Some Random But Fabulous Fun Facts
- Editor OGN Daily
- Sep 6
- 2 min read
Ten facts that may be a surprise to you, compiled by the team at BBC Science Magazine.
Clouds may look light and fluffy, but those big white things floating overhead are actually very heavy. In fact, a cloud weighs around a million tonnes. A cloud typically has a volume of around one cubic kilometre and a density of around 1.003kg per m3 - that's a density that’s around 0.4 percent lower than the air surrounding it - and this is how they are able to float.
Mars isn’t actually round. Unlike any other rocky planet in the Solar System, Mars is actually shaped like a rugby ball, but with different sizes along all three axes.
The fear of long words is called Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. The 36-letter word was first used by the Roman poet Horace in the first century BCE to criticise those writers with an unreasonable penchant for long words.
Mount Everest isn't the tallest mountain on Earth. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the twin volcanoes, are taller than Mount Everest as 4.2km of their height is submerged underwater. The twin volcanoes measure a staggering 10.2km in total, compared to Everest’s paltry 8.8km.
Most maps of the world are wrong. On most maps, the Mercator projection - first developed in 1569 - is still used. This method is wildly inaccurate and makes Alaska appear as large as Brazil and Greenland 14 times larger than it actually is. For a map to be completely accurate, it would need to be life-size and round, not flat.
One in 18 people have a third nipple - although this can range from one that is invisible on the surface, to a full nipple with milk-producing tissue. Known as polythelia, the third nipple is caused by a mutation in inactive genes.
Deaf people are known to use sign language in their sleep. A case study of a 71-year-old man with rapid eye movement disorder and a severe hearing impairment showed him using fluent sign language in his sleep, with researchers able to get an idea of what he was dreaming about thanks to those signs.
The biggest butterfly in the world has a 31cm (12 inch) wingspan. It belongs to the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing butterfly, which you can find in the forests of the Oro Province, in the east of Papua New Guinea.
Starfish don’t have bodies. Along with other echinoderms (think sea urchins and sand dollars), their entire bodies are technically classed as heads.
Mirrors facing each other don't produce infinite reflections. Each reflection will be darker than the last and eventually fade into invisibility. Mirrors absorb a fraction of the energy of the light striking them. The total number of reflections mirrors can produce? A few hundred.
