What are the most fascinating science facts?
Let me bring you interesting science facts filled with sadness:
1. The Curiosity rover was programmed to sing “Happy Birthday” to itself for its first anniversary on Mars.
Curiosity didn’t actually play the song : the rover's sample analysis unit vibrates at different frequencies to move soil samples.
2. Mars is the only planet populated entirely by robots, yet they’ll never meet each other.
Curiosity and Opportunity are both on Mars, but each on the opposite sides of the planet.
3. 52Blue is a lonely whale unable to communicate with any other whale due to its frequency.
Usually, whales communicate at a frequency around 20Hz. This one can only use a frequency of 52Hz.
4. Pluto didn't get to make one whole orbit of the sun in the time we considered it a planet.
It takes Pluto 248 years to revolve around the sun. It was discovered in 1930 and demoted from its Planet title in 2006.
5. Scientists accidentally killed the world's oldest known animal.
Ming the clam was born in 1499, which means it was 507 years old. It was killed when frozen for a boat trip. The scientists had no idea it would do so.
6. The two Voyager spacecrafts are the farthest human-made objects from Earth, but they're travelling in different directions.
Voyager 1 is now in interstellar space. Voyager 2 is still in the heliosheath, the outermost layer of a bubble around the solar system created by the solar wind.
7. It’s gonna take Voyager 1 another 40,000 years to reach another star system.
And even then it'll be over a light year away from the star. That is as alone as can be.
8. A spacecraft that launched in the '70s was still transmitting a signal to Earth in 2008, but nobody had been listening for nine years.
The spacecraft ICE was supposed to stop transmitting at some point in the '90s, but apparently someone forgot to tell it.
Beautiful, scary, lonely science.
How sad are these science facts?
