Mind blowing science facts
1. There is enough DNA in an average person’s body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back. 17 times
The human genome, the genetic code in each human cell, contains 23 DNA molecules each containing from 500 thousand to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled, or about 5 cm on average. There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body and if you’d uncoil all of the DNA encased in each cell and put them end to end, then these would sum to a total length of 2×10^14 meters or enough for 17 Pluto roundtrips (1.2×10^13 meters/Pluto roundtrip).
2. It can take a photon 40,000 years to travel from the core of sun to surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of way to earth
A photon travels, on average, a particular distance, d, before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction.From the core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) where it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps. The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes between many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, the light that reaches us today is energy produced maybe millions of years ago. Amazing!
3. When Helium is cooled to almost absolute zero (-460°F or -273°C), the lowest temperature possible, it becomes a liquid with surprising properties: it flows against gravity and will start running up and over the lip of a glass container!
We all know helium as a gas for blowing up balloons and making people talk like chipmunks, but what most people don’t know is that it comes in two distinct liquid states, one of which is borderline creepy. When helium is just a few degrees below its boiling point of –452 degrees Fahrenheit (–269 degrees Celsius) it will suddenly be able to do things that other fluids can’t, like dribble through molecule-thin cracks, climb up and over the sides of a dish, and remain motionless when its container is spun. No longer a mere liquid, the helium has become a superfluid—a liquid that flows without friction.
“If you set [down] a cup with a liquid circulating around and you come back 10 minutes later, of course it’s stopped moving,” says John Beamish, an experimental physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Atoms in the liquid will collide with one another and slow down. “But if you did that with helium at low temperature and came back a million years later,” he says, “it would still be moving.
Source:-http://www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/10-quick-scientific-facts-will-blow-mind/
1. There is enough DNA in an average person’s body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back. 17 times
The human genome, the genetic code in each human cell, contains 23 DNA molecules each containing from 500 thousand to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled, or about 5 cm on average. There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body and if you’d uncoil all of the DNA encased in each cell and put them end to end, then these would sum to a total length of 2×10^14 meters or enough for 17 Pluto roundtrips (1.2×10^13 meters/Pluto roundtrip).
2. It can take a photon 40,000 years to travel from the core of sun to surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of way to earth
A photon travels, on average, a particular distance, d, before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction.From the core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) where it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps. The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes between many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, the light that reaches us today is energy produced maybe millions of years ago. Amazing!
3. When Helium is cooled to almost absolute zero (-460°F or -273°C), the lowest temperature possible, it becomes a liquid with surprising properties: it flows against gravity and will start running up and over the lip of a glass container!
We all know helium as a gas for blowing up balloons and making people talk like chipmunks, but what most people don’t know is that it comes in two distinct liquid states, one of which is borderline creepy. When helium is just a few degrees below its boiling point of –452 degrees Fahrenheit (–269 degrees Celsius) it will suddenly be able to do things that other fluids can’t, like dribble through molecule-thin cracks, climb up and over the sides of a dish, and remain motionless when its container is spun. No longer a mere liquid, the helium has become a superfluid—a liquid that flows without friction.
“If you set [down] a cup with a liquid circulating around and you come back 10 minutes later, of course it’s stopped moving,” says John Beamish, an experimental physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Atoms in the liquid will collide with one another and slow down. “But if you did that with helium at low temperature and came back a million years later,” he says, “it would still be moving.
Source:-http://www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/10-quick-scientific-facts-will-blow-mind/
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