10 Things you didn't know 5 minutes ago! (Part 7)

10. Earth is the only place we have observed fire


This is because of the fantastic abundance of oxygen, anywhere else there is just simply not enough.

9. The tongue map is wrong


During primary school (or roughly 4th grade for you americans), you learn about the tongue map how different areas of the tongue suit different tastes. This is wrong, the tongue can sense the 5 different tastes all over it, just in different sensitivities.

8. Celery, truffle mushrooms and pork contain androstenone


This compound is aromatic and heavily influences flavour.

50% of people cannot smell it, roughly 15% find it woody and the rest think it smells like urine. Nice.

7. Why you actually set your clock forward in march


Benjamin Franklin created this as a joke. He said that getting people up earlier on brighter mornings saved the number of candles needed to light up the workspace.

This idea started near 1920 and then went viral around the world.

6. According to quantum physics, the shortest time that can exist is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds


This is known as planck's time, or the time taken for light to move a plancks length which is 1.6x10^-35m

To appreciate how small this is, the diameter of a proton is 10^20 times larger than this length.

The dinosaurs know this

5. Each day, 8 billion meteoroids hit the Earth


Meteoroid is the fancy name for meteorite but not yet in Earth, they are so tiny that no one notices them whizzing to the ground.

4. Counting sheep is a baaaaaaa'd idea


Scientists have proven that counting sheep to cure insomnia is ineffective, the subjects got so bored their minds turned to more engaging subjects.

3. How much can your pencil hold?


Scientists estimate the average drawing distance of a pencil is 35 miles long. However no one yet has tested this claim, want to be the first?

2. There can never be such things as vampires

Vampires are supposed to die by sunlight so they appear in the night.

However moonlight is just reflection of the sun, and hence counts as sunlight which means the vampires would burn in the night as well.

1. The diamond planet

I wish.

Astronomers have spotted a planet made entirely of diamond just 4,000 light years away. The scientists estimate the density and amount of carbon results in a complete diamond planet.