A Potpourri of Oddball Facts

Change of pace today.  Just for the fun of  it, instead of writing another typical rant about MAGA people and all the harm they’re causing the world, I thought I’d share some oddball facts and figures from the worlds of science, politics and general information.

• • If you lined up all the blood vessels in your body into one line, that line would extend  60,000 miles, or long enough to wrap around the world more than two times.

• • There is no such thing as the largest number because you can add a zero to any number, into infinity.  But the largest named number is the Graham number, which, according to Plus magazine, is so large that the universe is not large enough to hold all its digits.  However, Plus says, we do know that whatever that Graham number is, it ends in 7 and can be divided by 3.
  • Astronomers were astounded recently when they discovered a planet with a tail 350,000 miles long, or longer by half than the distance from Earth to the moon, making it the longest tail ever discovered.  The planet, named WASP-69b, is 1,150 light years away from Earth, is slightly bigger than Jupiter, and it circles its star every four Earth-days.  Scientists say the stellar wind of particles its star blasts out burns away the planet’s atmosphere at the rate of about 200,000 tons a second, or about the size of Earth every billion years.
  • Although Donald Trump claims to be a Christian, he forever demonstrates and exemplifies every one of what the Roman Catholic Church calls The Seven Deadly Sins, which are pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth.   But he never demonstrates Christianity’s basic teaching, which is to love.
    
  • A new study from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab shows that the amount of water lost so far from Greenland’s melting glaciers  is enough to cover all of Texas with an ice sheet more  than 30 feet deep.
    
  • If you were to stand on the Equator and shine a flashlight to the horizon, and if the light would adhere to the Earth’s surface, it would circle the earth 7 ½ times in the first second.  If you were to point the light into space, it would reach the moon in 1.3 seconds, and the sun in eight minutes and 20 seconds.
  • Astronomers have so far identified 85 exoplanets that they say could contain life, but they agree the actual number is almost certainly in the trillions.  Of the 85 discovered so far, all of them exist in “unique solar systems,” or solar systems that contain only one planet.  And all the planets are the size of Jupiter, Saturn or Neptune.  The 85 are among more than 5,000 exoplanets they have confirmed since 1991, the year astronomers first officially confirmed that exoplanets even exist.
  • Newspapers used to be one of the largest employers in America, but over the last 15 years more than 2,000 newspapers, all but 70 of them weeklies, have ceased publication. Nearly half of U.S. counties (1,449) now only have one newspaper, often a weekly, and 171 counties have no newspaper at all. Further, 42 of the largest 100 newspapers now publish six or fewer days a week, and 11 of those only publish one print newspaper a week.
  • We know that our universe is expanding, but what is it expanding into?  Scientists tell us the question makes no sense because the universe is everything so it isn’t expanding into anything.  It’s just expanding.  All of the galaxies in the universe are moving away from each other at ever-increasing speeds, but there’s no center they’re expanding from, and no outer edge to expand into anything else.  But that doesn’t mean that the universe is infinite. Scientists put it this way: Think of the fabric of the universe as the surface of a balloon. As the balloon inflates, the surface stretches and every point on that surface moves away from every other point, but a tiny being on the surface of that balloon could walk forever and never run into the edge of its balloon universe. There’s no edge, yet that balloon universe has a finite volume.
  • Spider webs are five times stronger than steel, and they are flexible.  Scientists have been trying forever to duplicate the spider’s web, but so far they are no closer to an answer than they were the first day they tried.
  • If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees with the Colorado Supreme Court that Donald Trump is ineligible for the state’s Republican primary ballot under the Insurrection Clause of the 14^th Amendment, it also could apply to dozens of others who are running for office or currently hold office.  The Huffington Post identified 57 state and local elected Republican officials from 27 states who were involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, including 16 members of state houses or assemblies, four state senators, six county commissioners, seven city council members, two mayors, three school board members, two state GOP chairs, and one state attorney general: Texas’ Ken Paxton.
  • Science informs us that the ratio between the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force was established within one millionth of a second after the Big Bang, and if that difference had been off by just one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, life could not have developed in the universe.  But science has no idea what was going on one millionth of a second before that.  Science also can trace humanity’s existence to a cell that appeared in the ocean 3.5 billion years ago, but it has no idea how that cell got there.
  • The nearest major galaxy to us, the Andromeda Nebula, is 2.5 million light years away, and the most distant galaxy ever discovered, named HD1, is 13.5 billion light years away from us.  Flying at the speed of 430,000 miles an hour, which is the fastest a spacecraft (the Parker Solar Probe) has ever flown, it would take 3.91 billion years to reach the Andromeda Nebula.  It would take 21 billion years to reach HD1, which would be more than 7 billion years longer than the universe has existed.
  • America’s aid to Ukraine to help it fight Russia’s invasion has helped the United States in at least two ways: militarily and economically.  Militarily, it has helped us clear our warehouses of outdated weapons and make room to replace it with modern weapons.  And it has helped economically because building those weapons has provided thousands of jobs, almost all of  them in red states.
  • There are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the world.  There are 10 times the number of stars than there are cups of water in all the oceans in the world.  There are more molecules in a spoonful of water than there are stars in the sky.
  • If you were to weigh yourself at the North Pole, then weigh yourself at the Equator, you would find yourself several pounds lighter at the Equator, but your body mass would be the same.  Why?  Earth spins at approximately 1,038 miles an hour, so if you are on the Equator the centrifugal force would spin those pounds skyward.  But if you’re at the North Pole, you are simply turning around and thus there is no centrifugal force.
  • Theoretically, the maximum height trees can reach is between 400 and 426 feet, but the world’s tallest known tree is California’s Coast Redwood (sequoia sempervirens), which is 380.8 feet tall.  The tree, which stands in a secret location in the  Redwoods National and State Park, is so tall that you cannot see its top from  the ground.
  • What exists between in the space between an atom and its nucleus?  Electron clouds, which represent regions where electrons are likely to be found, with darker areas representing higher probabilities and lighter areas indicating lower probabilities.  In other words, there is no space between an atom and its nucleus, but only bustling clouds of probabilities.  Got it?