http://discovermagazine.com Science, Technology, and The Future http://discovermagazine.com/2008/may/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-recycling Happy Earth Day! Now help fix the planet. Jocelyn Rice and Amber Fields 2008-04-22T04:19:35Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2008/apr/19-20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-sex 10) The spiny anteater, an egg-laying mammal native to Australia and New Guinea, has a penis with four heads, but only two fit into the female at once. 17) Only a few vertebrates besides humans copulate face to face. Among those that sometimes do this: hamsters, beavers, and some primates, such as bonobos and orangutans. Dean Christopher 2008-03-19T03:36:40Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-relativity 1) Who invented relativity? Bzzzt—wrong. Galileo hit on the idea in 1639. 8) Although Einstein was a teetotaler, when he finally completed his theory of relativity, he and his wife drank themselves under the table—the old-fashioned way to mess with your space-time continuum. Susan Kruglinski 2008-02-25T04:29:22Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/20-things-you-didn2019t-know-about-science-fiction 19) After Philip K. Dick’s death, fans built an android likeness of him that mimicked his mannerisms and quoted his writings. 20) In 2005, the Dickbot was misplaced by a baggage handler. It remains at large. Dean Christopher and Jocelyn Rice with additional reporting by William Shunn 2008-02-14T06:34:03Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jan/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-snow 11) Don’t eat the red snow, either: “Watermelon snow” smells like fresh watermelon and gets its ruddy color from a species of pigmented algae. The snow tastes great, but eating it will give you the runs. 17) Inuit cultures probably don't have hundreds of words for snow. Many linguists say there are so many Inuit dialects and so many ways to parse a word that it’s like counting how many words Europeans have for love. Susan Kruglinski 2007-12-11T20:18:17Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/dec/20-things-you-didn2019t-know-about-gold 10) Gold is virtually indestructible and has been highly valued throughout history, so humans have always recycled it. Upwards of 85 percent of all the gold ever found is still being used today. 12) For more than 70 years, the standard treatment for rheumatoid arthritis was regular injections of a liquid suspension of gold, which acts as an anti-inflammatory. Doctors still don’t know why. LeeAundra Temescu 2007-11-15T08:59:58Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/nov/20-things-you-didn2019t-know-about-living-in-space 15 Missing something? The vents on the space shuttle and International Space Station serve as the lost and found, sucking up anything that’s floating about unsecured. 16 The shuttle commode requires that astronauts align themselves precisely in the dead center of the seat. A mock-up of the shuttle toilet, complete with built-in camera, is used to train them how to position themselves. Corey S. Powell 2007-10-30T04:45:03Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/oct/20-things-you-didn2019t-know-about-the-surgeon-general They weren't all the presidents' stooges. Dean Christopher 2007-10-05T04:58:37Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-hygiene 18) TV kills! Television remotes are the worst carriers of bacteria in hospital rooms, worse even than toilet handles. 19) It is now believed President James Garfield died not from a gunshot but because doctors treated the president with manure-stained hands, causing a severe infection that killed him three months later. Liza Lentini and David Mouzon 2007-08-20T12:37:32Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/aug/20-things-you-didn2019t-know-about-mosquitoes 6 It would take 1,200,000 mosquitoes, each sucking once, to completely drain the average human of blood. In the Arctic, mosquitoes can bite a person as many as 9,000 times per minute. At that rate, an individual could lose half his blood in two hours. 11 When a mosquito detects the whine of the opposite sex, it begins to synchronize its own pitch to match that of the potential mate. Randy males can “relate” to girl frequencies in a second or two. Females take several times longer to synchronize. Dean Christopher 2007-07-24T05:05:43Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/20-things-you-didn2019t-know-about-galileo 13 Although he formulated the laws of universal acceleration, there is no evidence he ever dropped balls off the Leaning Tower of Pisa to prove them. 18 He also sketched various inventions, including a candle-and-mirror combination to reflect light through a building, an automatic tomato picker, a pocket comb that doubled as an eating utensil, and a ballpoint pen. Liza Lentini 2007-08-17T07:25:59Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-nothing 11) It is said that Abdülhamid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s, had censors expunge references to H2O from chemistry books because he was sure it stood for “Hamid the Second is nothing.” 17) To physicists there is no such thing as nothing. Empty space is instead filled with pairs of particles and antiparticles, called virtual particles, that quickly form and then, in accordance with the law of energy conservation, annihilate each other in about 10^-25 second. LeeAundra Temescu 2007-07-05T07:55:34Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-pencils 2) In his autobiography, G. Gordon Liddy describes finding John Dean (whom he despised for “disloyalty”) alone in a room. Spotting sharpened pencils on a desk, Liddy fleetingly considered driving one into Dean’s throat. 9) French researchers hit on the idea of using caoutchouc, a vegetable gum now known as rubber, to erase pencil marks. Until then, writers removed mistakes with bread crumbs. Dean Christopher 2007-07-05T07:55:46Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/apr/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-robots Robotics expert Henrik Christensen predicts humans will be having sex with robots within four years, and Hans Moravec, founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, predicts that robots will emerge as their own species by 2040. Sean Markey,Corey S. Powell 2007-07-05T07:55:14Z Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2007/mar/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-bees 5 The queen was known as the king until the late 1660s, when Dutch scientist Jan Swammerdam dissected the hive’s big bee and discovered ovaries. 18 Worker bees have strictly regimented roles, including that of undertakers who drag their dead siblings from the hive. Liza Lentini 2007-07-05T07:55:40Z Print Article