Interesting facts

Brogan

Legend
Staff Member
This is a thread for interesting little scientific, technological or related facts, which don't necessarily deserve a thread of their own (although we can always split posts off into standalone threads if they develop into discussions).

Here's one to start us off...

"The air we breathe isn't exactly clean, and we take in many dangerous elements with every breath.

"We need a mechanism to remove all the junk we breathe in, and the way it's done is with a very sticky gel, called mucus, that catches these particles and removes them with the help of tiny cilia."

"The cilia are constantly beating, even while we sleep.

"In a co-ordinated fashion, they push mucus, containing foreign objects, out of the lungs, and we either swallow it or spit it out.

"These cilia even beat for a few hours after we die. If they stopped, we'd be flooded with mucus that provides a fertile breeding ground for bacteria."
I have emboldened the interesting bit at the bottom. I never knew that.

Taken from here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19357090
 
Venous Thrombo Embolism causes more deaths in the UK per annum than Breast Cancer, AIDS and Road Traffic Accidents combined.
 
2 galaxies just like our own have just been found

http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/article00543.html

image_543.jpg
 
All though, really, we have no idea what our Galaxy actually looks like becasue we've never seen it. We think it looks like that but no one actually knows.
 
Whilst we need oxygen to live it also the thing that makes us age and eventually kills us, Michael Jackson believed that sleeping in an oxygen tent would keep him young but he was seriously misguided, but most people know he wasn't exactly normal in the head don't they..
 
Whilst we need oxygen to live it also the thing that makes us age and eventually kills us, Michael Jackson believed that sleeping in an oxygen tent would keep him young but he was seriously misguided, but most people know he wasn't exactly normal in the head don't they..

Didn't know that, but just read a bit about it. And isn't it only an unstable oxygen molecule that can damage cells?
 
There's a photograph I find particularly terrifying:

pompeii.jpg


In the foreground are the ruins of Pompeii but in the background are towns and urban areas that have been built since the latest sub-pliniian eruptions, which are actually much closer to Vesivius than Pompeii is, and sit right at the foot of the volcano.
 
There is an internet rumour that the guage used on our railways is related to the width of two yoked horses - 4ft 8". This is because the same companies who made trains also made horse drawn carriages so it was easier for them to use existing jigs and fixtures when constructing the railway carriages. So is someone calls you a horses arse it quite a useful measure.
 
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