Solar flares are scarily powerful
The energy they release is the equivalent of 100-megaton atomic bombs exploding at once. It’s a good thing the Earth’s atmosphere protects us from their radiation.
It’s impossible to burp in space
When you burp on Earth, gravity keeps down the solids and liquid from the food you just ate, so only the gas escapes from your mouth. In the absence of gravity, the gas cannot separate from the liquids and solids, so burping essentially turns into puking. Check out these foods that are actually banned from space.
About half of your body is bacteria
That’s right. A 2014 study estimates that the human body consists of 39 trillion bacteria and 30 trillion human cells. In the past, researchers thought we were more bacteria than human with a ratio of 10:1. While this new calculation is probably closer to the true numbers, it’s not a hard fact. Here are 20 more obscure facts you never knew about your own body.
Men are more likely to be colorblind than women
The genes responsible for the most common type of colorblindness are found on the X chromosome, the National Eye Institute explains. Even if women have the genes on one of their two X chromosomes, a properly functioning gene on the other one makes up for that loss. If men inherit the gene on their only X chromosome, they’ll become colorblind.
We have no idea what most of the universe looks like
About 96 percent of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy, which are undetectable to humans. Scientists believe this is because the particles that make up these substances don’t interact with regular matter or light. Even though scientific discoveries are constantly being made about the stars, planets, and other galaxies we can see, it’s impossible to make conclusions about things that are invisible to our eyes. Next, brush up on these 50 interesting facts about basically everything.
Originally Published on Readers Digest
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