10 true facts that are simply impossible to believe

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Penguins give off laughing gas, turtles breathe through the anus, and capybaras are fish. Almost.

1. The hottest place in the universe is on Earth

Where do you think the highest temperature in the universe is? Probably, you will assume that in the core of some star. But no. Naturally, it is hot there, but there is a place that is warmer.

The absolute temperature record was set in 2012 by a man at the Large Hadron Collider. Scientists pushed heavy ions accelerated to 99% of the speed of light and got a temperature of 5.5 trillion degrees Kelvin. Well, or almost the same in Celsius: plus or minus 273 degrees do not play a role here.

This number, of course, is far from the Planckian Tomilin K. A. Planck values / 100 years of quantum theory. History. Physics of the temperature of the Universe at the time of the Big Bang, but also quite significant. For comparison, the hottest known star, WR 102 Sagittarius, is only heated to 210,000 K.

2. Penguins defecate with laughing gas

In 2019, scientists at the University of Copenhagen studied king penguins on the island of South Georgia, between South America and Antarctica.

And here's what it turned out: penguins are beautiful, but, like most birds, they are extremely uncultured creatures who relieve themselves right where they live. Of course, they are fine, but zoologists are uncomfortable: while walking around the penguin clutches, they have to move around the feces all the time. And this is not only disgusting, but also dangerous.

Guano, penguins contain many compounds of nitrogen and phosphorus. When the faeces decompose, they release nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. The one that dentists use for anesthesia.

After you walk knee-deep in penguin guano for several hours, the roof really starts to go. You feel bad, your head is splitting. You can start laughing and see glitches.

Bo Elberling Professor, Department of Geology, University of Copenhagen

By the way, penguin feces have some effect on the Earth's atmosphere, filling it with greenhouse gases. Nitrogen emissions from one colony of these birds are 100 times stronger than from an agricultural field treated with nitrogen fertilizers. Birds produce so much feces that their footprints are visible to Adelie Penguins Poop So Much, Their Feces Can Be Seen From Space from satellites from space.

Fortunately, however, there are not many penguins in the world to actually fill the atmosphere with gases. But the methane-emitting cows are a much more pressing problem, given the pace of agricultural development.

3. Oxford is older than the Aztec empire

When we talk about the Aztec empire, we imagine a state with a thousand-year history that has vanished in the centuries, cities lost among the jungle, huge stone pyramids and sacrifices with obsidian knives. However, in fact, it is not at all as ancient as we used to think.

This empire was formed in 1429, when the Aztecs conquered their former allies - the state of Tlacopan. And in 1521, Fernando Cortez united with Texcoco - the opponents of the Aztecs - and destroyed the latter. So much for the ancient civilization.

In comparison, Oxford University was founded in 1096. So it is older than the whole empire. But it is not the oldest: the University of Bologna appeared in 1088.

4. Every year 162,719 pints of Guinness are deposited on beards

In 2000, the Guinness brewing company conducted a study that revealed a very sad fact. Dermatologist Robert Dover found that the average person drinks a pint in 10 sips. If he has a mustache and a beard, about 0.56 milliliters of beer settles on them.

It flows down the mustache, does not enter the mouth.

Calculating the average density of mustaches and beards and comparing it with the number of unshaven men, as well as with beer sales, Dover found that bearded men in Great Britain lose up to 162,719 pints of Guinness a year, which remains ingloriously above their lips and in their beards. This costs mods approximately £ 423,070 annually, or approximately $ 536,000 at the exchange rate at the time of the study.

The moral is simple: if you want to drink more beer, shave.

5. From the point of view of the Catholic Church, the capybara is a fish

The cute animal in the picture is a capybara, a relative of a guinea pig. Comes from South America. They are friendly creatures that are kept around the world as pets and are sometimes raised for meat and skins.

In the 16th century, the Catholic Church recognized the meat of these mammals as permissible for consumption during Lent.

The logic was simple: a capybara lives in water, which means it is close to fish, but you can eat fish during fasting. Capybaras are especially eaten in Venezuela.

6. The clouds are heavy, even very

If you think that the phrase "You are as light as a cloud!" - this is a compliment, then you are mistaken. Clouds are pretty heavy things.

Researchers at Oxford and the US Geological Survey calculated the density of water vapor in the atmosphere, established the average volume of the cloud, and found that one cloud, a cubic kilometer in size, weighs about 550 tons. Because there is more water in the clouds than you think. And she weighs a lot.

Believe it or not - lift up a regular 19-liter canister of water for an office cooler.

Fortunately, clouds can still float in the air because the atmosphere beneath them is dense enough to support them.

7. The largest living organism in the world is a mushroom

What kind of creature do you imagine when you hear the phrase "the largest living creature in the world"? An elephant, a blue whale, or a giant squid? This is all a trifle compared to the real king of nature.

Meet: honey mushroom.

A dark honey fungus growing in the Malur Forest Reserve in Oregon, USA, is the largest living organism on planet Earth. The fruiting bodies of the fungus (those very caps with legs) are just the external genital organs, scattering spores for reproduction. The mushroom itself is hiding underground. Its mycelium, that is, mycelium of thin living threads, entangles the roots of an entire forest.

The mushroom covers more than 910 hectares and weighs 35,000 tons. And he is 8 thousand years old. All this time he grew, parasitizing on the roots of trees. And if the mushroom wanted to take over the world, neither Kong nor Godzilla together would stop it. But, fortunately, the honey mushroom is rather phlegmatic and does not eat people. Let us thank nature for this.

8. The Mary River Turtle in Australia can breathe through the anus

Elusor macrurus, or Mary River turtle, is an endemic species of short-necked turtles native to Australia. These reptiles are quite large: their size reaches 50 cm. Algae often grow on their heads and shells, which helps to camouflage, therefore they are often called green-haired turtles.

But the most amazing feature of Cann, J.; Legler, J. M. (1994). The Mary River Tortoise: A New Genus and Species of Short-necked Chelid from Queensland, Australia (Testudines: Pleurodira). Chelonian Conservation and Biology Elusor macrurus - The ability to absorb oxygen through the cloaca, that is, the anus. No, if necessary, turtles can breathe normally through their nostrils. But when you dig at the bottom in search of food, sometimes there is no time to put your head above the water. The solution is to lift your butt and breathe through it.

9. You can make a phone from a cat

In 1929, Princeton University researchers Ernest Wever and Charles Bray studied the structure of the auditory nerve. They didn’t think of anything better how to open the cranium of a live cat and connect electrodes to the auditory nerve. On the other side of the wire there is an amplifier and a telephone receiver.

And when Bray spoke something in the ear of the cat, Vever heard them in the other room through the telephone receiver.

For this experiment, Wever and Bray were awarded the Howard Crosby Warren Medal from the Society for Experimental Psychology in 1936.

The cat, unfortunately, did not survive the experiment, but his sacrifice was not in vain. Thanks to her, cochlear implants were invented, allowing deaf people to hear.

10. Sudan has twice as many pyramids as Egypt

Which country, in your opinion, can be called a state of pyramids? Egypt immediately comes to mind, but it is not.

In Sudan, there are about 255 pyramids, erected by the rulers of the Meroite kingdom 800 years after the Egyptians stopped building their own. In Egypt, there are only 138 pyramids. And even if the Sudanese, or, as it is more correct to call them, the Nubian pyramids are smaller, they are also richly decorated. Although they were plundered more often.

And the South American Indians - Maya, Aztecs, Olmecs and others - together built Michael D. Coe. Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs there are 51 pyramids in total. Apparently, this is because they did not have a custom of building a separate fence for each king, and the pyramids served as temples, not tombs.