Stomach acid is strong enough to dissolve razor blades
Your stomach digests food thanks to highly corrosive hydrochloric acid with a pH of 2 to 3. This acid also attacks your stomach lining, which protects itself by secreting an alkali bicarbonate solution. The lining still needs to be replaced continually, and it entirely renews itself every four days.
If you took out all the empty space in our atoms, the human race could fit in the volume of a sugar cube
The atoms that make up the world around us seem solid, but are in fact over 99.99999 per cent empty space. An atom consists of a tiny, dense nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons, spread over a proportionately vast area. This is because as well as being particles, electrons act like waves. Electrons can only exist where the...
It takes 8 minutes, 19 seconds for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth
Thermal cameras detect the heat lost by a subject as infrared, but polar bears are experts at conserving heat. In space, light travels at 300,000 kilometres (186,000 miles) per second. Even at this breakneck speed, covering the 150 million odd kilometres (93 million miles) between us and the Sun takes a considerable time. And eight minutes is still very...
Polar bears are nearly undetectable by infrared cameras
Thermal cameras detect the heat lost by a subject as infrared, but polar bears are experts at conserving heat. The bears keep warm due to a thick layer of blubber under the skin. Add to this a dense fur coat and they can endure the chilliest Arctic day.
Chalk is made from trillions of microscopic plankton fossils
Tiny single-celled algae called coccolithophores have lived in Earth’s oceans for 200 million years. Unlike any other marine plant, they surround themselves with minuscule plates of calcite (coccoliths). Just under 100 million years ago, conditions were just right for coccolithophores to accumulate in a thick layer coating ocean floors in a white ooze. As further sediment built up on...
Hawaii moves 7.5cm closer to Alaska every year
The Earth’s crust is split into gigantic pieces called tectonic plates. These plates are in constant motion, propelled by currents in the Earth’s upper mantle. Hot, less-dense rock rises before cooling and sinking, giving rise to circular convection currents which act like giant conveyor belts, slowly shifting the tectonic plates above them. Hawaii sits in the middle of the...
A teaspoonful of neutron star would weigh 6 billion tons
A neutron star is the remnants of a massive star that has run out of fuel. The dying star explodes in a supernova while its core collapses in on itself due to gravity, forming a super-dense neutron star. Astronomers measure the mind-bogglingly large masses of stars or galaxies in solar masses, with one solar mass equal to the Sun’s...
Some metals are so reactive that they explode on contact with water
There are certain metals – including potassium, sodium, lithium, rubidium and caesium – that are so reactive that they oxidise (or tarnish) instantly when exposed to air. They can even produce explosions when dropped in water! All elements strive to be chemically stable – in other words, to have a full outer electron shell. To achieve this, metals tend...
