Science
Top 10 Accidental Scientific discoveries
1. Teflon
In 1938, a young American scientist called Roy J Plunkett was researching new refrigerants for the DuPont Company and was storing tetrafluoroethylene gas in cylinders at low temperatures. When he opened the cylinders, the gas had disappeared, but the containers still weighed the same. Intrigued, Plunkett sawed a cylinder in half and a white powdery substance fell out. Finding it to be resistant to heat and that few other substances would stick to it, he realised the substance polytetrafluoroethylene could have widespread use.
2. Saccharin
A Russian chemist called Constantin Fahlberg was, in 1878, working at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, analysing the chemical compounds of coal tar. One day, he neglected to wash his hands when he left work and, eating his dinner at home, discovered that the compound sulphamine benzoic that remained on his fingers had a sweet taste. He quickly and privately applied for patents in several countries and saccharin made him a wealthy man.
3. Cellophane
In 1900, Swiss engineer Jacques E Brandenberger was eating lunch when a fellow diner spilled some wine, causing the tablecloth to be replaced. Brandenberger decided to invent a waterproof tablecloth, but the application of a liquid viscose made the covering too stiff. The coating did, however, peel off as a piece of transparent film. A new product, with strong commercial potential, was born.
4. Penicillin
One accidental discovery that has saved millions of lives came about as a result of bad housekeeping. In 1928, London-based Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming accidentally left a tray of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered. After a few days, bacterial growth was visible, save for a patch of mould that was stopping the bacteria’s spread. A substance produced by the mould, dubbed penicillin by Fleming, was subsequently found to kill off much harmful bacteria and became the world’s most used antibiotic.
5. Dynamite
The Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel owned a factory manufacturing nitroglycerin, an explosive deemed too unstable for widespread use. One day in 1867, he dropped a vial of it on the ground, but was intrigued when it didn’t explode, possibly because it had mixed with sawdust on the floor. When Nobel added a further stabiliser silica known as kieselguhr mass production of reliable gunpowder could begin.
6. Viagra
In the early 1990s, British scientists employed by the Pfizer pharmaceutical company were carrying out tests on a new compound aimed at treating angina. The trials were unsuccessful, but many of the participants reported experiencing penile erections. After further trials, Pfizer took the drug Sildenafil citrate by now branded as Viagra to market. By 2000, Viagra accounted for 92 per cent of worldwide sales for prescribed erectile dysfunction pills.
7. The microwave oven
In 1945, Percy Spencer, an employee of the American defence contractor Raytheon, was standing in front of a magnetron when the chocolate bar in his pocket melted. Intrigued, Spencer placed some popcorn in front of the tube. It instantly popped across the room. The commercial potential of the discovery was pounced upon; within two years, Raytheon were marketing the first microwave oven.
8. Vulcanised rubber
In its natural state, rubber can rot and smell. For many years, American inventor Charles Goodyear tried to make a more durable substance. In 1839, he finally found success by accident. Inadvertently brushing rubber powder and sulphur from his hands, it landed on a hot stove. The melting rubber reacted with the sulphur and became vulcanised leading to Goodyear becoming a pioneer in the tyre industry.
9. Vaseline
In 1859, a 22-year-old Brooklyn chemist called Robert Chesebrough visited the Pennsylvanian oil fields, eager to break into the profitable industry. The oil workers told him about a sticky substance called ‘rod wax’, a by-product of the extraction process that often caused the drilling rigs to seize up. A redeeming feature was that it seemed to speed up the healing of cuts and burns. After ten years of testing, Chesebrough managed to extract usable petroleum jelly. Vaseline was born.
10. Super glue
In 1942, Kodak employee Harry Coover was making plastic gunsights for military planes, but the solution he created – later named cyanoacrylate was far too sticky. A decade later, a colleague developing jet fighter canopies used the discarded solution and its phenomenal gluing powers were rediscovered.
Science
Top 10 Space Stories of the Decade
10. Saturn Moon Titan Explored
On Jan. 14, 2005, the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe dropped through Titan’s atmosphere after a seven-year trek attached to NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Huygens wasn’t designed to live for very long after atmospheric reentry, but it unveiled a mysterious outer solar system world to us for the first time.
Before this mission, very little was known about Saturn’s largest moon, and scientists were unsure whether Huygens would land on a rocky surface or in an ocean. Titan’s thick atmosphere composed of primarily nitrogen and clouds of methane and ethane, about 50 percent thicker than our atmosphere signaled to scientists that Titan was similar to a young Earth.
Observations from the Huygens probe and Cassini spacecraft tell us that Titan and Earth share many features, such as sand dunes and lakes. But these features are heavily laced with organic molcules that could support life, leading researchers to speculate about Titan’s potential to nurture microbes.
9. Moon Water Confirmed
India’s Chandrayaan-1 satellite confirmed the presence of water on the moon in September 2009, building on flyby observations by other probes on their way elsewhere. Although the lunar surface is still drier than Earth’s driest desert, evidence of water is there, hinting at a solar wind interaction with the moon’s surface that produces water and hydroxyl molecules.
It may not be an oasis up there, but future moon colonists could extract and purify the traces of water from the surface to use for drinking, food cultivation, oxygen and fuel. Or, our colonists could take a trek to the moon’s poles to mine water from the deepest craters
On Oct. 9, 2009, NASA dropped a spent rocket into a crater to produce a 100-foot-wide hole. They found water there too. That rocket produced a massive plume of dust that was analyzed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and ground-based observatories. At least 25 gallons of water ice was detected in the plume.
8. Organic Chemistry Collected from Comet’s Tail
In 2004, the NASA Stardust mission chased after Comet Wild 2 to find out if the icy mass contained the building blocks for life, since meteorites found on Earth contained organic chemistry that originated from space. Sure enough, in August 2009, NASA announced that they had found samples of glycine an amino acid in Stardust’s collection plates. It didn’t stop there, there’s increasing evidence that exoplanets orbiting distant stars contain organic chemistry in their atmospheres.
In 2008, organic chemicals were detected in the disk surrounding a star called HR 4796A, 220 light-years from Earth. And most recently, NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes detected carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called HD 209458b.
These discoveries, sparked by Stardust, have transformed our understanding about how life may have formed on Earth. They also give us a strong hint that life may not be unique to Earth; the universe appears to be manufacturing organic chemistry everywhere.
7. A Supermassive Black Hole on Our Doorstep
There’s a monster living in the center of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years from Earth. By 2008, astronomers tracking the behavior of stars orbiting an invisible point confirmed that the monster is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A.
A lone star called “S2,” with a very fast orbit, has been tracked since 1995 around this invisible point. In 2002, Rainer Schödel and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics announced that the only explanation for S2’s fast orbit was that it was circling a very compact, massive object a supermassive black hole that was stopping the star from flinging out of its orbit into space.
In 2008, after S2 completed one 16-year orbit, it was confirmed that the star was orbiting a black hole with a gargantuan mass of approximately 4.3 million suns. The confirmation of a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way boosted the theory that most galaxies contain a supermassive black hole at their cores.
6. Big Bang “Echo” Mapped for the First Time
In June 2001, NASA set out to find the ancient “echo” of the Big Bang by mapping the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation that buzzes like static throughout the cosmos, using the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) .
When the universe was born, vast amounts of energy were unleashed, which eventually condensed into the stuff that makes up the mass of what we see today. The radiation that was created by the Big Bang still exists, but as faint microwaves.
By mapping slight variations in the CMB radiation, the probe has been able to precisely measure the age of the universe (13.73 billion years old) and work out that a huge 96 percent of the mass of the universe is made up of stuff we cannot see. Only 4 percent of the cosmic mass is held in the stars and galaxies we observe; the rest is held in “dark energy” and “dark matter.”
5. Hubble Gets to Grips with Dark Energy
In 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope was upgraded with a new instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, that revealed the presence of a mysterious force called “dark energy.”
The camera was set up to help researchers understand why Type Ia supernovae were dimmer than expected. Hubble’s observations of these supernovae discovered that they weren’t dimmer because the stars were different (they should all explode with the same brightness). The only explanation was that the universe’s expansion was unexpectedly and inexplicably speeding up. This accelerated expansion was making the light dim over vast cosmic distances. Hubble’s discovery led to a better understanding of what dark energy is — an invisible force that opposes gravity, causing the universe’s expansion to speed up.
4. Eris Discovered; Pluto Demoted
In January 2005, Mike Brown and his team at Palomar Observatory, Calif. discovered 136199 Eris, a minor body that is 27 percent bigger than Pluto. Eris had trumped Pluto and become the 9th largest body known to orbit the sun.
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided that the likelihood of finding more small rocky bodies in the outer solar system was so high that the definition “a planet” needed to be reconsidered. The end result: Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet and it acquired a “minor planet designator” in front of its name: “134340 Pluto.”
Mike Brown’s 2005 discovery of Eris was the trigger that changed the face of our solar system, defining the planets and adding Pluto to a growing family of dwarf planets.
3. Dark Matter Detected
In the summer of 2006, astronomers made an announcement that helped humans understand the cosmos a little better: They had direct evidence confirming the existence of dark matter — even though they still can’t say what exactly the stuff is. The unprecedented evidence came from the careful weighing of gas and stars flung about in the head-on smash-up between two great clusters of galaxies in the Bullet Cluster.
Until then, the existence of dark matter was inferred by the fact that galaxies have only one-fifth of the visible matter needed to create the gravity that keeps them intact. So the rest must be invisible to telescopes: That unseen matter is “dark.”
The observations of the Bullet Cluster, officially known as galaxy cluster 1E0657-56, did not explain what dark matter is. They did, however, give researchers hints that dark matter particles act a certain way, which they can build on.
2. Mars Surface Gives up Signs of Water
In 2008, NASA’s Mars Phoenix lander touched down on the Red Planet to confirm the presence of water and seek out signs of organic compounds. Eight years before, the Mars Global Surveyor spotted what appeared to be gullies carved into the landscape by flowing water. More recently, the Mars Expedition Rovers have uncovered minerals that also indicated the presence of ancient water. But proof of modern-day water was illusive.
Then Phoenix, planted on the ground near the North Pole, did some digging for samples to analyze. During one dig, the onboard cameras spotted a white powder in the freshly dug soil. In comparison images taken over the coming days, the powder slowly vanished. After intense analysis, the white powder was confirmed as water ice.
This discovery not only confirmed the presence of water on the Red Planet, it reenergized the hope that some kind of microbial life might be using this water supply to survive.
1. Alien Planets Spotted Directly
The first alien planets — called exoplanets — were being detected in the early 1990s, but not directly. In 2000, astronomers detected a handful by looking for a star’s “wobble,” or a star’s slight dimming as the exoplanet passed in front of it. Today we know of 400 exoplanets. In 2008, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and the infrared Keck and Gemini observatories in Hawaii announced that they had “seen” exoplanets orbiting distant stars. The two observatories had taken images of these alien worlds.
The Keck observation was the infrared detection of three exoplanets orbiting a star called HR8799, 150 light-years from Earth. Hubble spotted one massive exoplanet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light-years from Earth. These finds pose a profound question: How long will it be until we spot an Earth-like world with an extraterrestrial civilization looking back at us?
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Science
10 Superhuman Real Life Superpowers
10.Human Magnets
You will find many individuals on the planet that claim to get the amazing property to develop a magnetic field that causes metal to stick for their skin, which will be remarkable if this were truly true. Obviously, their forces aren’t limited to steel, in addition they get plastic to stick too and they don’t trigger any sort of troubles with electronic device.
Turns away they’re maybe not truly magnetic, but rather have amazingly tacky epidermis, which can be just total, however, it will be nice to help you instead of placing it in your pocket to stick your telephone to your own torso, I guess.
9.Super Memory
Daniel Tammet recalls pi to over twenty two thousand digits, can talk five languages and continues to be studied extensively by neurobiologists because he is able to clarify precisely how he does it. Do n’t get your hopes up though, he can do all this because he has synaesthesia, where he experiences shapes, textures and colors when he thinks of numbers and phrases.
In a single case he then appeared in a interview talking the terminology and was able to understand audio Icelandic in a week.
8.Mr Eat-all
Have you ever ever not been so full that you just wanted to consume a Cessna plane that was whole? How about a coffin? Possibly a computer? You’re a regular person if you answered no to most of these questions, but you’re also not a person using an real super strength. Michel Lotito, also known as Mr Eat-all, had the power to consume and, moreover, shit out anything you can think of without the damage, including poisonous substances.
If the typical person consumed any of those items subsequently they’d be left with serious problems, but maybe not Mr Eat-all, although with that mentioned so his strength wasn’t just best he did also perish at the age of 57.
7.Tame Wild Animals
Richardson gets the ability to tame just about any animal, it seems, as long as they are reared by him from infancy, that might not seem spectacular initially, but a pride of lions tries and join without any taming approaches that are conventional and see how well that goes for you.
Taming big cats isn’t sunshine and all puppy dogs, there’s quite a serious problem with having a pride of lions treat you as one of their very own, for instance they’ll also perform with battle with you, which, as you are able to imagine, is quite painful.
6.Strongest Man in History
Louis Cyr proved to be a strong man that is classical, except with one important variation, he was much better than everybody else by a long shot. Doing a back lift he managed to raise just under two tonnes, he also wrestled a guy around 2 feet taller than him and won.
His record breaking efforts have not yet been overtaken by anybody including these who’ve obtained steroids, even today.
5.The Human Computer
Shakuntala Devi was an Indian social worker with some psychological abilities that are quite amazing, Some may call her a genius in mental calculating; I, however, might call her a machine from the future that was destroyed in the search for Sarah Connor.
Shakuntala had the ability in blistering speed to perform mental calculations, for instance she was able to compute the cube root of sixty one million, six-hundred and twenty-nine-thousand, eight hundred and seventy five before the person checking her answers could write her answer down.
4.Godhand
Mas Oyama was an amazing example of what the human body could be capable of, he created his own full contact karate and has a black belt in two different disciplines than just his own. Oyama was of exactly what the body could possibly be competent of an incredible exampl, he produced his own full contact karate and has a blackbelt in two disciplines that were different than just his own.
He showed his strength and endurance by killing fully grown bulls with one blow and participating in three different hundred-man fighting competitions in a row, He showed endurance and his strength by killing fully bulls that were grown with one blow and participating in three distinct hundred-man fighting competitions in a row, In which he fought 100 trained karate experts a day off for three days.
3.Iceman
WimHof does possess a whimsical name, he also has got the ability to withstand insanely low temps that would kill many people were they exposed for how long to them that he sets through himself.
Ice man ran a marathon in –20 °C (-4 °F) weather in only a pair of short pants, he also tried to scale Mount Everest in precisely the same attire, but couldn’t ensure it is all the way up because of a foot injury. He also holds the world record for the greatest quantity of time spent submerged in ice.
2. Ultra Endurance
1. Super Reflexes
Science
10 Islands that may disappear
The rise of the ocean level could function as the biggest menace to the entire world in the days in the future. If global temperatures continue to go unabated sea levels all over the world could increase by as much as five yards incoming generations, that may seriously impact low lying islands and states. Sea levels have increased 6 to 8 ins in the previous 100 years. Also, it’s been discovered that Antarctic is now shedding around 159 billion tonnes of ice every year for the island countries currently living at sea level, which presents a problem that is new.
Let’s check out 10 such islands which is impacted by climate change crisis.
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is a sovereign nation composed of a substantial number of islands in Oceania lying to the east of Northwest and Papua New Guinea of Vanuatu.
As a result of debilitating aftereffects of climate change the Low Lying lands of the Solomon Islands are severely affected with decreased property area and crops failing.
Maldives
Maldives is just another island that might be shortly lost to rising ocean levels. With the average floor level altitude of 1.5 metres above sea level, Maldives is our planet’s cheapest state. And because of the geographic location it’s due to inundation from climate change, the most state.
President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed stated that “If carbon emissions continue at the speed they’re rising nowadays, my state will likely be submerged in seven years.”
Republic of Cape Verde
Republic of Cabo Verde is an island nation spanning an archipelago of 10 islands in the Atlantic Ocean that is central. Cape Verde is exceptionally exposed to climate change and sea level increase as it detrimentally affects the environment, market and society.
Palau
Palau, formally the Republic of Palau, is an island region situated in the western Pacific Sea. The citizenry of around 21,000 is spread across 250 islands developing the developed chain of the Caroline Islands. As global warming causes sea levels to inch up, Palau is facing severe floods which makes inhabitants live under constant fear of their homes being washed away.
Fiji
Fiji covers a complete part of some 194,000 square kilometres (75,000 sq mi) that around 10% island. The nation includes much more than 500 islets, amounting to some total property area of circa 18, 300 square kilometers, and an archipelago of more than 332 countries, that 110 are forever inhabited.
Based on 4th examination report of IPCC, Fiji is currently experiencing coastal erosion because of which human arrangement and water resources have reached an increased threat because of sea level rise.
Torres Strait Islands
Torres Strait Islands are a small grouping of at the least 274 tiny islands which lie in Torres Strait. Climate change triggers some serious issues within this island, like floods damage erosion, coral bleaching etc.
Seychelles
Seychelles includes 115 granite and coral islands in the western Indian Ocean, having a population of 87,122. A rise of just three feet would submerge the Maldives and make them uninhabitable. Also it has witnessed the world`s worst coral die-off.
Tegua
The United Nations reported the approximately 100 residents of Tegua, part of the Torres Strait Islands positioned in the Pacific, the primary climate change refugees in 2005.
The sea-level also increased, triggering in regards to a quarter of the flooding, although a lot of the flooding was because the island sunk almost five inches between 1997 and 2009.
Micronesia
Micronesia is just a subregion of Oceania and contains thousands of tiny countries while in the western Pacific Ocean. There are four primarily archipelagos along with a number of other outlying destinations.
The sea water is regularly killing off food plants. Scientists warn that a one meter rise that is tiny would produce the area uninhabitable.
Kiribati islands
Kiribati is definitely an island country within the tropical Pacific Sea that is main. The country consists of 32 atolls and one raised coral island, Banaba. It’s a populace 697, of 102.
Due to the increasing sea level, nearly all of it territory disappeared under the ocean which caused most of its population to move to another island, Tarawam.
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