Mind Blowing Facts

Your skin is an incredible organ, it holds you together, keeps invading pathogens from killing you, and also doesn't do this. Howdy skin jobs. Natalia here. Happy Halloween and thanks for tuning into DNews! Skin is the largest organ of your body. I've already mentioned a couple of the benefits of having skin -- but here are a few more: it grows hair to protect itself, it sweats to cool the body down, has goosebumps to warm us up, it's self healing, and senses the world around us… Seriously, we're wrapped up in one of the most fantastic materials! But, there's one thing that vertebrate skin doesn't do easily, and that's tear. A good example here is, leather: cow skin. Motorcyclists wear it because if they crash it doesn't rip or break… it just skids, protecting their actual skin with other skin! Weird. In fact, leather should skid longer than either denim or bulletproof kevlar. Textile companies test the strengths of leather in what they call breaking ...

The Starship Enterprise's mission is to explore strange new worlds, but some of the “strange new worlds” are exoplanetary horrors, likely to frighten even Captain Jean-Luc Picard back into his shuttlecraft. Howdy planetary bodies, Trace here for DNews. Out there, in the deepest corners of our galaxy, are some of the most amazing exoplanetary discoveries. We're finding alien worlds orbiting two stars; possibly Earth-like planets that may host life; we're even detecting clouds condensing in the atmospheres of exotic hot Jupiters! It's an amazing and PROFOUND voyage of discovery. But often, as we get familiar with some of these exoplanets, they sound downright HORRIFIC. For example, 55 Cancri e might be oozing and poisonous! Located about 40 light-years away, this exoplanetary scare fest is known as a super-Earth, 8-times the mass of Earth. It's really hot because it's so close to it's star; so hot, in fact, that water and other fluids can't exist in a l...

Election day in November 2016 will be the day Americans vote for their new president. But many don't know that it in Washington, DC, a ballot referendum will determine whether most of the federal district will be allowed to gain statehood. But… why isn't the District of Columbia already a state, what exactly is it, and could it be the 51st state? Well, Washington, DC is unique. Although the district is not a state, and does not see representation in Congress, its residents pay the sixth highest individual income tax rate in the US. For many, it is ironic that the home of the US government suffers from the very issue that led to its founding: “taxation without representation”. So why did this happen? Well, it originated out of necessity.  In 1783, in the last months of the Revolutionary War, soldiers in Philadelphia who had been recruited to fight the British were not being paid. In retaliation, they stormed the Congress building, and when the founding fathers asked the gover...

Cats. You know them, you love them. Or at least, I do. But whatever you feel about cats, they're a bit of a scientific mystery. No one is totally sure whether the common house cat is really a domestic breed distinct from its wild ancestors. Since the cat genome was first sequenced, albeit incompletely, in 2007, we know all cats can be traced back to the Near Eastern wildcat that still lives in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries. Now, a team of geneticists have taken their love of cats to a whole new level. They studied DNA found in the remains of 209 ancient cats that lived between 15,000 years ago and the 18th century. The results give some insight into how cats conquered the world… before the Internet. Right off the bat, the team knew they had something interesting on their hands. They found a 9,500 year old tomb in Cyprus that contained cat remains alongside human remains, and they also found remains in Egyptian tombs from 6,000 years ago -- because those ...

What could possibly be more frightening than climate change, biological warfare, dying, and -wait for it- Obamacare? What about.... clowns. Hi, jokers, it's Natalia for DNews! A legitimate phobia of clowns is called coulrophobia. Although a lot of people are creeped out by clowns, full-blown coulrophobia is not a common phobia. However, with the rise of creepy clown sightings across the US and parts of Britain, we wanted to know: why are people so afraid of clowns? Is it an innate fear or a fear born out of horror films, like “It” and “Killer Klowns from Outer Space'? Well, there is actually some science to back up why so many people are creeped out by these merry pranksters. A 2008 British survey of approximately 250 children, found that nearly all of them thought clowns, regardless if they were intentionally scary or not, were ‘creepy'. But how could Bozo the Clown be in the same category as Pennywise from “It”? An attribute of many clowns is their unwavering dedicatio...

In 1990 science fiction writer Michael Crichton published the novel Jurassic Park. The plot follows an eccentric billionaire's attempt to bring dinosaurs back to life for a theme park. The book shot into the bestsellers list and spawned four blockbuster films, a sequel novel and a renewed interest in dinosaurs for a generation. But could it be more than fiction? Could we make real dinosaurs walk among us again? In the novel, Crichton explains the science behind bringing dinosaurs back to life. According to Crichton, insects from the age of the dinosaurs could become trapped in tree resin, which fossilises into amber. This preserves the insects' bodies and DNA. For instance, ants, beetles and wasps have all been preserved in amber. Some of them are over 100 million years old. Some of those ancient insects would be vampiric insects like mosquitos, who drank the blood of prehistoric animals. If they had a meal shortly before they became trapped and then preserved, the blood - and...

In October 2016, a thirteen year old girl in India died after completing a 68-day religious fast. The girl and her family were devout followers of Jainism, which celebrates a lifestyle of radical self control and restriction. This time it went too far, but it made us want to know, what exactly is Jainism? Well, Jainism is an ancient religion largely concentrated in India. Its followers do not worship one omnipotent creator god, like Christianity or Islam. Rather, Jains believe that the universe is made up of jiva, which is souls or consciousness, and ajiva, which is time, space, physical matter and everything else that doesn't have a soul. Both jiva and ajiva are thought to have existed forever and can never be destroyed. Jains believe that souls live in a cycle of reincarnation, and that karma, which are impurities that result from conscious actions, attach to the soul throughout life. The ultimate goal of jainism is to eliminate all karma. Those without any karma are thought t...

The morning rooster has met its underwater match. Scientists have studied fish since the days of Aristotle, analyzing their body language and vocal behavior, but recent recordings off the coast of Australia have identified some new overlapping fish songs, particularly at dusk and dawn. In a study published in the journal Bioacoustics, researchers found seven new fish sounds in coastal waters off Port Headland, Australia. They discovered this by recording groups of fish over an 18-month period and found unique choral patterns—overlapping ‘solos' that created a melody. But interestingly, they don't create these vocalizations using vocal chords. In fact, the term ‘vocalization' is a bit of a misnomer, according to researchers. There are many ways fish can sing – by gnashing their teeth, snapping the tendons of their pectoral fins together, and more commonly, by contracting and vibrating their swim bladder against their sonic muscle. The swim bladder isn't a bladder like w...

In October 2016, the United States launched a volley of missiles at Houthi rebels in Yemen after an attack on an American warship in international waters. The U.S. claims that this incident is isolated, and that it does not have any direct military involvement in the Yemen's Civil War. However, many say that not only is the US involved, but it has picked a side in what is being called a proxy war. So, what exactly is the U.S. doing in Yemen? Well, in a nutshell, Yemen is split between two groups. On one side are the Houthis[Hoo-Thees], an anti-government rebel group aligned with the Shiabranch of Islam. They oppose the active government which was established without opposition after the 2011 Arab Spring. This ultra-conservative group is backed by Iran, which also aligns with the Shia faith, and would see greater power in the Middle East if it was able to directly or indirectly control Yemen. On the other side is the Hadi government, which has struggled to maintain power since t...

In 2014, the Islamic State became an international terrorist threat when it seized large territories of Iraq and Syria. One of the group's greatest and most surprising gains was Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul. Roughly two years later, ISIS has lost about half of its territory in Iraq, and US-backed forces have launched an operation to retake Mosul, which experts say could mark the beginning of the end for the jihadist group. So why is Mosul so crucial for ISIS? Well, it's important to note that the Islamic State's power is almost entirely predicated on land.  The terror group's goal is to overthrow governments and wage war until they secure a global caliphate. They've been able to fund their operation largely through robbing banks, taxing and extorting the local population and stealing natural resources like oil. But the terror group has already lost much of its income sources due to US-led airstrikes. So today, controlling large populations is especially ...

The modern republic of Turkey was founded as a secular state in 1923. However, since 2003 the country has become increasingly conservative under the leadership of Recep Erdogan [ree-sep err-duh-gan]. Following the rise of Daesh, the country has become increasingly unstable and unpredictable. In 2016, evidence emerged that connected the terrorist organisation to the Turkish government. The subsequent growth of Islamic extremism in Turkey has led political journalists like the BBC's Paul Kirby to argue that it is becoming extremely dangerous. Turkey has very significant military capabilities. Its armed forces include 315,000 army personnel, 60,000 air force members, and 48,600 naval force staff. And, despite not being an official nuclear state, US defense organisations claim it has a covert nuclear arsenal. With a huge annual military budget of over $18 billion, in terms of hard power, Turkey is a formidable player on the world stage. The country also occupies a unique political pos...

There's no need to panic, but a heads up -- there might be a big bully on the loose, and it's tormenting our entire solar system. Hi there! Ian here for DNews and I'm here to talk about a solar mystery that astronomers have failed to explain… until NOW. For a long time astronomers have known that our sun is tilted. It's not by much, but the tilt is there -- its spin axis appears to be over 6 degrees off-vertical. So what the heck could have caused THAT? Well, nobody really knows for sure, hence the “mystery.” But there's some evidence that it has nothing to do with the sun at all. Instead there might be an object out there roughly ten times the mass of Earth bullying our entire solar system. Back in January, renowned dwarf planet hunters from Caltech caused a huge stir when they announced that they had discovered a group of small objects in the outer solar system acting rather strange. They all seemed to be traveling in the same direction. It's extremely unli...

Humans handedness is influenced by hundreds of genes and environmental factors. That being said, a consistent 10 percent of the human population is left-hand dominant… so there's definitely a big genetic component. A study in PLOS Genetics identified a gene, PCSK6, which helps determine how the body organizes itself in early development, and correlated it with hand-dominance. But, if handedness is genetic, shouldn't we see it throughout the rest of the natural world too? Well, it is seen in some animals! Great apes have handedness, for example; it has been detailed in studies published in Behavioural Brain Research and Animal Cognition. Scientists have theorized one of the influencing factors of hand dominance is rooted in the language processing part of the brain, but it could also have been passed down by our ancestors, thanks to our use of tools. The studies on great apes found they used different hands for different activities!  They preferred their right-hand for inanim...

October 2016 marks 70 years since Nazi war criminals were prosecuted in what has been called the biggest murder trial in history. These 13 trials held in the German town of Nuremberg sparked a new era of international human rights law. So what were the Nuremberg Trials? Well, during World War Two, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime systematically murdered an estimated 11 million people, more than half of whom were European Jews. Throughout the war, the Allied powers, which included the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, issued regular warnings to the German government, promising to punish its massing killing and other heinous war crimes.  But with the war over in 1945, Allied leaders were not sure how to do this, as there was no precedent for trying international crimes of this proportion. Joseph Stalin suggested summarily killing as many as 100,000 officers without trial, and even Winston Churchill considered doing so just for high-ranking members. But US leaders persuade...

Imagine you're trying to throw something heavy as far as possible… the best way to do it, is hold on, and spin in a circle to add momentum, right? Now imagine you're the Earth and the thing you're throwing… is a rocket! Hey there Florida wannabes, I'm Trace, this is DNews! Thanks for swimming over. Florida; the land of endless beaches and verdant marshes. Oh, and we can't forget the hurricanes, of course. Knowing all that, why would we start a space program there? In the late 1940s, rocketry was taking off. At the U.S. government missile range in New Mexico, scientists were trying to figure out how to control the flight of highly explosive giant metal tubes. In 1947, a V-2 rocket, launched, took an unplanned flight over El Paso, Texas, and crashed in Juarez, Mexico. The U.S. had to pay damages and deal with the international fallout. They needed to move out of New Mexico -- they considered going to Washington, California, Alaska, Baja, or the Banana River Naval Air...

In October 2016, hundreds of thousands of people in Southern Brazil voted to break off and form their own country. The unofficial referendum had no legal bearing, but why do Southern Brazilians want independence? Well, those who voted in favor of secession are part of a separatist movement called “The South Is My Country”. It's made up of individuals in Brazil's three southernmost states, who argue that these states are culturally distinct and economically autonomous enough to be completely independent from the rest of Brazil. Separatist movements in Southern Brazil gained momentum in the early 1990's. Revolutionaries argued that Brazil's Southern state of Rio de Grande Do Sul was funneling billions of tax dollars into the Brazilian economy but only seeing about 63 percent returned. And this persisted, they said, because the regions that benefitted from it - namely the Northeast and the Amazon - had unfairly secured a majority in Congress. More than two decades later, ...

Female orgasms seems to be so mysterious they've been the subject of studies for ages. Can we just agree that at the end of the day they're all just awesome? Hello everyone, Amy here for DNews. Sexually speaking, women tend to be bit more complicated than men. Female arousal is heavily dependent on location, comfort, stress, and even more nebulous factors like relationship with a partner and contextual life. And many women still don't know exactly what gets them off. Is it direct clitoral stimulation? Friction from intercourse? A mixture of both? In order to understand a female orgasm, it helps to know the parts involved. First off, the part you can see on the outside is not the vagina. It's actually called the the vulva; the vagina is the canal inside the vulva. And then there's the clitoris. Most of us think of the clitoris as a small organ typically covered by a hood but it's actually so, so much more. The clitoris the metaphorical tip of the iceberg, the ic...

Way out past Neptune, New Horizons is flying through the attic of our solar system… where we keep all the ancient building blocks of life and planets. How do we know? Because we can see red. Hello dwarf planet fans, Ian here for DNews, taking some time to check in on NASA's most daring space probe that's currently digging deep into some of the solar system's most ancient artifacts. After launching in 2006, NASA's New Horizons mission took nearly a decade to reach the outer solar system to fly past Pluto. Then the nuclear-powered spacecraft zipped through Pluto's system and saw many strange and wonderful things. Probably the biggest shocker was Pluto has a kind of rusty color. Mars now has some competition! Who would have guessed Pluto would be the second “red planet” located in the solar system's badlands -- way out there in the Kuiper Belt. This is surprising because up until 2015, astronomers only had a very blurry, fuzzy idea about what the tiny world looked...

The Ottoman Empire was one of the longest lasting empires in modern history, spanning from 1299 to 1922. But after its meteoric rise throughout Europe, spreading Islam and bridging the Eastern and Western worlds, the Empire slowly deflated and collapsed. Ultimately, some of the worst geopolitical situations we've seen in the past century can all be linked to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. So, what contributed this steady collapse? Well, at its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries, the empire covered more than 15 million people, and about 2 million square miles throughout the Mediterranean Sea, as well as Southeast Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, and North Africa. But the spread of the Empire upset neighboring Western European powers, which saw the Islamic empire as encroaching on their own conquests. In particular, the House of Habsburg was one of their most aggressive rivals, and the two fought a series of wars in the 16th through 18th century. The most important was the se...

In September 2016 the European Union's foreign policy chief enacted a timetable for developing an official military force representing the EU. So what would an EU armed force look like? Although talks of establishing an EU military force have been ongoing since the creation of the bloc, they've been opposed by objections from the United Kingdom. But with Brexit having separated the UK from the EU's decision making process, the EU is cleared to move forward. But could Europe really have its own military? Well, on the one hand, Europe does already have a defense network in place. First and foremost is the continent's involvement in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which represents 22 of the 28 EU member countries. NATO is also backed by the US and Canada, meaning that many of the most powerful militaries in the world, excluding Russia and China, are among its ranks. And both NATO and the EU have mutual defense policies stretching across their member states. In p...

What if our universe comes with a self-destruct button to eliminate itself so cleanly and efficiently, that every single physical thing would just stop existing and life would be impossible forever. The ultimate ecological catastrophe - vacuum decay. (Theme music) To explain how our universe could destroy itself, we need to understand two principles: One - energy levels. A core idea in physics is that everything has an energy level. The higher the level, the more energy is in the system Wood, for example, has a high level. It can be burnt, a process that releases the chemical energy stored in its molecular bonds and turns it into heat. The ash leftover is at a lower energy level than the wood before. Two - stability. Everything in our universe tries to move towards its ground state, in which it's completely stable and has as little energy as possible. For example, a ball on a hill is unstable and has a lot of potential energy. When disturbed, it will roll down into the valey and...

In September 2016, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Philip Breedlove, issued a stark warning. He claimed that European defence forces were not prepared to withstand a Russian attack. His claim was frightening given the scale of Russian military expansion in the last decade. In 2010 Russian President Vladimir Putin embarked on an enormous $700 billion defence programme. At a time when its relationships with the rest of Europe are turning frosty, might it be gearing up for a war? Russia has a history of regional colonialism. From 1922 to 1991 the country controlled 22 billion km² of Eastern Europe under the Soviet Union banner. Today, this area comprises 15 independent states, and several culturally distinct territories that Russia will not cede control of. This includes Chechnya, which Russia controls despite the territory declaring its independence in 1991. More recently, in 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea from the Ukraine, following a controversial referendum, which m...

The best thing about flying first class? Getting drunk fast on free booze! Actually that doesn't happen, but other things do happen to your body at altitude. Hey guys! An Earthbound Amy with you on DNews today. That you get drunk faster at high altitudes is the myth people love because, well, a lot of humans like alcohol's effects. The problem is, that doesn't really happen. Multiple studies have shown that regardless of where you drink, your blood alcohol level will be the same. If you feel loopy and weird after one drink on a plane, it's more likely your body is reacting to the altitude itself. But before we leave the Earth, let's start with where many of us live: at sea level, or thereabouts. This is where humans have evolved to live comfortably. With 1 bar of atmospheric pressure, the air is thick and carries plenty oxygen molecules to oxygenate our blood to keep our organs healthy. And because the pressure is greater outside our bodies than inside, it's ea...

how much force does it take to break a bone? As it turns out that question is a lot more complicated than it sounds. Adults have 206 bones that come in a lot of shapes and sizes, so some bones are going to be a lot easier to break than others. The largest bone in your body, your femur or thigh bone, is a lot harder to break than the long slender clavicle, or collarbone, which one of the more commonly broken bones. Part of this has to do with the of muscle around a bone that supports the bone and absorbs some of the impact from a hit. Your femur encased in all your leg meat, and that can take more of a hit than your rib. Dr Cindy Bir of the University of Southern California estimates that a force of 3,300 newtons has a 1 in 4 chance of cracking the average person's rib, while their femur typically takes more force to break: around 4,000 newtons. There isn't a set number for what force will break a bone like a rib because how the force is applied makes a difference. A blow per...

In September 2016, India announced it would provide Afghanistan with $1 billion dollars in economic aid. This is far from the first time India has supported the war-torn country. So why do India and Afghanistan love each other? Well, India and Afghanistan were both once part of the British empire and shared a large portion of their borders until the late 1940s, when India gained independence. Their alliance largely began in 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. India was one of the first non-communist countries to recognize Afghanistan's new soviet-backed government. As Afghanistan transitioned out of soviet rule a decade later, India sent aid and supported every seceding government. But their relationship hit a roadblock in 1996, when the Afghan government was seized by the Taliban, a violent Islamist militia. India refused to recognize Taliban rule. In fact, no country short of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates would sanction the oppressive regime....