Fake Moon dust
How do you test Moon landers, or lunar excavation and construction processes? Get some fake moon dust, of course.
Coney Island to the moon
One of the earliest amusement park dark rides was a trip from Coney Island to the Moon and back.
Secret volcano
In 1943 a new volcano arose in Hokkaido. The Japanese government managed to keep it a secret for several years.
Oldest satellite
Sputnik 1 orbited the Earth for three months; Sputnik 2 for nearly six months. Explorer 1 stayed in orbit for twelve years, but the fourth artificial satellite, Vanguard 1, is still flying today.
Singing sand dunes
In a few places around the world sand dunes make a sound like a sad tuba when you walk on them.
Swimming across North America
It’s theoretically possible to swim across North America from the Pacific to the Atlantic, thanks to a strange creek in north-west Wyoming.
Light of the rocks
Radiocarbon dating only works on organic material, so how do you accurately measure the last time rocks and sediment saw sunlight? Luminescence dating.
Pacific aurora
In 1962 the United States detonated a nuclear bomb in outer space over Hawai’i. It caused an artificial aurora in the sky over Honolulu – and another one over Samoa, more than four thousand kilometres away.
Reversing river
Every six months the Tonlé Sap River reverses direction.
Science wars: The island universe
April 26, 1920, two astronomers publicly debated the structure of the cosmos. Is the Milky Way everything there is, or is it just one of many “island” universes?
Eclipse cycle
The saros is a measurement of time equal to 6585 days (plus one third of a day). It is the time between identical eclipses.
Natural nuclear power
Enrico Fermi switched on the first human-made nuclear reactor in 1942, but the first natural nuclear reactor on Earth occurred 1.7 billion years earlier.
The death of Tycho Brahe
The body of famed astronomer Tycho Brahe was dug up twice (in 1901 and 2010) to find out what killed him. The conclusion: he died of excessive politeness.
Lunar garbage collection
The second mission to land on the Moon had garbage collection duty: they picked up the remains of a probe that had crashed there two years earlier.
Oldest Earth rock
The oldest Earth rock was not found on the Earth.