Before the Dinosaurs

Before the Dinosaurs were around on Earth, the dominant group of Animals that roamed the earth were the  Permian Synapsids. They were bizarre looking mamal like reptiles. Some of them had spines on their back. 

If you saw a Permian Synapsid, you would see a creature that looks both like reptile and a mamal at the same time. 

It is thought they went extinct because of frivalous volcanism, or several super volcanoes erupting in tandem. The food chain was wipe out by acid rain and cold weather because of dust from the volcanoes. 

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Giant Sloth

The closest being we have to king king Kong is the Megatherium, the giant sloth. It was a type of sloth that was able to grow 6 meters tall and weighed about 4 tones. It spent most of its life walking on all 4 limbs but was able to stand up on two legs to reach higher parts of the tree to eat, or to intimate predictors or other sloths. 

It was native to south America and went extinct about 10,000 years ago. 

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Largest Lizard

The largest species of lizard to ever exist as far as we know is the Magalania, it was native to Australia, and went extinct 40,000 years ago, about the same time humans settled there. 

It grew to about 7 meters long and weighed roughly 500 kg. There is no evidence that it ate people but many experts think it likely did eat people . There is also evidence that people are the reason it went extinct. 

It belonged to the same family as the Komodo Dragon and looked a lot like a monitor lizard only much bigger. 

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Largest Flying bird

The largest flying bird to ever exist as far as we know is the Argentavis magnificens, they were loosely related to Eagles but belonged to their own group. They were known to stand as tall as an adult human and have a wingspan of 8 meters. 

They were a predator and probably hunted other birds and mammals. If you saw one flying today, it would look like a paraglider or a small airplane. The family group they were a part of is Teratornithidae, they were a group of large eagle like birds that lived in south America. 

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The Sandy Drowning Theory

There is a well known fan theory associated with the musical movie titled 'Greace'. They think the whole movie is an hallucination of Sandies brain caused by her drowning. 

In the theory, Dan doesn't save her from drowning in the beginning of the movie, that was an hallucination along with all the other scenes in the movie up to the point when they're in a car and it starts to fly to heaven. 

The flying car scene in the theory would be when her oxygen starved brain finally shuts down. It is quite a grim concept and it makes the whole movie hard to view a second time. It adds a grim lens to an otherwise upbeat movie. 

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Largest Ever Flying Animal

The Largest flying animal to ever exist as far as we know is the Quetzalcoatlus northropi, it was a type of pterosaur. It went extinct at end of the late Cretaceous period, the end of the dinosaur era. It was huge, the creature is thought to weigh about 250 kg and stood about 5 or 6 meters tall when not flying; as tall as a giraffe. 

It not fully understood how they were able to fly but it is thought they would use a spring like muscle contraction to launch itself into the air. The 10 to 11 meter long wingspan would have helped it to stay airborne. 

If it existed today, it would likely be mistaken for a small airplane because of its size. 

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One Cell Multi Cell

If you ever wondered if there is a life form that lives as a single cell but also can be a multi cell organism, there is one, it's called Dictyostelium discoideum. 

It is an amoeba (ameba) that lives as a single celled being that consumes bacteria but when there isn't much to eat, individual cells will join together to form a multicellular being (a bit like power rangers when all their robot parts join together). When they are all joined together they can combine their movement to crawl large distances compared to their size. They behave more like a worm or slug than a cellular life form when they are one. 

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Giant Cell

There is a giant single cell life form that lives at the bottom of the ocean called a Xenophyophorea. They are so big that they can be picked up by hand. They use sediments in the ocean to build their shells known as tests. They live by gathering small particles of other life forms like algi the drift down from the ocean above them. 

Some of these single celled life forms can reach the size of 20cm across, about the size of a football. Although they are one cell they usually have more than one nucleus. 

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Black holes

It is believed that all objects with mass can become black holes as long as their radius is reduced to a certain size, even individual particles can become black holes. In a book written by professor Brian Cox it pointed out that if the Earth were compressed into the size of a pepple, a few centimetres across, it would be a black hole. 

The same book pointed out that gravity is the weakest force, a small magnet can pull a metal object away from the Earth, but it has no limits, it keeps increasing with mass and can be focused into a small space and cause a sphere around itself with an escape velocity that is higher than the speed of light. In other words, even light can't escape the gravity of a black hole if it gets too close. They call the space where light can't escape the event horizon. 

Movie Facts

In the book that the movie 'The thing 1982' is based on titled  'who goes there' by John Campbell. There are some key attributes of the alien creature that was not revealed in the movie. 

Firstly, the organism doesn't need to eat or breathe because it can harness cold fusion in its cells, they split water molecules and merge the two hydrogen atoms together to make helium and lots of energy.  

Secondly, Dr Blair believed it has a default form and was likely artificially created to spread an alien civilization around the universe. When they found the creature it had three red eyes and tendrils in its head and Dr Blair came to the conclusion that when it had finish assimilating all the life forms it would return to its default form, unless it needed adaptations to survive. 

Thirdly, the creature is telepathic and as it thawed out in the book, it would mess with the minds of the crew and it knew what they were all going to do. They couldn't hide anything from it. 

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James Webb's New Friend

When they Launched the James Webb Space telescope it had a priority problem. It can only look at a very tiny fraction of the sky at a time and it is difficult to choose what places are more important than others. 

For this reason they sent up the Pandora Space Telescope, it will mostly look at stars when one of their planets transitions between the star and us. The probe will try to separate  the light from the planets atmosphere and the star and detect if there is something interesting there like clouds or oxygen. If the probe finds something interesting then the James Webb space telescope will take over and have a closer look.

The pandora probe is very small, about the size of a washing machine and the rocket bay that took it up had extra space so they added two other small cube satellites, sparks and balckcat, they're about the size of a serial box and would fit in a shopping bag. 

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What Trees Are Made of

Almost all of a tree's mass comes from the air. The tree will take carbon dioxide from the air and water; it will use solar energy to split the water molecules and combine them to the carbon atoms freed from the carbon dioxide and release the oxygen as a waste product. 

The root of a tree doesn't use anything in the soil except some nitrate compounds but they are almost nothing. Using air water and sunlight, a tree self assembles into a giant wooden structure that towers over all the animals. 

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AI Cribbage

If you ask chat GPT to play Cribbage with you, it will cooperate and set up a virtual game of Cribbage. 

It will start dealing text based playing cards and hide its own hand and ask you what cards you want to remove. It will even do all the pegging for you virtually. 

The same is true of snakes and ladders. It will create a text based version of the game with a virtual dice and place ladders and snakes at different  points on the board. 

Moon Fact

In diagrams, the moon looks like it is quite close to the Earth, it looks like it is within the diameter of the earth. The truth is the moon is approximately 380,400 kilometres away.

The distance between the earth and the moon is so vast that every planet would fit in the space between them. 

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Dehumidifier Credit

If you buy a good Dehumidifier that can remove more than 12 liters of Water per day, it will pay for itself in less than a year. During winter months it will reduce your heating bill because dry air is better at storing heat than damp air and feels warmer so you feel compelled to turn down your thermostat. 

It could also reduce the amount of time your sick from off work because dry air carries less microbes and viruses. 

It can also stop damage to walls and furniture cased by condensation. 

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Chromosome 2

In humans, Chromosome 2 is actually two chromosomes fuzed together. Most chromosomes are X shaped but they're only like that when the cell is about to split into two. Normally they are just a single thread of DNA. For some reason we have one Chromosome that is two fused together. 

There are telomere sequences in the middle of the Chromosome, they usually appear at the ends of the Chromosome.  

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Bombadier Beetle

The Bombadier Beetle has a biological weapon, their backside doubles as a gun. They can shoot burning hot acid out of their backsides to give predictors burns and put them off hunting them. 

The Bombadier Beetle does this by mixing Hydrogen Peroxide and Hydroquinone together in a chamber inside their abdomen. The two chemicals are present in separate glands in their abdomen but when they're mixed together they become a hot explosive acid. 

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Train Vs Taxi

If you were going from farringdon in London to Brighton, what is better? Uber or Train. 

If four adults were travelling together, the prices would be about the same. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT)

A taxi going from London to Brighton costs roughly £100 (£25 each). 

A train ticket for 4 passengers going from London to Farringdon would cost about £100 (£25 for each passenger) 

If you had fewer passengers, the taxi would still cost £100. It would only be the same price and slightly more convenient if you were going as a small group. 

This observation doesn't account for rail cards and discount codes. 

Trains move a lot faster than cars and they sometimes give you cheaper return tickets, however some Uber cars can take more than 4 passengers, some can take 6 or 7.  

Fizzy Fact

Most Fizzy drinks have carbon dioxide dissolved in them. The reason they chose that gas is because it has the most  positive attributes for the lowest cost. Carbon dioxide dissolves the most without making the water poisous. Ammonia dissolves in water more than carbon dioxide but it makes the water slightly toxic. 

There are other gasses that can be added to flavoured water to make it fizzy and not toxic, you can add oxygen or nitrogen but they have their own issues, oxygen fizzy water tastes flat and makes the water taste oxidized. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

Nitrogen gas costs more than carbon dioxide and it is more difficult to dissolve in water so it makes the water less fizzy and the bubbles are smaller so the foam caused by pouring the liquid lasts a long time. Some beer companies have been known to use Nitrogen instead of Carbon dioxide because they don't want a tangy taste and they want the pouring  foam to last a long time. 

Most carbon dioxide gas in fizzy drinks is a by-product of other industrial process so it is very cheap. They almost treat it like a waste product, yet for a fizzy drink it is the best gas to use, you get more fizz, a tangy taste from the drink and you get a longer shelf life because carbon dioxide is acidic when dissolved in water and that kills microbes. 

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Pier Trains

There are three piers in Britain that are known to have working railed trains running on them. The most famous one is Southend on sea. The pier itself is extremely long 2.15 km (1.34 miles) and the train will take you most of the way across the pier. They claim to be the longest pleasure pier in the world. From my experience, the starting platform at the beginning of the pier has the look and feel of an old subsurface metropolitan subway station. 

The Ryde Pier on the Isle of wight has a more practical pier train. It is used to bring people to the catamaran ferry that goes back to the mainland and the bring people from the ferry back to the coast. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

Hyther pier in Hampshire is the oldest working pier train line in the world. 

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