Every field of knowledge has the capacity to amaze us: There are astonishing tales of history; awe-inspiring works of art and music; incredibly simple (and complex) mathematical proofs; brilliant and moving stories from literature. But science—the study of our natural world—seems to have a unique capacity to make us just say, “Wow.” Consider:
There are more trees on the planet than stars in the solar system: According to NASA, there are up to 400 billion stars in the milky way galaxy – but the number of trees on Earth is estimated to be more than 3 trillion.
Water can boil and freeze at the same time: What is known as ‘triple point‘ occurs when temperature and pressure is just right for three phases (gas, liquid and solid) to coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium.
A day on Venus lasts longer than a year on Venus: On the planet Venus, one rotation on its axis takes the equivalent of 243 Earth days and the planet’s orbit around the Sun takes the equivalent of just 225 Earth days.
Everything you see happened in the past: It takes approximately 50 milliseconds for visual information to process in your brain, by the time you actually see something, it already happened.
Your DNA could stretch from the Earth to the Moon thousands of times: Scientists estimate that each human cell would contain about six feet of DNA if stretched end to end. Multiply that length by the trillions of cells in our bodies and you get a lot of trips to the Moon!
As Carl Sagan famously once said, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
Have a wonderful day.
