Random Facts I Think About Every Now And Then

• There is a hexagon shape on the north pole of Saturn that twice as big as the earth. No one know why. This is likely formed by a jet stream first discovered by the Voyager missions and confirmed by Cassini mission in 2004 to 2017. Though not as famous as the red spot on Jupiter, this feature is just as mysterious.

• Prince hated that Sinead O’Connor became a superstar by using his song “Nothing Compares To You. In her memoir, Sinead said Prince invited her to his mansion for dinner and berated her and proposed a pillow fight but put a hard object in his pillow and attacked O’Connor. She fled and he gave a brief chase in his car

• An average cumulous cloud weighs around 500 tonnes. How does it “float”? Essentially, the density of the cloud is less than the density of the surrounding air, allowing it to float.

• Pluto has not completed a full orbit around the sun since it’s discovery. It takes around 250 earth years for Pluto to orbit the sun and Clyde Tombaugh discovered it in 1930. So it will complete the orbit from and to the point where we last saw will be in 2180. Also it went from a planet to a dwarf planet.

• A note book from Srinivas Ramanujam which was discovered in late 70s inspired and challenged mathematicians to new research in number theory which is used in areas like quantum topology and string theory. And like everything else that’s original and unique to India, the British have it housed in England. If they could, they would have moved the Taj Mahal to London.

• Venus rotates backward and there are no successful theories that explain why. The sunrises in west and sets in east on Venus (if you could have seen the sun cause Venus has a very thick atmosphere).

• The Moon is Moving Away from Earth. Each year, the Moon drifts approximately 4 cm further away from Earth due to tidal forces. This slow migration has implications for Earth, including affecting the length of a day and the extent of tidal effects.

• The potato helped stabilize the population of Europe and possibly helped it become the power house of the 16 to 20th centaury.

• We humans have bacteria on and within us. It is estimated, the ratio is 1:1 when compared to the number of cells that make 1 human being. The bacteria within us, plays crucial role in our health (digestion, producing vitamins, helping our immune system and protecting against pathogens). We would not survive without bacteria. They can survive without us easily. So the question is, are we just vessels created by bacteria? Are we the by product of bacteria evolution?

• Human species will die off one day. The question is how. Asteroid Impact? Super volcanic Eruptions? Solar Flares or Cosmic Events? Surprisingly (or rather, not surprisingly), I have read studies that more than likely we humans will die off because of Climate change or a Nuclear war. Imagine, that our end may come not from the indifferent hand of nature, but from our own.

Have a good day!