Unbelievable science facts
Human body
1. Children have 100 more bones in their bodies than adults. Babies have about 300 bones at birth. As we age, these bones shrink to 207 and form the skeleton of an adult human.
2. During the summer, the Eiffel Tower in Paris is about 15 centimeters long. This is because when a substance is heated, its particles move further and it takes on a larger mass - which is known as thermal expansion. Conversely, when the temperature drops it causes contraction again.
3. In 2.3 billion years, the earth will heat up so much that no life will exist. After that time, the earth will turn into a huge desert-like Mars. Scientists have speculated that the sun will eventually swallow up our earth.
4. About 20% of the world's oxygen comes from the Amazon rainforest alone. Our atmosphere is made up of about 6 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen. Covering an area of 5.5 million square kilometers (2.1 million square miles), the Amazon rainforest provides significant amounts of oxygen and absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide.
5. The earth is a huge magnet. Inside the core of the earth is a sphere of liquid iron. Changes in temperature and density create currents of iron, which in turn create electric currents. These currents create a magnetic field.
6. The Hawaiian Islands are moving closer to Alaska by 7.5 inches each year. The Earth's crust is divided into giant pieces called tectonic plates. These plates are in constant motion. Hot and less dense rocks, however, rise before cooling and sinking, giving rise to circular convection currents that gradually remove tectonic plates above them. Hawaii sits in the middle of the Pacific Plate, which is slowly flowing back to the North American plate and back to Alaska.
7. A neutron star is the remnant of a massive star that has run out of fuel. When a dead star explodes in a supernova, its core collapses on its own due to gravity, creating a very dense neutron star. Surprisingly, one teaspoon of neutron star weighs 6 billion tons.
8. There are some metals on earth that are so reactive that they actually explode on contact with water. Some of these metals are potassium, sodium, lithium, rubidium and cesium.
9. Chalk is made from billions of microscopic plankton fossils. A single-celled alga called coccolithophores has lived in the world's oceans for 200 million years.
10. It takes only 8 minutes and 9 seconds for light to come from the sun to the earth. Light travels 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second in space. 8 minutes and 9 seconds is a very short time to travel 93 million miles between the earth and the sun.
