First Planets to be Photographed

First Planets to be Photographed

Fomalhaut b and HR 8799 b, c, d (November 13, 2008)

• Direct exoplanet observation has been compared to watching a gnat flying across the face of a searchlight on a foggy day from miles away (source: National Geographic). 

• Fomalhaut b and HR 8799 b, c, d are the first exoplanets directly imaged in optical wavelengths (that is, in colloquial terms, photographed) using huge Earth-based telescopes at W.M. Keck and Gemini Observatories in Hawaii along with the Hubble Space Telescope. 

• Truly an impressive feat, yes, but not quite as impressive as the next one.

Epsilon Eridani

Closest to Solar System

Epsilon Eridani (Epsilon Eridani b discovered August 7, 2000)

• It’s actually a system of planets, not unlike how we like to call our own solar system. 

• The name “Epsilon Eridani” stands for the parent star, or their “sun,” and it has two probable planets orbiting it: one confirmed (Epsilon Eridani b) another yet unconfirmed (Epsilon Eridani c), making it the closest planetary system at just over 10 light years from the solar system.

• It even has not one but two asteroid belts, an inner one between Epsilon Eridani b and the star and an outer one between b and c, and also a dust ring beyond c’s orbit believed to be produced by extrasolar comets bumping into each other.

Bioscope

LAGAAN was set in 1892. At that time, an over in cricket consisted of four or five balls.

But the movie followed the six-balls-in-an-over format, a rule that was introduced in the 20^th century.

Travel Sutra

The toy train of Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR) runs at a leisurely speed of 33 km per hour.

It is slowest in country. It takes almost 4 hours 25 minutes to cover its 46 km journey.

This means tourists have plenty of time to enjoy picturesque route full of twists and turns, tea and coffee plantations, forest-clad hills and tunnels.

Gateway of India

In 1911, when the royal couple King George V and Queen Mary arrived, they were welcomed with hastily created white plaster arch.

It was replaced by the present monument in 1927 named ‘Gateway of India’ to commemorate the royal visit.

Honey Badger

The Honey Badger is said to be the world’s most fearless creature.

Armed with weapons like incredibly sharp teeth, thick, rubbery and loose skin that allows it to easily wriggle through the mouth of its predator, the audacious creature has been spotted to even take on pride of lions.

Smooth Tyres for racing cars?

CAR tyres act as cushions for the wheels and give the car a good grip on the road preventing it from skidding while turning corners or when the brake is applied.

A smooth tyre grips the road far better than a treaded tyre, so racing cars are fitted with smooth tyres.

Non-racing cars could have smooth tyres too if they were to move only on dry roads, like racing cars. But as they have to move on all sorts of roads including wet ones they need treaded tyres.

Crackers

A cat’s arching back is a sign that it is feeling threatened. The cat is able to arch its back so high because its spine contains nearly 60 vertebrae which fit loosely together. In contrast, humans have only 34 vertebrae.

A Himalayan named Colonel Meow entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2013 for having the longest fur.

Fact of Kidney

A human being can survive with only one functioning kidney.

In fact, a single kidney working at only 75% of its capacity can sustain life. Each kidney has 1.2 million nephrons, tiny tubes that filter the blood, returning nutrients to the body and flushing away wastes. In a healthy person, each day, about 120 liters of fluid and particles enter the nephrons to be filtered.

If only one kidney is present, that kidney can adjust to filter as much as two kidneys would normally.

The nephrons adapt by increasing in size. In a normal person, 1% of nephrons die every year after the age of 40. The remaining nephrons enlarge and fully compensate for this reduction in numbers.

Swelling Peas

If dried peas are kept in water for a few hours, they will swell and become bigger in size. Why does this happen?

Peas may appear to be dry, but they contain a little water in which solids are dissolved. Whenever a concentrated fluid is separated from a thinner fluid by a membrane, the thinner fluid crosses over to the thicker fluid through the pores in the membrane.

In case of peas, the water in the pan being more dilute, it will travel through the skin (membrane) of the peas and enter the peas causing the peas to swell.

Rarest FLowers

Middlemist Red

The Middlemist Red is often considered to be the rarest flower in the world, with only two known examples existing anywhere - whether in the wild or in a protected environment. One is found in New Zealand and the other at Chiswick House in West London, and plenty of visitors are keen to get a glimpse of its beautiful pink petals (the red in its name is something of a misnomer). 

Jade vine

Jade vine is a very rare flower found mostly in the rainforest of the Philippines and a few other locations. It has claw shaped flowers, which vary in color from blue to light green. The vine's stem can grow up to 18m (60 feet) in length and the flowers droop down to be pollinated by bats who hang from the trees that host the plant. The wonderfully colored petals become particularly special at night, when they radiate with a luminous glow in the dark forest.

Kadapul flower

The kadapul flower is found mostly in Sri Lanka, and is often considered to be the most expensive flower in the world, for two reasons. Firstly, it only blooms at midnight, before withering again by dawn, and secondly, it dies pretty much as soon as it is picked. This means they can't really be sold, and are essentially priceless. Not many people in the world get to see this rare flower bloom, or smell its wonderful scent. It is held in high regard in Sri Lanka and has various nicknames including 'Flower from Heaven' and 'Queen of the Night'.

Chocolate Cosmos

The chocolate orchid is endemic to Mexico, but is now sadly believed to be extinct in the wild. The plant is so named because the odor it releases when it blooms smells of chocolate. There is only one example of this unique, maroon flower in existence today, a clone grown by scientists using a technique called vegetative propagation. 

Computer facts

• Alaska is the only state in America that can be typed on one row of a traditional English QWERTY keyboard.

• The Apple II had a hard drive of only 5 megabytes when it was launched.

• In general, people tend to read as much as 10% slower from a screen than from paper.

• Ubuntu is one of the more popular distributions of Linux. The word Ubuntu comes from an African word meaning “I am because of you”.

• The Name “Macintosh” Was Inspired by an Apple with the name “mcintosh”.

• In 1932 Professor August Dvorak created the Dvorak keyboard, which was made to be superior to the standard QWERTY keyboard.

• Doug Engelbart created the very first computer mouse from wood in 1964.

• Christopher Sholes invented the QWERTY keyboard in 1868.

• The Apple Lisa was the first commercial computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) and a mouse.

• The Apple Lisa was released in June 1983.

• In 1822, Charles Babbage created the first computer.

• 1024 Gigabytes is equal to 1 Terabyte.

• 1024 Terabytes is equal to 1 Petabyte.

• 1 Petabyte can hold 13.3 years of HD-TV video.

• 86% of people try to plug their USB devices upside down.

Facts about Universe

• A day on Venus is longer than a year.

• 33 light years away there is an exoplanet completely covered in burning ice.

• About 275 million new stars are born everyday.

• According to astronauts, space smells like seared steak, hot metal, and welding fumes.

• According to researchers, the center of our galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum.

• Each year the moon moves 3.8 cm further from the Earth.

• Earth has over 8,000 pieces of space junk orbiting around it.

• Earth’s rotation is slowing at a rate of about 17 milliseconds a century.

• Far beyond Neptune, there may be an object the size of Earth orbiting the sun.

• If you could compress the Earth down to the size of a marble, it would collapse on itself and become a black hole.

Animal facts

1. Gorillas can catch human colds and other illnesses.
2. A newborn Chinese water deer is so small it can almost be held in the palm of the hand.
3. Ostriches can run faster than horses, and the males can roar like lions.
4. A lion in the wild usually makes no more than twenty kills a year.
5. The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting.
6. The only dog that doesn’t have a pink tongue is the chow.
7. Turtles, water snakes, crocodiles, alligators, dolphins, whales, and other water going creatures will drown if kept underwater too long.
8. Almost half the pigs in the world are kept by farmers in China.
9. On average, dogs have better eyesight than humans, although not as colorful.
10. Deer have no gall bladders.
11. There is an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas.
12. Snakes are carnivores, which means they only eat animals, often small ones such as insects, birds, frogs and other small mammals.
13. In Alaska it is illegal to whisper in someone’s ear while they’re moose hunting.
14. The bat is the only mammal that can fly.
15. The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.
16. Some male songbirds sing more than 2000 times each day.
17. The only mammals to undergo menopause are elephants, humpback whales and human females.
18. Blue-eyed lemurs are one of two (non-human) primates to have truly blue eyes.
19. A tarantula spider can survive for more than two years without food.
20. For every human in the world there are one million ants.
21. If you lift a kangaroo’s tail off the ground it can’t hop – they use their tails for balance.
22. If you keep a goldfish. in a dark room, it will become pale!
23. Cows can sleep standing up, but they can only dream lying down.
24. The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.” uses every letter of the alphabet.
25. The average fox weighs 14 pounds.
26. The scientific name of the red fox is Vulpes vulpes.
27. Alligators can live up to 100 years.
28. A single elephant tooth can weigh as much as 9 pounds.
29. The turkey is one of the most famous birds in North America.
30. A housefly hums in the key of F.
31. During World War II, Americans tried to train bats to drop bombs.
32. Canis lupus lupus is the scientific name for a grey wolf.
33. To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaw, push your thumb into its eyeballs-it will let you go instantly.
34. It is much easier for dogs to learn spoken commands if they are given in conjunction with hand signals or gestures.
35. Even a small amount of alcohol placed on a scorpion will make it go crazy and sting itself to death!
36. Male rabbits are called “bucks,” females are “does.”
37. The flamingo can only eat when its head is upside down.
38. Animals generate 30 times more waste than humans which is 1.4 billion tons every year.
39. Ants never sleep. Also they don’t have lungs.
40. A group of owls is called a parliament.

Facts about bones

Babies have more bones than adults.

Adults have 206 bones in their bodies, but the same is not true for infants.

The skeleton of a newborn baby has approximately 300 different components, which are a mixture of bones and cartilage. The cartilage eventually solidifies into bone in a process called ossification — for example, the kneecaps of newborns start off as cartilage and become bone in a few years.

Over time, the "extra" bones in infants fuse to form larger bones, reducing the overall number of bones to 206 by adulthood.

The hands and feet contain over half of the body's bones.

Bones come in all shapes and sizes, and are not evenly distributed throughout the body; some areas have far more bones than others. Coming out on top are your hands and feet.

Each hand has 27 bones, and each foot has 26, which means that together the body's two hands and two feet have 106 bones. That is, the hands and feet contain more than half of the bones in your entire body.

Some people have an extra rib that can cause health issues.

Most adults have 24 ribs (12 pairs), but about one in every 500 people has an extra rib, called a cervical rib. This rib, which grows from the base of the neck just above the collarbone, is not always fully formed — it's sometimes just a thin strand of tissue fibers.

Regardless of its form, the extra rib can cause health issues if it squashes nearby blood vessels or nerves. This results in a condition known as thoracic outlet syndrome, which is marked by pain in the shoulder or neck, loss of limb feeling, blood clots and other problems.

Every bone is connected to another bone — with one exception.

The hyoid is a horseshoe-shaped bone in the throat, situated between the chin and the thyroid cartilage. It's also the only bone in the human body not connected to another bone.

The hyoid is often considered the anatomical foundation of speech; because of where it's located, it can work with the larynx (voice box) and tongue to produce the range of human vocalizations. Neanderthals are the only other species to have hyoids like humans, and its presence in those hominids has led scientists to speculate that the Neanderthals had complex speech patterns similar to modern humans.

Interesting facts to increase your GK

Felidae

There are 36 species of cats in this family. Species in this family are found in all areas of the world, except for Australia and Antarctica. They vary in size from the domestic cat to the lion.

The members of this family are built for hunting. They stalk, chase, and pounce on their prey. Unlike the claws found in most carnivores, the claws of species in the cat family are retractable and can be drawn into their paws. This protects their sharp claws from wearing down.

They have sharp canine teeth that help them kill their prey. Most species in this family sever the spinal cord of their prey with their canines. Species in this family have rounded heads and short muzzles. They have excellent eyesight and hearing and a good sense of smell.

The big cats in this family, like the lion, tiger, jaguar and leopard, can roar, but they can't purr. The small cats in this family, along with the pumas and the cheetah, can purr, but they can't roar! Most species in this order are solitary and hunt at night.

Species in this family include the cheetah, the caracal, the Chinese desert cat, the jaguarundi, the ocelot, the serval, the Eurasian lynx, the fishing cat, the lion, the tiger, and the snow leopard.

Electric Eels

This can be source of energy. An electric eel is a fish capable of generating a 400 V electric discharge. This mechanism is used by the fish to defend itself from predators and to hunt small fish – but its main purpose is that of a radar system, a replacement for its nearly blind eyes. 

This fish has fascinated us since the very moment someone realized its awesome electric power, so the next step was obvious: find a way to use it. A Japanese aquarium has already used an eel to light up a Christmas tree, so maybe the future electrical generator in our homes will be a small pond full of eels.

Solar wind

Solar power is already recognized as one of the cleanest energy sources currently available; however, solar panels still have several economic and practical limitations. Fortunately, scientists are already working on another method of drawing power from the sun: solar wind. Not exactly a wind as we know it, solar wind is more like a constant flow of accelerated particles, which could be used to generate energy using a sail made of copper. 

The earth does not receive this flow directly thanks to our atmosphere, so the power generator would need to be placed in space. This might be difficult, but it is nothing compared to the biggest issue of this technology – how to send the generated power back to earth. The best idea so far has been to send it with a laser beam.

Unusual and amazing snakes

Sea snakes

Sea snakes are easily the most unusual of all snakes. They belong to the same family as cobras and coral snakes (Elapidae), but they have adapted to a completely marine lifestyle; in some species, the adaptations are simply incredible. There are 62 species recognized to date, and they are found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans; they are all extremely venomous, with some species, such as the Beaked Sea Snake, having venom up to ten times more powerful than a cobra’s. One sea snake species, the Belcher’s sea snake, is considered by experts to be the most toxic of all snakes, marine or otherwise. Fortunately, sea snakes are usually docile and human fatalities are exceedingly rare. Most sea snakes give birth to live young; this means that they don’t have to return to a beach to lay eggs as sea turtles do (except for a few species). As a result, they have practically lost the broad scales on their belly, which other snakes use to move on land, and most sea snakes are completely helpless out of the water. Some species are indeed so well adapted to the sea, that they can even absorb oxygen directly from the water, through their skin! They also have special glands on their tongue, which expel the excess of salt from the snake’s organism every time it flicks its tongue.

Flying snake

Flying snakes are found in the rainforests of India and southeastern Asia, and, despite their rather alarming name, they can’t actually fly. They are, however, accomplished gliders. When a Flying Snake wants to go from one tree to another, it launches itself into the air while flaring out its ribs and sucking in its stomach, thus flattening and widening its body and turning into a pseudo-concave wing. As amazing as it may sound, Flying Snakes are even better gliders than flying squirrels. While squirrels can glide up to 60 meters from one tree to another, Flying Snakes can glide up to 100 meters or more, and they actually ”slither” in mid air, which gives them better stability and some degree of control over their ”flight”. Flying snakes are venomous, but not dangerous to humans. They feed mostly on lizards and other small animals, and spend most of their time up trees.

Horned viper

Found in the deserts of Northern Africa and the Middle East, horned vipers are small, usually under 50 cms long. They often have a pair of horns over the eyes, but there are also some individuals that lack them completely, and, therefore, can be easily mistaken for other vipers. They are venomous, but their bite is usually non fatal to humans. When threatened they rub their coils together to produce a warning sound before they strike. The horned viper was formally named ”Cerastes cerastes” in 1768, by Austrian naturalist Nicolaus Laurenti. Cerastes was a mythical Greek monster, a serpent that hid under the sand in the desert and ambushed any passing creature, using its horns as a lure. Ironically, the horned viper itself may have been the real life inspiration for the mythical Cerastes! Indeed, the horned viper hunts by hiding under the sand (leaving only its horns, eyes and nose exposed) and striking at any small animal (mostly rodents and lizards) that comes close. Ancient observers may have exaggerated the snake’s size and dangerousness, giving origin to the Cerastes myth, which Laurenti remembered when naming the horned viper centuries later. The horned viper’s horns, however, are not used as a lure; to date, no one really knows what the horns are used for, or why some horned vipers have them and some don’t.