Science — Page 4

There are significantly more trees on Earth than estimated stars in the Milky Way.

It is estimated that there are over three trillion trees on Earth, while our galaxy contains between one hundred to…

Water can boil and freeze at the same time under specific conditions.

At the so-called triple point, the exact temperature and pressure allow the three phases of matter (liquid, solid…

Sound cannot travel through the vacuum of space.

Sound is a mechanical wave that needs a material medium, such as air, water, or metal, to propagate. In the vacuum of…

Water is the only natural substance on Earth that exists as a solid, liquid and gas.

Under natural conditions, water can be found in all three physical states at the same time. Ice at the poles, liquid…

Helium cannot be solidified at normal pressure.

Helium is the only element that remains liquid down to absolute zero at normal atmospheric pressure. To solidify it…

Sound travels about 4.3 times faster in water than in air.

The speed of sound depends on the density and elasticity of the medium through which it propagates. Water is much…

There is enough gold in the Earth's core to coat the surface of the planet.

Heavy and siderophile elements sank to the center during Earth's formation. It is estimated there is enough gold down…

Light takes eight minutes to reach Earth from the Sun.

Traveling at about three hundred thousand kilometers per second, light covers the one hundred and fifty million…

The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is one thousand times greater than at the surface.

At a depth of about eleven thousand meters, the pressure reaches over one thousand atmospheres, equivalent to having…

Io, a moon of Jupiter, is the most volcanically active body in the solar system.

With over four hundred active volcanoes, its eruptions can eject material hundreds of kilometers high.

Liquid helium can climb up the walls of its container.

At temperatures near absolute zero, helium becomes a superfluid, losing all viscosity and managing to escape from…

Blue eyes do not contain blue pigment.

The colour results from the Tyndall Effect, the same scattering of light that makes the sky blue. The lack of melanin…

If you fold a piece of paper forty-two times, it reaches the Moon.

The thickness of the paper doubles with each fold. Due to exponential growth, after forty-two theoretical folds, the…

Water can form at least fifteen different phases of ice.

Under different extreme combinations of pressure and temperature, water molecules organise into distinct crystalline…

The Sun does not rotate like a solid body and spins faster at the equator.

Being a ball of plasma, the Sun undergoes differential rotation, taking about twenty-five days to complete a rotation…

On Jupiter and Saturn, it rains diamonds from the sky.

Lightning turns methane into soot that, as it falls, is hardened by extreme pressure until it turns into graphite and…

Water can remain liquid well below freezing in a state called supercooling.

If the water is very pure and lacks crystallisation nuclei where ice can start to form, it can cool to minus forty…

On the exoplanet HD 189733b, it rains molten glass sideways.

The atmosphere of this giant planet is swept by winds of eight thousand kilometres per hour, pushing condensed…

The Milky Way is moving through space at two million kilometres per hour.

Our galaxy is pulled by the gravity of massive structures like the Great Attractor, travelling at a mind-boggling…

A teaspoon of water contains more molecules than drops of water in the ocean.

Due to the tiny size of H2O molecules, a simple teaspoon contains about one and a half sextillion molecules, a number…

Francium is so unstable that there is likely less than 30 grams of it in the Earth's crust at any given moment.

The most stable isotope of francium has a half-life of only 22 minutes. It rapidly decays into other elements…

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…

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…