Atomic Fingerprinting

In the sophisticated world of counterfeiting, it can often be difficult to tell fakes from the real deal. But now, scientists have developed a new method that can stamp things with "atomic fingerprints" to keep phony products at bay.

"There is no bigger crime than counterfeit crime," said Robert Young, a professor of physics at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom and chief technology officer of the tech startup Quantum Base.
Earlier this month, Young and his colleagues announced a relatively simple technique for confirming the authenticity of an object — an advance that could put a dent in the counterfeit industry, where fakes, forgeries and imitations cost the global economy half a trillion dollars in lost revenue each year, according to the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, headquartered in Paris.


The new anti-counterfeiting method, published online in ArXiv, the open-access preprint journal from Cornell University, has two components: a unique molecular pattern that can be incorporated into a holographic label and a smartphone app.
The unique pattern is created by intentionally fabricating flaws into an atom-thin layer of material, such as graphene oxide. Flaws may include removing a carbon atom, or adding extra oxygen atoms, or creating a ridge of atoms, according to the researchers. Once the flaw is set, the material is incorporated into an ink and then, using an inkjet printer, printed onto a hologram, which can be added as a label to any product.
To confirm the presence of the atomic pattern, a person would use a smartphone camera and its built-in flash to photograph the label. The flash excites the atoms, which produce a unique color based on the pattern. A corresponding app can instantly analyze the image and confirm whether the label is authentic or not, the researchers said."I'm really satisfied by how simple it is," Young told Live Science.


Solving such an extensive problem like counterfeiting requires a solution that can be adopted by a large number of people, Young added. A technique that's easy to incorporate and easy to analyze could ensure that it's widely adopted much faster, he said.
Young and his team are working with a company that prints 10 billion holograms per year and said that the first application could be in the automotive industry, where parts are already spray-painted with labels. By piggybacking onto existing manufacturing applications, the researchers can prove that the method works, according to Young.
"We're expecting the first products in market in the first quarter of next year, in 2018," he said.
From there, the researchers would like to branch out to other industries, including pharmaceuticals, where $200 billion a year is lost from counterfeit drugs, Young said. And what's worse, this illegal medicine can sometimes lead to death.
"Thirty percent of counterfeit pharmaceuticals don't contain the correct active ingredient," Young said. "People buy these things, believe they're real, but they're not being treated for the disease."
Young said that eventually, the atomic fingerprints his team has developed could be laminated directly onto individual pills.
"This is genuinely a really exciting application," he said.

Brain Hacking Technology

There's been a lot of hype coming out of Silicon Valley in recent months about technology that can meld the human brain with machines. But how will this tech help society, and which companies are leading the charge?
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made waves in March when he announced his latest venture, Neuralink, which will design so-called brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Initially, the BCIs will be used for medical research, but the ultimate goal is to prevent humans from becoming obsolete, by enabling people to merge with artificial intelligence.
While these may seem like lofty goals, Musk is not the only one who's trying to bring humans closer to machines. Here are five companies that have doubled down on hacking the brain. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]

Neuralink

According to Musk, the main barrier to human-machine cooperation is communication "bandwidth."
This means that using a touch screen or a keyboard is a slow way to communicate with a computer. Musk's new venture aims to create a direct "high-bandwidth" link between the human brain and machines.
What that system would actually look like is not entirely clear yet. Words like "neural lace" and "neural dust" have been bandied about, but all that has really been revealed is a business model. Neuralink has been registered as a medical research company, and Musk said the firm will produce a product to help people with severe brain injuries within four years.
This will lay the groundwork for developing BCIs for healthy people, thus enabling humans to communicate by "consensual telepathy," which could be ready within five years, Musk said. Some scientists, particularly those in the neuroscience community, are skeptical of Musk's ambitious plans.

Facebook

Not to be outdone, just a few weeks after Musk launched Neuralink, Facebook announced that it is working on a way to let people type with their thoughts.
The goal is to build a device that would allow people to "type" up to 100 words per minute, according to Regina Dugan, head of the company's secretive Building 8 research group. Dugan also suggested that the device could work as a "brain mouse" for augmented reality (AR), removing the need to track hand movements to control cursors, The Verge reported.
Facebook has also been light on the details of its plans. The company has said it does not think implants are feasible in the long term, so it's focusing on developing some kind of cap that could track brain activity noninvasively, most likely using optical imaging.
But this technology doesn't exist yet. So, in the meantime, Facebook said that, within two years, it plans to create a prototype medical implant that would pave the way for future devices.

Kernel

Musk wasn't the first wealthy entrepreneur to dive into the underdeveloped neurotechnology space. Last August, Bryan Johnson, founder of the online payments company Braintree, invested $100 million into the startup called Kernel.
The company's initial goal was to develop a chip that could record memories and redeliver them to the brain, based on research by Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist at the University of Southern California. But six months later, the two parted ways due to the long timescales involved, reported MIT Technology Review, and the company is now focusing on technology similar to Neuralink.
Kernel plans to build a flexible platform for recording and stimulating neurons, with the goal of treating diseases such as depression and Alzheimer's. But like Musk, Johnson is not afraid to discuss the prospect of using the technology to augment human abilities and merge with machines.
"There's this huge potential to co-evolve with our technology," Johnson told CNBC.

Emotiv

Unlike some other companies in this burgeoning industry, Emotiv actually makes products — electroencephalography headsets that record brain activity noninvasively.
The technology is lower fidelity than the kinds of neural implants other companies, such as Neuralink, are considering, but it is more established. The company has a research-grade device, called EPOC+, which sells for $799. But it also produces a more consumer-oriented headset, called Insight, which retails for $299.
Emotiv also produces a variety of software products that allow users to visualize their brain activity in 3D; measure their brain fitness; and even control drones, robots and video games, reported The Daily Dot. The company was selected to be part of the Disney Accelerator program in 2015, with the aim of creating a "wearable for the brain."

DARPA

Although it's not a company itself, the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a $60 million program last year to develop an implantable neural interface in collaboration with a consortium of private companies.
The project, which is a part of former President Barack Obama's BRAIN Initiative, is ambitious. DARPA wants a device that can record 1 million neurons simultaneously and stimulate at least 100,000 neurons in the brain. DARPA also wants the device to be wireless, the size of a nickel and ready in four years, which is an incredibly aggressive deadline, according to MIT Technology Review.
Potential applications include compensating for sight or hearing problems because the device could feed digital auditory or visual information directly into the brain. The exact technological approach is unclear at this stage, but the project has the heft of some major engineering giants, such as Qualcomm, behind it,  Quartz reported.

The spray technology works on large or irregularly shaped surfaces.

While touch sensing is common on small, flat surfaces such as smartphone or tablet screens, researchers have now developed a technology to turn surfaces of a wide variety of shapes and sizes into touchpads using tools as simple as a can of spray paint.


The technology, called Electrick, can turn walls, furniture, steering wheels and even toys into touch sensors, the researchers said. The “trick” is to apply electrically conductive coatings or materials to objects or surfaces, or to craft objects using conductive materials. By attaching a series of electrodes to the conductive materials, researchers showed they could use a well-known technique called electric field tomography to sense the position of a finger touch.
“For the first time, we’ve been able to take a can of spray paint and put a touch screen on almost anything,” said Chris Harrison, Assistant professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, US.

The group is scheduled to present Electrick at CHI 2017, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, this week in Denver, Colorado. Until now, large touch surfaces have been expensive and irregularly shaped, or flexible touch surfaces have been largely available only in research labs. Some methods have relied on computer vision, which can be disrupted if a camera’s view of a surface is blocked. The presence of cameras also raises privacy concerns.
With Electrick, conductive touch surfaces can be created by applying conductive paints, bulk plastics or carbon-loaded films, among other materials. Like many touchscreens, Electrick relies on the shunting effect — when a finger touches the touchpad, it shunts a bit of electric current to ground. By attaching multiple electrodes to the periphery of an object or conductive coating, the researchers showed they could localise where and when such shunting occurs.


They did this by using electric field tomography — sequentially running small amounts of current through the electrodes in pairs and noting any voltage differences. The researchers used Electrick to add touch sensing to objects as varied as a steering wheel and the surface of a guitar, among others. The technology could be used to make an interactive smartphone case — opening applications such as a camera based on how the user holds the phone.

An equation is analogous to a scale into which weights are placed. When equal weights of something (grain for example) are place into the two pans, the two weights cause the scale to be in balance and are said to be equal. If a quantity of grain is removed from one pan of the balance, an equal amount of grain must be removed from the other pan to keep the scale in balance. Likewise, to keep an equation in balance, the same operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division must be performed on both sides of an equation for it to remain an equality. You may have studied many Equations but you never knew how these Equations changed the World.



1. Isaac Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation : Newton's Law explains why the planets move the way they do, and how gravity works both on earth and throughout the universe. First published in the Principia in July 1687, the Law of Universal Gravitation was the defacto reference equation for nearly 200 years until Einstein's theory of General Relativity replaced it.



2. Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity : Einstein's most famous undertaking is the generally accepted theory on the relationship between space and time. First proposed in the year 1905, the Theory of Relativity has both radically altered the course of physics, and deepened our knowledge of the universe's past, present and future.



3. The Pythagoras Theorem : This ancient theorem first recorded circa 570-495 BC is a fundamental principle in Euclidean Geometry, and the basis for the definition of distance between two points. Pythagoras Theorem also describes the relationship between the sides of a right triangle on a flat plane.



4. Maxwell's Equations : James Clerk Maxwell's set of equations describe how electric and magnetic fields can be altered, both by each other and by charges and currents. First published between 1861 and 1862, they are to classical electromagnetism what Newton's Laws of motion and gravitation are to classical mechanics.



5. The Second Law of Thermodynamics : Rudolf Clausius's law states that energy always flows from higher concentration to lower concentrations. It also states that whenever energy changes or moves, it becomes less useful. Formulated in 1865, it has led to the development of technologies like internal combustion engines, cryogenics and electricity generation.



6. Logarithms :  Logarithms were introduced by John Napier in the early 17th century as a way to simplify calculations. They answer the question, "How many of X number do we multiply to get Y number ?" Logarithms were adopted by early navigators, scientists and engineers. Today, scientific calculators do the job for us.



7. Calculus : The calculation shown in the definition of a derivative in differential calculus, one of calculus's two major branches. The derivative measures the rate at which a quantity is changing if you are walking 2 km an hour, then you will change your position by 2 km every hour. In 1600's Newton used calculus to develop his laws of motion and gravitation. 



8. Schrodinger's Equation : This equation describes how the quantum state of a quantum system changes with time. Developed by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger in 1926, it governs the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles in quantum mechanics. Schrodinger's Equation paved the way for Nuclear power, microchips, electron microscopes, and quantum computing.



9. Information Theory : Information Theory is a branch of mathematics that studies the coding of information in the form of sequences of symbols, and the speed at which that information can be transmitted. Applications of topics within information theory include data compression and channel coding. Research in the field was also instrumental in the development of the internet and mobile phones.


10. Chaos Theory : Chaos Theory is a branch of mathematics that studies complex systems whose behavior is extremely sensitive to slight change in conditions. In essence, it shows how small alterations can lead to consequences of much greater scale. Chaos Theory has applications just about everywhere- Meteorology, Sociology, Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Biology, and Philosophy.

Below we have 10 facts about black holes — just a few tidbits about these fascinating objects.

Fact 2: Look out! Our Milky Way likely has a black hole.
A natural next question is given how dangerous a black hole is, is Earth in any imminent danger of getting swallowed? The answer is no, astronomers say, although there is probably a huge supermassive black hole lurking in the middle of our galaxy. Luckily, we’re nowhere near this monster — we are about two-thirds of the way out from the center, relative to the rest of our galaxy — but we can certainly observe its effects from afar. For example: the European Space Agency says it’s four million times more massive than our Sun, and that it’s surrounded by surprisingly hot gas.
Fact 3: Dying stars create stellar black holes.
Say you have a star that’s about 20 times more massive than the Sun. Our Sun is going to end its life quietly; when its nuclear fuel burns out, it’ll slowly fade into a white dwarf. That’s not the case for far more massive stars. When those monsters run out of fuel, gravity will overwhelm the natural pressure the star maintains to keep its shape stable. When the pressure from nuclear reactions collapses, according to the Space Telescope Science Institute, gravity violently overwhelms and collapses the core and other layers are flung into space. This is called a supernova. The remaining core collapses into a singularity — a spot of infinite density and almost no volume. That’s another name for a black hole.

 

Fact 4: Black holes come in a range of sizes.
There are at least three types of black holes, NASA says, ranging from relative squeakers to those that dominate a galaxy’s center. Primordial black holes are the smallest kinds, and range in size from one atom’s size to a mountain’s mass. Stellar black holes, the most common type, are up to 20 times more massive than our own Sun and are likely sprinkled in the dozens within the Milky Way. And then there are the gargantuan ones in the centers of galaxies, called “supermassive black holes.” They’re each more than one million times more massive than the Sun. How these beasts formed is still being examined.
Fact 5: Weird time stuff happens around black holes.
This is best illustrated by one person (call them Unlucky) falling into a black hole while another person (call them Lucky) watches. From Lucky’s perspective, Unlucky’s time clock appears to be ticking slower and slower. This is in accordance with Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which (simply put) says that time is affected by how fast you go, when you’re at extreme speeds close to light. The black hole warps time and space so much that Unlucky’s time appears to be running slower. From Unlucky’s perspective, however, their clock is running normally and Lucky’s is running fast.

 

Fact 6: The first black hole wasn’t discovered until X-ray astronomy was used.
Cygnus X-1 was first found during balloon flights in the 1960s, but wasn’t identified as a black hole for about another decade. According to NASA, the black hole is 10 times more massive to the Sun. Nearby is a blue supergiant star that is about 20 times more massive than the Sun, which is bleeding due to the black hole and creating X-ray emissions.
Fact 7: The nearest black hole is likely not 1,600 light-years away.
An erroneous measurement of V4641 Sagitarii led to a slew of news reports a few years back saying that the nearest black hole to Earth is astoundingly close, just 1,600 light-years away. Not close enough to be considered dangerous, but way closer than thought. Further research, however, shows that the black hole is likely further away than that. Looking at the rotation of its companion star, among other factors, yielded a 2014 result of more than 20,000 light years.

Fact 8: We aren’t sure if wormholes exist.
A popular science-fiction topic concerns what happens if somebody falls into a black hole. Some people believe these objects are a sort of wormhole to other parts of the Universe, making faster-than-light travel possible. But as this Smithsonian Magazine article points out, anything is possible since we still have a lot to figure out about physics. “Since we do not yet have a theory that reliably unifies general relativity with quantum mechanics, we do not know of the entire zoo of possible spacetime structures that could accommodate wormholes,” said Abi Loeb, who is with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.



Fact 9: Black holes are only dangerous if you get too close.
Like creatures behind a cage, it’s okay to observe a black hole if you stay away from its event horizon — think of it like the gravitational field of a planet. This zone is the point of no return, when you’re too close for any hope of rescue. But you can safely observe the black hole from outside of this arena. By extension, this means it’s likely impossible for a black hole to swallow up everything in the Universe (barring some sort of major revision to physics or understanding of our Cosmos, of course.)


Fact 10: Black holes are used all the time in science fiction.
There are so many films and movies using black holes, for example, that it’s impossible to list them all. Interstellar‘s journeys through the universe includes a close-up look at a black hole. Event Horizon explores the phenomenon of artificial black holes — something that is also discussed in the Star Trek universe. Black holes are also talked about in Battlestar: Galactica, Stargate: SG1 and many, many other space shows.
Here on Universe Today we have a great article about a practical use for black holes: as spacecraft engines. No one can get to a black hole without space travel. Astronomy Cast offers a good episode about interstellar travel.

7. Chocolate is good for your skin
“Some people say that I eat too many chocolate bars …” Remember that acne infomercial from the 90s? No? Well, it doesn’t matter. Not only does it not cause breakouts, it’s actually good for your skin! (Well, dark chocolate at least.) Flavonoids found in dark chocolate protect women’s skin from the sun’s UV rays, according to German scientists. But that doesn’t mean you can skip the sunscreen.

8. Chocolate can control coughs
The most delicious way to kick your cough, apparently, is chocolate. One of the sweet’s chemical components, theobromine, seems to reduce the activity of the vagus nerve, the part of the brain that triggers coughing fits. Scientists are even working on a cough-quelling drug that uses theobromine in place of codeine—a narcotic common in cough medicine.



9. Chocolate improves blood flow
In 2008 Harvard scientists forced test subjects to undergo “two weeks of enhanced chocolate intake.” A fortnight of chocolate face-stuffing, they found, sped up blood flow through their subject’s middle cerebral arteries. In other words, more chocolate means more blood to your brain.

10. Chocolate strengthens your brain
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University found that dark chocolate shields cells in your brain, and accordingly protects it from damage caused by stroke. Epicatechin, a compound found in chocolate, significantly reduced the brain damage in mice who suffered strokes, they found. Scientists at California's Salk Institute also found that epicatechin improved mice’s memories.

If you thought lifehacks or Jugaad is a recent phenomenon, here are some intelligent lifehacks used in ancient India. 


In Southern part of the country , after a temple was built, Kalasams , a pot like metal, were fixed on top of it. And no building taller than the temple would be constructed. This was primarily done for two purposes:Made of gold, silver or copper, Kalasams are good conductors of electricity. So during monsoon thunder shower, the temple tower will take the first hit and Kalasams will prevent the high electrical energy from affecting a lot of people.Each Kalasam is then filled up with up to 100 kgs of rice, maize, corn and millets and sealed. During excessive rains and floods, these grains are used for subsequent sowing. 



Seed balls , a technique of planting trees by embedding organic seed balls in the ground and now promoted by political leaders to increase green cover, is actually an ancient India concept. Many villagers would make these seed balls at home, throw them everywhere and help in planting without opening up soil or using any tools. 



Mewar rulers in India apparently used to fool their enemies by making their horses wear baby elephant trunks. Opposition would then not attack the horses thinking they were baby elephants. Maharana Pratap apparently used this war tactic in the famous Battle of Haldi Ghati. 


Throwing coins in the river was actually a hack our fore-fathers used for better health. Here is how it works. Copper is one metal useful to the human body, but not consumed. So, when these coins were thrown in, it ensured we consumed copper as rivers were the only source of drinking water. 



Do you know where the word Jugaad came from ? From a quadricycle called Jugaad. This vehicle was made of wooden planks and old jeep parts and was the most used means of transportation in north India. According to Wikipedia, "Jugaad could be used as a term for any low cost vehicle which typically costs around Rs. 50,000. Jugaads are powered by diesel engines originally intended to power agricultural irrigation pumps. Today, a jugaad is one of the most cost-effective transportation solutions for rural Indians." 



Do you know why forts in Rajasthan were constructed with small entry gates for the rooms? During war, when soldiers from the enemy troop bent their head to enter, the soldiers standing next to gate would chop their heads off. 



When sanitizers did not exist , people like care-takers, plumbers, sewage cleaners, applied salt all over the body before starting their work. This was because salt acted as a fool-proof disinfectant. 


Do you know why applying Mehend i became one of the wedding rituals? It was actually a hack used by the elderly ladies in the family to ensure that the bride stays calm. Mehendi is a very powerful herb that cools your body. So, to prevent any stress for the bride and women at home, Mehendi was applied. 



Women in every household would make ingredients like fries and spices by drying them for days. This way the food items would stay fresh for even a year, without preservatives. Now you know why they stayed healthy? This is followed till now in small towns


Almost every household had mango leaves tied at the door step. That is because mango leaves act as the best anti-virus. 


There are many more such interesting lifehacks that our forefathers. Please share with us in the comments section below if you know of any.

1. There is enough DNA in an average person’s body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back — 17 times

The human genome, the genetic code in each human cell, contains 23 DNA molecules each containing from 500 thousand to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled, or about 5 cm on average. There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body and if you’d uncoil all of the DNA encased in each cell and put them end to end, then these would sum to a total length of 2×10¹⁴ meters or enough for 17 Pluto roundtrips (1.2×10¹³ meters/Pluto roundtrip).

2. The average human body carries ten times more bacterial cells than human cells

It’s funny how we compulsively wash our hands, spray our countertops and grimace when someone sneezes near us—in fact, we do everything we can to avoid unnecessary encounters with the germ world. The truth of the matter is that each and every one of us is a walking petri dish! All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug or 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho. Don’t worry, though. Most of these bacteria are helpful; in fact, we couldn’t survive without them.
For one thing, bacteria produce chemicals that help us harness energy and nutrients from our food. Germ-free rodents have to consume nearly a third more calories than normal rodents to maintain their body weight, and when the same animals were later given a dose of bacteria, their body fat levels spiked, even if they didn’t eat any more than they had before. The gut bacteria is also very important to maintaining immunity. (image source)

3. It can take a photon 40,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to its surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to Earth

Photon travels, on average, a particular distance d before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction. From the core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) where it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps. The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes between many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, the light that reaches us today is energy produced maybe millions of years ago. Amazing!

4. At over 2000 kilometers long, The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth

Coral reefs consist of huge numbers of individual coral polyps – soft-bodied, invertebrate animals – linked by tissue. The Great Barrier Reef is an interlinked system of about 3000 reefs and 900 coral islands, divided by narrow passages, just beneath the surface of the Coral Sea.Spanning more than 2000 km and covering an area of some 350 000 sq km, it is the largest living structure on Earth and the only one visible from space. But this fragile coral colony is beginning to crumble, battered by the effects of climate change, pollution, and manmade disasters.

5. There are 8 times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic ocean

 A teaspoon of water (about 5 mL) contains 2×10²³ water molecules, but each water molecule is comprised of 3 atoms: two hydrogen and one oxygen. Moreover, if you’d laid down end to end each water molecule from a teaspoon full you’d end up with a length of 50 billion km or 10 times the width of our solar system.

6. The average person walks the equivalent of five times around the world in a lifetime

 The average moderately active person take aound 7,500 step/day.  If you maintain that daily average and live until 80 years of age, you’ll have walked about 216,262,500 steps in your lifetime. Doing the math;  the average person with the average stride living until 80 will walk a distance of around 110,000 miles.  Which is the equivalent of walking about 5 times around the Earth, right on the equator.

7. When Helium is cooled to almost absolute zero (-460°F or -273°C), the lowest temperature possible, it becomes a liquid with surprising properties: it flows against gravity and will start running up and over the lip of a glass container!

We all know helium as a gas for blowing up balloons and making people talk like chipmunks, but what most people don’t know is that it comes in two distinct liquid states, one of which is borderline creepy. When helium is just a few degrees below its boiling point of –452 degrees Fahrenheit (–269 degrees Celsius) it will suddenly be able to do things that other fluids can’t, like dribble through molecule-thin cracks, climb up and over the sides of a dish, and remain motionless when its container is spun. No longer a mere liquid, the helium has become a superfluid—a liquid that flows without friction.
“If you set [down] a cup with a liquid circulating around and you come back 10 minutes later, of course, it’s stopped moving,” says John Beamish, an experimental physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Atoms in the liquid will collide with one another and slow down. “But if you did that with helium at low temperature and came back a million years later,” he says, “it would still be moving.

8. If Betelgeuse would explode transiting from the red supergiant stage to supernova then our sky would light continuously for two months. It can happen anytime, within a couple of thousand years, tomorrow or even now

Betelgeuse lies some 430 light-years from Earth. Yet it’s already one of the brightest stars in Earth’s sky. The reason is that Betelgeuse is a supergiant star – the largest kind of stars in the Universe. Betelgeuse has a luminosity about 10,000 times that of the Sun and its radius is calculated to be about 370 times that of the sun. If it were positioned at the center of our sun, its radius would extend out past the orbit of Mars. Because it’s near the end of its lifetime, Betelgeuse is likely to explode into a supernova. (image source)

9. An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body

You have about 5 litres of blood in your body (at least most people do) and the average heart pumps about 70 ml of blood out with each beat. Also, a healthy heart beats around 70 times a minute. So, if you multiply the amount of blood that the heart can pump by the number of beats in a minute, you actually get about 4.9 litres of blood, which is almost your whole body’s worth of blood. In just a minute, the hearts pumps the entire blood volume around your body.

10. The known universe is made up of 50,000,000,000 galaxies. There are between 100,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars in a normal galaxy. In the Milky Way alone there might be as many 100 billion Earth-like planets. Still think you’re alone?

The "Milky Way" can be seen as a hazy band of white light some 30 degrees wide arcing across the sky. Although all the individual naked-eye stars in the entire sky are part of the Milky Way, the light in this band originates from the accumulation of unresolved stars and other material located in the direction of the galactic plane. Dark regions within the band, such as the Great Rift and the Coalsack, are areas where light from distant stars is blocked by interstellar dust. The area of the sky obscured by the Milky Way is called the Zone of Avoidance.
The Milky Way has a relatively low surface brightness. Its visibility can be greatly reduced by background light such as light pollution or stray light from the Moon. The sky needs to be darker than about 20.2 magnitude per square arcsecond in order for the Milky Way to be seen. It should be visible when the limiting magnitude is approximately +5.1 or better and shows a great deal of detail at +6.1. This makes the Milky Way difficult to see from any brightly lit urban or suburban location, but very prominent when viewed from a rural area when the Moon is below the horizon.
The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness shows that more than one-third of Earth's population cannot see the Milky Way from their homes due to light pollution.

Yuvraj Singh is one of the best ODI cricketers India has produced in recent times. At his best, there is no player on the planet that you would rather than this stylish left-handed from Punjab. That silky flick through the on-side, that slap through mid-wicket that he plays with disdain, Yuvraj’s high bat-lift makes his game even more pleasant to watch.