1323 facts
Humans are born with roughly 10,000 taste buds, but this number drops significantly over time. By age 70, many people have fewer than 5,000 remaining. This decline makes food taste...
While your tongue identifies basic tastes like sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami, your nose does the heavy lifting. When you eat, aromas travel from the back of your mouth to y...
The combination of low humidity and high cabin pressure numbs your taste buds, specifically reducing your ability to detect sweet and salty flavors. Background engine noise also di...
Supertasters have a higher density of taste buds on their tongues. This makes bitter foods like broccoli, coffee, and dark chocolate taste overwhelmingly sharp. Even mild spices ca...
As strict carnivores, cats lack the specific taste receptor gene needed to detect sugar. Instead, their taste buds are highly specialized to identify proteins and fats found in mea...
To keep your sense of taste sharp, your body replaces taste bud cells every 10 to 14 days. This constant renewal protects your ability to distinguish flavors despite the wear and t...
While most of your 10,000 taste buds are on your tongue, thousands more line your soft palate and throat. These extra sensors help your brain identify flavors and detect potential...
Earth has roughly 7.5 quintillion grains of sand. While that sounds massive, the observable universe contains an estimated 70 sextillion stars. This means there are about 10,000 st...
Humans consume roughly 50 billion tons of sand and gravel every year. This is enough to build a wall 24 meters high and 24 meters wide around the entire equator. Because smooth des...
When red-hot lava meets cold seawater, it shatters instantly into tiny fragments of volcanic glass. While traditional white sand takes thousands of years to form, these volcanic be...
Concrete requires rough, angular sand to create a strong bond. In deserts, wind erosion tumbles grains until they are smooth like marbles. These rounded grains slide past each othe...
On islands like Taketomi and Iriomote, the sand consists of the calcium carbonate shells of microscopic organisms called Foraminifera. These star-shaped remains are only about one...
A lightning bolt is five times hotter than the surface of the sun. This intense heat instantly melts sand into hollow, glassy tubes that mirror the lightning's path underground. Th...
Parrotfish eat coral to reach the algae inside. Since they cannot digest the hard calcium carbonate skeletons, they grind them up and excrete them as fine sand. A single large parr...
The curiosity gap is the mental tension we feel when there is a gap between what we know and what we want to find out. The New York Post exploits this by using dramatic headlines a...
In the mid-20th century, the New York Post changed from a large broadsheet to a compact tabloid size. This allowed passengers to read in tight spaces without hitting their neighbor...
Hamilton launched the paper with a $10,000 investment to challenge political rivals like Thomas Jefferson. Today, it is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the Uni...
Despite their complex problem-solving skills, octopuses have incredibly short lifespans. The Common Octopus lives only one to two years, while the Giant Pacific Octopus may reach f...
With 400 million neurons spread across its limbs, an octopus's arms can taste, touch, and move independently. This decentralized system allows each arm to hunt and solve problems w...
Octopus ink contains tyrosinase, an enzyme that irritates a predator's eyes and temporarily paralyzes its sense of smell. This chemical defense prevents hunters like sharks from tr...
Octopuses have no bones or internal shells. Their bodies are made almost entirely of soft tissue and muscle. The only hard part is a sharp beak made of chitin. If the beak can pass...
These pigment-filled sacs, called chromatophores, expand or shrink instantly via muscle control. This allows an octopus to change its color and pattern in less than a second. Worki...
Each sucker is packed with sensory cells called chemoreceptors. These allow the octopus to detect chemical signals in the water and on surfaces, effectively tasting its environment...
By changing its shape, color, and behavior, this octopus mimics venomous creatures like sea snakes and lionfish. It selects the best disguise based on the specific threat it encoun...
The central brain handles overall control, but each arm has its own cluster of neurons that can act independently. These mini-brains allow the arms to touch, taste, and move withou...
At 8,848 meters, air pressure is only one-third of that at sea level. Fewer air molecules mean the atmosphere cannot retain warmth. When jet stream winds exceed 280 km/h, wind chil...
Lake Vostok is roughly the size of Lake Ontario but remains hidden deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Geothermal heat and intense pressure keep the water liquid despite the free...
Located in Russia's Sakha Republic, Yakutsk sits on ground that stays frozen year-round. To prevent buildings from sinking as they emit heat, engineers construct them on concrete s...
The Moon's poles contain deep craters that haven't seen sunlight for billions of years. These 'Permanently Shadowed Regions' reach temperatures as low as -248°C (-415°F). This is c...
Oymyakon is the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth. When temperatures plummet below -50°C (-58°F), the moisture in your breath turns into ice crystals immediately. As the...
While outer space is freezing, labs on Earth can reach temperatures near absolute zero. By hitting atoms with lasers from multiple directions, scientists slow their movement until...
Located 5,000 light-years away, this nebula has a temperature of -272.15°C (-458°F). It is just 1°C above absolute zero, making it even colder than the afterglow of the Big Bang. T...
Satellites have recorded temperatures as low as -94°C (-137°F) at Dome Argus. This is far below the -78.5°C (-109°F) freezing point of carbon dioxide. The air here is so cold, thin...
The equator receives intense sunlight, creating excess heat that must be redistributed to maintain a stable climate. Cyclones absorb warm air and moisture from tropical oceans and...
Cyclones pull massive amounts of moisture from warm ocean waters. When they reach land, they release this stored vapor as torrential rain. A large storm can dump more water in one...
This happens because of the Coriolis effect. In the Northern Hemisphere, Earth's rotation pulls air to the right, causing a counterclockwise spin. In the Southern Hemisphere, air m...
A major hurricane generates roughly 600 terawatts of energy, which is 200 times the world's total electrical capacity. This power comes from heat released as water vapor condenses...
While violent winds swirl around it, the eye remains peaceful with clear skies. Air sinks from high altitudes and warms up, preventing clouds from forming. This calm zone can span...
The Southern Lights begin at an altitude of about 100 kilometers (62 miles). In contrast, Mount Everest is only 8.8 kilometers (5.5 miles) tall. This means the aurora glows on the...
While oxygen creates common green and red auroras, nitrogen produces blue and purple hues. These colors require high energy and typically appear during intense solar storms. Becaus...
The Sun follows an 11-year activity cycle. During the Solar Maximum, increased solar flares and sunspots release massive energy. This makes the Aurora Australis brighter, more colo...
For decades, people reported hearing hissing or clapping during the Aurora Australis, but scientists only confirmed it in 2012. These sounds are caused by static electricity discha...
Known as conjugate auroras, these displays occur simultaneously at both poles. Earth's magnetic field lines act as a bridge, guiding solar particles to both hemispheres at once to...
The Sun constantly emits charged particles called solar wind. When these particles reach Earth, our magnetic field funnels them toward the South Pole. As they crash into gases like...
To survive winter, a squirrel's hippocampus expands to create mental maps of up to 10,000 food caches. This brain region, responsible for spatial memory, shrinks back to its origin...
Squirrels regulate their body temperature by adjusting blood flow to their tails. The tail acts as a cozy blanket in the winter and a cooling radiator in the summer. It also provid...
These squirrels survive harsh winters by dropping their core temperature to 27°F (-3°C). Through a process called supercooling, they remove ice-nucleating agents from their blood t...
To protect their winter stash, squirrels perform 'deceptive caching.' If they feel watched, they will dig a hole and pretend to bury a nut while keeping it hidden in their mouth. T...
To prevent their teeth from becoming dangerously long, squirrels must constantly gnaw on hard objects like nuts and bark. Their front teeth can grow up to 6 inches every year. With...
This behavior is called olfactory camouflage. By smelling like a rattlesnake, the squirrels trick predators into thinking they are venomous snakes. This clever disguise even deters...