and information on the latest top stories, weather, entertainment, politics and more. |
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Imam: NYC Islamic center is 'the right thing to do'
The imam behind a controversial Islamic center near New York's ground zero broke his silence Tuesday, hours after a coalition of leaders denounced anti-Muslim bigotry. 
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NASA: Rescue just start for miners
The pending rescue of the 33 miners trapped in a Chilean mine will only be the beginning of the miners' ordeal, NASA officials told Chilean authorities on a recent visit. 
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6.3 magnitude quake hits Fiji Islands
A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the Fiji Islands, Wednesday at 4:13 a.m. (12:13 p.m. ET Tuesday), the U.S. Geological Survey reported. 
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FBI: Ex-soldier threatened to kill Obama
A former soldier arrested after a hostage incident at a military base in Georgia faces multiple charges that include threatening to kill President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, according to federal court documents filed Tuesday. 
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John Lennon's killer denied parole
The man who killed former Beatle John Lennon was denied parole for the sixth time, officials said. Mark David Chapman is next eligible for a parole interview in 2012. 
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Polygamist sect leader nixes extradition
Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs will stay in a Utah jail for at least two more months after his attorneys objected to his signing an extradition waiver in a Utah court Tuesday. 
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Gov.: Colorado wildfire dangerous
A fleet of aircraft is being deployed to help put out a fast-moving wildfire near Boulder, Colorado, that has forced about 3,500 residents to evacuate. 
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Hermine brings tornado warning, rain
Tropical Storm Hermine is heading north after making landfall near Brownsville, Texas. The storm has 45 mph winds and may cause local flooding. 
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Van der Sloot: I 'misused' Holloway case
In a jailhouse interview with a Dutch television station, Joran van der Sloot said he is remorseful for telling so many stories regarding the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, but once again denied culpability in the case. 
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Killer whale dies at San Diego SeaWorld
A 12-year-old male killer whale, who showed signs of being ill only the day before, died Tuesday afternoon at SeaWorld in San Diego, California, the park announced. 
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