Fun Facts

[Leafo]

Do you have fun facts you want to share with people?
This is the place to do so!
Ill go first ever seen a pet with BBS and wondered what that stands for? Benjamin Button Syndrome.
Continue this please!

[lemonbumb]

oh jeez i have so many fun facts from my astronomy class i've learned, especially the sun and venus.

sun
-it's not actually on fire. its boiling plasma, which is the next level up from matter being a gas (solid, liquid, gas, PLASMA). we see fire-y colors bc of telescope filters and imaging correction to make it easier for out brains to process what exactly it is we're looking at
-sunspots are slightly cooler in temperature which is why they appear a different color and how we can track them
-the sun is rotating too. everything in our solar system rotates.
-solar flares aren't as common as you think. plasma flares (aka coronal mass ejection), however, are a lot more common and hit us on Earth quite frequently. this is why we get the northern lights/aurora borealis
-bonus, mercury is way too close to the sun to have an atmosphere, let alone anything super cool on it. the most notable feature (imo) is that the nights there reach 100K (-280F). that's like. really really really cold. there's no in between either, it's either that on the side away from the sun or 623K (~900F) facing the sun. and even if you found a way to withstand the wild temps, the radiation would k word you before you even got there. so. yanno. don't try to live on mercury kids.

venus
-has an extremely dense layer of sulfuric clouds that reflect the majority of light, which is why it Looks Like That.
-regardless of its beauty, its really smelly. sulfur atomoshere? ew.which is my favorite fun fact ever because no one really thinks about how a planet would smell, and it's even more ironic because Venus is the roman goddess of love and beauty. shes so stinky yall
-underneath all of that reflective gorgeousness though, is the very incredible real life depiction of Hell.
-no. seriously. there are lava domes and shield volcanoes (which are exactly what they sound like), and because of all the sulfur clouds and how dense they are there's an extreme greenhouse effect which makes it as hot, if not hotter, than mercury. the only reason it has lava structures is because of the distance, and it's made up of different space materials than mercury
-it is the only planet to rotates "backwards" or in retrograde.
-it has 90x the pressure than on Earth. we once sent a craft to Venus and it lasted maybe two hours before it just got obliterated bc it was crushed by the sheer weight of the atmosphere

another bonus because even though i'm not an astronomy major (godspeed to those who are), i find the subject extremely fascinating and i would Love to brain dump about it:
the reason there's life on earth and not on venus or mars (other than the obvious reasons regarding venus), is because of a thing called the goldilocks zone (think: "too hot, too cold, just right"). there is a specific band of range around any solar system that has the optimal distance away from a star to promote the formation of any kind of life because water can form. Venus is just to the left of this band, and mars is just to the right of it (or rather, they're both juuuust on the outside of this band in opposite directions, if that makes it easier). earth is within that zone.
If a planet is too close to a star (like Venus or Mercury), it will have extremely hot temperatures, and therefore no oceans or rain or snow (no water), and there's not enough erosion, which also dissuades the formation of water. also, hotter temps = more atmospheric escape. this is why mercury has such a itty bitty atmosphere. planets too far away from the star are way too cold. any water that does exist can Only exist as ice and snow. there is no way to heat it up (even if you could theoretically bring a lighter or something. it's just not possible). there's also not enough erosion to promote life that far away either because everything is still too solid.

those are my fun facts for tonight. i'm sorry this is so long, i just love talking about this stuff and it gets my brain goin lol

[rileypillow]

Some animal facts, since I mostly research animals!

Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur. It is most often portrayed as a lizardlike, colourful (often green) creature, however it is actually more closely related to mammals and going by that it might have much duller colours than expected. It is often shown as having its legs out to the side like a reptile, however new research believes it may of held its legs below it like a mammal. Dimetrodon went extinct around 40 million years before dinosaurs had evolved! After finding this out, Dimetrodon suddenly made a lot more sense to me, it does have a mammalian look about it. Due to it being such an ancient species, its appearance is not known, though this reconstruction is by far the most realistic I have seen.

Compared to other insects that buzz, there is something that is just so annoying about a mosquito's. All flying insects buzz because they beat their wings and they can't help it, except for the mosquito, which controls the sound its wings make. Female mosquitoes make their buzz louder and high pitched to attract males. I always wondered why sometimes they seemed so loud when they weren't in my room, yet when they're really close I can barely hear them.

Edit: Nearly forgot this fact but animals are not related in the way that people (or at least myself) were taught at school. Animals aren't split into vertebrates and invertebrates. Rather, vertebrates are just one branch off a massive tree! Vertebrates also evolved before insects and modern molluscs did, I was taught they were the most recent but they are far from that. Fungi and several other kingdoms (I'm not going to list them all because there are a LOT, but they are mainly single-celled) are more closely related to animals than to plants. I still have more to research, but I found this so interesting to learn! :)

[Cygnetta]

If you’ve never heard of this, you might not believe it at first.

[KingSpinosaurus]

The skull of a Chinese Water Deer really makes you realise how the Chinese myths of dragons came to be.