20 Interesting Science Facts (#2)

To hear a interesting fact a day you can follow me on twitter where I use the hashtag #InterestingScience. Click here to see more interesting science facts.

1. The red planet could once have been blue. Mars once had liquid water until it lost its magnetic field.
2. Did you know seabirds have glands near their eyes that allow them to drink seawater.
3. Did you know Mercury is not the hottest planet in the solar system.
4. Venus has the hottest surface temperature but Jupiter has the hottest core temperature in the solar system.
5. Every year the moon moves about 3.8cm away from the Earth.
6. Smallpox has been eradicated from the population thanks to vaccinations.
7. Astronauts can weld in space without a heat source. Its called cold welding and was first discovered in the 1940s.
8. If you keep the fsrit and lsat lteetr the smae but mix the rset of the wrod up you can sltil raed the snecetne.
9. Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in 1961. He died 7 years later in a plane crash at the age of 34.
10. Bromine and mercury are the only elements that are liquid at room temperature.
11. Astatine has a half-life of 8.1hrs. At any given time there is only an estimated 28g of the element on the earth.
12. A mars-sized object named Theia hit the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. The debris from the collision formed the moon.
13. The word “science” derives from Latin word scientia meaning knowledge.
14. The space shuttle Discovery has 148,221,675 miles on its clock and has spent 365 days, 22 hours, 39 minutes, 33 seconds in space.
15. “Moon” was Buzz Aldrins’s mother’s maiden name. #InterestingScience
16. In space no one can hear you burp. This is because you can’t really burp in space.
17. Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the sun some parts reach -173C on its surface.
18. Our sun loses 260 million tonnes of material every day.
19. Oxygen was the original pollutant.
20. Mitochondria and chloroplast where originally independent bacteria.