Six Thought-Provoking Articles with Surprising Facts

What is our planet doing?

We go about our daily lives, giving little thought to what our world is doing or where it‘s going.

If you’re standing on the equator, the widest part of the Earth, you’d be speeding along at about 1,670 kilometres per hour (1,038 miles per hour) due to the Earth spinning on its axis once every 24 hours.

Travelling around the Sun on its yearly trip, the Earth is racing along at about 107,000 kilometres per hour (66,500 miles per hour).

The Earth and the other seven planets follow the Sun on its journey around the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. That orbit is called a galactic year and takes an estimated 230 million years to complete. Travelling around the galaxy, the Earth is speeding along at roughly 828,000 kilometres per hour (514,000 miles per hour).

To top it off, our galaxy, with us on board, is travelling through space at over 2.1 million kilometres per hour (1.3 million miles per hour), and we don’t even notice it.

Our time here on earth.

The universe is thought to have begun expanding roughly 13.8 billion years ago. It was the beginning of space and time.

We, humans, have made up a timescale to suit ourselves. A day is the time it takes for our planet to complete one turn on its axis. One month is a measure of time roughly corresponding to the Moon’s cycle around the Earth, and the time it takes for the Earth to make a complete orbit around the Sun is called a year.

We all talk about “yesterday” in many conversations, but way back in the distant past there must have been a day without a yesterday.

Yes, it is hard for us to comprehend that statement.

How would we manage without our time?

The human ingredients.

An average-sized adult person consists of approximately 7 octillion (7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) atoms, and almost all of them are billions of years old.

The most abundant elements in our bodies are hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. They account for roughly 96% of the mass that makes up you and me.

An element is a pure substance that consists of the same type of atoms.

During our lives, atoms are constantly leaving and joining our bodies. Hydrogen came into existence roughly 13.8 billion years ago, not long after the birth of the universe itself. Most of the helium in the universe also formed shortly after the Big Bang, although some has been produced inside stars ever since.

The heavier atoms came much later, and they were manufactured in stars and supernova explosions.

Under normal conditions, atoms cannot be destroyed; they just keep on being recycled.

Our existence. Is it evolution?

Many people don’t believe in the evolution of life, but as they say, everyone has their own beliefs. I personally cannot see a more plausible explanation of why we are here.

Evolutionary biologists say that humans and all other living species are descended from simple, bacteria-like ancestors.

Evidence of bacteria can be traced back at least 3.7 billion years. Over countless generations, small modifications have taken place. Small changes which are more favourable to life are more likely to be passed on to the next generation. This has been happening since life first appeared on our planet.

The changes that are passed on through natural selection are the reason you are here reading this article.

One thing that evolution needs is plenty of time, as it is a very slow process; our lives are too short to see the changes.

Comets: Lonely space travellers.

Comets are objects in our solar system that contain dust, rocks, and ice. They orbit the Sun in highly elliptical (oval-shaped) paths.

As they get closer to the Sun, they warm up and release gases and other debris. This outgassing produces a glowing cloud called a coma and often a tail.

In 1986 my two young children and I watched the most famous short-period comet, Halley, as it made its closest approach to the Sun on its long journey through space.

There’s a chance that my children will see it again. After reaching the farthest point in its orbit beyond Neptune in 2023, it turned around and started on that long trek back towards the Sun, arriving here in 2061.

Depending on when you were born, some people will see Comet Halley twice. I saw it once but will never see it again.

We are very much alike.

You, I, and every other human alive today share about 99.9% of the same DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). That slight difference of 0.1% is what makes us a little bit unique.

Chimpanzees are the closest living relatives we have in the animal kingdom. They share about 98.8% of our DNA, and surprisingly, the common garden slug shares around 70% of many of the genes associated with our DNA.

We even share about 50–60% of many of our genes with one of our most popular fruits, bananas. Yes, every living organism on our planet is related.

It’s widely believed that all living organisms have evolved from a common ancestor through mutations in their DNA.

The result of this extremely long process is the biodiversity of species we see worldwide today.

British spelling.

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