I figured I may as well do a post about the brain and how it works considering the fact that I'm using mine right now. So are you if you're reading this, just how it goes I guess. The brain is weird and wet and squishy. Technically the brain named itself and everything ever seen or heard of. The brain created languages and art. All sorts of cool things have been made by the brain, like this blog post. So the brain is made up of a bunch of cells known as neurons. There's like 100 billion of them in just your brain alone. There are a few types of neurons, Sensory neurons, Motor neurons, and Interneurons. Sensory neurons carry signals from the outer parts of your body into the central nervous system. Motor neurons carry signals from the central nervous system to the outer parts of your body. Lastly, Interneurons connect various neurons within the brain and spinal cord. Basically, neurons are constantly sendings signals all throughout your body to your brain which makes things happen like they do. Normally, the brain sends signals to the exact same spot every time, like a destinated path, which is why our body acts the same everyday. However, when people do drugs like psychedelics and other things, these signals gain new pathways to different parts of the brain. Kind of like connecting the brain to parts of itself that aren't supposed to have ever met. This causes the hallucinations and such from the drugs. So, in all, the brain has a specific function that it is supposed to go through and not be messed with, but some people really hust don't care.
Aye, you want it, I got it. Hey guys me again bringing you the latest in sweet facts. As you all know I'm the greatest fact writer of all time. Not that "did you know facts" guy, he probably steals my facts. Today, I have facts on this animal known as an Aye-Aye. It's a nocturnal animal with big, bulgy eyes that lives in the country of Madagascar. I don't remember if it's in the movie though. Aye-Ayes have really long claws on all of their fingers and toes except for the thumbs. It helps them to grip tree branches and other things. Neat right? An Aye-Aye is either dark brown or black and they sleep high up in the leaves of trees in little balls all day long. They have a bad rep and are believed to be an omen of bad luck, so the citizens of Madagascar would kill them on sight. Because of this the Aye-Aye is an endangered species that is protected by the law now. They are mammals and primates. They're actually the only primate believed to find their prey with echolocation. They tap on the branches of trees and listen for insects to move around. Delicious. Also, if they aren't murdered or killed by other animals then their life span is usually around 20 years. They only get to be about 17 inches long from their body and head, but their tail, which is very bushy and huge, gets to be about 24 inches long. That's all I have about them now folks, adios.
I have done a blog post on tornadoes, so I should probably do another storm. Just to keep up the tradition. This post is going to be about really big storms. Some people call them hurricanes, but I live life on risks. Hurricanes are super windy storms with a lot of rain. They have been really disastrous in the U.S. Hurricane Katrina was a big one that did a lot of damage. We also had Hurricane Sandy not long ago. We felt that here in Virginia, but not as bad as some states. America deals with a few hurricanes over years. Usually once a year, but we do not get them some years. Depends on how the weather feels, it has no boss. Hurricanes are really only counted as hurricanes once the winds reach 74mph and they can and have reached up to around 160mph. The diameter of hurricanes are 400 to 500 miles long sometimes. That's at least the length of three trucks in a row, I don't know though because I'm not a scientist. Can you even imagine a storm that big coming at you? Also hurricanes can have thunderstorms inside them as well as tornadoes, that is a triple threat you have to watch out for. Do not worry though. In the middle of a hurricane is this thing called the "eye." It is really not that windy amd surprisingly calm in the eye, so just chill in there a while. It can be roughly 20 miles long, so just manage to follow in it until it dies down. The strength of hurricanes rapidly lower once it hits land, so what you see going on in the ocean is not what you will receive. One last neat fact I swear. Hurricanes form over the ocean, as you know, but the water has to be at least around 80 degrees for them to stay a hurricane. Sayonara, I'm out.
Guess who it is, yeah me again. I own this blog so it will always be me. I'm doing this blog on constellations because I think space is pretty sick. A group of stars that form a pattern in the sky at night is the definition of constellations. Simple right? There are a lot of constellations too. Around 88 or so. Some constellations only appear in the northern hemisphere and some only in the southern. Apparently, the constellations that show up in both hemispheres can be upside down in the south, so that's pretty neat. Oh and did you know that the earliest official records of constellations were made 3,000 years ago by the Babylonians? The zodiac signs are based off of their observations as well. So as you can see, constellations are cool. Go tell your friends this. That's all I've got for you. Bye. Ha just kidding, now I'm going to tell you some actual constellations because those facts are a bit boring. Everyone knows the Little Dipper and Big Dipper. I have trouble just finding those, so imagine how it is looking for the others. There is also Orion, Taurus, Aries, and Big Star. Got you again, Big Star was made up. Cassiopeia and Andromeda are two more. I will try and add a picture of a lot of them. There is a ton though. The easiest way to find these constellations, if you can, is to find Polaris. All you have to do is find the Big Dipper and draw an imaginary line through the outer two stars of the Big Dipper’s bowl and you will come to Polaris. From there you can find all of them, if they are out at the time you're looking for them.
Howdy partners it's me again. I'm bringing you some information about the new vibrations in space, also known as Gravitational Waves. Now these are not the waves that people surf on. They aren't that cool, but they are still pretty interesting. The gravitational waves were created by two black holes colliding with each other. Now that's pretty sick. Physicists were able to directly observe the black holes colliding too. These gravitational waves came almost a century after Albert Einstein first announced them. Einstein didn't have any actual evidence of them, until now. These distortions in the fabric of space time travel at the speed of light. They carry information about how they were formed and information about gravity itself. By the time gravitational waves reach us they have slowed down and are less dangerous, but when they are first created gravitational waves are extremely violent. Gravitational waves can be created by other ways and not just from black holes. The collapse of a supernova and the coalescing of neutron stars can also produce gravitational waves. Neutron stars orbit each other for a long time, slowly getting closer and closer to each other before they finally collide and explode out these gravitational waves. I don't know about you, but I would love to observe a supernova collapsing or even two neutron stars colliding. It would be a once in a lifetime view and it would look awesome with a huge explosion shooting out gravitational waves, even though we wouldn't see them.
This blog post is going to be a bunch of different facts because there are just too many great facts to choose from! It's all going to be about electricity, as you can see if you look at the title, so lets get started. Static electricity is that zap you sometimes get when touching something metal. It's caused by an electric charge building up on the surface of an object. The zap then comes from an opposite charge neutralizing the electric charge.
Everyone knows what lightning is, it's that beautiful flash of light in the sky when it's storming. It can also appear when the days get too hot, so the air cools down and causes heat lightning. Well, lightning bolts are a discharge of electricity in the atmosphere and they can reach 130,000 miles per hour while also reaching 54,000 ºF. There is a ton of electricity just in that lightning bolt just imagine what it would feel like if it struck you. Now electric eels are kind of like lightning bolt, they both basically have electricity in them. Electric eels aren't near as powerful as a lightning bolt. Electric eels only generate 500 volts of electricity which can still hurt or even kill someone. They generate all of this electricity for them to use when hunting or just for self defense. Now the biggest source of energy for electricity comes from burning coal. The coal is burned to heat boiler water, which produces steam that spins turbines attached to generators. This is a ton of work just to power the electricity we use today. There are other ways to produce energy and then electricity, they are just not as efficient and have some side effects as well. The other options are things like wind turbines which can be set up in windy places, but then they can mess up the migrations of birds. There are also water turbines, but they mess with the rivers of the ecosystem which mess up the living of the wildlife. There is also a bike that a really smart business man is making. If the bike is pedaled for an hour then it can generate electricity for a whole 24 hours. If this machine were being shipped out to the poor countries they could be used to makes tons of electricity. The only side effect is that you get incredibly healthy. Are you scared of Mother Nature? You should be, she isn't fun to mess with. She's basically psycho, trying to steal your dog and make your tires flat. It's horrible. She can also spit out these things called Tornados. Now these are something you want to watch out for. They're giant, swirling funnels of wind, rain, and hail that tear through anything in their way. The winds of a tornado can reach 300 miles an hour, they can also tear through anything a mile wide and 50 miles long. That is just how big they can get. Usually, tornados can be predicted and have warnings before they hit so people can evacuate, but sometimes they develop so rapidly that there is hardly any warning sign to get people out. I don't know about you, but that is not somewhere I want to be. Now before a tornado hits there are usually some indicators of where it is going to land at. Right below the funnel can be a cloud of debris even if you don't see the funnel yet. Also, the wind might die down and make it eerily quiet as if the air has stood still. Then the tornado will strike following right at the edge of a thunderstorm. You can sometimes see the sun and bright skies behind the tornado, since it stays near the back of the storm. The average speed of a tornado is 30mph when moving forward, but every so often a big one will hit going 70mph or even more. Tornadoes also cause around 70 fatalities and 1500 injuries just in the U.S. alone every single year. Yikes!
So everyone knows the second closest planet to the sun in our solar system. It's Venus. Our planet Earth is the third closest, followed by Mars and so on. Well, Venus is a lot like Earth in size and mass, it is sometimes referred to as Earth's Sister Planet. That means Venus is a girl! Not really. Anyways, the surface of Venus is actually obscured by the thick clouds of sulfuric acid. We probably can't live there then. Surprisingly, Venus has no moons, which is weird for some reason. Maybe because of how close in size it is to Earth. Venus was also named after a Roman goddess of love and beauty, isn't that cute? Well, a lot like of Venus is the second closest to the sun, it's also the second brightest object in the sky. The Moon is the brightest, but apparently if the skies are clear you might be able to see Venus during the day. Neat! Another cool little fact about Venus is that its days are longer than its years. Seriously. A Venus day is 243 of Earth's days and one Venus' years takes 225 Earth days. Venus also experiences retrograde rotation. This just means that Venus spins counter-clockwise instead of regular clockwise. It doesn't really do much to the planet to spin this way, but it is very interesting in my opinion, I mean really, who wants to be different? Get your facts straight Venus, you're killing us. I'm about to hit you with another sweet fact. The atmosphere of Venus has so much pressure that it destroys asteroids entering the atmosphere. That means there are no craters on the surface of Venus. The pressure on Venus is about the same as the pressure at the very bottom of the ocean.
Are you excited to learn about one of the largest flying creatures in the world? Well you should be. This thing is going to blow your mind! It was huge, I'm talking gigantic, this thing was so big you wouldn't believe it! It was the hawk...slightly depressing. Even more depressing if you believed it because airplanes. Airplanes aren't actually living though, but you could count the people inside them, right? Anyways, one of the largest flying creatures in the world was the Quetzalcoatlus northropi, lets just call it the Quetzalcoatlus for time's sake. The Quetzalcoatlus was a species of Pterosaur, the "P" is silent, that rained through the skies around 60 million years ago. The Quetzalcoatlus didn't even have teeth, yet it played an important role in the ecosystem, its wingspan alone stretched 39 feet! Apparently, these creatures were so large they had to have a running start just to take off and they had a hard time landing. Not much is known about the creatures. Their bones are very fragile these days and paleontologists have a hard time finding the bones. Scientists believe that Pterosaurs liked to live near rivers, lakes, etc. which seems like common sense because you need water to survive. The Quetzalcoatlus diet was pretty straightforward. They ate small prey and carrion, which is just animals that were already dead. Their diets are a bit like diets of buzzards or vultures, mainly carrion and sometimes small prey. I think that the Quetzalcoatlus is pretty cool, but terrifying. I would love for scientists to find out more about them just so I can learn about them as well.
Yo it's me again. I'm back to give some more science facts. This fact is about the Virginia Opossum, which is also the title of this blog post. So, the Virginia Opossum has some white, black, and sometimes even gray fur. Their ears are black, but they don't have any fur on them and their tail is long and look pretty gross. The tail is also prehensile, which means it can grab onto branches and stuff. They can grow to be about the size of a cat or even bigger, but they have short legs and the females even have a pouch. Opossums live by themselves in places like forests, woods, farms, etc. They only get together when they need to breed and then they will part ways again. The opossum is also nocturnal, which means they like to only come out at night.
Opossums are very aggressive when threatened. They will hiss and show their teeth to predators and apparently, just like skunks, they also shoot a nasty liquid from their behinds to keep them away. They will play dead as well and will not move until the predator is gone. The Opossum are very good climbers and will usually build a nest in a tree or they will enter another animal's hole in the ground. They never actually dig their own holes either. Some of their predators are the big, scary birds in the sky, foxes, and humans. I don't know about you, but I am not going to TRY to get close to a opossum. |
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