From penguins and polar bears never meeting to the density of neutron stars, join us as we take a curious peep at 20 amazing facts about life and the universe.
20. Penguins are only found in the southern hemisphere.
19. Polar bears are only found in the northern hemisphere. (So that means penguins and polar bears would never naturally meet each other)
18. Australia is the only continent without glaciers.
17. Only 2% of all the water on Earth is fresh and 90% of that fresh water is locked up in glaciers around the world.
16. Although water covers 70% of Earth’s surface, it only accounts for 0.05% of Earth’s total mass.
15. According to a study by the Natural History Museum of Denmark, over the course of 4 billion years Earth’s oceans have lost around a quarter of their mass.
14. 6 to 8 million people die every year from water and water related diseases.
13. According to a study by the U.N. more people around the world have access to mobile phones than working toilets.
12. According to statistics from the Global Footprint Network, for all of Earth’s population to be at an American standard of living, it would take four earths to sustain that rate of consumption.
11. In 2001 the global meat consumption was 37 kg per capita. It is estimated that by 2030 it will rise to 53 kg per capita.
10. In August 2016, NASA announced a US$1 million prize to anyone that can make a planet Mars ready robot. To qualify the robot must be able to perform three specific tasks: repair a solar array, align a communications dish and repair a damaged hab.
9. Astronomers from Caltech have discovered an enormous reservoir of water deep in space. It is at least 140 trillion times the amount of water found here on Earth and is 100,000 times larger than the sun.
8. At the centre of the Milky Way is a black hole known as Sagittarius A. It has the mass of around 4.3 million suns.
7. After the Apollo 11 crew returned from their lunar mission, they were quarantined in case the Moon had infectious diseases.
6. Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoon of its matter, on Earth, would weigh one billions tons.
5. A pulsar star can spin up to 600 revolutions per second.
4. In 1998 the Hubble Space Telescope observed that a long time ago the universe expanded at a much slower rate than it does today. Meaning the universe is speeding up rather than slowing down as first thought.
3. Dark energy is a complete mystery to scientists but it’s thought to make up 65% of the universe!
2. A Dyson Sphere is a hypothetical structure that could encompass a whole star – harvesting it’s energy for further use.
1. Technological singularity is a hypothesis that the invention of artificial intelligence will abruptly trigger a rapid increase in technological growth that could dramatically alter the course of civilization. This new AI would enter a phase of run-away self-improvement cycles that would get exponentially quicker resulting in incomprehensible changes to the universe.