Weird Science Facts

Teenage DNA sleuths expose New York fish fraud | Weird Science Facts

2008-08-22T06:49:00.000-07:00

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ACCRA (Reuters) - Up to a quarter of fish in stores and restaurants in New York City was mislabelled as a more expensive variety, according to samples collected by two U.S. teenagers and tested with modern genetic identification methods.

In the worst cases, two samples of filleted fish sold as red snapper, caught mostly off the southeast United States and in the Caribbean, were instead the endangered Acadian redfish from the North Atlantic, according to the tests, revealed on Friday.

"We never expected these results. People should get what they pay for," Kate Stoeckle, 18, told Reuters of the project with Louisa Strauss, 17.

The two classmates from New York's Trinity school collected and sent off 60 fish samples to the University of Guelph in Canada. Of 56 samples that could be identified by a four-year-old DNA identification technique, 14 were mislabelled.

In all cases, the fish was labelled as a more costly type, apparently ruling out simple chance. It was the first known student use of DNA barcoding technology in a public market.

"We really like sushi and we'd take home fish samples and put them in alcohol," Stoeckle said of fish bought in shops and restaurants in Upper Manhattan.

Stoeckle's father Mark is an expert in genetic barcoding -- a system that produces a unique readout of a species' genes similar to the black and white barcode stripes often used to identify items sold in shops.

"Americans spend an estimated $70 billion (38 billion pounds) per year on seafood and we think authorities should do routine DNA barcoding of fish," Louisa Strauss said in a statement. Costs of barcoding run to tens of dollars per sample.

The DNA of fish from a sushi restaurant called "white tuna" turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a cheaper variety often raised on fish farms. One restaurant offered "Mediterranean red mullet" but the DNA matched spotted goatfish from the Caribbean.

The project did not give the names of the restaurants and shops since it was unclear if they were knowingly to blame or had been deceived by suppliers.

The findings raise questions about the management of fish stocks, under pressure from overfishing and facing new threats such as climate change. About 160 nations are meeting in Accra, Ghana, this week to discuss ways to combat global warming.

"It bears on a number of issues -- food safety, fraud and protection of endangered species," said Bob Hanner of Guelph, who oversaw the analysis of samples. Other imports, such as meat, could also benefit from DNA checks.

Scientists have catalogued barcodes for about 46,000 animal species so far (www.barcodinglife.org). The barcoders are looking to raise $150 million to create 5 million records from 500,000 animal species by 2014 -- or a cost of $30 each.

[Via yahoo news]

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation | Weird Science Facts

2008-08-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

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Beijing saleswoman demonstrates toy which levitates by magnetic force; Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation
In theory the discovery could be used to levitate a person

Levitation has been elevated from being pure science fiction to science fact, according to a study reported today by physicists.

In earlier work the same team of theoretical physicists showed that invisibility cloaks are feasible.

Now, in another report that sounds like it comes out of the pages of a Harry Potter book, the University of St Andrews team has created an 'incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together.

Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts.

Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.

[More on Telegraph...]

Top 5 Ways To Destroy Earth | Weird Science Facts

2008-02-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

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A host of methods for ending the planet as we know it.

Total Existence Failure

You will need: nothing

Method: No method. Simply sit back and twiddle your thumbs as, completely by chance, all 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms making up the planet Earth suddenly, simultaneously and spontaneously cease to exist. Note: the odds against this actually ever occurring are considerably greater than a googolplex to one. Failing this, some kind of arcane (read: scientifically laughable) probability-manipulation device may be employed.

Utter, utter rubbish.

Gobbled Up By Strangelets

You will need: a stable strangelet

Method: Hijack control of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, New York. Use the RHIC to create and maintain a stable strangelet. Keep it stable for as long as it takes to absorb the entire Earth into a mass of strange quarks. Keeping the strangelet stable is incredibly difficult once it has absorbed the stabilizing machinery, but creative solutions may be possible.

A while back, there was some media hoo-hah about the possibility of this actually happening at the RHIC, but in actuality the chances of a stable strangelet forming are pretty much zero.

Earth's final resting place: a huge glob of strange matter.

You will need: Earthmoving equipment

Hurled Into The Sun

Method: Hurl the Earth into the Sun. Sending Earth on a collision course with the Sun is not as easy as one might think; even though you don't actually have to literally hit the Sun (send the Earth near enough to the Sun (within the Roche limit), and tidal forces will tear it apart), it's surprisingly easy to end up with Earth in a loopy elliptical orbit which merely roasts it for four months in every eight. But careful planning can avoid this.

This is impossible at our current technological level, but will be possible one day, I'm certain. In the meantime, may happen by freak accident if something comes out of nowhere and randomly knocks Earth in precisely the right direction. Earth's final resting place: a small globule of vaporized iron sinking slowly into the heart of the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: Via act of God: 25 years' time. Any earlier and we'd have already spotted the asteroid in question. Via human intervention: given the current level of expansion of space technology, 2250 at best.

Source: "Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers," by Grant Naylor

Eaten By von Neuman Machines

You will need: a single von Neumann machine

Method: A von Neumann machine is any device that is capable of creating an exact copy of itself given nothing but the necessary raw materials. Create one of these that subsists almost entirely on iron, magnesium, aluminum and silicon, the major elements found in Earth's mantle and core. It doesn't matter how big it is as long as it can reproduce itself exactly in any period of time. Release it into the ground under the Earth's crust and allow it to fend for itself. Watch and wait as it creates a second von Neumann machine, then they create two more, then they create four more. As the population of machines doubles repeatedly, the planet Earth will, terrifyingly soon, be entirely eaten up and turned into a swarm of potentially sextillions of machines. Technically your objective would now be complete - no more Earth - but if you want to be thorough then you can command your VNMs to hurl themselves, along with any remaining trace elements, into the Sun. This hurling would have to be achieved using rocket propulsion of some sort, so be sure to include this in your design.

So crazy it might just work.

Earth's final resting place: the bodies of the VNMs themselves, then a small lump of iron sinking into the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: Potentially 2045-2050, or even earlier.

Source: "2010: Odyssey Two," by Arthur C. Clarke

Sucked Into A Giat Black Hole

You will need: a black hole, extremely powerful rocket engines, and, optionally, a large rocky planetary body. The nearest black hole to our planet is 1600 light years from Earth in the direction of Sagittarius, orbiting V4641.

Method: after locating your black hole, you need get it and the Earth together. This is likely to be the most time-consuming part of this plan. There are two methods, moving Earth or moving the black hole, though for best results you'd most likely move both at once.

Very difficult, but definitely possible.

Earth's final resting place: part of the mass of the black hole.

Earliest feasible completion date: I do not expect the necessary technology to be available until AD 3000, and add at least 800 years for travel time. (That's in an external observer's frame of reference and assuming you move both the Earth and the black hole at the same time.)

Sources: "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy," by Douglas Adams; SPACE.com

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Fast Weird Science Facts

2008-01-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

weird science facts

Music was sent down a telephone line for the first time in 1876, the year the phone was invented.

Sound travels through water 3 times faster than through air.

A square piece of dry paper cannot be folded in half more than 7 times.

Air becomes liquid at about minus 190 degrees Celsius.

Liquid air looks like water with a bluish tint.

A scientific satellite needs only 250 watts of power, the equivelant used by two hour light bulbs, to operate.

The thin line of cloud that forms behind an aircraft at high altitudes is called a contrail.

Radio waves travel so much faster than sound waves that a broadcast voice can be heard sooner 18,000 km away than in the back of the room in which it originated.

A US ton is equivalent to 900 kg (2000 pounds). A British ton is 1008 kg (2240 pounds), called a gross ton.

Industrial hemp contains less than 1% of THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana.

Since space is essentially empty it cannot carry sound. Therefor there is no sound in space, at least not the sort of sound that we are used to.

The Space Shuttle always rolls over after launch to alleviate structural loading, allowing the shuttle to carry more mass into orbit.

The word "biology" was coined in 1805 by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

Most of the air is about 78% nitrogen gas. Only 21% consists of oxygen. The remaining 1% consists of carbon dioxide, argon, neon, helium, krypton, hydrogen, xenon and ozone.

Argon is used to fill the space in most light bulbs. Neon is used in fluorescent signs. Fluorescent lights are filled with mercury gas.

Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world.

Water expands by about 9% as it freezes.

The surface of hot water freezes faster than cold water but the rest of the water will remain liquid longer than in a cold sample.

The smallest transistor is 50-nanometres wide - roughly 1/2000 the width of a human hair.

A compass does not point to the geographical North or South Pole, but to the magnetic poles.

The double-helix structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick. The length of a single human DNA molecule, when extended, is 1.7 metres (5 ft 5 in).

In a desert, a mirage is caused when air near the ground is hotter than air higher up. As light from the sun passes from cooler to warmer air, it speeds up and is refracted upward, creating the image of water.

The typical bolt of lightning heats the atmosphere to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

An electric oven uses one kilowatt-hour of electricity in about 20 minutes, but one kilowatt-hour will power a TV for 3 hours, run a 100-watt bulb for 12 hours, and keep an electric clock ticking for 3 months.

In the 6th century BC Greek mathematician Pythagoras said that earth is round - but few agreed with him.
Greek astronomer Aristarchos said in the 3rd century BC that earth revolves around the sun - but the idea was not accepted.
In the 2nd century BC Greek astronomer Erastosthenes accurately measured the distance around the earth at about 40,000 km (24,860 miles) - but nobody believed him.

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Weird Science Facts: 35 Weird Facts You Never Heard Of

2007-12-25T02:47:00.000-08:00

weird science facts
Here are some weird facts for you:

1. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

2. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

3. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

4. The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

5. A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

6. There are more chickens than people in the world.

7. Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.

8. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."

9. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.

10. All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.

11. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

12. "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

13. All 50 States are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.

14. Almonds are a member of the peach family.

15. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

16. Maine is the only State whose name is just one syllable.

17. There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

18. The characters "Bert" and "Ernie" on Sesame Street were named after "Bert the cop" and "Ernie the taxi driver" in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life."

19. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

20. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

21. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

22. In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

23. Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

24. Los Angeles' full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula."

25. A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

27. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

28. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

29. The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

30. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

31. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

32. Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.

33. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

34. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

35. "Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

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Top 20 Weird Science Facts

2007-12-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

weird science facts

Facts 1 - 5

1. There are 62,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body - laid end to end they would circle the earth 2.5 times

2. At over 2000 kilometers long The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth

3. The risk of being struck by a falling meteorite for a human is one occurrence every 9,300 years

4. A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons

5. A typical hurricane produces the energy equivalent to 8,000 one megaton bombs

Facts 6 - 10

6. Blood sucking hookworms inhabit 700 million people worldwide

7. The highest speed ever achieved on a bicycle is 166.94 mph by Fred Rompelberg

8. We can produce laser light a million times brighter than sunshine

9. 65% of those with autism are left handed

10. The combined length of the roots of a Finnish pine tree is over 30 miles

Facts 11 - 15

11. The oceans contain enough salt to cover all the continents to a depth of nearly 500 feet

12. The interstellar gas cloud Sagittarius B contains a billion, billion, billion liters of alcohol [JFrater is planning to move there in the near future]

13. Polar Bears can run at 25 miles an hour and jump over 6 feet in the air

14. 60-65 million years ago dolphins and humans shared a common ancestor

15. Polar Bears are nearly undetectable by infrared cameras, due to their transparent fur

Facts 16 - 20

16. The average person accidentally eats 430 bugs each year of their life

17. A single rye plant can spread up to 400 miles of roots underground

18. The temperature on the surface of Mercury exceeds 430 degrees C during the day, and, at night, plummets to minus 180 degrees centigrade

19. The evaporation from a large oak or beech tree is from ten to twenty-five gallons in twenty-four hours

20. Butterflies taste with their hind feet and their taste sensation works on touch - this allows them to determine whether a leaf is edible

Weird Science Facts - Earth is in fact growing-AMAZING

2007-12-12T07:05:00.000-08:00

weird science facts
This video is a Neal Adams animation about his theory that the Earth is growing. This collides with the Pangea theory. Watch it, you will be amazed.

30 Interesting Weird Science Facts

2007-11-30T08:07:00.000-08:00

weird science facts
1. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second.

2. It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.

3. In October 1999 the 6 billionth person was born.

4. 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.

5. The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.

6. Every year over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.

7. The largest ever hailstone weighed over 1 kg and fell in Bangladesh in 1986.

8. Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.

9. Every year lightning kills 1000 people.

10. In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf.

11. If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.

12. All the hydrogen atoms in our bodies were created 12 billion years ago in the Big Bang.

13. The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.

14. The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

15. Female black widow spiders eat their males after mating.

16. When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.

17. The earliest wine makers lived in Egypt around 2300 BC.

18. If our Sun were just inch in diameter, the nearest star would be 445 miles away.

19. The Australian billy goat plum contains 100 times more vitamin C than an orange.

20. Astronauts cannot belch - there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.

21. The air at the summit of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet is only a third as thick as the air at sea level.

22. One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a …pea.

23. DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler.

24. The molecular structure of DNA was first determined by Watson and Crick in 1953.

25. The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo.

26. Englishman Roger Bacon invented the magnifying glass in 1250.

27. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.

28. Wilhelm Rontgen won the first Nobel Prize for physics for discovering X-rays in 1895.

29. The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus - In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall.

30. Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967 - the patient lived for 18 days.

More weird science facts:

Cliff-Diving Cow Hits Minivan by weird facts

So That's How $100m Looks Like by weird facts

Breaking Bad News: Brazilian girl forced to have sex for food while in jail

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Weird Science Facts: Top 10 Myths in Science

2007-11-20T04:43:00.000-08:00

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There is no gravity in space

Blame the term "zero-gravity" for this common misconception. Gravity is everywhere, even in space. Astronauts look weightless because they are in continuous freefall towards the Earth, staying aloft because of their horizontal motion. The effect of gravity diminishes with distance, but it never truly goes away. Oh, and while we're at it, it's also untrue that space is a vacuum. There are all kinds of atoms out there, albeit sometimes far apart (and this thin gas adds to the collective gravity budget, too!)

Humans use only 10 percent of their brains

This media darling has been around for at least a century. Fortunately, it's just not true. MRI imaging clearly demonstrates--with fancy colors no less--that humans put most of their cerebral cortex to good use, even while dozing.

Yawning is "contagious"

Empirically, this is tough to deny; perhaps you'll yawn while reading this. The real question is whether there's actually something physiological at work here, and the answer is likely yes: even chimpanzees mimic each other's yawns.

A penny dropped from the top of a tall building could kill a pedestrian

A penny isn't the most aerodynamic of weapons. A combination of its shape and wind friction means that, tossed even from the 1,250-foot Empire State Building, it would travel fast enough merely to sting an unlucky pedestrian.

Adults don't grow new brain cells

Much of a human's crucial brain development happens during childhood, but it isn't all downhill from there. Studies have shown that neurons continue to grow and change well into the adult years.

Chicken soup can cure the common cold

Cure is a strong word, but science suggests Moms around the world are still right in forcing spoonfuls of chicken soup down their kids' throats. Studies have found that the broth actually contains anti-inflammatory properties that help reduce congestion.

Eating a poppy seed bagel mimics opium use

Purveyors of this urban legend call on a popular Seinfeld episode for support. It turns out there's truth behind the comedy: tests suggest ingesting just two poppy seed bagels may produce a positive result for opiates on a drug screen.

Lightning never strikes the same place twice

In fact lightning favors certain spots, particularly high locations. The Empire State Building is struck about 25 times every year. Ben Franklin grasped the concept long ago and mounted a metal rod atop the roof of his home, then ran a wire to the ground, thereby inventing the lightning rod.

Chickens can live without a head

True, and not just for a few minutes. A chicken can stagger around without its noggin because the brain stem, often left partially intact after a beheading, controls most of its reflexes. One robust fellow lived a full eighteen months. Likely he was a real birdbrain, however.

Water drains backwards in the Southern Hemisphere due to the Earth's rotation

Not only is the Earth's rotation too weak to affect the direction of water flowing in a drain, tests you can easily perform in a few washrooms will show that water whirlpools both ways depending on the sink's structure, not the hemisphere.

[Via LiveScience]

Halo 3 player punched mom after she took away game

Drunk Builders, Or What ?

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11 Weird Science Facts You Never Heard About

2007-11-09T08:44:00.000-08:00

Weird Science Facts
Every year about 98% of atoms in your body are replaced.

At a glance, the Celsius scale makes more sense than the Fahrenheit scale for temperature measuring. But its creator, Anders Celsius, was an oddball scientist. When he first developed his scale, he made freezing 100 degrees and boiling 0 degrees, or upside down. No one dared point this out to him, so fellow scientists waited until Celsius died to change the scale.

In Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more than 100 years before either moon was discovered.

At a jet plane's speed of 1,000 km (620mi) per hour, the length of the plane becomes one atom shorter than its original length.

In the Durango desert, in Mexico, there's a creepy spot called the "Zone of Silence." You can't pick up clear TV or radio signals. And locals say fireballs sometimes appear in the sky.

Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.

Bill Gates' first business was Traff-O-Data, a company that created machines which recorded the number of cars passing a given point on a road.

Uranus' orbital axis is tilted at 90 degrees.

The final resting-place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker - the Moon. The famed U.S. Geological Survey astronomer, trained the Apollo astronauts about craters, but never made it into space. Mr. Shoemaker had wanted to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical problem. His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft before it was launched on January 6, 1998. NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon in an attempt to learn if there is water on the moon.

Outside the USA, Ireland is the largest software producing country in the world.

The first fossilized specimen of Australopithecus afarenisis was named Lucy after the paleontologists' favorite song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," by the Beatles.

Figlet, an ASCII font converter program, stands for Frank, Ian and Glenn's LETters. weird science facts

Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
Plutonium - first weighed on August 20th, 1942, by University of Chicago scientists Glenn Seaborg and his colleagues - was the first man-made element.

The radioactive substance, Americanium - 241 is used in many smoke detectors.

The original IBM-PCs, that had hard drives, referred to the hard drives as Winchester drives. This is due to the fact that the original Winchester drive had a model number of 3030. This is, of course, a Winchester firearm.

Sound travels 15 times faster through steel than through the air.

On average, half of all false teeth have some form of radioactivity.

Only one satellite has been ever been destroyed by a meteor: the European Space Agency's Olympus in 1993.

Starch is used as a binder in the production of paper. It is the use of a starch coating that controls ink penetration when printing. Cheaper papers do not use as much starch, and this is why your elbows get black when you are leaning over your morning paper.weird science facts

Sterling silver is not pure silver. Because pure silver is too soft to be used in most tableware it is mixed with copper in the proportion of 92.5 percent silver to 7.5 percent copper.

A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber. A ball of solid steel will bounce higher than one made entirely of glass.

A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.weird science facts

An ordinary TNT bomb involves atomic reaction, and could be called an atomic bomb. What we call an A-bomb involves nuclear reactions and should be called a nuclear bomb.

At a jet plane's speed of 1,000 km (620mi) per hour, the length of the plane becomes one atom shorter than its original length.weird sciense facts

The first full moon to occur on the winter solstice, Dec. 22, commonly called the first day of winter, happened in 1999. Since a full moon on the winter solstice occurred in conjunction with a lunar perigee (point in the moon's orbit that is closest to Earth), the moon appeared about 14% larger than it does at apogee (the point in it's elliptical orbit that is farthest from the Earth). Since the Earth is also several million miles closer to the sun at that time of the year than in the summer, sunlight striking the moon was about 7% stronger making it brighter. Also, this was the closest perigee of the Moon of the year since the moon's orbit is constantly deforming. In places where the weather was clear and there was a snow cover, even car headlights were superfluous.

According to security equipment specialists, security systems that utilize motion detectors won't function properly if walls and floors are too hot. When an infrared beam is used in a motion detector, it will pick up a person's body temperature of 98.6 degrees compared to the cooler walls and floor. If the room is too hot, the motion detector won't register a change in the radiated heat of that person's body when it enters the room and breaks the infrared beam. Your home's safety might be compromised if you turn your air conditioning off or set the thermostat too high while on summer vacation.

Western Electric successfully brought sound to motion pictures and introduced systems of mobile communications which culminated in the cellular telephone.

On December 23, 1947, Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., held a secret demonstration of the transistor which marked the foundation of modern electronics.

The wick of a trick candle has small amounts of magnesium in them. When you light the candle, you are also lighting the magnesium. When someone tries to blow out the flame, the magnesium inside the wick continues to burn and, in just a split second (or two or three), relights the wick.

A lot more weird science facts: Weird Facts

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