Archive

Month: August 2026

Fact A second is defined by a caesium atom, not the Earth Exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations. The planet turned out to be an unreliable clock. 1 min read Fact Bananas are measurably radioactive So are you, and so is anyone you hug. 1 min read Fact Light has been slowed to the speed of a bicycle And then stopped entirely, and then released again. 1 min read Fact Superfluid helium climbs out of its own container Cooled far enough, it flows with no viscosity and creeps up the walls. 1 min read Fact Gallium melts in your hand A metal with a melting point below body temperature. 1 min read Fact The kilogram stopped being a physical object in 2019 For 130 years it was a lump of metal in a vault near Paris - and it was losing weight. 1 min read Fact Water is bizarre, and life depends on the bizarreness Almost every substance contracts when it freezes. Water expands. 1 min read Fact Helium was discovered on the Sun before it was found on Earth An unexplained yellow line in an eclipse spectrum, in 1868. 1 min read Fact Glass is not a slow-moving liquid Old cathedral windows are thicker at the bottom because of how they were made. 1 min read Fact The Sun should not be able to burn, and quantum mechanics lets it The core is too cold for fusion. It happens anyway, by cheating. 1 min read