20 things

scorpiolady · Superstar

RE: 20 things

The Soldier Girl · Star

Hey, this is a VERY VERY COOL THREAD! Keep them coming gang! aww

Kolecta · Junior Member

source:

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/sep/20thingsdeath

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/jul/20thingssleep/

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/aug/meteors20things/

Kolecta · Junior Member

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Meteors

The Perseids may be a washout this year, but that's no excuse to ignore valuable news about X-ray slaps, the Tears of St. Lawrence, and the fiddly meteor/meteoroid/asteroid/meteorite distinction.

by LeeAundra Temescu

1 The most famous and spectacular meteor shower, the annual Perseids, will peak on August 12th. Sadly, the show will be a virtual washout this year because a near-full moon will flood the sky with light. Consider this list your consolation prize.

2 The Perseids are also called the "Tears of Saint Lawrence" after a martyred Christian deacon whom the Romans burned to death on an outdoor iron stove in A.D. 258. Before dying, he was said to have cried out: "I am already roasted on one side. If thou wouldst have me well cooked, it is time to turn me on the other."

3 Technically, a meteor (from the Greek meteoron, meaning "phenomenon in the sky") is merely the streak of light we see trailing a meteoroid. A meteoroid is any interplanetary object bigger than a speck of dust and smaller than an asteroid.

4 Once it hits Earth, a meteoroid suffers an identity crisis and becomes a meteorite.

5 Chase that, Superman: Perseid meteoroids enter the atmosphere at approximately 130,000 miles per hour.

6 Meteorites contain the oldest known rocks in the solar system, as well as pre-solar grains, minerals that formed around other stars perhaps billions of years before our solar system was born.

7 To protect it from the estimated 100,000 meteoroids that will slam into it during its expected 20-year life span, the International Space Station is covered with a foot-thick blanket of Kevlar, the material used to make bulletproof vests.

8 Each day, up to 4 billion meteoroids fall to Earth.

9 Don't worry. Most of them are minuscule in size.

10 Meteorite impacts have been blamed for hundreds of injuries, but only one has been verified by scientists. In 1954, Annie Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama, was struck by an eight-pound meteorite that crashed though her roof and bounced off a radio into her hip while she was napping.

11 A study published in 1985 in the journal Nature calculated the rate of impacts to humans as .0055 per year, or one event every 180 years. Thanks to Annie Hodges, odds are that the rest of us are safe through the end of this century.

12 Maybe that's why President Clinton canceled Clementine II, a spacecraft designed to defend Earth against incoming meteoroids, asteroids, and comets, a.k.a. Near Earth Objects. Or the probe may have fallen prey to the giggle factor, the tendency of government officials to snicker at the perils posed by flying rocks.

13 One way of deflecting a Near Earth Object is to explode a nuclear device in its vicinity. The resulting radiation pulse would vaporize the object's surface; as the vapor streamed away, it would deliver a thrust that could throw the body off course. This push is known as an X-ray slap.

14 A 30-foot-wide meteoroid that struck the atmosphere over Antarctica in 2004 left 2 million pounds of dust in its wakeenough to seed rain clouds and affect the climate on the other side of the planet.

15 To communicate over long distances, NATO and the National Weather Service still bounce radio signals off the ionized trails left by meteors when they enter Earth's atmosphere.

16 If you find a meteorite, the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society demands that you donate 20 percent or 20 grams, whichever is smaller, to a laboratory for future research. You can sell the rest.

17 Unless you found it in South Africa, where all meteorites are protected under the National Heritage Law and must be surrendered to the nearest authorities.

18 Of the more than 24,000 meteorites known to have landed on Earth, only 34 are thought to have originated on Mars. Most of these have been found in Antarctica and North Africa because they are easy to spot on sand dunes and ice.

19 Martian meteorites can sell for $500 a gram. Space rocks fetch just $2 a gram.

20 To buy one, try eBay, which often lists more than 1,000 meteorites for auction. Or call Steven Spielberg, one of the most avid collectors (along with Sheik Saud bin Mohammed al-Thani of Qatar).

Kolecta · Junior Member

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Sleep

The official world record for staying awake, possible killers lurking in our mattresses, a continent's war against naps, and more.

by Jason Stahl

1 Chronic snoring can be treated by uvulopalatopharyngoplasty, a surgical procedure that tightens the tissues of the soft palate and throat. Possible side effects include changes in voice frequency.

2 Another option involves injecting the palate with a chemical to harden the soft tissue. This is called a snoroplasty, derived from the Greek word plastos, meaning molded, and somewhat lamely from the English word snore, meaning snore.

3 Baaaa'd idea: A 2002 study by Oxford University researchers concluded, brilliantly, that the traditional practice of counting sheep is an ineffective cure for insomnia. The mental activity is so boring that other problems and concerns inevitably surface.

4 Mattresses have an average life span of 8 to 10 years. They grow some nasty stuff in that time; one study links mattress bacteria to sudden infant death syndrome.

5 An adult bedbug can survive up to one year without feeding.

6 In 2004 Americans filled more than 35 million prescriptions for sleeping pills.The number of adults aged 20 to 44 taking pills to help them fall asleep has doubled in the last four years.

7 More than 100,000 car crashes in the United States each year result from drowsiness. Drivers talking on cell phones increase the rate by 6 percent, so don't call someone if you get tired.

8 Disco isn't dead, it's on the dashboard: In 2008 Volvo plans to unveil a system that will monitor a driver's eyes and head, along with the movement of the steering wheel. If a driver seems to be nodding off, interior lights will start to flash.

9 A six-year study of a million adults showed that people who get only six to seven hours of sleep a night have a lower death rate than those who get eight hours. Maybe it's those late nights watching QVC.

10 In 1964 17-year-old Randy Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours and 12 minutes, the world's record. He then slept for 15 hoursnot a record, but not bad.

11 Let's sleep on it first: In a gesture of integration with the European Union, Spain has launched a campaign to eliminate the tradition of siestas, or afternoon naps.

12 Thanks in part to their afternoon naps, Spaniards sleep an average of 40 minutes less per night than other Europeans. Spain also has the highest rate of workplace accidents in the EU and the third lowest productivity rate.

13 Who knew it was that easy? A Muslim couple in India is being forced to split up after the husband uttered the word talaq, the Arabic word for divorce, three times in his sleep. According to Muslim law, the "triple talaq" is an actual divorce.

14 The idea that it is dangerous to wake a sleepwalker is a myth. Given the things sleepwalkers get up to do, like climbing roofs and fixing insanely large sandwiches, it is probably more risky not to wake them.

15 Whales and dolphins can literally fall half asleep. Their brain hemispheres alternate sleeping, so the animals can continue to surface and breathe.

16 Dreaming is connected to bursts of electrical activity that blow through the brain stem every 90 minutes during REM sleep. Over a lifetime, an average person spends more than six years dreaming, clocking more than 136,000 in all.

17 But nobody knows why we dream.

18 Hey, be glad she doesn't have a telethon: More than 5 million American children suffer from nocturnal enuresis, better known as bed-wetting. Actress Suzanne Somers used to be one of them, according to her autobiography.

19 Somniphobia is the fear of sleep.

20 So far, there are no known celebrity somniphobes.

Kolecta · Junior Member

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Death

Newsflash: we're all going to die. But here are 20 things you didn't know about kicking the bucket.

by LeeAundra Temescu

1 The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.

2 Never say die: There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including "to be in Abraham's bosom," "just add maggots," and "sleep with the Tribbles" (a Star Trek favorite).

3 No American has died of old age since 1951.

4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.
5 The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the "agonal phase," from the Greek word agon, or contest.

6 Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.

7 So much for recycling: Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluidformaldehyde, methanol, and ethanolinto the soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air.

8 Alternatively . . . A Swedish company, Promessa, will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the resulting powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this "ecological burial" will decompose in 6 to 12 months.

9 Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be consumed by vultures.

10 The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses dosed with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever in livestock.

11 Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.

12 If this doesn't work, we're trying in vitro! In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.

13(*) During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as fuel for locomotives.

14Well, yeah, there's a slight chance this could backfire: English philosopher Francis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, died in 1626 of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow to see if cold would preserve it.

15 For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, like ducks.

16 Waiting to exhale: In 1907 a Massachusetts doctor conducted an experiment with a specially designed deathbed and reported that the human body lost 21 grams upon dying. This has been widely held as fact ever since. It's not.

17 Buried alive: In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in "hospitals for the dead" while attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.

18 Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.

19 If you can't make it here . . . More people commit suicide in New York City than are murdered.

20 It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans began.

For more salacious details about the deceased, try the following books:

The Corpse: A History, by Christine Quigley (1996).
The Biology of Death: Origins of Mortality, by André Klarsfeld and Frédéric Revah (2003).
R.I.P. : The Complete Book of Death and Dying, by Constance Jones (1997).
The American Way of Death, by Jessica Mitford (1963).
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach (2003).

*Editor's note: A Discover reader wrote to the magazine saying this "thing" was not true. We acknowledge that this was probably a hoax perpetrated by Mark Twain in his 1869 book Innocents Abroad. No less an authority than the BBC repeats the claim, but as Heather Pringle points out in her book The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead (Hyperion, 2001), "No mummy expert has ever been able to authenticate the story, although several have tried and written about their frustration. Twain seems to be the only published sourceand a rather suspect one at that, given his penchant for fiction and his own published disclaimer: 'Stated to me for a fact,' he observed of the train tale in a note to Innocents Abroad. 'I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to believe it. I can believe anything.'"