Facts What were the most ferocious land predators before the dinosaurs? Researchers believe that the saber-toothed gorgons (gorgonopsids),
which lived just before the dinosaurs, were probably the most ferocious
land predators of that time (about 260 million years ago). The largest
gorgonopsids were ten feet long. They were fast, deadly reptiles with a
pair of long stabbing teeth, looking something like the saber-toothed tigers
that lived in North America until about 12,000 years ago. They probably
filled a similar ecological niche as the saber-toothed tigers, although
they may not have been as smart, and probably did not form complex social
groups. Gorgonopsids were wiped out in the Great Permian Extinction 251
million years ago (see the previous Cool Fact below), but related species
formed the line that eventually led to mammals. There is debate about whether
or not they were warm blooded. What is Silly Putty and where did it come from? Most kids know about Silly Putty, that stretchy, bouncy stuff that
comes in a hollow plastic egg. It's a mixture of boric acid and silicone
oil, originally invented in 1945 by engineers at General Electric as a
substitute for rubber. The strange, new stuff, first known as "gupp," was
not a very good rubber replacement because it was too soft and sticky.
No one quite knew what to do with it, but it was cool to play with, so
some of the scientists took some home or kept a lump on their desk at GE.
It was not until 1949 that an unemployed advertisement writer named Peter
Hodgson discovered a lump of "gupp" at a toy store in New Haven. The store's
owner had gotten it from a GE engineer, but wasn't interested in marketing
it. It was packaged by Hodgson as "Nutty Putty" and then renamed "Silly
Putty." Now it's everywhere -- it's even been to the moon. What kind of space propulsion needs no fuel? A new device called an electrodynamic orbital tether will make it
possible for orbiting spacecraft to maneuver without using up fuel. An
electrodynamic tether is a long wire that is unreeled upward or downward
from a spacecraft, together with an ion-releasing device called a plasma
contactor. It works by taking advantage of forces generated in the wire
when current flows through it as it slices through the planet's magnetic
field. A tether can be used to increase the altitude of an orbit, in which
case it consumes electrical power, or it can cause the orbit to become
lower, in which case it acts as an electrical generator. Scientists are
considering using solar-powered electrodynamic tethers for future missions
to Jupiter, a planet with a strong magnetic field. A space probe with such
a system could maneuver for many years among Jupiter's moons, powered by
sunlight and propelled by the planet's magnetic field. More about advanced
space propulsion projects: http://infinity.msfc.nasa.gov/Public/ps01/sprop.html
http://www.tethers.com/M-ETethers.html How do bacteria find food and avoid danger? Bacteria are the simplest cellular life forms, so their ways of
finding food and avoiding danger are also very simple. They do it by alternating
between two kinds of swimming. When a bacterium rotates its flagella (tiny
helical swimming oars) counterclockwise, it swims steadily forward. When
it rotates them the other way, it "tumbles" without making any long-term
progress. The bacterium is sensitive to the chemistry of its environment.
If the chemical signals show that food is nearby, it tumbles more and swims
less. If the chemistry is not so good, it swims more and tumbles less.
The result is that it swims away from danger and toward food. More about
how bacteria swim, with a movie: http://www.cellsalive.com/animabug.htm
An article about the surprising intelligence of bacterial swimming: http://lux.ucs.indiana.edu/~pietsch/microminds.html
A previous Cool Fact about another way that bacteria navigate: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/02/03.html How did fake fossils fool a university professor? A fossil hoax known as "Beringer's Autographed Stones" was so successful
that a university professor published a book about the fake fossils. In
the early 18th century fossils were still a matter of considerable debate
among geologists. Dr. Hohann Bartholemew Adam Beringer, of the medical
faculty at Wuerzberg, held the view that fossils were mostly not the remains
of animals, but rather the handiwork of God, made to please Him. Two men
who disagreed with his views carved various shapes into stones and planted
them at Beringer's favorite digging site. Beringer believed these fake
fossils to be produced by the direct intervention of God, and as the hoaxers
planted more and more preposterous fakes, Beringer became even more excited.
The hoax was eventually revealed, and Beringer was so embarrassed that
he bought back as many copies of his book as he could find, at great expense.
The hoax ruined the reputations of everyone involved: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/berstone.htm When was the first meeting between Europeans and Native Americans? Columbus was not the first European to meet Native American people.
A much earlier meeting happened when Viking explorers landed in the extreme
northeast of North America, around the year 1000. The landing was part
of a great exploratory wave, when the Vikings sailed all around the north
Atlantic visiting Iceland, Greenland, and northern North America. They
found these lands almost entirely uninhabited. There are two stories from
the 13th and 14th centuries, written records of much older orally transmitted
tales, that tell the story of their encounters with Native Americans. They
are "The Saga of Erik the Red," and "The Saga of the Greenlanders," both
about the explorer Erik the Red and his son, Leif Eriksson. The Vikings
were bold explorers: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/arctic/features/viking/ A previous
Cool Fact about Vikings: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/03/02.html What kind of spider catches flying insects without using a web? The arboreal (tree-climbing) tarantula, Avicula versicolor, is so
fast that it can grab flying insects right out of the air. It is one of
the few spiders that can do this without using a web. A. versicolor is
found on Martinique and Guadeloupe islands. It's a huge, furry, red and
brown spider that can jump rapidly and accurately among the tree branches
where it lives. Like most tarantulas it has excellent eyesight, with full
stereo vision. If it sees a flying insect it springs at it, in an act of
exquisite timing and precision, and snatches it right out of the air. Dinner
is served! Tarantulas are among the most intelligent arthropods: http://www.image.dk/~boston/edderdyr/ What kind of life lives inside solid ice? Scientists are studying a frozen lake in Antarctica where there
are entire ecosystems locked inside solid ice. The lake never thaws, but
six feet down in the ice there are tiny clumps of dark material. In the
summer, when the sun shines down through the ice, a small amount of liquid
water forms around the dark clumps, and in that space grow specialized
bacteria and cyanobacteria (sometimes called blue-green algae). How did
these clumps of life get down in the ice? During the summer the topmost
layer of ice on the lake accumulates bits of dust blown in from the surrounding
cold desert. These dust particles soak up sunlight and become warmer, melting
the ice around them. They then sink down into the ice, taking living spores
with them. The ice-loving life forms are in Lake Bonney: http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/aut97/ice.html
Life forms living in such extreme conditions are known as "extremophiles."
Today's Cool Word is extremophile: http://www.cool-word.com/archive/1999/02/18.html
Previous Cool Facts about extremophiles: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/06/21.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/05/11.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/08/07.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/09/08.html Why does a hurricane have a calm "eye" in the center? The eye of a hurricane is the inescapable result of the laws of
physics. No matter how strong the rotating winds are around the center,
there must always be a point where there is no wind at all. That point,
and a circular region around it, is the eye. Sometimes the sky in the eye
is clear and blue, or stars may be visible if it's night. A hurricane's
eye is surrounded by a circular wall of boiling clouds. The cloud wall
marks the sudden transition between the raging winds and relative calm.
Air pressure in a hurricane's eye is very low, often lower than any (sea-level)
pressures outside of such storms. Although we know there must be an eye,
there are many unanswered questions. Why is the eye so sharply defined?
Why is there a downdraft in most eyes? How can a storm's eye develop two
concentric cloud walls, and why does the storm often weaken immediately
afterwards? Here's some great writing about hurricane Hugo (South Carolina,
1989): http://www2.sptimes.com/weather/HG.6.html Other Cool Facts about
thunderstorms and hurricanes: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/10/29.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/01/11.html How many different kinds of life are there? No one knows for sure how many different kinds (species) of life
forms there are on planet Earth, but a vast number have been discovered
so far. Just among animals there are at least 1,500,000 different species.
How many species are in some of the largest groups? The numbers given here
are lower bounds; there are probably more in each group waiting to be discovered:
750,000 species of arthropods (insects, crustaceans, spiders, etc.) 265,000
species of land plants 120,000 species of algae 90,000 species of molluscs
(snails, clams, octopuses, squids, etc.) 77,000 species of fungi 18,000
species of flatworms 12,000 species of roundworms 8,600 species of birds
4,000 species of mammals In addition, there are thousands of species of
reptiles, amphibians, protozoa, bacteria, viruses, and other life forms.
Take a tour through the history of life on Earth: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/life/tournew.html Why do some birds sleep with one eye open? Many kinds of birds sleep with only one half of their brain at a
time, keeping one eye open and one eye closed. They alternate which half
of their brain is awake and which half is asleep. A recent study suggests
that the reason is simple: the birds are literally keeping an eye out for
predators. Birds that are on the edge of the flock are much more likely
to sleep this way, and the eye that is open usually faces out into the
area surrounding the flock. That way predators cannot approach without
being seen. Birds are not the only animals that sleep this way. Dolphins
and other sea-mammals sleep with only half their brains, but for a different
reason: they need to remember to swim to the surface to get a breath of
air. People might also sometimes sleep with only part of the brain: http://www.exn.ca/html/templates/htmlpage.cfm How does the B-2 bomber avoid detection? The B-2 bomber has a wing span of 172 feet (52 meters), yet its
radar "signature" (apparent size on a radar screen) is as big as that of
a bird. Not only that, but it makes very little sound and is difficult
to see, from the ground or from the air. The bomber's construction uses
graphite composites, which trap radar waves inside the plane, and its outer
surfaces contain no flat parts and no right angles, which would reflect
radar. The jet's hot exhaust is mixed with cool air before being released,
foiling heat-seeking missiles. Its engines are also hidden deep inside
the plane, where their noise is muffled by the structure of the aircraft.
Even the plane's shape is designed to fool the eye, making it difficult
to tell whether it's coming or going. The result is an aircraft that is
able to fly deep into enemy territory without detection. More about the
amazing B-2 "stealth" bomber: http://www.discovery.com/area/technology/b2/b2.html How do opals show rainbow colors? Opal is one of the few gemstones that is not a crystal. Although
it's made of silica (silicon dioxide), the same compound as quartz and
agate, the molecules are not arranged in crystalline order. Opal is made
of millions of extremely tiny spheres of silica molecules, loosely packed
together, with water molecules between them. The water content can be as
high as 10% or more. The colors come from the interaction between light
and the silica spheres. If the spheres are almost the same size, they tend
to pack into semi-regular patterns that diffract light, the same way a
peacock's feather does. Each opal shows its own unique colored display.
More about opals: http://www.theimage.com/gemstone/opal/opal.html http://www.desertusa.com/magfeb98/feb_pap/geo_opal.html Do rocks from Mars fall onto the Earth? Analysis of the chemical composition of some meteorites suggests
that they may be pieces of the planet Mars. They were probably thrown into
space during large asteroid impacts on Mars, and may have spent millions
of years in orbit before falling onto the Earth. In 1996 tiny fossil-like
structures, smaller than bacteria, were discovered inside one of these
Mars rocks. There is debate about whether these cylindrical capsules were
once living cells. Is there life on Mars? The presence on Earth of Martian
meteorites may have given us a rare, close-up look at Martian chemistry,
but we still have no certain answers about Martian life forms. More about
the meteorites from Mars, and the controversial "fossils": http://seti1.setileague.org/photos/marspix.htm
http://cnn.com/TECH/9608/06/mars.life/ http://www.fas.org/mars/aaas_001.htm
A previous Cool Fact about Mars: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/06/24.html How does petrified wood form? Petrified wood is wood that has turned to stone. Usually it is millions
of years old. Often it shows beautiful colors that were not present in
the original wood. How does wood turn to stone? When wood dies it begins
decaying immediately. To become petrified it must be quickly covered by
a layer of volcanic ash, mud, or other material that excludes oxygen, thus
preventing it from decaying. If conditions are right, the organic part
of the wood dissolves slowly, and at the same time minerals replace the
organic matter, duplicating its structure exactly. The mineral replacement
can be silica, calcite, pyrite, or marcasite. The colors are caused by
impurities in the replacing mineral. The most common impurity is iron,
which causes red, orange, or yellow colors. Manganese or copper can cause
blue, black, or green colors. One of the finest deposits of petrified wood:
http://www.shannontech.com/ParkVision/PetForest/PetWood.html What's the most powerful kind of light microscope? The light microscope that can see the smallest details is the laser
scanning confocal microscope (LSCM). It's a sophisticated combination of
a laser, a computer, and advanced optics. The LSCM eliminates one of the
biggest sources of optical "noise" in ordinary microscopes: light from
parts of the image that are not in focus. Instead of creating the whole
image all at once, a confocal microscope aims a tiny spot of light at the
subject, scanning it like the beam of electrons used in a scanning electron
microscope. The result is an image that shows much smaller details than
traditional light microscope images. There are other devices, like electron
microscopes, which achieve much greater magnification than the LSCM. Nevertheless,
LSCM images sometimes show information that is impossible to see with any
other microscope. Galleries of confocal images: http://www.neuro.soton.ac.uk/BIG/Pretty_Pictures/pretty.pictures.html
http://www.is.kochi-u.ac.jp/Bio/clsm/clsm.html More about how it works: http://www.llt.de/conprin.html What animal had the longest neck of all? The longest known neck was that of the dinosaur Mamenchisaurus.
Its neck could be as long as 15 meters (49 feet), two and a half times
as long as a giraffe's neck. The whole dinosaur could be as long as 26
meters (85 feet) and might weigh as much as ten metric tons. Mamenchisaurus
necks contained 19 vertebrae, more than any other known dinosaur. A giraffe's
neck contains only seven vertebrae. Memenchisaurus was related to the Diplodocus,
another huge dinosaur. Both were herbivores that used their long necks
to get at vegetation without having to move their bodies very much. Mamenchisaurus
lived during the late Jurassic Period, about 140 million years ago. More
about Memenchisaurus: http://www.nature.ca/notebooks/english/mamenchi.htm
Previous Cool Facts about unusual necks: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/12/18.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/05/13.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/05/20.html What kind of human body cell acts like an amoeba? Your body contains cells that look and act very much like amoebas
(see previous Cool Fact below to learn more about amoebas). Certain kinds
of leukocytes, or white blood cells, cling to the walls of arteries and
veins, moving around by extending pseudopods (temporary protrusions) and
flowing along. The most common white blood cells are called neutrophils.
Trillions of them are created every day by the bone marrow and released
into the blood. They are attracted to substances that are present at the
sites of injury or infection. Once they arrive, they engulf bacteria, dead
cells, and other debris. The largest white blood cells are the macrophages,
which clean up various tissues and organs. One kind of macrophage eats
dead neutrophils. There are many other kinds of white blood cells. All
of them are part of the human immune system, which keeps the body free
of infection. How the human immune system works: http://www.howstuffworks.com/immune-system.htm
Previous Cool Facts about amoebas: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/08/24.html
Previous Cool Facts about blood: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/02/28.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/04/28.html How can telescopes directly image planets of distant stars? It's about as easy to see a planet of a distant star as it is to
see a candle flame next to a searchlight from many miles away. The star's
light drowns out the planet, and the planet is lost in the glare. By a
method called nulling interferometry, astronomers can optically remove
most of the light of the star, leaving the planet's light undimmed. In
infrared light, in which planets are relatively bright, a planet might
be visible. The method works by using two mirrors to create one image.
One mirror is adjusted so the light travels very slightly farther to make
the image. Light waves from the star are canceled out, but light from the
planet gets through. Several observatories are beginning to explore the
idea, and a space- based nulling interferometer is under design. If there
are planets like Earth out there, we may soon be able to see some of them.
More about nulling interferometry: http://www.spacer.com/planetary/extrasolar-98b.html
http://unisci.com/stories/0917981.htm A previous Cool Fact about planets
of other stars: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/09/16.html What kind of single-celled organisms have no nuclei? Most living cells contain a nucleus, a semi-enclosed compartment
where the cell's DNA (genetic material) is stored, but bacteria just have
a single, looped DNA molecule, tangled into a mass called the nucleoid.
Bacteria are the simplest life forms on Earth, and the most ancient. There
are no sub-compartments inside bacterial cells, just a rich, syrupy liquid,
thick with enzymes and other organic molecules. Bacteria prosper by growing
and dividing as fast as possible. Because they are small and simple, they
can be fast and hardy. If the environment is good, the population of some
bacteria can double in 20 minutes. More about bacteria: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/bacteria.html
A previous Cool Fact about bacteria: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/02/09.html
A previous Cool Fact about cells without nuclei: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/04/28.html What's the most primitive multicellular animal? In the animal kingdom, the most primitive multicellular forms are
the sponges, members of the phylum Porifera. These animals have been around
since just before the Cambrian Period, more than 500 million years ago.
Today there are about 5,000 known species of sponges. All the cells of
a sponge are nearly identical, and its body has no distinct organs or separate
tissues. It is a porous mesh of cells, like a living filter, designed to
trap tiny, floating life forms. It does not move, but pulls water through
itself, filtering out microscopic life forms, which its cells engulf. The
simplest sponges can spontaneously reconstruct themselves after being torn
apart into individual cells. The cells move together and build a body much
like the old one, but with the individual cells in different places. More
about sponges: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/porifera/porifera.html Previous
Cool Facts about very primitive life forms: http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/05/08.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/10/06.html What kind of bird spits oil? It is best to keep well clear of the nests of the fulmar, a seabird
that is capable of spitting a foul-smelling, yellowish oil at nest intruders.
The oil comes from the bird's stomach. The bird can send the oil as far
as 1.5 meters (5 feet) with great accuracy. Fulmars are related to albatrosses
and petrels, in the order Procellariiformes. Most birds in this group produce
stomach oil and feed it to their young, but only the fulmar spits it at
intruders. Even when they are not spitting oil, fulmars and their close
relatives are malodorous creatures. Every part of the bird emits a strong,
musky odor, even the eggs. Giant petrel egg shells that have been in a
museum for 100 years still smell. The northern fulmar's habitat stretches
from the Arctic to regions as far south as England, California, and Japan:
http://rainbow.ldgo.columbia.edu/edf/info/dist/fulmar/ A research paper
about fulmars: http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/courses/en570/papers_1998/skinner.html [FLASH] [Toolbox]
[Search] [Weather]
[Horoscopes]
[Weekly Horoscope]
[AmateurRadio] [Word]
[Humor]
[News] [LinkOpps]
[LinkBuddies]
[PetPeeves] [Today
in History] [Facts]
[myths-facts]
[Sounds]
[Banners]
[UFO's] [Home]
[Family]
[Mom and Dad]
[WhoamI] [Reel]
[OfficeMax]
[Beyond]
[RegisterIt]
[WebsiteGarage] Updated Mar 9th 2001