Water on Mars

According to NASA, one of the most important things they found out about Mars was discovering rocks that form in liquid water. They believe that the planet once had water oceans and rivers. 

Picture drawn by AI on behalf of Alan Booth

Another important discovery was finding rocks with magnetic minerals that were aligned to the poles of the planet. Although the magnetic fields of Mars have faded away, in the past they existed. Mars once had a strong magnetic field protecting its atmosphere from solar wind particles. 

Mario Facts

The computer game character Mario's full name is Mario Mario and his Brother's full name is Luigi Mario. They were named after Mario Segal, he was the landlord that rented a large warehouse out to Nintendo. He should've been called Alan 🙄

He was originally called Jump man but they renamed him Mario when the landlord did Nintendo a favour, being nice gets you far. Nintendo originally wanted Popeye the sailor man to be their main character but they couldn't get the license so they used jump man from Donkey Kong instead and gave him the name Mario. He then gained a brother when the game became two players. In the original side scrolling games, Mario looks like he is headbutting the bonus boxes but if you look closely, you'll find he is actually pressing them with his hand. 

Venus Facts

According to some NASA Blog posts, the planet Venus is believed to once have water oceans on the surface. They came to the conclusion because planetary orbiters were detecting rocks that form in the presence of water. 

It is also believed the planet's rotatation was slowed down because it was hit by a dwarf planet with a glancing blow. This caused a chain reaction, the magnetic field failed because of the slowed down rotation and that caused solar wind particles to reach the atmosphere and strip away water and nitrogen. The atmosphere was then replaced with a dry thick blanket of CO2 by volcanoes. Soon after that, the planet had a run away greenhouse effect. 

Africa by accident

Many British people I have spoken to have been to the African continent without realising it. They have been on holiday in the Canary Islands, mostly Tenerife. I have been to La Palma, lovely open air airport with palm tree gardens. Although they are Spanish islands, they sit on the African continent on the Atlantic ocean. 

Drawn by AI for this blog. 

When my parents took me to the island of La Palma, I had no idea it was part of the African continent, I thought they were Mediterranean islands, they're not, they're in the Atlantic ocean and are part of the African continent. 

USA compared to Britain

The land area of the Island of Great Britain is roughly 250,000 Km²,  243,610 km² to be exact. 

The Land area of the United States of America is 

9.834 million km². 

This means the USA is roughly 40 times the size of Britain.

Largest living Cell

There exists a single celled organism that can grow to about the size of a golf ball and sometimes bigger. It is a single celled algi called 'Valonia Ventricosa'. It is considered to be one of the largest single celled organisms in the world. 

Picture drawn by AI on behalf of the blog author 

These gigantic single celled organisms can be found in every ocean in the world. They're believed to be able regenerate if they're damaged or broken into multiple pieces. Each fragment could grow into another complete 'Valonia Ventricosa'. 

The Thing Movie

The movie titled "The thing" is based on the Book called 'Who Goes there' by John Campbell. In the '80s version of the film, there are some differences from the book. In the book, the alien wasn't discovered by a separate Norwegian expedition. It was discovered by the same crew. 

Image generated by artificial intelligence 

In the book the alien has a default form, a creature with a humanoid shape and three red eyes. The creature also has tentacles in it's hair. In the book the creature doesn't need to eat or breathe because it has cold fusion proteins, the cells can get energy directly from water molecules by splitting it and fusing hydrogen. In the movie this ability is never exposed. The book also mentions that the cells of the organism are identical from the victim cells except for the nucleus. Most of the science is cut out of the movie. 

Trip To Hell

According to the book titled '23 minutes in Hell', a guy called Bill Wiese was pulled out of his body and was taken to Sheol, the Current Hell. He was there for about 23 minutes because his wife saw the time when he came back to his body. 

He claimed it was like a prison deep underground filled with people that rejected God and angry Fallen Angels. He claimed he was put in a prison cell with two Demons that look like  humanoid reptiles. He also claimed in his book that it was unbearably hot and stank of sulphur.