Amazing Science Facts

Facts 1 – 5

1. There are 62,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body – laid end to end they would circle the earth 2.5 times

2. At over 2000 kilometers long The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth

3. The risk of being struck by a falling meteorite for a human is one occurrence every 9,300 years

4. A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons

5. A typical hurricane produces the energy equivalent to 8,000 one megaton bombs

Facts 6 – 10

6. Blood xxxxing hookworms inhabit 700 million people worldwide

7. The highest speed ever achieved on a bicycle is 166.94 mph by Fred Rompelberg

8. We can produce laser light a million times brighter than sunshine

9. 65% of those with autism are left handed

10. The combined length of the roots of a Finnish pine tree is over 30 miles

Just paying the bills...

Facts 11 – 15

11. The oceans contain enough salt to cover all the continents to a depth of nearly 500 feet

12. The interstellar gas cloud Sagittarius B contains a billion, billion, billion liters of alcohol [JFrater is planning to move there in the near future]

13. Polar Bears can run at 25 miles an hour and jump over 6 feet in the air

14. 60-65 million years ago dolphins and humans shared a common ancestor

15. Polar Bears are nearly undetectable by infrared cameras, due to their transparent fur

Facts 16 – 20

16. The average person accidentally eats 430 bugs each year of their life

17. A single rye plant can spread up to 400 miles of roots underground

18. The temperature on the surface of Mercury exceeds 430 degrees C during the day, and, at night, plummets to minus 180 degrees centigrade

19. The evaporation from a large oak or beech tree is from ten to twenty-five gallons in twenty-four hours

20. Butterflies taste with their hind feet and their taste sensation works on touch – this allows them to determine whether a leaf is edible

Experts Puzzled By Spot On Venus

Astronomers are puzzled by a strange bright spot which has appeared in the clouds of Venus. The spot was first identified by an amateur astronomer on 19 July and was later confirmed by the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft. Data from the European probe suggests the spot appeared at least four days before it was spotted from Earth. The bright spot has since started to expand, being spread by winds in Venus's thick atmosphere. Scientists are unsure as to what caused the bright spot tens of kilometres up. However, a volcanic eruption is a possibility. 

Much of the planet is thought to have been resurfaced by volcanism. Though no firm evidence for present-day volcanism has been discovered, scientists suspect it could still be happening on Venus. But an eruption would have needed to be extremely powerful to penetrate this far through the planet's dense, mainly carbon dioxide, atmosphere. Another potential source for the bright spot are charged particles from the Sun interacting with Venus's atmosphere. 

Alternatively, atmospheric turbulence may have caused bright material to become concentrated in one area. This is not the first time bright areas have been spotted on Venus. But this feature is unusual because it is confined to a relatively small region. The spot was first identified by US amateur astronomer Frank Melillo, from Holtsville, New York. Astronomers have recently been studying a "scar" on Jupiter, thought to have been caused by a comet or asteroid impact. 

World Largest Ground based Lunar Image World Record

Lumenera Corporation, www.lumenera.com, a leading manufacturer and developer of high performance digital cameras and custom imaging solutions for scientific, industrial, and surveillance markets, is pleased to announce that a Guinness World Record was set for The Largest Ground-based Digital Lunar Mosaic using the SKYnyx2-0 and INFINITY2-1 camera series.

The Lunar World Record Team, featuring some of the world's foremost amateur astronomy imagers from the UK, gathered on April 2009 to create a high resolution image of the moon larger then any other taken by ground-based astronomers. Lumenera's professional astronomy cameras were combined with high-end amateur telescopes and special software to capture close to 1.2 million video frames of the 9-day old Moon over a single night. 288 individual images were then meticulously pieced together and colour balanced to create a seamless single mosaic. The record breaking mosaic is 87.4 megapixel in resolution with a Moon diameter of approximately 9550 pixels, allowing for features as small 0.6 miles to be seen.
To achieve the high focal length needed for the Guinness World Record the Lunar World Record Team chose Lumenera's SKYnyx2-0 and INFINITY2-1 CCD USB 2.0 cameras. The cameras, running at 30fps, were used with a red filter which included IR block coating to prevent blooming and glare in the night time images. The team also used Lumenera's LuCam Software to gather the captured data from the cameras.

Sales of the Guinness World Record setting image will be donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. In support of this remarkable astronomy achievement, fund raising competitions were held by Lumenera's employees and contributions raised for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust were matched by the Corporation.

"I am very proud our cameras were selected for this ambitious and innovative undertaking." stated Huw Leahy, President, Lumenera Corporation. "Congratulations to the UK-based Lunar World Record Team for this notable achievement and their support of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust."

For more information or to purchase a poster of the image visit www.lunarworldrecord.com, or contact Lumenera at marketing@lumenera.com.

About Lumenera

Lumenera Corporation, a division of Roper Industries, and headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, is a leading developer and manufacturer of high performance digital cameras and custom imaging solutions. Lumenera cameras are used worldwide in a diverse range of industrial, scientific and security applications.

Lumenera solutions provide unique combinations of speed, resolution and sensitivity in order to satisfy the most demanding digital imaging requirements. Lumenera customers achieve the benefit of superior price to performance ratios and faster time to market with the company's commitment to high quality, cost effective product solutions. For further information about Lumenera, please visit www.lumenera.com or call 613-736-4077. To receive Lumenera press releases as they are issued, contact us at marketing@lumenera.com.