Some black holes are shrouded in the ground-up remains of dead planets which become a thick dusty ring.
Astronomers have spotted the debris of a "comet storm" deep inside Eta Corvia star system 50 light-years from Earth.
Astronomers are tracking a cloud of gas that will get eaten by the black hole in the center of our galaxy 27,000 light-years away.
The venom of the box jellyfish is among the most powerful in the world. It has caused at least 5,567 human deaths since 1954.
A newly discovered cockroach called Leaproach can jump 50 body lengths (we can only manage about two).
Rats show altruism: Given the choice test rats will often choose to help liberate a fellow rat rather than eat a treat.
Humans even though they look pretty hairless still have the same density of hair follicles as a chimp or gorilla the same size.
Ice cream can be made from any kind of milk including breast milk. But a London parlor that tried it was ultimately shut down.
The Guinness Book of Records-holder for "most pounds of bees worn on the body" attracted 87 pounds of bees.
The guinea pig-sized Hyrax shares an ancestor with the elephant despite their enormous size difference.
The Appalachian Mountains are the fourth range to occupy the Eastern United States. The others were raised and worn down over the last billion years.
Betelgeuse a red giant star that forms the right arm of the constellation Orion is 800 times larger than our sun.
Electricity generated from waves, tides, deep-water currents and off-shore wind farms could power 240 million homes by 2050.
If underwater turbines could harness just 1/1000 of the energy of the Gulf Stream's current, they could power 7 million homes.
A "wet burp" may occur in space if you drink a carbonated liquid, like beer, and try to burp. Liquid will be ejected.
Bamboo would be an ideal plant for Mars colonists to grow. It's fast growing, hardy and can be used to build furniture.
NASA's Planetary Protection Officers make sure we don't accidentally contaminate other planets and that WE don't get contaminated by alien lifeforms.
President Cleveland bought his friend's daughter her first baby carriage at birth, and married her in the White House when she was 21.
Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic Ocean is the most remote island on Earth. The nearest land is Antarctica, 994 miles away.
A Kiwi bird is similar in size to a chicken, but its one-pound egg is six times bigger than a chicken egg.
Crossing the largest-known impact crater of any planet in the solar system, Mars' Hellas, would be like driving from Atlanta to Albuquerque.
You could jump three times higher on Mars than on Earth; gravity on Mars is only 37 percent that of Earth's.
The Army is building a hypersonic flying bomb that can hit a target anywhere in the world -- in one hour.
The first Thanksgiving feast in 1621 included fowl and deer though the exact menu was never written down.
The first Pilgrims in 1620 were taught how to survive in the New World by a Putuxet Indian named Squanto.
Thanksgiving didn't become a national holiday until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln set it for the last Thursday in November.
Over 80 percent of the sources opinions and editorials skeptical of climate change are found in the US or UK press.
For at least 20 000 years after the "Great Dying", 252.28 million years ago, 3 percent of its species died every 1000 years.
Some galaxies store their waste in vast halos recycling the gas for new stars and extending their lifespans.
Our sun spins at 2 kilometers per second at its equator. But the fastest-spinning star known spins at 600 kilometers per second!
Complex life forms like jellyfish might survive in the protected sub-surface ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa.
The highest structures in Arizona are the stacks from the the Navajo Generating Station coal burning power plant.
The smallest car in the world measures approximately 4 x 2 nanometers about one billion times smaller than a VW Golf.
It took radio broadcasters 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million, television 13 years, and the Internet just four years.
Parrotfish create much of the sand around coral reefs by eating chunks of coral and pooping it out as sand.
If you removed all of the space between the atoms and molecules that make up the Empire State Building the building would be reduced to the size of a grain of rice.
In 1988 Yannis Kouros ran 1000 miles in 10 days 10 hours 30 minutes and 35 seconds breaking the world record by over 34 hours.
'Usain Bolt ran the 100 meter dash in Berlin in 2009 with 41 strides in 9.58 seconds. He holds the world record in that event.
The sun rotates on its axis like Earth does. But one "day" on the sun's equator equals about 25 Earth days.
The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is the sound of gas bubbles between the knuckles bursting.
It takes the Earth 1 year and 6 hours to orbit the sun. To account for this an extra day is added to the calendar every 4th year (leap year).
The deepest hole ever dug was 7.5 miles (12.262 kilometers) deep less than a third of the way through the Earth's crust.
Red in fall leaves comes from a pigment that the leaves make only in the fall - scientists don't know why.
It took radio broadcasters 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million, television 13 years, and the Internet just four years.
Intense storms on the sun can kill satellites, zap astronauts and, occasionally, knock out entire power grids on the ground.
In November 2009, a Japanese man named SAL9000 married a digital avatar named Nene Anegasaki on the digital dating simulator Love Plus.
Up to 90 percent of the species living in the waters off southwestern Australia are found nowhere else on Earth.
Antarctica has more than 300 lakes under the ice that might host microbial life. But no one has broken through to find out for sure ... yet.
The oldest surviving tree species evolved 160 million years ago during the Jurassic era. Ichou trees are still grown in Japan today.
Until 1875 we had no proof that horses at a gallop took all four feet off the ground. Eadweard Muybridge invented high-speed photography to prove it.
A Fermilab scientist is building a "holometer" designed to investigate whether we live in a hologram.
If you put Mt. Everest on the seafloor next to Hawaii's Mauna Kea, Mt. Everest would be less than 10,000 feet above sea level.
Space is not empty; it's thought to be buzzing with "virtual particles" popping in and out of existence.
If you put Mt. Everest on the seafloor next to Hawaii's Mauna Kea, Mt. Everest would be less than 10,000 feet above sea level.
Hello was not always the first thing said over the phone. The first operating phone service was established in 1878 and the formal greeting was "ahoy".
Fragments of NASA's Skylab crashed near the town of Esperance Australia in 1979. The U.S. space agency was fined $400 for littering. They never paid.
To promote the passing game in football NFL bosses changed the shape of the football in 1934. They made the ball longer and skinnier.
Libyan rebels dug up a photo album completely filled with pictures of former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Moammar Gadhafi's abandoned compound in Tripoli.
Scratch-n-sniff jeans that smell like raspberries have been created by Boutique jean company Naked and Famous Denim.
Some spiders use "remote copulation" where males castrate themselves but still successfully transfer sperm.
Antarctica is a great place to find meteorites. The black space rock can be easily seen in the white snow.
The computer mouse was invented in 1967 and was called an "X-Y Position Indicator". It cost over $300.
In 1994 a 17-year-old Michigan Boy Scout built a nuclear reactor in his mother's shed using radium from old clocks.
137 million DVD players were sold from their introduction in 1997 to 2007. Apple's iPhone sold more than 146 million in 4 years.
The first independent nation to grant women the right to vote was Sweden. From 1718 to 1771 taxpaying "professional" women were allowed to vote.
The shortest war on record was fought between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
When asked once if he was afraid of anything Thomas Edison replied "I am afraid of the dark". He died with all the lights burning in his New Jersey home.
The male seahorse can get "pregnant" when a female deposits eggs in his pouch.The male seahorse can get "pregnant" when a female deposits eggs in his pouch.
Refrigerators don't make for good donations after an earthquake. Haiti received 10 freight containers filled with them following the quake in 2010 - all requiring a foreign voltage.
The world's deepest known undersea hot springs are anchored in an enormous gash in the Caribbean seafloor some five kilometers beneath the waves.
Corn fields that use insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam are contributing to the collapse of bee colonies.
If societies paid the communities who live closest to wilderness areas to be stewards 331 million of the world's poorest could earn a dollar a day.
If a spacewalking astronaut cries tears don't run down; they pool around the eyeball making it hard to see.
A wire just one atom tall and four atoms wide carries an electric charge as well as a conventional wire can.
An iPad dropped from 100 000 feet survived intact in a special protective sleeve: The G-Form iPad Extreme Sleeve 2.
A Brazilian plant has sticky underground leaves that trap tiny worms letting the plant essentially "eat" them.
In an effort to combat illegal gambling in Greece all electronic games like online chess have been banned.
Some conservationists say it's better for some eagles if wind farms are granted a license to kill them.
Some Finland scuba divers don't wear ankle weights so they can walk upside down on ice-covered lakes.
Critters living at hydrothermal vents between Chile and Antarctica are unlike any in the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans.
Climate change is linked to the collapse of the Mayans in Central America and the Khmer Empire in Southeast Asia 400 years later.
Football legend Rosie Grier captured and disarmed Sirhan Sirhan after he assassinated Robert F. Kennedy. Grier was the bodyguard for Kennedy's wife.
Fall leaves turn color because the green chlorophyll in them disappears as the tree prepares for winter revealing the yellows and reds usually masked by green.
Fall leaves turn color because the green chlorophyll in them disappears as the tree prepares for winter revealing the yellows and reds usually masked by green.
Even though the Voyager 1 spacecraft is traveling at 10 miles per second through space it would still take it 70000 years to reach the nearest star.
Electric motors have better acceleration than combustible engines. That's why Rimac Automobile's Concept_One can hit 62 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds.
Eighth President Martin Van Buren created the word "OK". During his campaign Old Kinderhook (O.K.) clubs from Van Buren's hometown supported the President.
During a solar eclipse the drift of the moon's shadow across the Earth becomes its own weather front.
Dino-era flying reptiles called pterosaurs grew as tall as giraffes and had wingspans almost as wide as a school bus.
Bubblegum is usually pink because its inventor Walter Diemer only had pink food coloring at his factory.
Brown beer bottles drive male Australian jeweled beetles so wild that the beetles will try to mate with the bottles which doesn't work out well for the beetles.
Bill Gates (Software) is the fourth-richest man in American history after John D. Rockefeller (Oil) Andrew Carnegie (Steel) and Cornelius Vanderbilt (Railroads).
Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his baseball cap to keep him cool and changed it every two innings.
At less than 40 feet per million years Mexico's gypsum crystals are the slowest-growing ever measured.
Astronauts Michael Collins Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had to go through US Customs to come back from the moon.
According to Irish legend on judgement day Christ will be the judge all nations but St. Patrick will be the judge of the Irish.
About 2200 pounds of circuit boards can contain 40 to 800 times the amount of gold normally mined from 2200 pounds of ore.
Abebe Bikila became the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal in 1960 when he won the Marathon -- running barefoot.
A pig allowed to live in Irish farmhouses in olden days was once known as "the gentleman that pays the rent".
A parasite of the order Isopoda eats the tongue of its host fish and then takes the place of the tongue.
As Beethoven got more deaf in his later compositions he chose lower-frequency notes that were easier for him to hear.
The Common Poorwill is the only known bird species to hibernate. It hibernates for up to five months.
Reindeer can see ultraviolet wavelengths, which may help them view contrasts in their mostly white environment.
Unlike for permafrost the source of methane escaping out of the Arctic Ocean and into the atmosphere through cracks in the sea ice is uncertain.
Plants, grasshoppers, fish and fruit flies have all been levitated to test the effects of weightlessness.
The world's largest Tesla coils will be 10 stories high and generate 200-foot-long arcs of high-voltage electricity.
The world's smallest steam engine is just a few micrometers across and made from a tiny plastic bead floating in water.
The fastest video in the world can record a trillion frames per second, enough to show a beam of light moving between two points.
If a grain of sand falls to the North Pacific seabed it will be another 1000 years before another grain lands on top of it.
A light bulb that hasn't been turned off since 1901 still shines at a fire station in Livermore Calif.
The worlds heaviest man on record at 1400 lbs is nearly 44 times heavier than the world's smallest man at 32 lbs.
A camera surgically embedded into the back of the head of artist Wafaa Bilal sends still images every minute to a Qatar art museum.
The Hubble Space Telescope has carried out over a million scientific observations and adds more all the time.
The Guinness Book of Records-holder for "most pounds of bees worn on the body" attracted 87 pounds of bees.
Ice cream can be made from any kind of milk, including breast milk. But a London parlor that tried it was ultimately shut down.
For at least 20,000 years after the "Great Dying" 252.28 million years ago, 3 percent of its species died every 1,000 years.
Unlike for permafrost, the source of methane escaping out of the Arctic Ocean and into the atmosphere through cracks in the sea ice, is uncertain.
The world's largest Tesla coils will be 10 stories high and generate 200-foot-long arcs of high-voltage electricity.
Thanksgiving didn't become a national holiday until 1863, when Abraham Lincoln set it for the last Thursday in November.
A camera surgically embedded into the back of the head of artist Wafaa Bilal sends still images every minute to a Qatar art museum.
A light bulb that hasn't been turned off since 1901 still shines at a fire station in Livermore, Calif.