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How many facial expressions do cats have?
🐈 Cats display at least 276 different facial expressions, according to a study.
😺😾🙀 About 46% of these expressions are friendly, nearly 37% are aggressive and roughly 17% are ambiguous. Each expression combines about four of 26 unique facial movements, including various ear positions, parted lips, jaw drops, dilated or constricted pupils, blinks, pulled lip corners, nose licks, protracted or retracted whiskers.
😽 The findings show cats are more articulate and affectionate than previously thought.
🐈⬛ Although the researchers haven’t been able to compare their results with those of wild felines, they do know that all close relatives of the domestic cat are ferociously solitary animals. Pet cats might have retained some of that defensive “wild” communication, but they probably started to pick up friendly facial expressions over the course of their 10,000-year history with humans.
ℹ️😻 International Cat Day takes place on August 8.
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Where were the world’s first traffic lights installed?
🚦Every year on August 5th, International Traffic Light Day is observed and highlights the importance of the traffic light.
🚥 The world's first traffic light was a manually operated gas-lit signal installed in London, Great Britain, in 1868 ⬆️. It showed a red or green light at night. In 1869 a gas leak caused an explosion, injuring its policeman operator, and the same year this traffic light was removed.
🚦 The history of the first electric traffic light starts with the installation of the first electric traffic signal system in Cleveland, USA, on August 5, 1914. That first traffic light signal only had two colors – green and red ⬆️.
🚥 In 1920 the first three-coloured traffic lights with red, yellow and green lights were put to service in New York and Detroit, USA.
🚦The first electric traffic lights in Europe were installed in the 1920s. Traffic lights returned to London in 1926.
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Why does Earth appear blue from space?
🛰🚀 From space, satellites and astronauts mostly see the Earth as a blue globe.
🔵 The color is produced because the blue part of the Sun’s light is scattered in all directions by air molecules—eventually reaching our eyes from so many angles that the entire sky looks blue. That blue light is reflected back into space by oceans that cover about 71% of our planet.
🌐 The entire planet isn’t blue, of course. The clouds themselves are white, reflecting the white, direct sunlight back out at any onlookers. Ice — such as the caps on our planet’s poles — appears white for the same reasons. The continents, similarly, appear either brown or green from a great distance, depending on the seasons and how covered-in-plants the terrain is.
⚫️ The Earth only appears blue if you are looking at it from outer space on the side that is being lit by the sun. It will appear black when orbiting around a part of the Earth that is experiencing night.
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How many wild tigers are left in the world ?
🐅 There are around 5,000 tigers left in the wild today, according to different scientific sources.
🐅🇮🇳India is home to some 3,700 wild tigers – approximately 75 per cent of the world’s wild tiger population. Since 1973, the Indian government is implementing Project Tiger ⬆️, an ambitious tiger conservation program.
🐅🇷🇺🇨🇳 The second largest wild tiger’s population tiger is found in Russia and northeastern China. Only in Russia, the number of the Amur/Siberian tiger ⬆️ may now reach 600-700 animals.
🐯 The International/Global Tiger Day is observed every year on July 29.
The day was established in 2010 at the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia that brought 13 tiger range nations to address the alarming revelation that 97 per cent of wild tigers had vanished since the beginning of the 20th century.
The nations came together to join Tx2, intending to double the tiger population from 3,200 to at least 6,000 tigers.
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When and what would be the next supercontinent?
Scientists believe that supercontinents form on a cycle every several hundred million years or so, and we should expect another one in 200-250 million years.
There are currently 4️⃣ theories/models on the subject, shown at the video ⬆️.
Novopangaea (the antipodes of Pangea): if the Atlantic keeps opening and the Pacific keeps closing, the Americas would collide with the northward drifting Antarctica, and then into the already collided Africa-Eurasia.
Pangea Proxima: with the Atlantic Ocean closing, the Americas, Europe and Africa are brought back together and would be surrounded by a super Pacific Ocean.
Amasia: all the continents, except Antarctica, keep drifting north and and merge as the Arctic Ocean closes.
Aurica: if both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are closing, the European and African plates would then rejoin the Americas.
ℹ️According to some experts, Novopangaea is the most likely future supercontinent.
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Who proposed the concept of supercontinents and what is the theory of continental drift?
Geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) ⬆️ first proposed the concept of supercontinents in 1912.
Wegener noticed that the shorelines of Africa and South America seemingly fit together like giant jigsaw puzzle pieces and therefore was convinced that all of Earth’s continents were once part of a supercontinent Pangaea.
Wegener suggested that the continental landmasses were “drifting” across the Earth.
Fossils of similar organisms across widely disparate continents ⬆️ encouraged his revolutionary theory of continental drift.
But Wegener could not explain the mechanism for how his theory works and thought that perhaps the rotation of the Earth caused the continents to shift towards and apart from each other. (It doesn't.)
Wegener’s theory was rejected for decades until scientists finally confirmed some of his ideas with the modern theory of plate tectonics.
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What was the most recent all-in-one supercontinent?
The most recent and certainly the best known supercontinent is Pangaea.
The name "Pangaea'' comes from Ancient Greek words meaning "all Earth."
This is how Pangaea could look like ⬆️.
According to scientists, after Columbia, Rodinia and Pannotia, Pangaea was one of four all-in-one supercontinents that included all of Earth’s landmasses at their time.
Pangaea existed in the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic when the dinosaurs arose.
Pangaea split when the Central Atlantic Ocean opened.
It was the progenitor of today's continents, and many of today’s mountain ranges were formed at the time of collision of continents and lithospheric plates.
However, today researchers believe that Pangaea never included all of Earth's landmasses. For example, modern-day north and south China were independent islands separated to the east of Pangaea around 359-299 million years ago.
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Why was one of the supercontinents called Rodinia and what modern continent was likely the core of it?
The giant land formation after Columbia was called Rodinia from the Russian “родина” (“rodina” means “motherland”) or “родить” (“rodit” means “to give birth”).
The ocean of that time — Mirovia comes also from the Russian word “мир” (“mir” means “world”) or “мировой” (“mirovoi” means “worldwide”, “global”).
Researchers don't know exactly how big Rodinia was, but North America was likely the core of it.
This is how Rodinia could look like from the South Pole ⬆️.
According to scientists, during Rodinia’s existence, the first multicellular organisms began to appear in oceans around the world.
Some researchers also believe that the theory of “Snowball Earth” refers to the period the breakup of this supercontinent.
ℹ️ The Snowball Earth is a geohistorical hypothesis that in the distant past ice smothered the entire planet, from the poles to the equator at least twice.
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At the time of which supercontinent could the first eukaryotes emerge?
The first eukaryotic organisms could emerge in the world’s oceans at the time of the supercontinent Kenorland, researchers suggest.
This supercontinent was formed in the Neoarchean era.
The name was given in accordance with the Kenoran orogeny – a Proterozoic phase of mountain building affecting the shield area in what is now the Lake Superior region of Canada.
Kenorland formed after the merger of several cratons (including Kaapvaal and Pilbara). The core of it came together around the junction of the Laurentia, Baltica, Western Australia and Kalaharia cratons and most of the Nena craton.
It is believed that Kenorland was only in the law latitudes.
⬆️ This is how this supercontinent could look like, marked continents and cratons being parts of it.
As Kenorland split apart, geologic events and the rise of oxygen-producing, single-celled life created the conditions for the Earth’s first glaciers.
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Why was the first supercontinent named Vaalbara?
The earliest and the most theoretical, the supercontinent Vaalbara is postulated to have existed about 3,5 billion years ago, in the early Archean Eon.
The name "Vaalbara" comes from the last four letters in the names of two cratons: the Kaapvaal craton in Southern Africa ⬆️ and the Pilbara craton in Western Australia ⬆️. Paleomagnetic data indicate that about 3.8 billion years ago they were very close to each other.
Containing some of the oldest rock on the surface of the planet, the Kaapvaal and Pilbara cratons also show evidence of four large meteorite impacts between 3.2 and 3.5 billion years ago.
There are three lesser-known cratons in East Antarctica that were probably included in the land mass of Vaalbara.
Geological evidence from the time of Vaalbara indicates that intracrustal melting and recycling must have been a major part of the early days of continent building. The planet must have been hot.
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Why are many children fussy eaters?
A new study demonstrates that at the age of six, children become extra fussy, particularly about the texture of their meal. The researchers asked 485 children between the ages of 5 and 12 to choose between six different foods with and without lumps, seeds and pieces of fruit in them ⬆️. In 76% of the instances, 6-year-olds opted for foods without lumps, the highest preference rate observed across the age groups.
According to researchers, food neophobia – a fear and rejection of eating new or unfamiliar foods – may be the main explanation for such children's eating behavior. Food neophobia is thought to be a protective function against dangerous foods, which seems to be particularly important for 6-7 aged children when they start to become more mobile and independent.
However, the study showed that the "anti-chunk phase" gradually goes the other way in 7–12-year-olds, even if parents often need to offer new foods up to 15 times.
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What is the oldest existing bridge?
The Arkadiko Bridge, also called the Kazarma Bridge, in modern Greece 🇬🇷 is believed to be the oldest existing bridge in the world.
⬆️ It is an arch bridge and one of the oldest of this type still used by the local population.
In Mycenaean (last phase of the Greek Bronze Age from 1600 – 1100 BCE) times, this bridge, built around 1300 – 1190 BCE, served as a highway in the area.
ℹ️ Besides the Arkadiko Bridge, among 🔟oldest bridges in the world,
🇹🇷4️⃣ are located in modern Turkey
Karamagara Bridge (built c.5th or 6th century CE)
Bridge near Limyra (built possibly c.3rd century CE)
Cendere Bridge (built c.200 CE)
Bridge Over River Meles/Caravan Bridge (built c.850 BCE)
🇮🇹2️⃣ in modern Italy
Ponte Sant’Angelo (built 134 CE)
Pons Fabricius (built 62 BCE)
🇮🇷1️⃣ in modern Iran – Band-e Kaisar (built c.260-270 CE)
🇪🇸1️⃣ in modern Spain – Alcántara Bridge (built 104-106 CE)
🏴1️⃣ in modern England – Tarr Steps (built possibly c.1000 BCE).
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How did the dinosaur with the strongest bite look like?
🦖 T.rex (Tyrannosaurus rex) that stomped the Earth from about 68 million to 66 million years ago is a repeat science fiction star for a reason: its bite was ferocious and could deliver up to six tons of pressure or about 50,000-60,000 newtons.
🦖 In museum halls, paleo art, and feature films, T. rex has traditionally been depicted with lipless jaws, banana-size fangs and a sinister grin, as seen in the top two illustrations ⬆️. But now, new evidence suggests these animals had lipped mouths, like modern-day lizards.
🦈🆚🦖 Among prehistoric animals, a possible contender of T. rex for the most powerful bite could be the huge shark Megalodon (Otodus megalodon) that terrorized the seas from 15 million to 3.6 million years ago with a bite force of up to 182,200 newtons.
ℹ️ Nevertheless, for its body size, the mighty T. rex’s bite was far less impressive than the bite of a much smaller modern dinosaur — a tiny Galapagos finch.
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Which living animals have the strongest bite?
Bite force is the force that the muscles and bones of the upper and lower jaw generate when an animal bites.
🐊🏆 The saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) has the strongest physically measured bite force at 16,414 newtons (newtons measure force magnitude) or about 1,674 kilograms/3,689 pounds of force.
The saltwater crocodile is the largest living reptile species and is found in saltwater and freshwater habitats spanning from Southeast Asia, and down to Australia’s northern coast.
Two aquatic predators could possibly beat the croc, but their bite forces have not been measured in a live setting.
The strongest bite force could be that of the orca (Orcinus orca), estimated at 84,516 newtons or about 8,618 kilograms/19,000 pounds or force, distantly followed by the bite force of a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias)🦈, at about 18,000 newtons or 1,835 kilograms/4,045 pounds of force, according to computer models.
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What is the most isolated location on Earth?
Nowhere on Earth one can find a place further from dry land than Point Nemo.
It is also known as “the oceanic pole of inaccessibility”, and is located at the point of coordinates 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W in the South Pacific Ocean, approximately 2,688 km (1,670 ml) away from the nearest land.
Geographically, it is located at the intersection of the equator, the International Date Line, and the 90th meridian west.
The nearest islands to Point Nemo are unpopulated: the Pitcairn Islands’ Ducie Island to the north; Motu Nii, a small island that is part of the Easter Island chain, to the northeast, and Maher island, off the shore of Marie Byrd Land, an unclaimed territory in Antarctica, to the south.
To find the closest hint of civilization, one should travel by boat during more than two weeks to one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands, Easter Island, which is located about 3,540 km (2,200 ml) to the west of Chile.
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Why is World Day for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons observed on August 6?
🇺🇸💥☢️🇯🇵 Also known as Hiroshima Day, World Day for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is observed on August 6th every year as a solemn commemoration of the atomic bombing by the United States of America of the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.
✔️On August 6th 1945, during World War II, a U.S. B-29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb (codenamed "Little Boy") on Hiroshima. It was the first ever use of atomic weapons in warfare.
✔️ The bombing of Hiroshima and that of Nagasaki on August 9th resulted in immense destruction and loss of life. The immediate aftermath saw these Japanese cities engulfed in a massive firestorm, with a large area reduced to ruins. The estimated death toll was up to 150,000 people.
🕊 World Day for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons serves as a reminder of the devastating impact of nuclear weapons and advocates for peace and the abolition of nuclear armaments.
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What is a blue planet where it rains molten glass?
🌏 Earth is called the 'Blue Planet'.
🔵 There's another "blue marble" alien planet about 60 light-years from Earth, where the world is anything but friendly to life. Known as HD 189733b, this planet ⬆️ is a giant, gaseous world resembling Jupiter, but much hotter. With a surface temperature of 980°C (1800°F) and winds that reach 6,400 km/h (4,000 m.p.h.), it’s not even remotely likely to be home to flora and fauna.
💦 Moreover, on HD 189733b there are rainstorms of glassy silicate particles, because of which, according to researchers, it appears blue.
ℹ️ HD 189733b is one of so-called hot Jupiter alien planets that are large, roughly Jupiter-sized planets and become very hot by circling tight around their stars. Hot Jupiters are easy to spot from a distance because as they pass in front of a star, their disc blots out a large portion of the star's light; HD189733b causes a three per cent drop in its star's light, for example.
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What is pareidolia?
Pareidolia (pronounced "par-i-DOH-lee-a") is a brain phenomenon in which a person or even a group of people see or hear something significant in a random image or pattern.
The word is derived from the Greek words para, meaning something faulty, wrong, instead of, and the noun eidōlon, meaning image, form or shape.
Face pareidolia occurs when humans see faces in inanimate objects, e.g. in a tree trunk or a piece of burnt toast.
According to researchers:
🔺 the human brain can see not only facial features, but also emotion in inanimate objects
🔺 humans are likelier to see male, rather than female faces, in inanimate objects
🔺 feminine-looking illusory faces are recognized as happy faster
🔺 masculine-looking illusory faces are perceived as angry quicker
🔺 face-like patterns activate similar socio-cognitive processes as real faces
🔺 humans have stronger face-like patterns than animals, which shows how important such social information is to humans.
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Why is July 23 important for whales and dolphins?
🐳🐬 23 July is World Whale and Dolphin Day.
This date was chosen in 1986 by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) because on July 23, 1982, for the first time, a total ban on commercial whaling was declared.
Today, this day still raises awareness about the issues facing these beautiful marine mammals.
This decision of the IWC has been successful. The killing of whales has declined precipitously; more than 2 million whales were killed in the century before the moratorium, a small fraction of that since. The reduced hunting pressure has allowed stocks of most whale species to rebound. E.g., since 1986, the western South Atlantic stock of humpback whales, has increased from 1,000 to nearly 25,000.
Except Japan, Iceland and Norway, most countries respect the commercial whaling moratorium. However, the ban on commercial whaling still allows whale harvest by aboriginal peoples in Alaska, Canada and Russia.
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What is the theory of land bridges between continents?
Before Alfred Wegener, other scientists also tried to unravel mysteries of Earth’s geology.
In the mid-1800s an Austrian geologist Eduard Suess (1831-1914) tried to solve how mountain ranges form and was tipped off by similar fern fossils found in South America, India and Africa.
Suess developed a theory of sea level rise and regression over time that would have linked together the southern hemisphere continents with land bridges.
This theory is only partially correct because there are land bridges on Earth, e.g. the Bering land bridge between Russian Siberia and American Alaska, but there isn't one between South America, Africa, and India, the ocean depths in those areas being too deep to support the land bridge idea of Suess.
Nevertheless, Suess first hypothesized the existence of a supercontinent Gondwana or Gondwanaland, which name he got from the Gondwana region of central India, and the Tethys Ocean.
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Which supercontinent emerged twice?
Gondwana is a supercontinent that emerged twice in the geological history of Earth.
The Early Gondwana (pre-Pangea) existed around 550-330 mya, and, together with Baltica, Siberia and Laurentia, was one of four landmasses that broke away from Pannotia.
⬆️ It was then the largest landmass on Earth, bringing together about 64% of the planet's landmass, but some geologists still don’t consider it a supercontinent.
The Early Gondwana’s assembly created the first massive mountain range on Earth as high as the Himalayas. Remnants of these mountains are found in Brazil and northern Africa.
The Late Gondwana (post-Pangea) emerged about 175 mya ago as the Southern part of Pangaea ⬆️ (the Northern part was Laurasia) and broke up about 150-140 mya.
It was then characterized by a tropical climate, a wide variety of flora and fauna, and a significant tectonic activity.
Today, the remnants of the Late Gondwana can be found in the southern hemisphere.
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Which of the possible supercontinents was the most short-lived?
The supercontinent Pannotia was formed about 650 mln years ago and lasted until 540 mln years ago. So, Pannotia could be the most short-lived of all possible supercontinents.
The jury is still out on whether Pannotia can rightfully be called a supercontinent.
According to researchers, Africa could be at the center of Pannotia, surrounded by other landmasses the time. This happened because Pannotia was formed by the subduction of exterior oceans (which pulled Rodinia apart and pushed Pannotia together).
This is how Pannotia could look like from the South Pole ⬆️.
During the existence of Pannotia there were two proto-oceans — Panthalassa and the Pan-African ocean, and this supercontinent broke apart with the opening of the Iapetus Ocean.
Since the major part of the land in those days was just near the poles, it is believed that the glaciations reached its peak just about 600 mln years ago.
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How big was the supercontinent Columbia?
At peak accumulation, about 1.8 billion years ago, virtually all of Earth's land mass was joined to the supercontinent Columbia creating a surface estimated to have been about 12,900 km from North to South and about 4,800 km in its widest part from West to East.
It is named "Columbia" because scientists posited that the landmass connected what is now eastern India with the Columbia basalts region in what is now North America.
These are two images how this supercontinent could look like ⬆️.
Scientists believe that once sutured together, Columbia was long-lived, existing for more than 500 million years.
The landmass of this supercontinent began to fragment around 1.6 billion years ago because of increased magma plume activity in the Earth's mantle. The breakup was slow and could last from 1.6 to 1.2 billion years ago.
According to researchers, during the time of Columbia, the first plants colonized land in the form of red algae.
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Where are the largest parts of the supercontinent Ur located today?
The largest parts of the possible supercontinent Ur that survive today are located in India, according to experts. This photo ⬆️ shows rock from eastern India, laid down during the Archean Eon. That rock is on the edge of the Eparchean Unconformity, a zone that shows a major time gap between the rock on one side and the rock on the other (a similar unconformity is found in the basement rock of the Grand Canyon).
The specifics of Ur are also very theoretical, and despite its supercontinent status, the land mass would have been smaller than modern-day Australia. This is how Ur could look like ⬆️.
This supercontinent is called Ur from the German prefix “ur” which means “original”, “fountainhead”.
Scientists believe that Ur formed from the same cratons as Vaalbara. So areas of Ur are also parts of Australia and Africa (Madagascar). But it is not believed that Ur is not a continuation of Vaalbara nor a successor.
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What supercontinents have existed throughout Earth’s history?
📌 The continents we live on today are moving, and over hundreds of millions of years they get pulled apart and smashed together again. Occasionally, this tectonic plate-fueled process brings most of the world's landmasses together to form a massive supercontinent.
📌 There's no strict definition for a supercontinent, but researchers say it should include around 75% of the available landmass.
Supercontinents are also defined as single connected continents made up of all or most of the land on the surface of Earth.
📌 Recently, thanks to research into the mineral distribution and carbon dating, scientists can piece together what past supercontinents might have looked like, how they formed and how they broke apart.
📌 Scientists believe that new supercontinents are forming and splitting up about every 400 to 500 million years.
📌 Although all models of early Earth’s plate tectonics are very theoretical, researchers can generally agree that there have been a total of seven or eight supercontinents ⬇️ and are relatively sure of at least three (Columbia, Rodinia and Pangaea).
🟤 The first and earliest supercontinent to have existed is Vaalbara that is suspected to have formed 3.6 billion years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Ur formed approximately 3 billion years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Kenorlan came together between about 2.72 and 2.45 billion years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Columbia, also called Nuna or Hudsonland, formed about 1.7 billion years ago and broke up approximately 1.5 billion years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Rodinia existed from around 1 billion years ago to 700 million years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Gondwana formed around 530 million years ago and was the largest landmass on Earth for more than 200 million years.
🟤 The supercontinent Pannotia may have briefly existed around 560 million years ago.
🟤 The most recent supercontinent, Pangaea, formed around 320 million years ago and broke up around 175 million years ago.
📌 The first supercontinents may have formed from the same cratons – stable blocks of Earth’s crust that form the center of a continent. These cratons can now be found in different parts of modern continents.
📌 Since subduction and seafloor melt replace plate tectonic material, nearly all of the land that makes up the Earth’s crust is less than 200 million years old, so it still difficult to find evidence of the supercontinents before Pangaea.
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Which country has the longest bridge?
🥇🇨🇳 China has the longest bridge in the world – the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge ⬆️.
it has a length 164km (104 miles) and is part of the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway.
It was built at a cost of around $8.5bn ( $52m for each km of the bridge) and can withstand not only seismic activity, but also extreme weather, and even a hit from a 300,000-ton naval vessel.
Today, China can be called a country of longest bridges, as, among 🔟 longest bridges in the world, 6️⃣ are located in continental China.
Besides the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, China has
Cangde Grand Bridge (1️⃣1️⃣6️⃣ km, #️⃣3️⃣ in the world)
Tianjin Grand Bridge (1️⃣1️⃣3️⃣ km, #️⃣4️⃣in the world)
Weinan Weihe Grand Bridge (7️⃣9️⃣ km, #️⃣5️⃣in the world)
Beijing Grand Bridge (4️⃣8️⃣ km, #️⃣7️⃣in the world)
Wuhan Metro Bridge (3️⃣7️⃣ km, #️⃣9️⃣in the world)
ℹ️ At last count in 2021, China has a whopping 961,100 road bridges, and that's not including other types of transport.
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Who made the first bridges?
ℹ️ The bridge is a structure that provides passage over obstacles (valleys, rough terrain, water) by spanning them with natural or human-made materials.
🔺 The ancient Assyrians and Egyptians could have been the first to introduce bridge building. Stone arches can be found over the entrance of the Great Pyramid of Giza (3200 to 4200 BC) but they were not true arches as they were made of single sloping stones meeting over an opening.
🔺 The first real evidence of bridge-building technology can be traced back to Babylonian society in about 4000BC. The river Euphrates was spanned in the center of the city of Babylon by a single brick arch, one furlong (220m) long and 10m wide ⬆️.
🔺 In China, masonry arches were also known to have existed, documented at around 2000BC. Arches can be seen in the Great Wall of China (completed 214BC) for carrying it over rivers.
🔺 The Romans incorporated the true semicircular arch into their designs in about 500-600BC.
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Which living creatures exert the most powerful bite force for its body size?
To determine an animal’s bite strength, some studies measure force, others measure pressure, and some take into account body mass in proportion to force. To compare bite forces in taxa of greatly differing body masses a bite force quotient (BFQ) is calculated as a regression of the quotient of an animal's bite force divided by its body mass.
The carnivorous mammal with the strongest bite for its body size is the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) ⬆️. Being only about the size of a big housecat, this marsupial with jaws that can open to an 80-degree angle, can produce a bite force of 553 newtons or about 56 kg of force and a BFQ of 181 (by comparison, the tiger’s BFQ is 127).
Some animals with a huge bite aren't even predators. The Galapagos large ground finch (Geospiza magnirostris) ⬆️ weighs only about 33 grams, but its beak can crack tough nuts and seeds with a force of 70 newtons.
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What do sci-fiction-pioneer Jules Verne, horror-writer H.P. Lovecraft, and the Russian space program have in common or what are some interesting facts about Point Nemo?
📍 Who Found Point Nemo?
While the oceanic point of inaccessibility has always existed, it was only just discovered in 1992, some three decades ago, thanks to modern computing and GPS technology. A Croatian-Canadian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela wrote a geospatial program called Hipparchus, and found Point Nemo.
📍 Point Nemo Isn’t Named After A Fish
The etymology of Point Nemo is easily confused with Disney’s well-known protagonist — fish Nemo — in the children’s show Finding Nemo. But Point Nemo was named after the famous fictional character Captain Nemo in Jules Verne’s ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.’ It translates roughly to “no man” in Latin, a name that fits a place so alone in the world.
📍 Point Nemo Is A Confluence of Lifelessness
The Nemo point is an area of the deep ocean with no islands, reefs, or other land structures. Instead, the ocean floor comprises abyssal plains, trenches, and mountain ranges plagued by perpetual darkness and silence. The extreme pressure of the deep sea and cold temperatures make it uninhabitable for most life forms. Currently, only bacteria and tiny crabs have been discovered to live in the volcanic vents on the seafloor near Point Nemo.
📍 Astronauts/Cosmonauts Are The Closest People
Surprisingly, the closest people to Point Nemo are astronauts and cosmonauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) in space. At their closest, they are about 415 km (258 ml) away from the location that marks the spot.
📍 Point Nemo Is A Spacecraft Cemetery
In the 1970s, space organizations found that an extremely remote location, such as Point Nemo, is a safe “scuttling” destination for satellites and spacecraft that are deorbited for decommissioning on expiry.
It is far enough away from air and sea traffic that the spacecraft will not be disturbed, and it is located in an area of the ocean with minimal currents, so the spacecraft and its technology will not drift away.
The first spacecraft to be sent to Point Nemo was the Soviet Union’s Salyut 1 in 1971.
Since then, more than 250 spacecraft have been sent to the graveyard, including the Mir space station, the Skylab space station, and the Beagle 2 Mars lander.
When a spacecraft is sent to Point Nemo, it is deorbited before being allowed to sink to the ocean floor. This procedure is called “geological disposal,” and it ensures that the spacecraft will not pose a threat to future space missions.
The ISS will likewise be decommissioned at Point Nemo in 2028-2030.
Ultimately, Point Nemo is a unique and fascinating place, serving an important role in space exploration.
📍 Point Nemo Is The Home Of Cthulhu
Point Nemo’s location is coincidentally the home of Cthulhu, the fictional cosmic entity created by author H.P. Lovecraft in his famous fictional work — The sunken city.
Cthulhu is a massive monster that is part octopus and part dragon and wields enormous power and influence.
Point Nemo is the perfect place for Cthulhu to hide from the world.
Lovecraft puts the city in the South Pacific Ocean at 47°9′S 126°43′W, very close to Point Nemo.
The fictional submerged city was first referenced in the short story The Call of Cthulhu (1928), written 66 years before the computation and eventual mapping of Point Nemo.
📍 Point Nemo Was Once Thought To Contain Life
In 1997, scientists recorded a very loud sound originating from point Nemo, an otherwise Lifeless/deathly place. The mysterious sound traveled across the Pacific, echoing all the way.
Since then, it’s been known as the Bloop.
Scientists ran with the hypothesis that a large aquatic animal, such as a whale or a giant squid, could have caused the sound.
With Point Nemo’s proximity to H.P Lovecraft’s sunken city, conspiracy theories flew with wild abandon.
But in 2005 researchers concluded that the Bloop was simply a phenomenon caused by large icebergs calving off an ice shelf in the depth of the dark.
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Why does water expand when it freezes?
💧 On heating, liquids expand since the molecules move with greater energy overcoming the intermolecular attraction. On the contrary, liquids usually contract on cooling. But that is not the case with water.
💧 The water molecules consist of 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, the oxygen atom side being slightly negative, while the hydrogen atoms side – slightly positive, forming hydrogen bonds. Upon freezing, the molecules set themselves in a very open arrangement that contains more space than the water in the liquid state. Hence, water expands upon freezing and becomes less dense. On the other hand, it contracts on thawing, much unlike most other liquids.
💧 Water expands approximately by about 10%.
ℹ️ Water is not the only substance that expands when it freezes, other substances are plutonium, germanium, bismuth, gallium, silicon, etc.
✍️ This phenomenon, the anomalous expansion of water, also explains why ice is floating in water.
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