Science — Page 2
Fascinating scientific discoveries
110 facts
The Voyager probes carry a gold-plated copper disc with sounds and images from Earth.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 carry the Golden Record, a message for possible extraterrestrial civilisations. The…
Traces of iron-60 have been found in Antarctic ice.
Iron-60 is a radioactive isotope produced in supernovae that does not occur naturally on Earth. In 2025, scientists…
MIT engineers have created a chip that uses heat to perform calculations.
MIT engineers developed silicon microstructures that perform matrix multiplications using only heat flow, without…
Tridymite, a rare mineral, has been found in Gale Crater on Mars.
Tridymite is a silica mineral that forms under conditions of high temperature and low pressure. Its presence in Gale…
A distant star that exploded twice has been detected.
In August 2025, the LIGO and Virgo detectors registered a gravitational wave signal suggesting a star exploding…
A quantum spin liquid has been observed for the first time at the University of Oxford.
Physicists at Oxford developed a new approach to observe a quantum spin liquid, a state of quantum matter that never…
Scientists have created crystals where electrons behave as if they live in a fourth spatial dimension.
MIT researchers, working at the MagLab, discovered a new family of crystals stacked with a slight twist where…
The speed of light in a vacuum is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second.
Since 1983, the speed of light in a vacuum has been a constant defined by convention. The exact value is 299,792,458…
A lightning bolt is about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
The temperature of a lightning bolt can reach 30,000 kelvin, while the Sun's surface is around 5,500 kelvin. The heat…
There are more ways to shuffle a 52-card deck than there are atoms on Earth.
The number of possible combinations of a 52-card deck is 52 factorial, a number with 68 digits. It is much larger…
There are bacteria that breathe iron instead of oxygen.
Some bacteria use iron instead of oxygen to produce energy. These microorganisms live in oxygen-free environments…
Atoms are almost entirely empty space.
If the nucleus of an atom were the size of a tennis ball, the electrons would be several kilometres away. Matter…
Hot water can freeze faster than cold water under certain conditions.
This phenomenon, called the Mpemba effect, was observed by a Tanzanian student in 1963. Under certain conditions, hot…
Bananas are slightly radioactive because of potassium.
Bananas contain potassium, and a small fraction of that potassium is the radioactive isotope potassium-40. Therefore…
Water is called the universal solvent because it dissolves all substances.
Water is called the universal solvent because it dissolves more substances than any other common liquid. However, it…
The human body contains about 0.2 milligrams of gold.
The human body contains traces of gold, about 0.2 milligrams, mostly in the blood. Gold has no known biological…
There are more possible chess games than atoms in the observable universe.
The number of possible chess games, known as the Shannon number, is estimated at 10 to the power of 120. The number…
Helium can become solid under very high pressure.
Helium is the only element that does not solidify at normal atmospheric pressure, even near absolute zero. However…
The human body contains enough sulphur to make about 200 boxes of matches.
The human body contains about 140 grams of sulphur, present in amino acids such as cysteine and methionine. This…
The human heart has a limited number of beats over a lifetime, about 2.5 billion.
The human heart beats about 2.5 billion times over an average 80-year life. This number is not a fixed limit, but an…
The air we breathe is composed of about 78 percent nitrogen.
Atmospheric air is composed of about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and 1 percent other gases, such as argon…
Liquid oxygen has a pale blue colour.
Unlike oxygen gas, which is colourless, oxygen in the liquid state is pale blue. This colour is due to the absorption…
The human eye can detect a single photon.
Under ideal dark conditions, the human eye can detect a single photon of light. Studies show that the rods in the…
The human nose can detect a drop of perfume in an entire house.
The human sense of smell is extremely sensitive. We can detect the smell of a single drop of perfume dispersed…
