Science Zone

Ever Wonder Why We laugh

Whether it's the snickering of your tyke or the excited hollers of a television show's studio gathering of people, we hear chuckling each day. Nothing could be more normal. 
 
However, in light of the fact that it's 
normal doesn't make giggling any less unusual. 
Case in point, whenever you're at the motion pictures getting a charge out of some comic drama blockbuster, listen hard to the giggling around you. 
 
Why are all these outsiders, as one, blasting into such peculiar, heaving, snorting clamors? 
Their giggles might all of a sudden quit appearing to be natural, and more like the cruel babble of feathered creatures or the shrieks of 
monkeys at the zoo. 
 
When you begin taking a gander at giggling as conduct, it can prompt some odd inquiries. 
Why do we? 
Isn't that right? 
Do creatures snicker? 
 
Also, why do we expect that any fair James Bond scoundrel will chortle malevolently when uncovering his arrangement for global control? What's so interesting? 
 
To answer these and different secrets of giggling, We dove into the shockingly argumentative universe of giggling examination. 
 
Why Do We chuckle? 
 
The answer may appear glaringly evident: We snicker when we see something entertaining. In any case, the self-evident answer is not right, in any event more often than not. 
 
"Most giggling is not in light of jokes or funniness," says Robert R. Provine, an educator of brain research and neuroscience at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. We ought to know, he has led various investigations of giggling and created the book Laughter. 
 
One of his focal contentions is that funniness and chuckling are most certainly not indivisible. 
Provine did an overview of chuckling in the wild - he and some graduate understudies listened in on normal discussions out in the open spots and made notes. 
Also, in a review of 1,200 "snicker 
scenes," he found that just 10%-20% of snickers were produced by anything taking after a joke. 
 
The other 80%-90% of remarks that got a snicker were dull non-witticisms like, "I'll see you all later" and "It was decent meeting you, 
as well." 
 
So why the snickers? 
Provine contends it needs to do with the transformative improvement of giggling. 
In people, chuckling originates before discourse by maybe a great many years. Prior to our human precursors could converse with one another, chuckling was a less complex technique for correspondence or communication. 
 
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-dYVUYPinDhA/VkhNfdaq9JI/AAAAAAAAAKk/nHax0T0QWJQ/s2560/%25255BUNSET%25255D.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-dYVUYPinDhA/VkhNfdaq9JI/AAAAAAAAAKk/nHax0T0QWJQ/s350/%25255BUNSET%25255D.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" /></a>

Ever Wonder Why We laugh

Whether it's the snickering of your tyke or the excited hollers of a television show's studio gathering of people, we hear chuckling...

How Mosquito Locate And Buzz in Our Ears

Typical of Africa, we heard odd stories, should I say myth about mosquito and ear. 
According to the story, the mosquito always visit the ear to remind it (ear) of the taunt that he (mosquito) is not a weakling. 
 
Here I will be talking how the mosquito locate and buzz in our ears. 
It all resulted as a dedication of a mother to bear her youngsters, 
natural basic however it might be, can deliver some amazing conduct. 
 
Out of the 3,000 known species 
of mosquitoes, a male mosquito has never been willing to feast on blood for his children. 
 
In many species the female requires a feast of blood to help in egg creation, not withstanding her standard eating routine of nectar. 
 
To observe casualties, the mother-to-be takes after signs like our body warmth, dampness and carbon dioxide discharges. 
 
Specifically, the carbon dioxide we 
breathe out draws in the bug to our heads, where they fly around searching for a delectable spot. 
And this is exactly how mosquitoes locate our ears in case if you're wondering how. 
 
The obvious buzz that goes before the jab of her proboscis is not some throaty pre-supper effortlessness, 
but instead the shrill whimper of quickly beating wings.

How Mosquito Locate And Buzz in Our Ears

Typical of Africa, we heard odd stories, should I say myth about mosquito and ear. According to the story, the mosquito always visit the ea...

Why We Cry When We Laugh Too Hard

Why do we cry when we giggle too hard? We cry when we're pitiful however why do we cry when we're excited by something? Being mise...

Optical Illusion, Explanation of The Mystery Behind These Images

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>Wondering how this possible? 
 
Well this is the possible explanation. 
When you look at the white layer on the picture, what you should see is a full color representation of the image as your retina/brain processes the negative image. 
 
Our visual system is constantly 
processing input and can fool us or create illusions from retinal or cortical processes. This illusion example is called a negative after-image that is caused by adaptation of the photoreceptors in the retina. 
 
Forcing ones eyes to fixate on a point (in this case the grey dot 
on Laura Galloway ‘s nose reduces the normal jitter or micro saccades that constantly occur as we scan things in our visual world. 
 
The micro saccades normally cause images to dance over the surface of the eye eliminating the possibility of too much adaptation if an image remains static over one group of photoreceptors for too long. 
 
In fact, if one were to eliminate all movement of the eye, and we were to fixate on a single point, our 
perception of our visual world would fade away. 
 
So, what happens in this illusion is that when we look from the first image to the white space or to 
a large plain surface, the photoreceptors that become adapted no longer signal effectively, but the photoreceptors surrounding the adapted photoreceptors strongly signal perhaps signaling opponent cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) involved in color vision. 
 
Though other evidence from Dacey, He, and MacCleod. suggests that opponency is not necessary to explain the illusion. 
 
 
To those who didn't see the beauty others saw. I just reinverted the picture for it to be visible for everyone. 
 
<a href='https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-gPm5jE4jgaM/VgkIzAaVjJI/AAAAAAAAAI0/LMPHWWXMRV8/s2560/1443432648943.jpeg' onblur='try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}'><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-gPm5jE4jgaM/VgkIzAaVjJI/AAAAAAAAAI0/LMPHWWXMRV8/s350/1443432648943.jpeg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"/></a> 
 
<a href='https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QMZv6H0rEvY/VgkI03k_ZzI/AAAAAAAAAI8/gm5H8N8u8Zs/s2560/1443432653489.jpeg' onblur='try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}'><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QMZv6H0rEvY/VgkI03k_ZzI/AAAAAAAAAI8/gm5H8N8u8Zs/s350/1443432653489.jpeg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"/></a></div>

Optical Illusion, Explanation of The Mystery Behind These Images

Wondering how this possible? Well this is the possible explanation. When you look at the white layer on the picture, what you should see...

It's Supermoon Day

It’s that time of year again – a bright supermoon will appear in the night sky. 
Except that the supermoon may not appear that, well, super to make our earthbound eyes. 
 
“If you had a regular moon 
right next to a supermoon you could definitely see the difference, but you really won't be able to notice much of a difference just looking at it in the sky,” said Mike Narlock, head astronomer at 
Cranbrook Institute of Science, to CBS . 
 
An ever so slightly larger 
version of a full moon is 
called a supermoon, or more 
technically, a lunar perigee. 
The moon appears bigger because it orbits closer than usual to Earth. To the right is a comparison image of a full moon 
(left) and a supermoon (right). 
 
Still, in case you’re 
interested, the perigee will occur on Sunday, August 30 at 11 
a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), according 
to <a href='http://space.com'>space.com</a>. At that time, the×moon will be around 222,631 miles (358,290 kilometers) 
away. 
 
Unfortunately, that’s not the best time for those of you in North America. Your best bet is to view the full moon, which will be close to a perigee, on Saturday evening, August 29. 
 
Although the supermoon may not appear as lustrous as its name, the closer distance is important. When the moon orbits this near to Earth, the ocean 
tides become stronger. Thus, on the day of the supermoon and for three days after, the Earth 
will experience larger than typical tides. 
 
If you’re not in the mood to see a slightly larger moon, then perhaps check out the tides in your local area. Or even better, combine the two. 
 
Credit: <a href='http://ifls.com'>IFLS</a> 
<a href='https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-G1kwPrnw8jQ/VeIS5251bBI/AAAAAAAAAHY/tJDHM5fZwqo/s2560/1440879334242.jpeg' onblur='try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}'><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-G1kwPrnw8jQ/VeIS5251bBI/AAAAAAAAAHY/tJDHM5fZwqo/s350/1440879334242.jpeg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"/></a>

It's Supermoon Day

It’s that time of year again – a bright supermoon will appear in the night sky. Except that the supermoon may not appear that, well, super ...

Ten Facts About Light

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>1. Greeks thought our sight came from something dashing out of the eyes and into objects. 
 
2. The first determination of “c”, the speed of light in a vacuum, was made by a Danish astronomer using the motion of the moons 
of Jupiter. 
 
3. In glass light slows down a bit, bending its trajectory and allowing the making of lenses. 
 
4. Particles traveling faster than light IN A MEDIUM, release a form of luminous shock wave called Cerenkov radiation that we see 
as deep blue light. 
 
5. Different colors have slightly different speeds in water, making them bend in slightly different angles. That causes the 
rainbow when water droplets are in the 
atmosphere. 
 
6. Light from the Sun takes 8 minutes and 17 seconds to reach us, but inside the sun the energy takes millions of years to go 
from the center to the surface. 
 
7. Humans, just like apes and monkeys, have three color receptors that allow us to see all colors. Birds and other non-mammals 
have four color receptors which means they can see many more colors than we do. 
 
8. The Hubble telescope photographed several galaxies receding from us at speeds above the speed of light. 
 
9. When Maxwell developed the equations to describe Electricity and Magnetism, some solutions were waves with about the speed of light. That was later confirmed, and Optics became a part of his theory. 
 
10. The difference of the speed of light according to the density of a substance is responsible for ghost cities travelers see in the desert, and is the process that allows the manufacture of fiber optics.</div>

Ten Facts About Light

1. Greeks thought our sight came from something dashing out of the eyes and into objects. 2. The first determination of “c”, the speed of ...

Why Healing Wounds Itch?

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>We are told that if a cut is itching it is healing, and that scratching itches is bad for healing, why have we evolved this tendency to cause the healing cut to itch? 
 
Answer 
There are special nerves in the skin, and this has only been discovered in fairly recent times as in the last few years, but there are itch specific nerve fibres in the skin, and their job solely is to signal to the A comparative picture of untreated 7-days-healed road rash in the form of a scar one year later. 
 
Fresh wound is on the right, and scar is on the 
left spinal cord that an area of the skin is being irritated in a way that we would perceive as itchy. 
 
Those nerve cells are activated in a number 
of ways. One of them is mechanically. So, if you have an insect crawling on you for example, the insect crawling over your skin elicits the right kind of stimulus that those nerve cells are interested in, 
and they are triggered. So you are therefore paying attention to that bit of 
skin because there might be a bug which is biting you, which might be about to give you malaria or something. 
 
So that's the first point, it’s mechanical. 
The nerve cells are also sensitive to chemicals and there are certain chemicals which when you put them in your skin, 
they're irritants. As a result, they make you think, “Oh! I've got an itchy patch of skin again.” You pay attention and you 
brush away the irritant chemical. 
 
Now when you have a wound, the wound closes by cells around the margins of the 
wound, proliferating, in other words, growing and they then migrate from the 
margins of the wound, down into the base of the wound. They actually follow the 
electrical gradient, a guy in Aberdeen discovered in the last 5 years or so that 
the inside of the wound is at a different voltage than the margin, and the cells flow down this electrical gradient, so they know where the base of the wound is. 
They then unite with their cellular counterparts, and stitch themselves into 
place. Then they start to contract, contractile filaments which pull the wound closed. 
 
So as they do that, they're eliciting a mechanical stress which the itch sensitive nerves will respond to and at the same 
time, there are various other factors which 
get released in a healing wound, chemicals which provoke healing in the wound, but also, up-regulate the activity of these itch sensitive nerves. 
 
So therefore, a wound that's closing up will feel itchy for mechanical and chemical reasons which are precisely the reasons why those nerve cells get stimulated in the 
first place. 
So that's the reason.</div>

Why Healing Wounds Itch?

We are told that if a cut is itching it is healing, and that scratching itches is bad for healing, why have we evolved this tendency to caus...

Why Snakes Don't Die of Their Own Venom

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>I know if animals like 
ourselves ate food that had been poisoned, it would have an adverse effect on us but it doesn’t seem to on snakes. I know they’re not immune to their poison because they don’t use it on each other when they fight for their territory battles. 
I just wondered why that was really. 
 
The reason is that the venom snakes use is a 
protein. Proteins are made up of building blocks of what’s called amino acids. They’re the same stuff, effectively, as your Sunday roast meat. 
That means that if you were to eat them – say I ate a snake and ate the poison sacks – if I just ate it and 
it went into my digestive system the acid and the enzymes in my stomach would just be able to break down the protein so it would fall apart and it would be harmless. It’s 
only actually toxic if it gets beyond the gut and it gets into the circulation of the body. 
 
That’s why one snake could, for instance, eat another snake, and it wouldn’t 
be poisoned by it. In the same way, a person who has diabetes and needs to inject the hormone insulin. Insulin is a protein and if you were to eat it by mouth, the 
digestive tract would break it down. That’s why people have to inject insulin to make it work. 
 
So why don’t snakes poison 
themselves given they have the same toxin in their bodies. It’s exactly the same reason if for instance your pancreas makes 
a deadly cocktail of digestive juices which, if they got into your bloodstream, would 
kill you very rapidly. 
 
People who get a condition called acute pancreatitis do have a very high mortality rate. It does 
kill people because they literally eat themselves from the inside out. The reason that they don’t do that normally when you’re healthy is because the enzymes are made in cells in an inactive state. 
 
They’re exported from the cell into a duct which is 
lined with specially protecting cells that 
stop it going back in to the body’s own tissues and do any damage. 
The only place it can go is down the duct and then out 
into the digestive tract. 
 
If you put that into the context of the snake, it’s got a gland which knows how to make the proteins in the venom. They get exported into this duct which is a special holding 
bay, protected from the venom. 
It can’t go back the wrong way. When the snake bites 
you there are tiny muscle cells around those ducts and it squirts the venom down the fang (there’s a duct in there) and in to 
the holes that the teeth have made in you. 
 
That’s why the snake doesn’t die from its 
own venom because it keeps it in a specially adapted part of the body so it can’t get into the circulation. 
<a href='https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-LopyVt-JpD0/VdyLtz9ysqI/AAAAAAAAAHI/Vb3ifie_e3M/s2560/1440517044994.jpeg' onblur='try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}'><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-LopyVt-JpD0/VdyLtz9ysqI/AAAAAAAAAHI/Vb3ifie_e3M/s350/1440517044994.jpeg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"/></a></div>

Why Snakes Don't Die of Their Own Venom

I know if animals like ourselves ate food that had been poisoned, it would have an adverse effect on us but it doesn’t seem to on snakes. I...

10 Things You Need To Know About Your Brain

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><head>The Brain</head> 
 
The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don’t know, but here are a few interesting facts that we’ve got covered. 
 
1. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour: 
Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? It’s due to the super-speedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car. 
 
2. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb: 
The cartoon image of a light bulb over your head when a great thought occurs isn’t too far off the mark. 
Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping. 
 
3. The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannic Or any other encyclopedia for that matter: 
Scientists have yet to settle on a definitive amount, but the storage capacity of the brain in electronic terms is thought to be between 3 or even 1,000 terabytes. The National Archives of Britain, containing over 900 years of history, only takes up 70 terabytes, making your brain’s memory power pretty darn impressive. 
 
4. Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your blood stream: 
The brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, yet consumes more oxygen than any other organ in the body, making it extremely susceptible to damage related to oxygen deprivation. So breathe 
deep to keep your brain happy and swimming in oxygenated cells. 
 
5. The brain is much more active at night than during the day: 
Logically, you would think that all the moving around, complicated 
calculations and tasks and general interaction we do on a daily basis during our working hours would take a lot more brain power than, say, lying in bed. Turns out, the opposite is true. When you turn off your brain turns on. Scientists don’t yet know why this is but you can thank the hard work of your brain while you sleep for all those pleasant dreams. 
 
6. Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream: 
While this may be true, don’t take it as a sign you’re mentally lacking if you can’t recall your dreams. Most of us don’t remember many of our dreams and the average length of most dreams is only 2-3 seconds–barely long enough to register. 
 
7. Neurons continue to grow throughout human life: 
For years scientists and doctors thought that brain and neural tissue couldn’t grow or regenerate. While it doesn’t act in the same manner as tissues in many other parts of the body, neurons can and do grow throughout your life, adding a whole new dimension to the study of the brain and the illnesses that affect it. 
 
8. Information travels at different speeds within different types of neurons: 
Not all neurons are the same. There are a few different types within the body and transmission along these different kinds can be as slow as 0.5 meters/sec or as fast as 120 meters/sec. 
 
9. The brain itself cannot feel pain: 
While the brain might be the pain center when you cut your finger or burn yourself, the brain itself 
does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain. That doesn’t mean your head can’t hurt. The brain is surrounded by loads of tissues, nerves and blood vessels that are 
plenty receptive to pain and can give you a pounding headache. 
 
10. 80% of the brain is water: 
Your brain isn’t the firm, gray mass you’ve seen on TV. Living brain tissue is a squishy, pink and jelly-like organ, thanks to the loads of blood and high water content of the tissue. 
So the next time you’re feeling dehydrated get a drink and keep your body hydrated. 
 
Credit: <a href=' http://icantseeyou.typepad.com'>ICan't See You</a></div>

10 Things You Need To Know About Your Brain

The Brain The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don’t know, but here a...

Skin As Body Temperature Regulator

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>The skin as we all know is the largest organ in the body. Also with exception of the bones and cartilages, it's the toughest tissue in the body. It does live up to its status by carrying out numerous functions such as protection, excretion, storage of food, sensitivity, regulation of the body temperature, production of vitamin D through the early sunshine and so on. 
 
Today we are going to see how the skin regulates the body temperature especially in we homoiothermic animals; animals with constant body temperature. 
 
This is truly amazing as how the skin keeps the body temperature constant regardless of changes in external environment though the liquid tissue cell (blood) also plays a role at body temperature regulation. 
 
On a hot day or weather, there's usually an increase in the temperature of the environment and the skin carry out the following processes to get rid of excess heat and thus to keep the body temperature constant. 
 
VASODILATION: 
There is a dilation of the capillaries near the skin surface and a constriction of those in the deeper layer. The impact of this is a large volume of blood flow close to the surface of the skin such that there's a loss of heat via the three mood of heat transfer namely; conduction, convection and radiation. 
 
DECREASE IN METABOLIC RATE: There is a reduction in metabolic activity by the skin or body and this reduces the heat released by metabolic activity and thus heat production is reduced. 
 
LOWERING OF HAIRS: We usually notice that the hairs especially those on the hands and legs rise and fall. Yes they rise and fall. 
During hot days, the hair erector muscles relax causing the hairs to lie flat on the skin surface. This expose most of the air trapped by the hairs and also heat from the body is lost as the air evaporates. 
 
SWEATING: 
The sweat gland is usually active during hot periods and there's large sweat production. As the sweat evaporate from the skin, latent heat of evaporation is also extracted from the body hence the heat of the body is reduced. 
 
On a cold day or weather, the following processes are done by the skin to regulate the body temperature. 
 
RAISING OF THE HAIRS: 
The hair erector muscle contract to raise the hair and trap more air during a cold weather. Since air is a bad conductor of heat, the layer of air next to the skin acts as an insulator and prevent heat loss from the body and conserves the normal body temperature. 
 
VOSOCONSTRICTION: There's constriction of capillaries close to the skin surface and also a dilation of capillaries in deeper layer of the skin. This brings about small volume of blood flow near the skin surface and hence prevents loss of heat and conserves body heat or temperature. 
 
INCREASE IN METABOLIC ACTIVITY: The skin increases the metabolic activity of the body especially the respiratory activity of the liver that release large amount of energy and heat. This help to generate the heat necessary to keep the body's temperature from dropping during cold weather. 
 
SWEATING: 
THE sweat gland become inactive on a cold day and hence there is very little production of sweat that gets evaporated thereby conserving the latent heat of vaporization and rather use it to keep the body temperature constant by ensuring no drop 'in temperature rate throughout the body. 
This is the very reason</div>

Skin As Body Temperature Regulator

The skin as we all know is the largest organ in the body. Also with exception of the bones and cartilages, it's the toughest tissue in t...

This Friday, There Would Be a Blue Moon

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>This Friday, there will be a once in a blue moon occurrence. If you step outside, you might find yourself gazing out at a brimming, full moon. 
 
Disappointingly, it won't actually be blue; the term is a misnomer. In fact, a blue moon isn't any different to any other full moon. 
In the past, a blue moon was used to mean "rare," but now the name is given to any full moon that is the second to appear in one calendar month. The lunar cycle is around 29 
and a half days, and months of the year are between 28 and 31 days long. The probability of a full lunar cycle, from full moon to full moon, 
occurring precisely during this time window is therefore not very high. 
 
The next blue moon, by this definition, is going to be on January 31, 2018 – around two and a half years from now. There will be another blue moon two months after that on March 31, 2018, 
after which it will be another two-year wait. 
 
The term "blue moon" has evolved over the last 200 years or so. Initially, a blue moon was 
based on a complicated combination of. circumstances. In one astronomical season, there are normally three full moons and if there was ever a fourth, then that would be the blue moon. 
 
However, this all changed when a hobby astronomer, James Hugh Pruett, wrote an article that was published in the magazine <a href='http://skyandtelescope.com'> 
Sky and Telescope</a> in 1946. He defined a blue moon as any second full moon in a calendar month. 
 
This definition was incorrect, but it was so much easier to understand that the world scrambled to embrace this new definition. 
 
You might be feeling a little disheartened that the moon won't be blue, but blue moons in terms of color have been seen in the past under very special circumstances. 
 
Usually, these moons are reported after a volcanic eruption or even a forest fire, which release plumes of 
particles that rise into the atmosphere. The particles happen to be the perfect size to scatter away red light, only allowing blue light through the dust cloud. Out of the ashes, a blue moon appears. 
 
<a href='http://ifls.com'>IFLS</a> 
 
<a href='https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-v6UZ2KyJpjc/VbsrPmwc4PI/AAAAAAAAAG0/hMyfNBjEwrM/s2560/1438329660547.jpeg' onblur='try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}'><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-v6UZ2KyJpjc/VbsrPmwc4PI/AAAAAAAAAG0/hMyfNBjEwrM/s350/1438329660547.jpeg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"/></a></div>

This Friday, There Would Be a Blue Moon

This Friday, there will be a once in a blue moon occurrence. If you step outside, you might find yourself gazing out at a brimming, full moo...

What is Dark Energy?

Instead of pulling galaxies in our universe together, gravity seems to be driving them apart. 
How can gravity be repulsive, when our everyday experience shows it’s attractive? 
 
To explain it, we need dark energy. 
 
What goes up must come down… right? 
 
How do we think about something we can't see and don’t experience in our everyday lives, but seems to be pushing our universe apart ever faster? 
 
The nature of dark energy is one of the most important unsolved problems in all of science. 
But what, exactly, is dark energy, and why do we even believe that it exists? 
Step back a minute and consider a more familiar experience: what happens when you toss a ball 
straight up into the air? 
 
It gradually slows down as gravity tugs on it, finally stopping in mid-air 
and falling back to the ground. Of course, if you threw the ball hard enough (about 25,000 miles 
per hour) it would actually escape from the Earth entirely and shoot into space, never to return. 
 
But even in that case, gravity would continue to pull feebly on the ball, slowing its speed as it escaped the clutches of the Earth. 
 
But now imagine something completely different. 
Suppose that you tossed a ball into the air, and instead of being attracted back to the ground, the ball was repelled by the Earth and blasted faster and faster into the sky. 
 
This would be an astonishing event, but it’s exactly what astronomers have observed happening to the 
entire universe! 
Scientists have known for almost a century that the universe is expanding, with all of the galaxies 
flying apart from each other. And until recently, scientists believed that there were only two possible options for the universe in the future. It could expand forever (like the ball that you tossed upward at 25,000 miles an hour), but with the expansion slowing down as gravity 
pulled all of the galaxies toward each other. 
 
Or gravity might win out in the end and bring the expansion of the universe to a halt, finally collapsing it back down in a “big crunch,” just 
like your ball plunging back to the ground. 
 
This illustration shows abstracted ‘slices’ of space at different points in time as the universe expands. 
 
So imagine scientists’ surprise when two different teams of astronomers discovered, back in 1998, that neither of these behaviors was 
correct. 
 
These astronomers were measuring how fast the universe was expanding when it was much younger than today. 
 
But how could they do this without building a time machine? 
Luckily, a telescope is a time machine. 
 
When you look up at the stars at night, you aren’t seeing what they look like today – you’re seeing light 
that left the stars a long time ago – often many hundreds of years. 
 
By looking at distant supernovae, which are tremendously bright 
exploding stars, astronomers can look back hundreds of millions of years. They can then measure the expansion rate back then by 
comparing the distance to these far-off supernovae with the speed at which they are flying away from us. 
 
And by comparing how fast the universe was expanding hundreds of millions of years ago to its rate of expansion today, these astronomers discovered that the expansion is 
actually speeding up instead of slowing down as everyone had expected. 
 
What pushes galaxies like these in the Hubble deep field apart? 
Instead of pulling the galaxies in the universe together, gravity seems to be driving them apart. 
But how can gravity be repulsive, when our everyday experience shows that it’s attractive? 
 
Einstein’s theory of gravity in fact predicts that gravity can repel as well as attract, but only under very special circumstances. 
Repulsive gravity requires a new form of energy, dubbed “dark energy,” with very weird properties. 
Unlike ordinary matter, dark energy has negative pressure, and it’s this negative pressure that makes gravity repulsive. (For ordinary matter, gravity is always attractive). 
 
Dark energy appears to be smoothly smeared out through the entire universe, and it interacts with ordinary matter only through the action of gravity, making it nearly impossible to test in the laboratory. 
 
Scientists used to think that the expansion of the universe was described by the yellow, 
green, or blue curves. But surprise, it’s actually the red curve instead. 
 
The simplest form of dark energy goes by two different names: a cosmological constant or 
vacuum energy. Vacuum energy has another strange property. Imagine a box that expands as the universe expands. The amount of matter in 
the box stays the same as the box expands, but the volume of the box goes up, so the density of matter in the box goes down. In fact, the density of everything goes down as the universe expands. 
 
Except for vacuum energy – its density stays exactly the same. (Yes, that’s as bizarre as it sounds. It’s like stretching a string of taffy 
and discovering that it never gets any thinner). 
 
Astronomers continue to probe the skies, looking for finer details that can build on what we suspect about dark energy. 
Since dark energy can’t be isolated or probed in the laboratory, how can we hope to understand exactly what it’s made of? 
 
Different theories for dark energy predict small differences in the way 
that the expansion of the universe changes with time. 
 
Credit: www.earthsky.org 
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-AphUeU-TjZU/VYvNtvUgddI/AAAAAAAAAF4/DugTGNaLV3o/s2560/1435225523745.jpeg"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-AphUeU-TjZU/VYvNtvUgddI/AAAAAAAAAF4/DugTGNaLV3o/s350/1435225523745.jpeg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" /></a>

What is Dark Energy?

Instead of pulling galaxies in our universe together, gravity seems to be driving them apart. How can gravity be repulsive, when our everyd...

Weird Facts About Human Body

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>> Men lose about 40 hairs in a day and women lose 70 hairs in a day. 
 
> Your blood has same amount of salts in it as an ocean has. 
 
> You are taller in the morning than you are at night. 
 
> Heart circulates blood in your body about 1000 times each day. 
 
> Eyelashes last about 150 days. 
 
> There are 500 hairs in an eyebrow. 
 
> The average human body contains 
approximately 100 billion nerve cells. 
 
> It is not possible to sneeze with open eyes. 
 
> Bones are 4 times stronger than concrete. 
 
> Average life span of a taste bud is only 10 days. 
 
> You are born without knee caps and they don't appear until age of 2 to 6 years. 
 
> Children grow faster in springtime. 
 
> Eyes stay the same size throughout life but nose and ears never stop growing. 
 
> We born with 300 bones but end up with 206 bones when we are adult. 
 
> Human skull is made up of 26 different bones. 
 
> Hair is made of same substance as fingernails. 
 
> Our entire body functions stop when we sneeze, even your heart beat. 
 
> Tongue is the strongest muscle in human body. 
 
> Typical person goes to bathroom six times a day. 
 
> Food takes 7 seconds to reach stomach from mouth. 
 
> Children have more taste buds than adults. 
 
> Sneeze blows air out of nose at the speed of 100 miles per hour. 
 
> Largest muscle in your body is one on which you are sitting on. 
 
> Smallest bone of body is in ears. 
 
<a href='https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NsSYwuLodyQ/VYffoKzMADI/AAAAAAAAAFk/3ikF8MO1U1U/s2560/1434967966575.jpeg' onblur='try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}'><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NsSYwuLodyQ/VYffoKzMADI/AAAAAAAAAFk/3ikF8MO1U1U/s350/1434967966575.jpeg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"/></a></div>

Weird Facts About Human Body

> Men lose about 40 hairs in a day and women lose 70 hairs in a day. > Your blood has same amount of salts in it as an ocean has. ...

How Ship's Floatation on Water Is Possible

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>Why is that an iron Rod sink in water? But imagine a ship made by an iron rod does not sink? 
 
This question was asked by one of our readers and I considered it worthy of a blog post. 
 
The ability of an object to float on water depends on factors such as the nature of object, the surface area and so on. 
Let's consider the principle of floatation popularly known as Archimedes's principle, he noted that for an object to float on water, the weight of object must equal the upthrust on the object when immersed in water. 
However it's most important to know that an object only floats on a water if and only if the weight of the body equals the upthrust before it's fully immersed in a liquid. 
Have you witnessed that it's possible for a rubber cup containing water to sink in a bucket of water and a steel cup to float. The both can sink and float based on the condition stated above. 
 
Coming back to your question, you pointed out that iron sinks and so should anything made of it. That's wrong. 
Here we are talking of the surface area, ship has a large surface area and thus before it can sink, it has to displace a large amount of water and its weight on the water leads to increase in upthrust on the ship and thus the weight and the upthrust equals each other. 
The effect of surface area can be seen in this way. 
We know if a stone and a paper are fallen at a height and at the same time in a vacuum, they land the same time. Why that's is not true if done in the atmosphere is that the stone has small surface area unlike the paper. 
 
So the paper has to overcome more resistance from the air i.e displace more air to land compared to the stone.</div>

How Ship's Floatation on Water Is Possible

Why is that an iron Rod sink in water? But imagine a ship made by an iron rod does not sink? This question was asked by one of our readers...

EVER WONDER WHY BIRDS FLY IN V FORMATION

<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>I stood gazing in wonder when a "V" flew past over me. Not actually a letter "V", rather a flock of birds in V formation. Still watching the beautiful scenery created by those birds in the sky, I noticed the one at the rear fly past others and replaced the leader. 
 
That's awesome I said having realized they possibly continued to change position when the leader is weak as our winged friends continue their migration 
 
Why do birds migrate? 
Why do birds fly in V formation? 
Why do the even prefer V shape? 
 
Away we flock with them to find the answer... 
 
Though not all birds migrate but more than half do. They are referred as migratory birds. 
Reasons why birds migrate to a different habitat vary but shouldn't be far from availability of food or for survival purpose i.e they respond to stimuli such as changes in weather. 
 
Flying in V formation is in fact a characteristic of migratory birds. 
Reason; to save energy during their long journey. 
 
Funny enough! birds migrate several kilometers away from their habitat. Don't be surprised why they mainly feed on grains because the grains provide the energy they burn up during their flight. Flying consumes a lot energy even a pilot can tell you that. 
 
Thanks to nature that has this amazing feature bestowed to our winged friends to enable their aerial adaptation. 
 
In the northern hemisphere, many birds migrate south during the winter months when the weather becomes too cold for them to survive in their northern habitats. Once spring arrives, the birds return to their homes. Equally as varied as the reasons for migrating are the ways in which different migratory birds make their journey. Some birds migrate alone, others travel in pairs and many move in large flocks. Some birds often migrate in swarms, while larger birds, such as geese,migrate in formation. 
 
Many times this migration takes the form of the letter V. 
Why? 
The reason birds prefer to fly in a V shape has puzzled researchers for many years. There are two general theories to explain the V-shaped phenomenon. The most accepted theory is that the formation of a flock influences aerodynamics, making it easier for the birds to fly. As the birds flap their wings, the air flowing off their wing tips gives birds in the back of the V an extra lift. 
 
This reduces the amount of energy the birds need to fly. Over the course of the migration, birds take turns leading the front of the V, the most difficult position. When a bird is tired of leading, it falls to the rear of the V, where there is the least wind resistance. Rotating through various positions in the V maximizes the use of each bird’s energy, allowing flocks to fly for long periods of time without having to stop. 
 
The second theory suggests flying in a V offers each bird an unimpaired line of sight as the flick flies through the air. This makes it easier for the birds to keep track of each member of the flock. Groups of fighter pilots often arrange their planes in V formation for the same reason.</div>

EVER WONDER WHY BIRDS FLY IN V FORMATION

I stood gazing in wonder when a "V" flew past over me. Not actually a letter "V", rather a flock of birds in V formation...

EVER WONDER WHY BIRDS FLY IN V FORMATION

EVER WONDER WHY BIRDS FLY IN V FORMATION

I stood gazing in wonder when a "V" flew past over me. Not actually a letter "V", rather a flock of birds in V formation...

WHY ARE GRASSHOPPERS GREEN DURING RAINY SEASON BUT BROWN DURING DRY SEASON

Ever wondered why grasshoppers are green during the rainy season but brown during the winter. Well it's an adaptive coloration to escape...

SKIN AS BODY TEMPERATURE REGULATOR

SKIN AS BODY TEMPERATURE REGULATOR

The skin as we all know is the largest organ in the body. Also with exception of the bones and cartilages, it's the toughest tissue in t...

WHY WE URINATE MUCH AND OFTEN ON A COLD WEATHER OR DAY

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No one can claim that he's oblivious of the fact that we tend to urinate more and often during cold weather. Yes you heard me right! 
 
But why is it so? 
Well let me address the question once and for all. 
 
First! How does the body react during cold and hot weather with regard to even temperature distribution through out the body. 
 
But then when does one feel warm and cold? 
I mean how does the body cope with hemostasis, to sound less complex the regulation of the body's temperature in order to attain and maintain a fairly constant temperature rate. 
 
The blood and the skin see to that. 
The blood cell does its by even distribution of blood around the body to ensure an even body temperature. 
To be precise, the blood disperse the temperature of a particular part of the body to all other parts of the body. <a href="http://sciencezone12.blogspot.in/2015/02/skin-as-body-temperature-regulator.html/">The skin does its as body temperature regulator</a> 
 
The body is usually warm on a hot day as a result of heat from the sun and high metabolic activity in the body. When the body is warm, there's a stimulation for sweat production and this is due to the high metabolic activity of the liver which heats up the body. 
 
For the sweat to be evaporated from the body, latent heat of vaporization is derived from the body and thus the body's temperature is continually reduced as the sweat evaporate. 
This and cold weather bring about the sensation of cold stimuli while hot weather and high metabolic activity within the body lead to warm sensation we feel. 
 
Acknowledging this, it's also important to understand how the body dispose sweat in each atmospheric condition and thus why we urinate much and often during cold weather or atmospheric condition than the warm one. 
 
During hot weather, the skin helps the liver dispose excess salt or sweat produced by the sweat gland through body sweating because the sweat gland is highly active and produces high amount of sweat. 
 
Unlike hot atmospheric condition, the sweat gland is inactive during a cold day and produces very little sweat. The effect of this is a drastic reduction of heat or sweat loss through evaporation. Not only does this result to body heat conservation but also result to the skin not excreting excess salts or sweat and then the sweat become excreted by the liver as urine. 
That's why we urinate much and often on a cold weather or day.</div>

WHY WE URINATE MUCH AND OFTEN ON A COLD WEATHER OR DAY

No one can claim that he's oblivious of the fact that we tend to urinate more and often during cold weather. Yes you heard me right! ...

Functions Of White Blood Cells And Immunization

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People can protect themselves from serious diseases by carrying out immunization i.e artificial immunization. 
 
But then, what's immunization?  
Immunization is the process of ingesting substances that is primed to make ones immune system  resistant to a specific pathogenic organisms or disease. Immunity created in the body is called natural immunization while the ones created by humans are called artificial immunity. 
 
Let's now know how artificial immunization is possible. 
 
We all know that the solid component of the blood known as the white blood cell carries out the important function of defending the body from pathogens or diseases. To make this more efficient,  the white blood cell is further categorized in two which include the phagocytes (that carry out phagocytosis, i.e ingestion of pathogens ) and the lymphocytes that secret substances called antibodies that function as follows in relation with the phagocytes. 
 
-Neutralization: the lymphocytes  neutralize the toxic produced by those pathogens or render them inactive. 
-Flocculation: The lymphocytes secret the disease causing organisms with antibodies that would cause them to clump together and then ingested by the phagocytes. 
 Clotting: during the process of clotting, the lymphocytes got attached to the mesh of fibrin that block the cut and thus prevent the entry of pathogenic organisms. 
 
Let's break down the lymphocytes a bit further. 
 
The lymphocytes are further classified into two principal groups and the null-group. 
B-lymphocytes: produce antibodies in the humoral immune response. 
 
T-lymphocytes: participate in the cell mediated immune response. 
 
The null-group contains the cytotoxic cells (natural killer cells) and  participates in the cell innate immune response. 
 
It's now important to note that a particular type of pathogen stimulates the production of a particular antibody. 
 
How immunization works: 
The artificial immunization is simply aimed at making or creating an awareness of a possible presence a disease and causing the lymphocytes to recognize them. 
This is done by ingesting a small dose of dead or weakened causal micro-organism of such disease into the body. 
This will quickly draw the attention of the lymphocytes and thus effect the production of a specific antibody that would kill the disease. 
 
So when these white blood cells are destroyed,  the body is left defenseless and thus exposed to any possible disease or pathogen. This exactly what AIDS does. 
 
It attacks and destroys the white blood cells. The diseased is left defenseless and different diseases invade the body. This will lead to the actual death of the person. What Aids does is only destroying the body immune,then the different diseases that invade the body lead to the death of such. 
 
Got any suggestion? 
Use the comment space. 
 </div>

Functions Of White Blood Cells And Immunization

People can protect themselves from serious diseases by carrying out immunization i.e artificial immunization. But then, what's immuni...

Why Well and Water Table Are Warm at Night or Morning During Winters

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
It is widely noticed in our various life activities that well water and underground water are warm at night/morning but cold at the day during winters. 
In fact! Am a witness to that strange occurrence. Back in my childhood days, we usually ran to the well to draw water for our bath in the morning after comparisons has been made on the temperature of well, tank and underground water to normal ones. 
 
This sounds so ridiculous because the reverse is obvious with regards to the temperature differences at night and day and factors that effect temperature at whole. 
How comes this strange phenomenon? 
Why the reverse change in temperature? 
 
Let's see what answer nature has to offer us and the mystery behind this strange and odd... 
 
Let's study first the temperature of the atmosphere (which affects the water on the earth's surface) and the one beneath the earth or underground (which affect the water-table or underground water). 
 
Temperature on the earth's surface or atmosphere is easily influenced by external factors e.g weather conditions while the temperature beneath the earth crust is fairly constant ( fairly affected by changes). 
 
So if for example the normal temperature of the two kind of water in question is 1degree Celsius, after the heating of earth's surface by the sun and the cooling <a href="http://sciencezone12.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-higher-you-go-cooler-it-becomes.html"> read also-the higher you go, the cooler it becomes</a> the temperature of the water would drop below 1 degree Celsius but that of the underground water remain fairly constant e.g 1 degree Celsius. 
 
When we then touch the two water, we realize the underground is warmer than the other. 
 
Another reason is that heat of molten magma of any occurring intrusive volcanic eruption may affect the temperature of the underground water.</div>
</div>

Why Well and Water Table Are Warm at Night or Morning During Winters

It is widely noticed in our various life activities that well water and underground water are warm at night/morning but cold at the day du...

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Weird Facts About Human Body

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EVER WONDER WHY BIRDS FLY IN V FORMATION

EVER WONDER WHY BIRDS FLY IN V FORMATION

WHY ARE GRASSHOPPERS GREEN DURING RAINY SEASON BUT BROWN DURING DRY SEASON

SKIN AS BODY TEMPERATURE REGULATOR

WHY WE URINATE MUCH AND OFTEN ON A COLD WEATHER OR DAY

Functions Of White Blood Cells And Immunization

Why Well and Water Table Are Warm at Night or Morning During Winters

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