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On 16 March 1926, Dr Robert H Goddard successfully launched the first liquid fuelled rocket. The launch took place at Auburn, Massachusetts, and is regarded by flight historians to be as significant as the Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk.
- Nasa |
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Proxima Centauri, the nearest member of the Alpha Centauri triple star system, is the closest known star to the Sun. Light takes only 4,22 years to reach us from Proxima Centauri. This small red star, captured in the centre of the image (left), is so faint that it was only discovered in 1915 and is only visible through a telescope.
- David Malin, UK Schmidt Telescope, DSS, AAO |
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Larger than any animal ever (including dinosaurs), the blue whale has a heart the size of a car. As of August 2005, the longest recorded specimen of the blue whale measured 33 metres - about the height of an 11-storey building. An adult sucks in
45 000 kg of water in a gulp, and filters out 3 000 to 4 000 kg of small shrimp and fish daily. (Image credit: Dan Shapiro/NOAA.)
- Nasa |
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2009 commemorates the 400th anniversary of the first astronomical use of the telescope by Galileo in 1609. Early in 1616, Galileo was accused of being a heretic, a person who opposed Church teachings. Heresy was a crime for which people were sometimes sentenced to death. Galileo was cleared of charges of heresy, but was told that he should no longer publicly state his belief that Earth moved around the Sun. Galileo continued his study of astronomy and became more and more convinced that all planets revolved around the Sun. In 1632, he published a book that stated, among other things, that the heliocentric theory of Copernicus was correct. Galileo was once again called before the Inquisition and this time was found guilty of heresy. Galileo was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1633. Because of his age and poor health, he was allowed to serve his imprisonment under house arrest. Galileo died on 8 January 1642.
- Nasa |
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Facts you need to know about batteries and their effect on the environment
Rechargeable batteries can, on average, generate up to 32 times less impact on the environment than disposable batteries. For 1 kWh of energy produced, rechargeable batteries have: * 23 times less potential impact on non-renewable natural resources * 28 times less potential impact on global warming * 30 times less potential impact on air pollution (ozone pollution) * 9 times less potential impact on air acidification * 12 times less potential impact on water pollution - Research conducted by Bio Intelligence Service for UNIROSS |
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The term "aeronautics" originated in France, and was derived from the Greek words for "air" and "to sail."
- Nasa |
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Name the mammal that has fingerprints similar to those
of a human. (Hint: It's cute!)
Answer: The Koala, found only in Australia, has similar fingerprints to those of a human. Even when examined under a microscope, it's difficult to distinguish between the fingerprints of this cute marsupial and those of humans. |
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How powerful was the Apollo 11 on-board computer?
The Apollo 11 spacecraft was equipped for its mission to the Moon with a state-of-the-art on-board computer. The CPU ran at a pace of 1 Megahertz, and the system memory was 36K in size. Currently, the typical home computer is equipped with a CPU running at least 300 MHz and many hand-held calculators contain more than 36K memory.
- One Giant Leap |
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Less than three per cent of all water on Earth is
freshwater (usable for drinking) and of that
amount, more than two-thirds is locked up in ice
caps and glaciers.
– Nasa |
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Around the world, the ozone layer averages about 3 mm thick, approximately the same as two coins stacked one on top of the other.
– Nasa |
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In 1803, a man named Luke Howard used Latin words to categorise clouds. Cirrus, which means "curl of hair", is used to describe high, wispy clouds that look like locks of hair.
– Nasa
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At any given moment, there are 1 800 thunderstorms happening somewhere on Earth. This amounts to 16 million storms each year! We know the cloud conditions that produce lightning, but we cannot forecast the location or time of a lightning strike.
– Nasa
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How did Google originate?
In 1996, Stanford University computer graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin began collaborating on a search engine called BackRub. BackRub operated on Stanford servers for more than a year, eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university. In 1997, Page and Brin decided that the BackRub search engine needed a new name. After some brainstorming, they settled on “Google” – a play on the word “googol”, a mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflected their mission to organise the immense amount of information available on the Web. Working from Susan Wojcicki’s garage, co-founders Page and Brin brought Google to life in September 1998
- Google |
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Who coined the metaphor “Surfing the Internet”
Given the task of writing a beginner's level article about the Internet for the journal Wilson Library Bulletin in 1992, Jean Armour Polly weighed up various metaphors to use in the title. Her inspiration came from the mouse pad she was using at the time, which was created by the Apple Library in Cupertino, CA. The one she was using pictured a surfer on a big wave. "Information Surfer", it said. Polly had settled on her metaphor.
In December 1992, Polly posted the article titled "Surfing the Internet" on the Net in NYSERNet's FTP space. The article was downloaded over 500 times in the first 14 hours.
In March 1993, Tom Mandel of SRI, unaware of Polly’s piece, wrote an executive overview of the Internet called "Surfing the Wild Internet". It was also distributed widely on the Internet. Tom (now deceased) and Polly asked that the words "Polly" or "Mandel" appear in the directory title somewhere. "Surfing the Internet" was updated and corrected in May 1993, and it was one of the first free Internet guides containing any information on Mosaic.
- Extracted from Netmom.com |
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What is the origin of a computer bug?
A moth stuck between relay points caused a fault in the US Navy's computer soon after the end of World War 2 - but that wasn't the first appearance of an actual "computer bug". The use of the expression "bug" to indicate a mysterious glitch goes back much further: to the days of inventor Thomas Alva Edison, who is reported to have spent some time investigating a "bug" in his phonograph. The use of the word was known to telegraphers even before then.
- Michael Quinion of World Wide Words |
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The two founders of Yahoo! are David Filo and Jerry Yang. Their Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new name with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth".
- Yahoo! Media Relations
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Earth, of course, can be studied without the aid of spacecraft. Nevertheless it was not until the twentieth century that we had maps of the entire planet.
- Nasa |
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Mars is sometimes called the “Red Planet" because of its red soil. Martian soil is red because it contains iron oxide (rust).
- Nasa |
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Mercury moves around the Sun faster than any other planet – it travels about 48 km per second, and circles the Sun in a mere 88 days, compared with 365 days for Earth.
- Nasa |
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Saturn’s rings, made up of particles of ice, dust and rock, stretch 272 000 km from edge to edge, but are less than a kilometre thick.
- Nasa |
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Venus spins backwards, so the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east. And because the planet rotates so sluggishly, a day on Venus (243 Earth days) lasts longer than the planet's orbit around the Sun (225 Earth days).
- Nasa |
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The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a massive storm that has been raging for more than four centuries and is almost the size of three Earths.
- Nasa |
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Uranus rolls along on its side, like a giant bowling ball. Seasons on Uranus last more than 20 years because the planet is tilted on its side.
- Nasa |
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With winds reaching up to 2 000 km/h, Neptune is the windiest planet in our solar system.
- Nasa |
Published by RamsayMedia (Pty) Ltd.: Digital Publishing.
Copyright 2010 all rights reserved. No portion may be reproduced without
the written permission of the publishers.