Amazing facts about milk

Afghanistan. The habit of drinking milk first became popular 10,000 years ago, when the first animals were domesticated, initially in Afghanistan and Iran, and later in Turkey and Africa. Cows first arrived in the United States in the 1600s.

Breast feeding. The most precious kind of milk is mother’s milk. This nourishes new-born babies until they are old enough to be weaned onto other foods. The first artificial milks arrived in the mid 1800s: baby formulas were invented by Henry Nestlè.

Cows. Cows produce 90% of the world’s milk needs. Each cow provides an average of 90 glasses of milk a day, or over 200,000 glasses over the course of its lifetime. Working by hand, a farmer can milk around 6 cows an hour.

Dairy products. From cheeses, both fresh and mature, to yoghurt, cream, butter, and ice cream. Dairy products come in a wide variety of forms, and are produced the world over, with their names and recipes changing from country to country. They all have the same characteristic in common: they’re tasty and very wholesome.

Extra mucus. Some theories say that when you have a cold you shouldn’t drink milk or consume dairy products, as doing so will increase the production of mucus. However, the exact opposite advice is also often given: when you’re suffering from congestion, drink a nice glass of warm milk.

Flavored. Everyone, young and old, loves it: flavored and sweetened milk, whether strawberry-colored or with added chocolate. It’s impossible to resist – but watch out for those calories. 

Goats and camels. There is a wide variety of milk-producing animals in the world, from goat and sheep’s milk to camels and other dromedaries, via ape, yak, water buffalo, reindeer and horses. There are even vegetarian milks made from coconut, almond, hemp and soy.

Honey. Natural sugars are best for accompanying milk, and pairing the two together has even inspired many artists: Milk and Honey was, for example, the name of an album by John Lennon.

Ice cream. Milk is the most important ingredient in hand-made ice cream, making up around 60% of the finished product. An English ice cream maker has even produced a variety made with human breast milk. The ingredient was confiscated after only a few days, however.

Jet Li. Milk is good for martial arts champions too: the words of the ‘new Bruce Lee’, the martial arts expert and actor Jet Li, who in China is the face of a publicity campaign designed to boost milk consumption.

Kubrick. In Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece A Clockwork Orange, the ‘droogs’ meet up at the Korova Milk Bar, where they go to drink ‘milk-plus’ - a mixture of milk and mescaline.

Lactose intolerance. Lactose, the form of sugar found in milk, cannot always be easily dealt with by the stomach: those who suffer from lactose intolerance can, however, drink lactose-free milk, which is lighter and easier to digest.

Milky way. The Milky Way is the galaxy which our solar system forms a part of. Legend has it that it was created by drops of milk from the breast ofHera, the wife of Zeus, as she breast fed Hercules.

No milk! Here’s the other side of the debate: whether due to intolerance, allergies or personal choice, there are many people who say no to milk. The most common alternative is soy milk.

Osteoporosis. Rich in calcium, milk is recommended in order to combat a variety of conditions, including osteoporosis, which affects the bones of women, especially from a certain age onwards.

Pasteur. It’s thanks to Louis Pasteur, the 19th century French biologist, that the milk we drink today contains little or no bacteria. He initially applied his heating technique, known as pasteurization, to beer. The process is still used today.

Queen Elizabeth. The Queen Elizabeth II of England each day drinks milk from cows raised on her own Windsor estate. When her grandchildren William and Harry went to Eton, the famous public school, she instructed the estate manager to send milk from the Royal cows every day for the Prince’s breakfasts.

Raw milk. Raw milk is milk that has not undergone any form of treatment, and which is drunk fresh soon after being produced. Richer in protein, it is the subject of a debate on food safety. In many countries around the world, you can buy raw milk from street vendors.

Sleep. From birth to old age, there’s no better recipe for a good night’s sleep: a nice glass of warm milk, maybe with honey or sugar, is a sweet, nutritious kind of lullaby: a true natural calmative.

Tooth decay. Drinking milk and eating yogurt and cheese is a great way to protect that perfect smile. Milk reduces the level of acidity in the mouth, combats plaque formation and reduces the risk of cavities.

UHT. Ultra High Temperature treatment is the name of the method of sterilization used for milk. Liquid milk given UHT treatment is also often called long-life milk and, unlike fresh milk, it can be drunk up to 6 months after it was produced.

Vitamins. Vitamins A, D, and B12, minerals such as potassium, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, magnesium, and also protein: milk is rich in nutrients essential for human health.

White Russian. The protagonist of The Big Lebowski, a film by the Cohen brothers, is very fond of milk: but he only ever drinks is as part of his favorite cocktail, the White Russian. Its recipe: 2 parts vodka, 1 partKahlua, milk or cream according to taste, and ice.

X-Men: Wolverine. Superheroes drink milk too. After Batman, the Fantastic Four, Superman and The Incredible Hulk, even Wolverine from the X-Menwas part of an American ad campaign aimed at convincing teenagers to drink more milk.

Yogurt. This is a milk derivative, but which is easy to digest, and very tasty. The word comes from the Turkish verb yogurtmak, meaning to mix. You can make it at home too, and it forms the base of many do-it-yourself beauty masks.

Zits. This theory has been the subject of debate for years, but various dermatological studies have shown that high consumption of milk is a cause of acne, and that it worsens the condition in people, above all the young, who already suffer from it. 

Amazing facts about space and universe

• 1. Saturn's moon Titan has plenty of evidence of organic (life) chemicals in its atmosphere.
• 2. Life is known to exist only on Earth, but in 1986 NASA found what they thought might be fossils of microscopic living things in a rock from Mars.
• 3. Most scientists say life's basic chemicals formed on the Earth. The astronomer Fred Hoyle said they came from space.
• 4. Oxygen is circulated around the helmet in space suits in order to prevent the visor from misting.
• 5. The middle layers of space suits are blown up like a balloon to press against the astronaut's body. Without this pressure, the astronaut's body would boil!
• 6. The gloves included in the space suit have silicon rubber fingertips which allow the astronaut some sense of touch.
• 7. The full cost of a spacesuit is about $11 million although 70% of this is for the backpack and the control module.
• 8. Ever wondered how the pull of gravity is calculated between heavenly bodies? It's simple. Just multiply their masses together, and then divide the total by the square of the distance between them.
• 9. Glowing nebulae are named so because they give off a dim, red light, as the hydrogen gas in them is heated by radiation from the nearby stars.
• 10. The Drake Equation was proposed by astronomer Frank Drake to work out how many civilizations there could be in our galaxy - and the figure is in millions.
• 11. SETI is the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence - the program that analyzes radio signals from space for signs of intelligent life.
• 12. The Milky Way galaxy we live in: is one among the BILLIONS in space.
• 13. The Milky Way galaxy is whirling rapidly, spinning our sun and all its other stars at around 100 million km per hour.

• 14. The Sun travels around the galaxy once every 200 million years – a journey of 100,000 light years.
• 15. There may be a huge black hole in the very middle of the most of the galaxies.
• 16. The Universe is probably about 15 billion years old, but the estimations vary.
• 17. One problem with working out the age of the Universe is that there are stars in our galaxy which are thought to be 14 to 18 billion years old – older than the estimated age of the Universe. So, either the stars must be younger, or the Universe older.
• 18. The very furthest galaxies are spreading away from us at more than 90% of the speed of light.
• 19. The Universe was once thought to be everything that could ever exist, but recent theories about inflation (e.g. Big Bang) suggest our universe may be just one of countless bubbles of space time.
• 20. The Universe may have neither a centre nor an edge, because according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, gravity bends all of space time around into an endless curve.
• 21. If you fell into a black hole, you would stretch like spaghetti.
• 22. Matter spiraling into a black hole is torn apart and glows so brightly that it creates the brightest objects in the Universe – quasars.
• 23. The swirling gases around a black hole turn it into an electrical generator, making it spout jets of electricity billions of kilometers out into space.
• 24. The opposite of black holes are estimated to be white holes which spray out matter and light like fountains.
• 25. A day in Mercury lasts approximately as long as 59 days on earth.

• 26. Twice during Mercury’s orbit, it gets so close to the Sun and speeds so much that the Sun seems to go backwards in the sky.
• 27. Nicolaus Copernicus was the astronomer who first suggested that the Sun was the centre, and that the Earth went round the sun.
• 28. The ideas of Copernicus came not from looking at the night sky, but from studying ancient astronomy.
• 29. As the earth turns, the stars come back to the same place in the night sky every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds. This is a sidereal day (star day).
• 30. When Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon for the first time, he said these famous words: “That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”
• 31. From the moon, astronauts brought back 380 kg of Moon rock.
• 32. During the moon landing, a mirror was left on the Moon’s surface to reflect a laser beam which measured the Moon’s distance from the Earth with amazing accuracy.
• 33. The stars in each constellation are named after a Greek alphabet.
• 34. The brightest star in each constellation is called the Alpha Star, the next brightest Beta, and so on.
• 35. The distance to the planets is measured by bouncing radar signals off them and timing how long the signals take to get there and back.
• 36. Spacecrafts have double hulls (outer coverings) which protect them against other space objects that crash into them.
• 37. Manned Spacecrafts have life support systems that provide oxygen to breathe, usually mixed with nitrogen (as in ordinary air). Charcoal filters out smells/
• 38. Spacecrafts toilets have to get rid of waste in low gravity conditions, Astronauts have to sit on a device which sucks away the waste. Solid waste is dried and dumped in space, but the water is saved.

• 39. A comet’s tail is made as it nears the Sun and begins to melt. A vast plume of gas millions of kilometers across is blown out behind by the solar wind. The tail is what you see, shining as the sunlight catches it.
• 40. The Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet smashed into Jupiter in July 1994, with the biggest crash ever witnessed.
• 41. Giant stars have burned all their hydrogen, and so burn helium, fusing helium atoms to make carbon.
• 42. The constellation of Cygnus, the Swan, contains the very biggest star in the known universe – a hyper giant which is almost a million times as big as the sun.
• 43. Planet Uranus was discovered by William Herschel, who wanted to name the planet George, after King George III, but Uranus was eventually chosen.
• 44. The first rockets were made 1,000 years ago in China.
• 45. Robert Goddard launched the very first liquid-fuel rocket in 1926.
• 46. Over 100 artificial satellites are now launched into space every year, a few of which are space telescopes.
• 47. The lower a satellite’s orbit, the faster it must fly to avoid falling back to the Earth. Most satellites fly in low orbits, 300 km from the earth.
• 48. Hipparchus was the first astronomer to try to work out how far away the Sun is.
• 49. The red color of Mars is due to oxidized (rusted) iron in its soil.
• 50. Mars’s volcano Olympus Mons is the biggest in the solar system. It covers the same area as Ireland and is three times higher than our Mount Everest.

• 51. Planets have magnetic field around them because of the liquid iron in their cores. As the planets rotate, so the iron swirls, generating electric currents that create the magnetic field.
• 52. Earth’s atmosphere is the only atmosphere discovered till date that human can breathe in.
• 53. Earth’s atmosphere was formed from gases pouring out from volcanoes.
• 54. Jupiter has no surface for a spacecraft to land on because it is made mostly from helium gas and hydrogen. The massive pull of Jupiter’s gravity squeezes the hydrogen so hard that it is liquid.
• 55. Jupiter spins right round in less than 10 hours which means that the planet’s surface is moving at nearly 50,000 km/hr.
• 56. The first successful planetary space probe was the USA’s Mariner 2, which flew past Venus in 1962.
• 57. Voyager 2 has flown over 6 billion km and is heading out of the solar system after passing close to Neptune in 1989.
• 58. To save fuel on journeys to distant planets, space probes may use a nearby planet’s gravity to catapult them on their way. This is called slingshot.
• 59. Hubble’s law showed that Universe is getting bigger – and so must have started very small. This led to the idea of Big Bang.
• 60. It’s believed that it was the impact of a big meteorite may have chilled the earth and wiped out all the dinosaurs.
• 61. The first astronomers thought the regular pulses from far space might be signals from aliens, and pulsars were jokingly called LGMs (short for Little Green Men).
• 62. Pulsars probably result from a supernova explosion - that is why most are found in the flat disc of the Milky Way, where supernovae occur.
• 63. Three moons have yet been found to have their own moons: Saturn’s moon Titan, Jupiter’s Lo, and Neptune’s Triton.

• 64. The largest moon in the Solar System is the Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
• 65. Saturn is not solid, but is made almost entirely of gas – mostly liquid hydrogen and helium. Only in the planet’s very small core is there any rock.
• 66. Winds ten times stronger than a hurricane on Earth swirl around Saturn’s equator reaching up to 1100 km/h – and they never let up: even for a moment.
• 67. The first space station was the Soviet Salyut 1 launched in April 1971; its low orbit meant it stayed up only five months.
• 68. In April 2001, Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, ferried up to the ISS by the Russian Soyuz space shuttle.
• 69. Einstein’s theory of general relativity shows that gravity not only pulls on matter, but also space and even ‘Time’ itself.
• 70. Since the star Deneb is 1800 light years away, we see it as it was when the emperor Septimus Severius was ruling the Rome (AD 200).
• 71. With powerful telescopes, astronomers can see galaxies 2 billion light years away. This means we see them as they were when the only life forms in Earth were bacteria.
• 72. The slowest rotating planet is Venus, which takes 243.01 days to turn around.
• 73. The fastest spinning objects in the Universe are neutron stars – these can rotate 500 times in just 1 second.
• 74. In summer in Uranus, the sun does not set for 20 years. In winter, darkness lasts for 20 years. In autumn, the sun rises and sets every 9 hours.
• 75. Uranus’s moon Miranda is the weirdest moon of all. It seems to have been blasted apart, and then put together again.

• 76. Solar flares reach temperatures of 10 million °C and have the energy of a million atom bombs.
• 77. True binary stars are two stars held together by one another’s gravity, which spend their lives whirling around together like a pair of dancers.
• 78. Halley predicted that a comet he had discovered would return in 1758, 16 years after his death, and it really did. It was the first time a comet’s arrival had been predicted, and the comet was named after him as Halley’s Comet.
• 79. Ceres is the biggest asteroid in the Solar System – 940 km across, and 0.0002% the size of the earth.
• 80. The sun is about 5 billion years old and half a way through its life – as a medium sized star it will probably live for around 10 billion years.
• 81. Neptune’s mood Triton is the coldest place in the Solar System, with surface temperatures of -236°C.
• 82. Voyager 2 will beam back data until 2020 as it travels beyond the edges of the Solar System.
• 83. The Pioneer 10 and 11 probes carry metal plaques with messages for aliens telling them about us.
• 84. Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity (1905) shows that all measurements are relative, including time and speed. In other words, time and speed depends upon where you measure them.
• 85. When things are falling, their acceleration cancels out gravity, which is why astronauts in orbits are weightless.
• 86. The first space telescope was the Copernicus, sent out in 1972.
• 87. Astronauts learn Scuba diving which helps them to deal with space walks.
• 88. Weightlessness makes astronauts grow several centimeters during a long mission.
• 89. The first living creature in space was the dog Laika on – board Sputnik 2 in 1957. Sadly, she died when the spacecraft’s oxygen supply ran out.

• 90. The first manned space flight was made in April 1961 by the Soviet Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1.
• 91. The heart of a star reaches 16 million °C. A grain of sand this hot would kill someone 150 km away.
• 92. Stars twinkle because we see them through the wafting of the atmosphere.
• 93. The sun weighs 2,000 trillion trillion tones – about 300,000 times as much as the Earth – even though it is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, the lightest gases in the Universe.
• 94. The sun gets hot because it is so big that the pressure in its core is so tremendous – enough to force the nuclei of hydrogen atoms to fuse to make helium atoms. This nuclear reaction is like a gigantic atom bomb and it releases huge amounts of heat.
• 95. The nuclear fusion reactions in the Sun’s core send out billions of light photons every minute but they take 10 million years to reach its surface.
• 96. The Hiroshima bombs released 84 trillion joules of energy. A supernova releases 125,000 trillion trillion times as such.
• 97. The most distant galaxies (quasars) have red shifts so big that they must be moving away from us at speeds approaching the speed of light.
• 98. When light waves from distant galaxies are stretched out his way, they look redder. This is called red shift.
• 99. The moon’s gravity is 17% of the Earth’s so astronauts in space suits can jump 4 m high on the moon.
• 100. The moon is the only other world that humans have set foot on. Because the moon has no atmosphere or wind, the footprints planted in its dusty surface in 1969 by the Apollo astronauts are still there today, perfectly preserved.

Amazing facts about solar system

10 ) The hottest planet isn’t closest to the sun
Many people know that Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, well less than half of the Earth’s distance. It is no mystery, therefore, why people would assume that Mercury is the hottest planet. We know that Venus, the second planet away from the sun, is on the average 30 million miles farther from the sun than Mercury. The natural assumption is that being farther away, it must be cooler. But assumptions can be dangerous. For practical consideration, Mercury has no atmosphere, no warming blanket to help it maintain the sun’s heat. Venus, on the other hand, is shrouded by an unexpectedly thick atmosphere, about 100 times thicker than our own on Earth. This in itself would normally serve to prevent some of the sun’s energy from escaping back into space and thus raise the overall temperature of the planet. But in addition to the atmosphere’s thickness, it is composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas. The carbon dioxide freely lets solar energy in, but is far less transparent to the longer wavelength radiation emitted by the heated surface. Thus the temperature rises to a level far above what would be expected, making it the hottest planet. In fact the average temperature on Venus is about 875 degrees F, hot enough to melt tin and lead. The maximum temperature on Mercury, the planet closer to the sun, is about 800 degrees F. In addition, the lack of atmosphere causes Mercury’s surface temperature to vary by hundreds of degrees, whereas the thick mantle of carbon dioxide keeps the surface temperature of Venus steady, hardly varying at all, anywhere on the planet or any time of day or night!

9 ) Pluto is smaller than the USA
The greatest distance across the contiguous United States is nearly 2,900 miles (from Northern California to Maine). By the best current estimates, Pluto is just over 1400 miles across, less than half the width of the U.S. Certainly in size it is much smaller than any major planet, perhaps making it a bit easier to understand why a few years ago it was “demoted” from full planet status. It is now known as a “dwarf planet.”

8 ) George Lucas doesn’t know much about “Asteroid Fields”
In many science fiction movies, spacecraft are often endangered by pesky asteroid fields. In actuality, the only asteroid belt we are aware of exists between Mars and Jupiter, and although there are tens of thousands of asteroids in it (perhaps more), they are quite widely spaced and the likelihood of colliding with one is small. In fact, spacecraft must be deliberately and carefully guided to asteroids to have a chance of even photographing one. Given the presumed manner of creation, it is highly unlikely that spacefarers will ever encounter asteroid swarms or fields in deep space.

7 ) You can make volcanoes using water as magma
Mention volcanoes and everyone immediately thinks of Mount St. Helens, Mount Vesuvius, or maybe the lava caldera of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Volcanoes require molten rock called lava (or “magma” when still underground), right? Not really. A volcano forms when an underground reservoir of a hot, fluid mineral or gas erupts onto the surface of a planet or other non-stellar astronomical body. The exact composition of the mineral can vary greatly. On Earth, most volcanoes sport lava (or magma) that has silicon, iron, magnesium, sodium, and a host of complicated minerals. The volcanoes of Jupiter’s moon Io appear to be composed mostly of sulfur and sulfur dioxide. But it can be simpler than that. On Saturn’s moon Enceladus, Neptune’s moon Triton, and others, the driving force is ice, good old frozen H₂0! Water expands when it freezes and enormous pressures can build up, just as in a “normal” volcano on Earth. When the ice erupts, a “cryovolcano” is formed. So volcanoes can operate on water as well as molten rock. By the way, we have relatively small scale eruptions of water on Earth called geysers. They are associated with superheated water that has come into contact with a hot reservoir of magma.

6 ) The “edge” of the Solar System is 1,000 times farther away than Pluto
Most people have been taught that the solar system just goes out to the orbit of Pluto. Today we don’t even consider Pluto a full-fledged planet, but the impression remains. Still, we have discovered numerous objects orbiting the sun that are considerably farther than Pluto. These are “Trans-Neptunian Objects” (TNOs), or “Kuiper Belt Objects” (KBOs). The Kuiper Belt, the first of the sun’s two reservoirs of cometary material, is thought to extend to 50 or 60 astronomical units (AU, or the average distance of the Earth from the sun). An even farther part of the solar system, the huge but tenuous Oort comet cloud, may extend to 50,000 AU from the sun, or about half a light year – more than a thousand times farther than Pluto.

5 ) Almost everything on Earth is a rare element
The elemental composition of planet Earth is mostly iron, oxygen, silicon, magnesium, sulfur, nickel, calcium, sodium, and aluminum. While such elements have been detected in locations throughout the universe, they are merely trace elements, vastly overshadowed by the much greater abundances of hydrogen and helium. Thus Earth, for the most part, is composed of rare elements. This does not signify any special place for Earth, however. The cloud from which the Earth formed had a much higher abundance of hydrogen and helium, but being light gases, they were driven away into space by the sun’s heat as the Earth formed.

4 ) There are Mars rocks on Earth (and we didn’t bring here)
Chemical analysis of meteorites found in Antarctica, the Sahara Desert, and elsewhere have been shown by various means to have originated on Mars. For example, some contain pockets of gas that is chemically identical to the martian atmosphere. These meteorites may have been blasted away from Mars due to a larger meteoroid or asteroid impact on Mars, or by a huge volcanic eruption, and later collided with Earth.

3 ) Jupiter has the biggest ocean of any planet 
Orbiting in cold space five times farther from the sun than Earth, Jupiter retained much higher levels of hydrogen and helium when it formed than did our planet. In fact, Jupiter is mostly hydrogen and helium. Given the planet’s mass and chemical composition, physics demands that way down under the cold cloud tops, pressures rise to the point that the hydrogen must turn to liquid. In fact there should be a deep planetary ocean of liquid hydrogen. Computer models show that not only is this the largest ocean known in the solar system, but that it is about 40,000 km deep – roughly as deep as the Earth is around!

2 ) Even really small bodies can have moons
It was once thought that only objects as large as planets could have natural satellites or moons. In fact the existence of moons, or the capability of a planet to gravitationally control a moon in orbit, was sometimes used as part of the definition of what a planet truly is. It just didn’t seem reasonable that smaller celestial bodies had enough gravity to hold a moon. After all, Mercury and Venus have none at all, and Mars has only tiny moons. But in 1993, the Galileo probe passed the 20-mile wide asteroid Ida and discovered its one-mile wide moon, Dactyl. Since then moons have been discovered orbiting nearly 200 other minor planets, further complicating the definition of a “true” planet.

1 ) We live inside the sun
Normally we think of the sun as being that big, hot ball of light 93 million miles away. But actually, the sun’s outer atmosphere extends far beyond its visible surface. Our planet orbits within this tenuous atmosphere, and we see evidence of this when gusts of the solar wind generate the Northern and Southern Lights. In that sense, we definitely live “inside” the sun. But the solar atmosphere doesn’t end at Earth. Auroras have been observed on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and even distant Neptune. In fact, the outer solar atmosphere, called the “heliosphere,” is thought to extend at least 100 A.U. That’s nearly 10 billion miles. In fact the atmosphere is likely teardrop shaped due to the sun’s motion in space, with the “tail” extending tens to hundreds of billions of miles downwind.

Amazing facts about human heart

The Human Heart

The average adult heart beats 72 times a minute; 100,000 times a day; 3,600,000 times a year; and 2.5 billion times during a lifetime.f Though weighing only 11 ounces on average, a healthy heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels each day.c A kitchen faucet would need to be turned on all the way for at least 45 years to equal the amount of blood pumped by the heart in an average lifetime.a The volume of blood pumped by the heart can vary over a wide range, from five to 30 liters per minute.e Every day, the heart creates enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles. In a lifetime, that is equivalent to driving to the moon and back.a Because the heart has its own electrical impulse, it can continue to beat even when separated from the body, as long as it has an adequate supply of oxygen.c The fetal heart rate is approximately twice as fast as an adult’s, at about 150 beats per minute. By the time a fetus is 12 weeks old, its heart pumps an amazing 60 pints of blood a day.g The heart pumps blood to almost all of the body’s 75 trillion cells. Only the corneas receive no blood supply.c A healthy heart pumps approximately 2,000 gallons of blood a day During an average lifetime, the heart will pump nearly 1.5 million barrels of blood—enough to fill 200 train tank cars.a Five percent of blood supplies the heart, 15-20% goes to the brain and central nervous system, and 22% goes to the kidneys.a The “thump-thump” of a heartbeat is the sound made by the four valves of the heart closing.a The heart does the most physical work of any muscle during a lifetime. The power output of the heart ranges from 1-5 watts. While the quadriceps can produce 100 watts for a few minutes, an output of one watt for 80 years is equal to 2.5 gigajoules.a The heart begins beating at four weeks after conception and does not stop until death.g A newborn baby has about one cup of blood in circulation. An adult human has about four to five quarts which the heart pumps to all the tissues and to and from the lungs in about one minute while beating 75 times.g The heart pumps oxygenated blood through the aorta (the largest artery) at about 1 mile (1.6 km) per hour. By the time blood reaches the capillaries, it is moving at around 43 inches (109 cm) per hour.g Early Egyptians believed that the heart and other major organs had wills of their own and would move around inside the body.d An anonymous contributor to the Hippocratic Collection (or Canon) believed vessel valves kept impurities out of the heart, since the intelligence of man was believed to lie in the left cavity.f Plato theorized that reasoning originated with the brain, but that passions originated in the “fiery” heart.f The term “heartfelt” originated from Aristotle’s philosophy that the heart collected sensory input from the peripheral organs through the blood vessels. It was from those perceptions that thought and emotions arose.f Prolonged lack of sleep can cause irregular jumping heartbeats called premature ventricular contractions (PVCs).b Some heavy snorers may have a condition called obtrusive sleep apnea (OSA), which can negatively affect the heart.b Cocaine affects the heart’s electrical activity and causes spasm of the arteries, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke, even in healthy people.a Galen of Pergamum, a prominent surgeon to Roman gladiators, demonstrated that blood, not air, filled arteries, as Hippocrates had concluded. However, he also believed that the heart acted as a low-temperature oven to keep the blood warm and that blood trickled from one side of the heart to the other through tiny holes in the heart.f Galen agreed with Aristotle that the heart was the body’s source of heat, a type of “lamp” fueled by blood from the liver and fanned into spirituous flame by air from the lungs. The brain merely served to cool the blood.f In 1929, German surgeon Werner Forssmann (1904-1979) examined the inside of his own heart by threading a catheter into his arm vein and pushing it 20 inches and into his heart, inventing cardiac catheterization, a now common procedure.f On December 3, 1967, Dr. Christiaan Barnard (1922-2001) of South Africa transplanted a human heart into the body of Louis Washansky. Although the recipient lived only 18 days, it is considered the first successful heart transplant.e “Atrium” is Latin for “entrance hall,” and “ventricle” is Latin for “little belly.”a A woman’s heart typically beats faster than a man’s. The heart of an average man beats approximately 70 times a minute, whereas the average woman has a heart rate of 78 beats per minute.b Blood is actually a tissue. When the body is at rest, it takes only six seconds for the blood to go from the heart to the lungs and back, only eight seconds for it to go the brain and back, and only 16 seconds for it to reach the toes and travel all the way back to the heart.c A large-buxomed female patient prompted a physician to invent the stethoscope French physician Rene Laennec (1781-1826) invented the stethoscope when he felt it was inappropriate to place his ear on his large-buxomed female patients' chests.f Physician Erasistratus of Chios (304-250 B.C.) was the first to discover that the heart functioned as a natural pump.f In his text De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, the father of modern anatomy, Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), argued that the blood seeped from one ventricle to another through mysterious pores.f Galen argued that the heart constantly produced blood. However, William Harvey’s (1578-1657) discovery of the circulation system in 1616 revealed that there was a finite amount of blood in the body and that it circulated in one direction.f The right atrium holds about 3.5 tablespoons of blood. The right ventricle holds slightly more than a quarter cup of blood. The left atrium holds the same amount of blood as the right, but its walls are three times thicker.g Grab a tennis ball and squeeze it tightly: that’s how hard the beating heart works to pump blood.a In 1903, physiologist Willem Einthoven (1860-1927) invented the electrocardiograph, which measures electric current in the heart.

Amazing facts about gravity

• Objects with mass are attracted to each other, this is known as gravity.
  

  
  
• Gravity keeps Earth and the other planets in our solar system in orbit around the Sun. It also keeps the Moon in orbit around Earth.
• Tides are caused by the rotation of the Earth and the gravitational effects of the Moon and Sun.
• Because Mars has a lower gravity than Earth, a person weighing 100kg (220 pounds) on Earth would only weigh 38kg (84 pounds) on Mars.
• It is thought that Isaac Newton’s theories on gravity were inspired by seeing an apple fall from a tree.
• While Newton’s older law of universal gravitation is accurate in most scenarios, modern physics uses Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity to describe gravity.
• Acceleration of objects to due to the gravity on Earth is around 9.8 m/s2. If you ignore air resistance (drag) then the speed of an object falling to Earth increases by around 9.8 metres per second every second.
• The force of gravity 100 kilometres (62 miles) above Earth is just 3% less than at the Earth’s surface.
• The human body can handle increased g-forces as seen in activities such as dragster races, airplane acrobatics and space training. The highest known acceleration voluntarily experienced by a human is 46.2 g by g-force pioneer John Stapp.
• While formula one racing drivers may feel around 5 g’s under heavy braking, they can experience over 100 g’s if a crash causes them to decelerate extremely quickly over a very short distance.
• Some roller coasters have been known to include g-forces of around 4 to 6 g.
• The higher something is, the greater its gravitational potential energy. Back in the Middle Ages, weapons called trebuchets were used to take advantage of this principle, using mechanical advantage and the gravitational potential energy of a counterweight to hurl rocks and other projectiles at or over walls. In modern times we use the gravitational potential of water to create hydroelectricity.

Amazing facts about bees

. 1.The honey bee has been around for millions of years.

2. Honey bees, scientifically also known as Apis mellifera, are environmentally friendly and are vital as pollinators.

3. It is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.

4. Honey is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water; and it's the only food that contains "pinocembrin", an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.

5. Honey bees have 6 legs, 2 compound eyes made up of thousands of tiny lenses (one on each side of the head), 3 simple eyes on the top of the head, 2 pairs of wings, a nectar pouch, and a stomach.

6. Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, compared with only 62 in fruit flies and 79 in mosquitoes. Their exceptional olfactory abilities include kin recognition signals, social communication within the hive, and odor recognition for finding food. Their sense of smell was so precise that it could differentiate hundreds of different floral varieties and tell whether a flower carried pollen or nectar from metres away.

7. The honey bee's wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second, thus making their famous, distinctive buzz. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.

8. The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.

9. A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth to collect 1 kg of honey.

10. It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world.

11. A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.

12. The bee's brain is oval in shape and only about the size of a sesame seed, yet it has remarkable capacity to learn and remember things and is able to make complex calculations on distance travelled and foraging efficiency.

13. A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and do all the work.

14. The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per day. Click here to learn more about the Honey Bee Life Cycle,

15. Larger than the worker bees, the male honey bees (also called drones), have no stinger and do no work at all. All they do is mating.

16. Each honey bee colony has a unique odour for members' identification.

17. Only worker bees sting, and only if they feel threatened and they die once they sting. Queens have a stinger, but they don't leave the hive to help defend it.

18. It is estimated that 1100 honey bee stings are required to be fatal.

19. Honey bees communicate with one another by "dancing".

20. During winter, honey bees feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.

The more I learnt about honey bee facts; honey's great creator -the honey bee itself, its highly organized society, how it acts with such intricate cooperation, and the various bee products, the more I admire and respect this amazing creature. It is no wonder why sometimes the colony is called a superorganism.

"Unique among all God's creatures, only the honeybee improves the environment and preys not on any other species." ~ Royden Brown

"If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live?" ~ Albert Einstein

Amazing facts about tea

• Tea comes from the leaves of a tree called Camellia sinensis. The three main types of tea are Black, Oolong and Green. Herbal tea does not come from the leaves of a tea plant, therefore, is not considered to be real tea. Roots, stems, flowers and parts of plants are used to make herbal tea.
• Studies in the Netherlands have shown that men who drink black tea which contains catechins are 50 percent less likely to die of ischemic heart disease. This takes place when our arteries become clogged and are unable to work properly because of constriction.
• Recent studies have shown that drinking between one and two cups of tea per day may promote fertility by stopping abnormalities in our chromosomes. In a recent test 250 women drank as little as half a cup of tea per day and their pregnancy rates were twice as high as those who did not.
• To cure puffy eyes lie in a horizontal position and place either a moist teabag or tea compress over both eyes and leave for about 20 minutes. The swelling around the eyes will to your amazement disappear and your eyes will return to their former glory.
• Tea will absorb odors around it. Here is a tip for removing food odors from your hands. Pour some tea over your hands and the tea will remove all odors from your fingers, and leave them smelling great. It even works great with fish odors!
• Black tea bags can be used to treat planter warts. Tannin in tea is acidic and can be just as effective in removing warts as various over the counter wart removers! Leave a cooled bag on the wart for about 15 minutes three times daily and slowly the wart will shrink and disappear.
• Scientists have reported for many years that men in Asian countries who drink green tea have very low instances of prostate cancer. Many prominent researchers believe that this is due to green tea containing many powerful antioxidants and preventative anti-cancer agents.
• In recent Australian studies CSIRO scientists found that the occurrence of skin cancer in laboratory mice was greatly reduced when they were given black tea. It is thought that polyphenols which are very strong antioxidants and are contained in the tea are the most likely reason for this phenomenon.
• Tea can be used to soothe burns and sunburns. Put wet tea bags onto the affected areas or keep in place with gauze. You can also put tea into your bath water. This works for other types of burns as well.
• The costliest teabag ever was created for the 75'th anniversary of the PG TIPS tea company. The bag was filled with two hundred and eighty diamonds and expensive limited edition tea leaves. The bag cost 7,500 pounds and would be auctioned to raise money for a Children's hospital in Britain.