All facts — Page 5

For geologists, ice is a mineral, and a glacier is technically a rock.

A mineral is a natural, inorganic solid with a crystal structure and a defined chemical composition, and ice meets…

'Photo 51', taken in Rosalind Franklin's laboratory, was crucial to discovering the structure of DNA.

The image, made with X-rays in 1952 by the student Raymond Gosling under Franklin's supervision, showed an X-shaped…

Copper surfaces kill bacteria and viruses within a few hours.

Copper ions damage the membranes and genetic material of microbes. In 2020 a study showed that the new coronavirus…

Helium was discovered in the Sun in 1868, almost 30 years before it was found on Earth.

During an eclipse, astronomers saw a yellow line in sunlight that no known element could explain. Norman Lockyer…

Zebras have completely black skin under their striped fur.

The stripes of zebras are only pigmentation patterns in the fur. If you shave a zebra, the skin underneath is dark…

Adélie penguins offer a pebble to their partner as a mating proposal.

Males search for the smoothest and most perfect pebble they can find and offer it to the female. If she accepts it…

Sheep can recognize human and other sheep faces in photographs.

Cambridge researchers discovered that sheep can learn to recognize the faces of famous people and other sheep from…

The Sahara desert is not mostly made of sand, but rather gravel and rock.

Only about 25 percent of the Sahara is covered by sand dunes. Most of its surface is made up of gravel plains, rocky…

Iceland is one of the few inhabited places in the world that has no mosquitoes.

Despite having a damp climate and cold temperatures similar to other Nordic regions where mosquitoes thrive, the…

There are fungi capable of breaking down and consuming polyurethane plastic.

Students at Yale University discovered a species of fungus in the Amazon rainforest that can survive by feeding…

The first digital camera was built by Kodak in 1975 and weighed over three kilos.

Engineer Steven Sasson created the prototype using parts from tape recorders and Fairchild's new digital sensor. The…

Cats cannot taste sweetness in food.

Cats lack the TAS1R2 gene responsible for detecting sweet flavours. This genetic mutation occurred millions of years…

About half of human DNA comes from ancient viruses that infected our ancestors.

Human endogenous retroviruses are remnants of viral infections that occurred millions of years ago and became…

Outside Mexico, all vanilla pods must be pollinated by hand, one by one.

The vanilla orchid is only naturally pollinated by a specific bee that lives in Mexico. In other producing countries…

In the laboratory, scientists have managed to slow light to just 17 metres per second.

Using a Bose-Einstein condensate made of ultra-cooled sodium atoms, researchers at Harvard drastically reduced the…

If the Earth were compressed to become a black hole, it would be the size of a golf ball.

For an object to become a black hole, its mass must be compressed within the so-called Schwarzschild radius. In the…

All the electrons circulating on the Internet together weigh approximately the same as a strawberry.

Physicist Russell Seitz calculated that the combined mass of the electrons moving in the global network is around 50…

Humans glow in the dark, but the light is invisible to the human eye.

The human body emits a small amount of visible light due to metabolic reactions that produce free radicals. However…

Peanuts are not nuts, but legumes.

Unlike walnuts or almonds that grow on trees, peanuts develop underground, just like peas or beans. They belong to…

Napoleon Bonaparte was not short, having an average height for his time.

The confusion arose due to the difference between French and English inches of the era. Napoleon measured about one…

Glass is not a slow-moving liquid, but an amorphous solid.

A popular myth claims that glass flows over centuries, explaining why old windows are thicker at the bottom. In…

The Eiffel Tower can be fifteen centimeters taller during the summer.

This phenomenon is due to the thermal expansion of iron. When the temperature rises, the metal molecules agitate and…

Humans are the only known animals that blush from embarrassment.

Blushing is an involuntary response of the sympathetic nervous system that dilates the blood capillaries in the face…

Nutmeg can cause severe hallucinations if consumed in large amounts.

This spice contains myristicin, a compound that, in high doses, affects the central nervous system. Excessive…