50 interesting scientific facts about our incredible world

The world is a mysterious place, and Live Science has plenty of material for our popular Life’s Little Mysteries series, which airs every weekend. We’ve been writing mysteries since 2004, and we’ve never run out of weird stuff to cover. Each mystery contains many facts, such as which animals are evolving the fastest and why there are so many venomous animals in Australia. To be honest, I could go on, but it would require linking with thousands of mysteries. So, for your geeky enjoyment, here are 50 of the most impressive facts.

1. Until the 1960s, researchers believed that people dreamed primarily in black and white.

2. Pumpkin is a type of berry (and a very large one).

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3. Evacuation stimulates the vagus nerve, which lowers blood pressure and heart rate. No wonder poop feels so good.

4. Iceland was once the only country in the world without mosquitoes, but in October 2025, the situation has changed.

5. If humans could fly with wings, they would need a wingspan of about 6 m (20 ft) to glide through the air.

6. Leaving the pit in doesn’t technically slow down the browning process of the whole avocado. It just prevents the oxygen from browning the bits underneath.

7. At approximately 400 m (1,300 ft) above sea level, the shores of the Dead Sea are the lowest point on dry land on Earth.

8. During the adolescent growth spurt, some teens can grow as much as 4 to 5 inches (10 to 13 centimeters) in a year.

9. Black holes are dark because light that crosses the event horizon is trapped. This means that if you enter a black hole, it will actually be very bright.

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10. After you wake up, it takes your brain 15 to 30 minutes to reach full cognitive capacity. This period is known as “sleep inertia.”

11. When sea levels fell during the last ice age, a huge land bridge connected North America and Asia. A similar bridge allowed the ancestors of tyrannosaurs to travel from Asia to North America about 68 million years ago.

12. The slowest moving land animal is probably the banana slug, which moves at a very slow pace of 0.006 miles per hour (0.0096 km), or one-tenth of an inch per second (2.7 millimeters per second). By comparison, snails glide at a relatively fast speed of 0.03 miles per hour (0.048 km), or 0.5 inches per second (1.3 centimeters per second).

13. Although rare, under certain circumstances women were allowed to compete as gladiators in ancient Rome, there are no records of women dying in combat.

14. The sound of the Perseus Cluster’s supermassive black hole spewing gas reaches a low B-flat, about 57 octaves below central C.

15. All newts are salamanders, but not all salamanders are newts.

16. Colorado River toads release the chemical 5-MeO-DMT (one of the most powerful hallucinogens around) from poison glands in their heads, but they can’t get high by licking it.

17. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa is considered the loudest in history, and people heard it 1,900 miles (3,000 km) away.

18. The oldest member of the genus Homo lived in Africa about 2.8 million years ago, but we don’t know which species it was.

19. The largest known prime number contains 41,024,320 digits.

20. Frogs breathe and drink water through their skin.

21. A bullet fired from a 223 Remington propels the weapon at speeds up to 2,727 miles per hour (4,390 km/h). This is fast enough to cover 11 soccer fields in one second.

22. A turtle’s shell is made up of 50 bones.

23. Despite what you may have seen in movies, the ancient Egyptians did not booby-trap their pyramids.

24. The longest undersea section of a tunnel in the world belongs to the Channel Tunnel, which has a 23.5-mile (37.9-kilometer) undersea section that connects the United Kingdom and France.

25. Despite evidence to the contrary, Christopher Columbus continued to claim that the lands he had “discovered” were part of Asia, perhaps to get paid.

26. The James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror has a diameter of 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) and a total collection area of ​​more than 270 square feet (25 square meters).

27. As of March 2025, there were 953 known natural satellites in the solar system (depending on your definition of a moon).

28. There are approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 observable universe.

29. It takes 5 to 10 years for the body in the coffin to fully decompose into a skeleton.

30. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is a web of ocean currents that circulates through the Atlantic Ocean, moving 600 million cubic feet (17 million cubic meters) of water and 1.2 petawatts of heat every second. This is approximately the same amount of heat produced by one million power plants operating at the same time.

31. The deepest place on Earth is the floor of the Mariana Trench, approximately 35,876 feet (10,935 meters) below the Earth’s surface. That means it’s about 7,000 feet (2,100 meters) deeper than the height of Mount Everest.

32. Researchers have shown that octopuses can be fooled by a type of “rubber hand illusion” by simultaneously stroking a real octopus arm hidden from view and a visible fake octopus arm. When the fake arm was pinched, the octopus reacted by changing color and retracting, as if its own arm had been attacked.

33. The asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs hit Earth at 27,000 miles per hour (43,000 km/h).

34. Approximately half of all eukaryotic species on Earth are insects.

35. Mount Everest is only the highest mountain in terms of elevation, at 29,031.69 feet (8,848.86 m) above sea level. Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s inactive volcano, measures 33,497 feet (10,211 meters) from its base to its peak, which is actually much higher.

36. It’s easier to cut an onion with a dull knife than with a sharp knife.

37. Antarctica became a continent about 34 million years ago after losing land contact with Australia and South America.

38. Jellyfish, anemones, and hydras don’t have brains, but they are capable of amazingly sophisticated behaviors.

39. Kangaroos have three vaginas.

40. Many species of sharks become temporarily paralyzed when held upside down.

41. The human heart has incredible stamina, beating on average about 100,000 times each day and pumping out about 2,500 gallons (9,500 liters) of blood.

42. Dragonflies are one of nature’s most efficient hunters, capturing their prey up to 97% of the time. In comparison, tigers have a success rate of only 10%.

43. Yes, some figs really do contain wasps.

44. Training OpenAI’s GPT-4 used an estimated 50 gigawatt-hours of energy. That’s enough to power San Francisco for three days.

45. The oldest DNA sequenced from plants and animals is 2.4 million years old.

46. ​​On average, people produce about 30 to 91 cubic inches (500 to 1,500 cubic centimeters) of gas each day, regardless of their diet. Thankfully, over 99% of these gases are odorless.

47. Female puff adders hold the record for most offspring born in a single pregnancy. There were a whopping 156 of them, and they were fully developed snakes.

48. The most times a person has folded a paper in half is 12 times. If you fold a piece of paper 42 times, it would be more than 273,280 miles (439,800 kilometers) high. This is longer than the average distance between the Earth and the Moon.

49. It is possible to convert other elements into gold, although not in large quantities.

50. The most cited organ in the human body is 78, and the heaviest organ is the skin.

Looking for more mysteries?

Here are some more great stories from Life’s Little Mysteries.

—Do humans and chimpanzees really share nearly 99% of their DNA?

—Why do European cities have milder winters than North American cities, even though they are located at the same latitude?

–Why do bubbles form when water is boiled using something other than a microwave?